CHAPTER IX.

THE VERDICT.

The arrest was made in September; in November the trial came on. It would have been earlier, but that witnesses were to be summoned from England. It was understood in Crichton that everything was very soon to be in readiness, and that the trial would be a short one; one side announcing confidently a speedy acquittal, the other intimating, by a grave but equally confident silence, their belief in a speedy conviction.

"Dear Mother Chevreuse!" sighed Honora Pembroke, who trembled with terror and apprehension as the day drew near, "how far from your heart is all this bitterness! How far from your wish it would have been to see a man hunted like a beast of prey, even if he had done you a wrong! How far from your peace is all this excitement!"

Far, indeed, would such an inquisition, however necessary to the ends of justice and the good of society, have been from that sweet and overflowing heart, where love, when it could not make the wandering steps seem to be searching for the right path, uprose like a flood, and washed out those traces of error from remembrance. Far enough, too, was all this trouble from the changing form that had once held so much goodness. One might guess how Nature had taken back to her motherly bosom the clay she had lent for mortal uses, and was slowly fitting it, by her wondrous alchemy, for immortality; purifying the dross from it, brightening the fine gold. While this tumult went on overhead, the crumbling dust of that temple whose ruin had brought such sorrow and disaster was slowly and sweetly going on its several paths to perfection; stealing into violets, into roses, into humble grass-blades, into mists that gathered again in drops to refresh its own blossoms and foliage!

Who can say what countless shapes of constantly aspiring loveliness the dust of the saint may assume before uniting once more and for ever to form that glorified body which is to hold, without imprisoning, the beatified spirit, and transmit without stain the sunshine of the Divine Presence?

Yes; far enough from such a progress was the feverish trouble resulting from this sudden and violent dissolution. Friends went to cover anew with flowers and green that grave over which the snows of coming winter had let fall a pure and shining mantle; but the tears they shed were bitter, and their flowers withered in the frost. Voices of those she loved recalled her virtues, and repeated her wise and tender sayings; but they, like all the world, found it easier to admire than to imitate. At humble firesides, where families gathered at night, shivering half with cold and half with fear, they blessed and mourned the hand that had helped them and the voice that had sympathized with and encouraged; but their blessing was so encumbered with human selfishness that it cast the shadow of a malediction. Pure indeed must be that love in whose footprints hatred never lurks!

On the day the trial began F. Chevreuse lost courage. More fatigued by constant physical labor than he would own, he was still more exhausted in mind. A devouring anxiety had taken possession of him. If he was less sure of Mr. Schöninger's innocence than he had been, no one knew it. Probably he entertained no doubt on that subject. But he was certainly less confident that the accused would be able to free himself entirely from suspicion. He could no longer be ignorant of the fact that there was a very damaging array of testimony against him.

"I must be allowed to be childish for once, if it is childishness," he said. "I cannot perform my duties till this is over. If a priest is needed, go to F. O'Donovan. Don't let any one come near me but Mr. Macon. Above all things, don't let any woman in."

We pardon this last request of F. Chevreuse, for he was not in the habit of speaking slightingly of women; and it must be owned that few of them have the gift of silence or of ceasing to speak when they have no more to say.

Mr. Macon was precisely the friend he needed in these circumstances--quick-sighted, clear-headed, prompt, and taciturn. He was, moreover, a man of influence, and could obtain information in advance of most persons.

"Make yourself quite easy, F. Chevreuse," he said. "You shall know everything of consequence within ten minutes after it has happened in the court-room."

The gentleman had in his pocket a package of small envelopes, all directed plainly to F. Chevreuse, and each one containing a slip of paper. When he seated himself in the court-room, a boy stood beside him ready to run with his messages.

In the priest's house, F. Chevreuse had shut himself into his mother's room. A bright fire burned on the hearth, the sun shone in through the eastern window, and at the other side could be seen a window of the church with the cipher of the Immaculate Mother, white and gold-colored, in the arch of it, sparkling as if it had just been traced there by Our Lady herself. All was still, the length of the house being between him and the street, so that only a faint hum of life reached his ears.

"It is hard to believe that misfortune is to come again," he muttered, glancing at the quiet brightness of the scene. "And I will not believe it. I will not think of it. In the name of God, all vain and evil thoughts begone!"

He drew a table near the fire, placed several books on it, and, seating himself, began in earnest to translate a book which he had been fitfully at work upon in the brief pauses of nearer duties. It was a relief to him to look thus into the mind of another, and escape a while from his own. "I am fortunate in having this to do," he thought, looking at the bright side of the situation.

The habit of concentrating his thoughts on the subject in hand did much for him; and when Mr. Macon's first message arrived, it found him bending with interest over the written page whereon he had rendered well a happy thought.

"That is better than the original," he said to himself. "The English is a large, loose-jointed language, sprawling slightly, but it is a sprawling Titan. It is rich and strong. For such a work as this, the French is a trifle too natty and crisp. Come in!"

The door opened, and his messenger stood there. Instantly all rushed across the priest's mind again. He stretched his hand for the note the boy offered him, and tore it hastily open. It was short:

"Nothing but preliminaries so far. The court sits again at two o'clock."

F. Chevreuse glanced at the clock, and saw that it was already noon. Two hours had passed like ten minutes while his mind was thus abstracted.

"Were there many people about the court-house?" he asked.

The boy had been instructed to give his notes without saying anything, and to speak only when spoken to; but he had not been told how much to say when he was spoken to. The temptation to relate what he had seen was irresistible.

"Oh! yes, father," he said, his eyes glistening with excitement. "There was such a crowd that I could hardly get out. I had to hold up the letter, and say it was for you. Then they made way."

F. Chevreuse dropped his eyes, and his face grew more troubled. "Mr. Schöninger was not in court?" he asked.

"No, sir!" The boy hesitated, and had evidently something more to say.

"Well?" said the priest.

"Somebody threw a crucifix in at his cell-window to-day, and he broke it up and threw it out again," the messenger said eagerly.

The priest's face blushed an angry red. "Have they no more reverence for the crucifix than to use it as a means of insult, and expose it in turn to be insulted?" he exclaimed. "Was it done by a Catholic? Do you know who did it?"

F. Chevreuse was putting on his overcoat and searching for his hat, to the great terror of the indiscreet tale-bearer.

"I don't know who did it," he stammered. "I guess it was some boys. But that was this morning; and now the police drive everybody away from that side of the jail. I am sure they won't do such a thing again, father."

The priest perceived the boy's distress in spite of his own preoccupation. "Never mind, Johnny," he said kindly, and tried to smile as he laid his hand on that young head. "You did no harm in telling me; I ought to know if such things happen. Come, I am going out, and our roads are the same for a little way. You are going to dinner? Well, thank your father for me, and say that I shall go only to the jail, and directly home again."

"And what has he gone to the jail for?" Mr. Macon inquired in surprise when he received this message from his son.

The boy answered truthfully enough, but with a somewhat guilty conscience, that he did not know, and sat down to his dinner, which he was unable to eat. His round cheeks were burning like live coals with excitement, and his heart was trembling with the thought that it was he who had sent the priest on that errand.

"You must learn to bear excitement better, my son," the mother said. "It will never do for you to be in court every day, if it is going to make you lose your appetite."

Thus admonished, Johnny called back his courage. "Oh! I'm not excited at all, mother," he said, with a fine air of carelessness. "It is only that I am not hungry. Why, all the men in the court-house, except the judge, were more excited than I was; weren't they, father?"

The father and mother exchanged a glance and smile. They were rather pleased with the self-confidence of this doughty young lad of theirs.

Meantime, F. Chevreuse had reached the jail, and learned that the story he had heard was quite true. Some boys, encouraged, it was thought, by their elders, had flung a crucifix into the Jew's cell-window, which was not far from the ground, and it had been tossed out to them, broken in two. The prisoner had complained that missiles were being thrown in, when the police had received instructions to keep the place clear.

"I have not allowed any visitors in the corridor for several days," the jailer said. "People crowded here by scores. But you, of course, can always go in. They are just carrying in the dinner."

"I am not sure that I wish to speak to him," the priest said with hesitation, but after a moment followed into the corridor. The waiter set the tin dishes containing food into the different cells, through a hole in the door, and retired. The jailer stood near the outer door. F. Chevreuse approached Mr. Schöninger's cell, not with the eager confidence of his first visit, but with an apprehension which he could not overcome. Other footsteps prevented his own from being heard, and he stood at the grating, unseen and unsuspected by the inmate of the cell.

Mr. Schöninger sat on the side of his bed, his face partly turned from the door, looking steadfastly out through the window. A silent snow had begun to fall, tossed hither and thither by the wind. The jail was near the Immaculate Conception, F. Chevreuse's new church, and the stone Christ that crowned the summit of the church was directly opposite the window of the cell. It stood there above the roof of the building, with the sky for a background, its arms outstretched, and now, in the storm, seemed to be the centre toward which all the anger of the elements was directed. The myriad flakes, tumbling grayly down, like flocks of rebel angels being cast out of heaven, buffeted the compassionate face as they passed, and, after falling, seemed to rise again for one more blow. They rushed from east, west, north, and south, to cast their trivial insult at that sublime and immortal patience. A small bird, weary-winged, nestled into the outstretched hand, and the wind, twirling the snow into a lash, whipped it out, and sent it fluttering to the ground. Nothing was visible through the window but that solitary form in mid-air stretching out its arms through the storm.

On that Mr. Schöninger's gaze was immovably set, and his face seemed more pale and cold than the stone itself. His hands were folded on his knees, the rising of the chest as he breathed was scarcely perceptible, and not a muscle of the closely-shut mouth stirred. His large, clear eyes, and the eyelids that trembled now and then, alone relieved the almost painful fixedness of his position.

Whether, absorbed in his own affairs, the direction his eyes took was merely accidental, or whether the statue itself had drawn and held that earnest regard, was not easy to decide. But a Catholic, ever ready to believe that images, whose sole purpose is, for him, to recall the mind to heavenly contemplations, will suggest holy thoughts even to unbelievers, must also necessarily hope that no eyes will for a moment rest on them in entire unconsciousness.

F. Chevreuse, after one glance, drew noiselessly back. Mr. Schöninger's strong and resolute calmness, which hid, he knew not what, of inner tumult or repose, disconcerted him. Besides, he had not forgotten that those white hands, so gently folded now, had within a few hours broken in pieces the symbol of man's salvation, and flung them from him in scorn. He would offer no explanations nor assurances to one who seemed so little in need of them. Sighing heavily, he turned away, and sought refuge again in his own home.

Yet a faint gleam of light had penetrated his sombre mood from this visit, and, when he had closed the door of his room, he stepped hastily to the window looking toward the church, and glanced up at the statue above him. It had been wrought in Italy, and brought to America in the good ship _Cometa_, and had on the voyage come near being thrown overboard to lighten the ship during a storm. Bales and barrels of merchandise had gone by the board, costly oils had floated on the waves, costly wines had perfumed them, but the heaviest thing in all the freight, the stone Christ, had been left undisturbed in spite of the sailors. The captain was a rough man, and cared little for any form of religion; but somewhere within his large, rude nature was hidden, like a chapel in a rock, a little nook still bright and fresh with his youth and his mother's teachings.

"If Jesus Christ did really walk on the sea without sinking, then he can keep this image of himself from sinking, and us with it," he said. "I'll put it to the test. If the ship goes down, I'll never believe in any of those old stories again."

And he held to his resolution through a terrific storm, in spite of a crew on the brink of mutiny, and finally sailed into port with the sacred image, which had, he believed, miraculously preserved them. And ever after, as they sailed, a little image of Christ sailed with them, fixed in the bows; and at night, during storms at sea, the sailors, albeit no Catholics, would bow their heads in passing it, and mutter a word of prayer for aid; and one old sailor, to whom for thirty years the land had been strange and the sea a home, used to tell how, on one terrible night of that long storm when the stone Christ had been their sole freight left, the crew, lashed to mast and spar, and looking every moment for destruction, had seen a white form glide forth from the hold, and, standing in the bows, stretch out its hands over the waves, which, with the gale, sank away to silence before them, leaving only the gentle breeze that had wafted them on their way home.

"I leave him to you, O shadow of my Lord!" the priest said. "Speak to him! call him so that he cannot resist you!"

He then returned to his work, somewhat relieved. "No trial is insupportable to him who has faith," he thought. "And may be all this trouble has come upon him in order that he might lift his eyes and behold that Christ whom he has denied standing with arms outstretched to receive him."

But notwithstanding this faint comfort, the second message did not find F. Chevreuse so absorbed as the first had. He could with difficulty command his thoughts, and was constantly lifting his head to listen for an approaching step, or starting at a fancied knock at the door.

Near the close of the afternoon the boy came, when the light was so dim that the note could be read only by taking it to the window.

"They have opened the case a long way off," Mr. Macon wrote. "They have proved that Mr. Schöninger has a lawsuit in England which involves a large fortune. It costs him every dollar he can raise, his opponents being an established family of wealth and influence, who have for years been in possession of the property he claims. They have proved that during the year ending last April his lawyers received from him fifteen hundred dollars in quarterly payments, and that in April they wrote that, without larger advances of money, it would be impossible for them to carry on the claim. In May, then, he sent them five hundred dollars, in June five hundred more, and on the first of September a thousand dollars. That closes the business for this afternoon."

"And what is the impression made?" F. Chevreuse asked Mr. Macon, when that gentleman called on him in the evening.

"The impression, or rather the conviction, is that Mr. Schöninger was in a condition to make a man desperate in his wish for money. An immense fortune might be secured by expending a few thousands then, and would certainly be lost if he had not the few thousands. They brought in a crowd of small tattlers to show that about the time he received this letter, and after, he was in great distress and agitation of mind; that he lost his appetite, and was heard walking to and fro in his chamber at night. Furthermore, it is evident that the money was obtained in some way after the first of May, though it was not all sent at that time. People naturally ask where the money came from, since he was not known to have any in bank, and was supposed to have sent before all he earned above what was necessary for him to live on."

"Poor fellow!" said F. Chevreuse pityingly. "What a trouble there was all the time under that calm exterior! For I never saw him otherwise than calm. Why, people might comment on my walking my room at night. I frequently walk so when I am thinking, and always when I say my beads."

"I do not imagine that Mr. Schöninger was saying his beads," Mr. Macon said rather dryly. "He was undoubtedly in trouble. He certainly had always an air of calmness, but to my mind it was not an air of contentment. He gave me the impression of a person who has some secret locked up in his mind. This affair of the contested inheritance explains it."

"Poor fellow!" F. Chevreuse said again, and leaned back in his chair. "He has got to have all his private affairs dragged up for discussion, and his looks and actions commented on by the curious. That is the worst of such a trial. A man fancies that he has been living a quiet, private life, and he finds that he has all the time been in a glass case with everybody watching him. The simplest things are distorted, and a mountain is built up out of nothing, and that without any wrong intention either, but simply by the curiosity and misconceptions of people."

Mr. Macon said nothing. He respected the priest's charity, but, for himself, he reserved his decision till the judge should have pronounced. He was not enthusiastic for Mr. Schöninger, nor prejudiced against him; he simply waited to see what would be proved, and had no doubt that the truth would triumph.

On the second day the trial progressed rapidly, approaching a vital point. Mr. Schöninger had not slept the night before the death of Mother Chevreuse, but had been heard walking and moving about his room till morning. Miss Carthusen, whose chamber was next his, gave this piece of information, and added that the next morning the prisoner looked very pale, and scarcely tasted his breakfast. She spoke with evident reluctance, and subjoined an explanation which had not been asked. "I noticed and remembered it, because I had heard of his suit in England, and was afraid it might be going against him."

She glanced nervously at the prisoner, and met a look wherein a softer ray seemed to penetrate the searching coldness. Perhaps he was touched to learn that one for whom he had cared so little had, without his suspecting it, sympathized with him, and been kindly observant of his ways.

On being questioned, she said that Mr. Schöninger had not come home the next night. They had expected him, because he usually told them when he was to be absent; but did not think very strange of it, as he was due early the next day at the town of Madison, where he went every week to give lessons, and where he sometimes went overnight. The last she saw of him that night was at Mrs. Ferrier's. They had a rehearsal there, and he had excused himself early, saying that he had an engagement, and left alone before any of the company.

Being further questioned, she admitted having seen that he took with him from his boarding-house the shawl that he habitually wore on chilly evenings.

A shawl was shown her, and she was asked if she recognized it.

"It was not easy to recognize any one among all the gray shawls there were in the world," she replied rather flippantly, "but Mr. Schöninger's was like that; she should think it might be his."

As she went out, the witness passed quite near the prisoner, and looked at him imploringly; but he took no notice of her. She paused an instant, then, bursting into tears, hurried out through the crowd, clinging to the arm of her adopted father. Lily Carthusen found herself far more deeply involved than she had intended. In a moment of pique and jealousy she had entertained and encouraged this accusation, and even insinuated that she could tell some things if she would; but it was one thing to suspect privately, and make peevish boasts which attracted to her the attention she so dearly loved, and quite another to face the terrible reality where a man was being tried for his life and she swearing against him.

Yet even while grieving over her haste, and repenting it after a fashion, her anger rose again at the remembrance of that cold glance which had averted itself from her when all in the court-room could have seen that she mutely begged his pardon for what she had been obliged to say.

"I hope this will teach you to guard your tongue a little," her father said in deep vexation, as he extricated her from the throng. "It's about the last place for a lady to come to. And, moreover, I hope it will cure you of concerning yourself about the pale looks and bad appetite of young men who do not trouble themselves about you."

"Oh! yes, papa," says Miss Lily; "since I've had a bad time, be sure you add a scolding to it. It's the way with you men."

Mr. Carthusen wisely kept silence. He had learned before this that the young woman who called him father had a remarkable talent for retort.

Where, then, did Mr. Schöninger spend the night the priest's house was entered? Not in Madison; for he had driven himself there early in the morning. He had waked a stable-keeper at four o'clock in the morning to give him a horse and buggy to drive to Madison. The man had wondered at the prisoner taking so early a start, even if he had to begin his lessons at eight o'clock, and had thought that something was the matter with him. He looked pale; and several times, while harnessing the horse, the witness had glanced up and seen him shivering, as if with cold, though it was a beautiful May morning. Mr. Schöninger had seated himself on a bench near the stable-door while waiting, and leaned his arms on his knees, looking down, and had not uttered a word before driving away, except to say that he would be back at seven o'clock in the evening. He looked like a man who had been up all night.

Being questioned, the witness testified that the prisoner wore at the time he saw him in the morning a large gray shawl, such as gentlemen wear; and, on still further questioning, he said that he had observed there was a little piece torn out of one corner. He had noticed and remembered this, because the shawl hung over the wheel when Mr. Schöninger started, and he had stopped him to tuck it up. His first passing thought had been that it was a pity to injure a new shawl; his second, on seeing the torn corner, that, after all, the shawl was not a new one. He would not, perhaps, have remembered such trivial circumstances but for what he heard immediately after. Some one came in and told him of Mother Chevreuse's death. It occurred to him that Mr. Schöninger must have heard of it already, and that it was that news which had made him so sober and silent. He recollected, too, having heard that F. Chevreuse and the Jew were quite great friends, but that the priest's mother did not like they should have any intercourse. He had observed, too, that Mr. Schöninger's boots were muddy, and wondered at it a little, as the roads were not bad, and as the prisoner had always been nice in his dress.

When Mr. Macon visited F. Chevreuse the evening of the second day, he found the priest looking quite haggard.

"You have written me the bad, and the worst of the bad," he exclaimed the moment the door was shut on them. "There must be something to counterbalance all this nonsense!"

"On the contrary, there is something to add," Mr. Macon replied. "Johnny couldn't get through the crowd at the last. They would not make way for him."

"Well?" the priest asked sharply.

They had seated themselves before the fire, and the red light of it shone up into one face turned sideways, and full of shrinking inquiry as it looked into the other face, whose downcast eyes seemed to shun being so read.

"Mr. Schöninger was somewhere wandering about the city all that night," Mr. Macon said. "He was seen and recognized by two or three persons, all of whom noticed something odd in his manner. He was seen in the lane back of the house here as late as eleven o'clock, and appeared to be going toward the river, but came back to the street on finding himself observed. He was not at his boarding-house nor at any of the hotels that night. Moreover, the measure taken of the tracks near your house corresponds with the size of the boots he wore."

"I don't want to hear any more!" exclaimed F. Chevreuse passionately, and hid his face in his hands.

His companion glanced quickly at him, then looked into the fire, and remained silent.

After a moment, the priest lifted his face.

"You don't mean to say that the case is going against him?" he asked in a low voice that expressed both fear and incredulity.

"It looks a little like that now," was the quiet reply. "But we do not know what to-morrow may bring forth."

"I believe Jane was called to-day?" F. Chevreuse remarked after a moment.

The other nodded his head.

"I hope she behaved well?" he added painfully.

Another nod. "Yes; as well as one could expect her to."

"The Ferriers, too, and Lawrence?"

"Yes; but their testimony was not of any great consequence."

The testimony of the Ferrier family was, however, entirely favorable to the prisoner, and they had mentioned him with such respect and kindness as to visibly affect him, and to create a sort of diversion in his favor. The wealth and style of the party, the manner in which they took possession, as it were, of the court-room, with several gentlemen clearing the path before them, made an impression. When they went out, the prisoner looked at them with a faint smile as they passed. Annette smiled in return, and Lawrence bowed with scrupulous respect and friendliness; but Mrs. Ferrier, rustling in voluminous silks, down which her rich sables slipped loosely, leaned over the bar, and, in the face of the whole court and crowd of spectators, shook hands with Mr. Schöninger, and, in a voice audible to the whole company, made with him an appointment which hovered strangely between the tragical and the absurd.

"Come to my house the minute you are out of this terrible place," she said. "Don't go anywhere else." Then she flounced out, wiping her eyes, and tossing her head disdainfully at the judge, the lawyers, and the crowd, whom she held to be, severally and collectively, to blame for these unjust and impertinent proceedings.

"You know, mamma," Annette said, "the judge has to listen to everybody, and it isn't his fault if people are accused. And Mr. Wilson is obliged to make out his case, if he can, and to ask a great many questions. Some things that seem to us trivial may have a good deal of importance in a case like this. You must remember that a law-court is quite different from a drawing-room, where people cannot be too inquisitive without being checked."

"I shall take care that none of them come to my drawing-room again," retorted the mother with spirit. "To think of that Mr. Wilson, who has been at my house to dinner, telling me to try to remember something that he knew I had forgotten or didn't want to tell! You may depend upon it, Annette, that man has a spite against poor Mr. Schöninger. It is as plain as day that he is raking up all he can against him. I shouldn't be surprised if the scamp were to hire men to tell lies about him. He looks capable of it. And then, to question me about what Mr. Schöninger had over his shoulder when he came to my house, and what time it was when he went away, and to show me that trumpery old gray shawl--if that is the majesty of the law, I don't want to see any more majesty. The object--and a most ridiculous and slanderous object it is, too--is to find out if Mr. Schöninger, as fine a gentleman as ever lived, broke into a priest's house, and murdered a lady and a saint, and stole a little package of dirty one-dollar bills. That's what they pretend to want to find out; and why don't they find it out in the proper way? It needn't take 'em long, I should think. But no! they must poke their noses into people's private affairs, asking every kind of impudent question, and making you say things twice, and then asking if you are sure, and then telling you that it's no matter what your opinion is about things; as if I hadn't a right to an opinion! They want to make money, and dawdle out a case as long as they can--that's what they want. And as for the curiosity of women, it's nothing! It takes a man to cross-question."

"O mamma, mamma!" sighed Annette, with smiling indulgence.

"Oh! yes; it's always 'O mama!'" exclaimed Mrs. Ferrier excitedly. "But I have common sense, for all that. And if I'd had the slightest idea how they were going to act, I would have thought out a good story before I came, and stuck to it through thick and thin."

"Why, mamma!" cried the daughter in dismay, "you were sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If you had said anything else, you would have committed perjury."

Mrs. Ferrier looked at her daughter in astonishment not unmingled with alarm. "I didn't swear any such thing," she said, the tide of her eloquence somewhat checked.

"Why, yes, mamma, we all took the oath. When we held up our hands and kissed the book, that was the time."

"I never uttered a word," averred the mother with decision.

"But the clerk said the words for us, mamma, and we held up our hands to denote, I suppose, that we acceded to all he said."

"I heard him mumble over something, I didn't know what it was," said the lady slightingly. "And so somebody else swears for you, like sponsors at a baby's baptism! Well, if he does the swearing, then the perjury is his."

"Good gracious, mamma!" cried Annette, "I hope you haven't been telling any lies!"

Mrs. Ferrier looked at her daughter in dignified reproof. "No, Annette; I'm not in the habit of telling lies, and I haven't told any to-day. And I hope I haven't told any truths about that poor struggling creature, who is, for all the world, like a sheep among wolves. I could never bear to see even a wolf hunted, much less a man."

The three were driving home, Lawrence seated opposite the ladies. While Mrs. Ferrier was talking, he leaned forward, with his arms on his knees, and softly smoothed the fur border of her velvet mantle. He had those little caressing ways when any one pleased him. A faint smile now and then touched his lips at some simple or energetic expression of hers, but his face was so averted that she did not see it, and it would appear that her simplicity did not displease, though it might amuse him a little.

Presently he relinquished the mantle border, and began, with delicate approach, to touch the wrist lets, stroking the dark fur softly, and pushing his finger-tips into it; and at length, when her attention, fluttering abstractedly toward him now and then, had become fixed on him, and she held herself still, and looked, with a half-surprised smile of pleasure, to see what sweet and childish thing he was doing, he took her two plump and well-gloved hands in his, and looked up at his wife. "There's no danger of her telling anything but the truth, Annette," he said. "She is too good and honest for anything else." And he actually bent his handsome head, and kissed Mrs. Ferrier's hands, first one then the other!

There was a momentary silence. Annette, startled by this unexpected delight, could only look at her husband with tearful, shining eyes.

"I tell you, Annette, she doesn't make half as many mistakes as--as I do, for instance."

He dropped his face, relinquished the hands he had kissed, and began again to play with the border of Mrs. Ferrier's cloak, leaving the two women to their talk.

But we have left F. Chevreuse and Mr. Macon.

"That hateful shawl, who raked that out?" the priest asked after a while, questioning in spite of himself.

"The whole turns upon that," Mr. Macon said, rousing himself from the brown-study into which he had fallen. "It seems that Miss Carthusen went up to the convent to make the acquaintance of the Sisters, and, while there, saw a shawl thrown over a lounge in the parlor. She examined it while waiting for the Sisters to come in, and found the corner torn. She mentioned the fact to that Renford, who is an amateur detective. The fellow's great ambition is to become a second Vidocq; he immediately offered to undertake the case, with the provision that, if he should succeed in finding the criminal, he should be regularly employed as a detective."

"Where did the Sisters get the shawl?" demanded F. Chevreuse. "Have they got to be dragged in?"

"It would seem that everybody is to be dragged in," Mr. Macon said. "My wife got the shawl, she doesn't know where, when she was collecting for the convent. That is, they say that she brought it; though she cannot recollect any person giving her such an article, nor recollect even having seen it among the packages. But her carriage was piled full that day, and she had called, perhaps, at twenty houses; so it would not be strange if she should forget."

"So those poor nuns have had to go into court!" said F. Chevreuse, much distressed by the news. "Which one went?"

"Oh! it wasn't a Sister; it was Anita," said Mr. Macon. "My wife went with the child, and stood by her all the time. It was Anita who took all the things from the carriage while my wife was talking with Sister Cecilia in the garden; and the girl counted and examined every package."

"She must have been terrified to death, that poor little lamb!" exclaimed F. Chevreuse, rising to walk about the room. "I think I should have been there with her. I would have gone if I had known. You keep too much from me, Mr. Macon. I known that you and others do this from kindness; but you must remember that it isn't for me to be cowardly and shrink like a baby. I'm not sure but I should feel better to be in the midst of it all than to be shut up here suffering the torments of suspense."

"You had a great deal better have nothing to do with it," his friend said decidedly. "You are not needed. F. O'Donovan was in court with Anita and my wife, and there was a body-guard of Catholics all about to make room for them going and coming. It was hard for the poor child; but what she felt most was not being in a crowd, and obliged to speak in public; she did not appear to think of that; but the thought that what she must say might bring trouble on any one almost overpowered her. She excited a great deal of sympathy. While she spoke, you could have heard a pin drop in the room."

"After all," F. Chevreuse said, catching at a consolation, "it won't hurt any of them to see one of God's snow-drops; and she is no more tender than many a martyr of the church has been."

Mr. Macon's brief story did not give any idea of the sensation produced in court by the appearance of this child, who was as strange to such a scene as if she had been, indeed, a wild flower brought from some profound forest solitude. Her beauty, the dazzling paleness of her face, from which the large eyes looked full of anguish and fear, the flower-like drooping of her form as she leaned on Mrs. Macon's supporting arm--all startled the most hardened spectator into sympathy. Careless and callous as they might have been, feeding on excitement as a drunkard takes his draught, ever stronger and stronger as his taste becomes deadened, each one seemed to realize for a moment how terrible a thing it is to see a human life at stake, and to have influence to destroy or to save it. If she had been a relative or personal friend to the accused, the impression would have been less deep; but the fact that she would have shown the same painful solicitude for any one of them may have stirred in their consciences some sense of their own heartlessness. They made way for her, and listened in breathless silence to hear what she would say. Her very distress lent a silvery clearness to her voice, usually so low and soft, and every word was heard as plainly as the notes of a small bird chirping when its nest is attacked.

"All I know, your honor, is this: Mrs. Macon drove about Crichton to ask for things for the convent; and Mother Ignatia let me go out to bring in the parcels she brought, because it pleased me. I always set down on a slip of paper a list of the articles, and the day of the month she brought them, and some of the Sisters helped me, and looked on. But this time no one but me did anything, for it was the day after Mother Chevreuse was killed, and everybody was in great trouble. Mrs. Macon said, when she came, that she had spent the night before at Madison with her sister there, and started early in her phaeton to beg for us, and had heard nothing of the news till she reached Crichton late in the afternoon. Then she drove straight to us; and, when she got out of the phaeton, she ran to Sister Cecilia, and they threw themselves into each other's arms, and began to cry. We were all crying, but I went to take the parcels out of the phaeton, because I wanted to do something. And I made a list of them, because I always had, and I carried them up-stairs. And I knew just how everything looked, because I tried to think of my work and not of Mother Chevreuse. And I do know surely that the gray shawl which was laid over our lounge was brought that day. I saw the piece torn out of the corner, and, when they arranged it for a cover, they turned the torn corner behind. That is all, your honor, except that Miss Carthusen came to the convent one day, and, when I went into the parlor, she was examining the shawl, and she said she did it because there was one like it missing out of their house. And I hope," said this simple creature, rising, in her earnestness, from Mrs. Macon's arm, and leaning imploringly toward the judge--"I hope that what I have said will not hurt anybody nor be used against anybody. And I ask Mr. Schöninger to forgive me if what I have said displeases him; for, if it should do him harm, I shall be unhappy about it as long as I live."

No one said a word as the girl was led, trembling and half fainting, out of the court-room. The prisoner regarded her with astonishment while she spoke, and when she turned toward him her pitiful face, and made her appeal for forgiveness, he bowed, and a slight involuntary motion of his hands looked as if he would fain have supported her drooping form. Never had he seen so simple and so impassioned a creature. An angel taking its first flight out of the white peacefulness of heaven, and looking for the first time on the miseries of earth, could scarcely have shown a more shrinking and terrified pity than had been displayed by this young girl, drawn from her peaceful convent home to the arena where crime and justice struggle for the mastery. And yet that pure and tender child had given him a terrible blow. Perhaps he felt that her testimony was important, simple as the story she told seemed to be; for his face grew deathly pale, and for the first time during the trial he lost that air of scornful security which he had sustained so far. Averting his face slightly, he seemed to be studying out some problem, and, as he thought, the faint lines between his brows grew deeper, and those sitting near him could see the veins in his temples swelling and throbbing with the stress of some sudden emotion.

The next morning F. Chevreuse went out to make sick-calls after his Mass was over, and returned quite convinced that his friends had been right in advising him to remain in-doors. Everybody he met gazed at him, as if trying to read in his face what thought or feeling he might be striving to hide; people turned to look after him; and groups of excited talkers became silent as he approached, only to resume their conversation with increased vehemence when he had passed. He had been obliged to check the wordy sympathy of some and the angry denunciations of others, who thought to please him by wishing ill to Mr. Schöninger; and more than once his heart had been wrung by some loud lament over his lost mother.

"You were right," he said to F. O'Donovan when he went in. "I will not go out again unless there is need of it."

"Then I give you as a task this forenoon to translate ten pages of that book," his brother priest replied. "It is needed, and should be ready for the early spring sales."

F. Chevreuse laid aside his wrappings with alacrity, glad to have a task assigned him. "But I would like to go into the church a minute," he said, making this request with the humility of a child. "Not to pray," he added quickly, as if afraid of receiving too much credit for piety; "I want to go into the gable, and look down to the court-house."

He stopped for permission, and his face was so worn and troubled that his friend checked the slight smile that unconscious display of obedience had provoked.

"Go, by all means, but do not stay long," he said. "The day is very cold. And, besides, it will do no good to watch there."

What he called the gable was a long, low attic running the whole length of the church, and lighted by a small gable window at each end. A steep stairway led up to a chamber over the altar; but from that the ascent was made by long ladders, very seldom used. The window over the altar gave a fine view of all the eastern and northern part of the city, and looked directly into the square in front of the court-house.

F. Chevreuse toiled wearily up, feeling himself grown old, and stood in the long, dusky room. The floor was covered with wood-shavings left by the builders, and spiders had hung their webs in thick festoons from beam to beam. One side of the southern window, at the further end of the church, was gleaming brightly, where the sun had begun to come in, and the rafters near it glowed as if kindling with fire; but the north window, that felt scarce a touch of sunshine in the winter-time, was covered deeply with frost, piled layer on layer through the cold night.

He put his face to the frame, and breathed on it till the glittering coldness melted, and a drop of water ran down, then another, and presently there was a clear spot in the glass. He wiped this dry with his handkerchief; then, covering his mouth and nose, that his breath might not freeze over the improvised loophole into the outer world, he leaned closer and looked out. For the large panorama of the city, spread out under a clear winter sky, and shot through by the two sparkling rivers, he cared not. Only one spot attracted his attention, and that was the court-house and the square in front of it. Looking there, he drew back, winked to clear his eyes, which had, perhaps, been dazzled by the sharp and tangled lights and shadows of the place; then looked again. The square should have been white with half-trodden snow, and dotted by passers here and there; instead of that, it was entirely black. But the blackness was not of the soil nor pavement; it was the swaying blackness of a crowd. They thronged the streets, pressing toward the square, and stood on the steps of the court-house, struggling to enter. Even at that distance he could see that policemen were forcing them back.

F. Chevreuse turned hastily away from the window, and descended to the church, heartsick at the sight. He threw himself one moment before the altar, then went into the house. As he entered, Jane, who was on the lookout, hid herself in her room till he had passed through the kitchen. Since the trial began, they had not met. She felt sure that he did not approve entirely of her conduct, and he allowed her to be invisible without asking any questions.

F. O'Donovan looked at him anxiously as he re-entered the sitting-room; and, when he went and leaned on the mantel-piece, hiding his face in his hands, approached and touched him kindly on the shoulder.

"It isn't your way, Raphael, to break down so," he said in that sweet voice of his, still sweeter with pity and tenderness.

That name, the name of his boyhood, when he and O'Donovan were at school together; when he was so overflowing with happiness that he could never be still, but had to be for ever at work or at play; when he knew no more of care than what the getting of his lessons involved, no more of sin than the little faults he recounted at his confessor's knees and forgot the next moment, and no more of sorrow than the changing of one beloved professor for another who speedily became as dear. O'Donovan, the beautiful boy, the youngest at school, had been his pride and idol in those days. He turned to him now, and, in the old way the English boys used to mock at him for, kissed his friend and school-fellow on both cheeks; at which the Irishman laughed a little and blushed a good deal.

"You're not much changed from the boy you were," said F. Chevreuse. "You had always a way of seeming to coax, while you were really commanding. Well, you're almost always right. How the wind whistles!"

It was a cutting north wind that broke multitudinously against the church, and seemed to splinter there into separate sharp voices. They went up from the narrow passage between the church and the house, they rang from the chimneys, and sighed and whimpered about the feet of the stone Christ, as if some wounded creature, invisible to man, had crawled there to seek for pity.

"What a day!" repeated F. Chevreuse, looking out. "December is certainly an ugly month, and January is a worse one. February would be worst of all, but that it is so near spring you can snap your fingers in its face."

He seated himself at the table, drew the books towards him, and glanced round at the fire, as if to assure himself that there was something shining in his vicinity, then took up a pen, and laid it down again, shivering, not because he was cold, but because he knew there was so much cold about.

F. O'Donovan, seated near the window, with his finger between the leaves of his Breviary, to keep the place, had observed his every movement. He dropped the book on his knee, and spoke in a gentle, dreamy way that was the very essence of soothing.

"Yes, this is now for a while one of the cold spots on the earth; but we have only to climb a little, in spirit or in memory, to have a different idea of December and everything else. How many years ago to-day is it that you and I saw oranges ripening in the sun in December, and roses blooming, and people pushing back their cloaks for the heat? It is an anniversary, for I have some little reason to remember the date. We were in Rome. I had been shivering in a bare, sunless room at the Propaganda, when I looked up and caught a glimpse through the window of a bit of miraculous blue sky over the roof of San Andrea's. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and time for a walk. I called you, and we started on a little exploring expedition; for we had neither of us seen much of Rome at that time. We muffled ourselves well, and went out into the Piazza di Spagna. I recollect you saying, as we came to those great stairs, that they must have been modelled by some one who had Jacob's dream-ladder in his mind. You said, too, that one reason why Rome is so much more beautiful than any other city is not because it is more artistic, but more natural. Each part grew for itself, instead of being cramped by some dominating idea that spoilt all in trying to direct all. You were delighted with the perfectly cool way in which a whole street would go up-stairs or down-stairs. Well, there was the whole side of a piazza going up-stairs. We went up, past the group of models, you know, who stand there to be stared at; the bearded old man who stands for S. Peter or Moses, the brigand and the brigand's wife, and the little brown gypsies. The calendar said it was December; yet in the piazza below the air said it was April. When we paused at the first landing, and began to wish we had left our cloaks at home, it was May, and up in front of the Trinita de' Monti it was mid-June. The fruit-sellers left their large baskets of oranges in the sun while they sat in the shade and waited for customers; there were baskets of flowers, with heaps of half-open roses on the stone rail of the balustrade, and streams of rich verdure flowed wide or trickled brightly between the gray sweeps of stone. In the east was that unimaginable blue that can only be compared to a gem; in the west, a dazzle of unclouded sunshine; and between the two, Rome floated in a silvery mist. You leaned on the balustrade, and--wretch that you were!--your first thought was a pagan one. You said that the goddess of beauty had sunk into the midst of the city, and left her drapery of cloud clinging all about it, and that, when she should withdraw, there would be a vision in the sky, but Rome would be nothing but ashes. That was the best image that Raphael Chevreuse could find, with the city before him all a-bubble with the domes of Christian churches. You may recollect that I gave you a very pretty lecture on the subject. Then you pointed out to me a pillar of smoke wreathing slowly up into the sky, showing between the bold front of the Pincian Hill and the twin cupolas in the Piazza del Popolo, with the distant forest and mountain for a background, and you said that we were nothing but cloud-people living in a cloud, and that the only realities were Moses and the Israelites out there offering up sacrifice in the wilds between Egypt and Chanaan. Well, December being too hot for us then, we walked off toward Santa Maria Maggiore. Do you remember the great orange-tree, as large as an apple-tree, that showed over the convent walls, and how thickly the golden oranges were set among its green foliage; and the symbol over the convent door of two lions trying to get at a bird that was safe in the top of a palm-tree;[274] and the vane that you said could have been thought of nowhere but in Italy--a rod with a cross at the top and a bird's wing swinging round as the wind changed? And when we walked on among the ruins, what superstitious young man gathered dandelions, because gold-colored flowers always brought him some happy chance, he said; and then, in the next breath, looking at those mountains before us, swimming, it seemed, in a sea of rosy-purple vapors, broke out with a psalm, "Montes exultaverunt ut arietes; et colles, sicut agni ovium"? You declared vehemently that the mountains were dancing, and I had to hold you to keep you from dancing too. A pretty sight it would have been to see a young Christian priest twirling _pirouettes_ among the ruins of the temple of Minerva! Doubtless, while we are in the midst of the snows and frost of a northern morning, the sun is just going down over that same warm and glowing scene. And, doubtless, too," said F. O'Donovan slowly, coming to the point he had started to reach, "outside this pain and confusion there is peace and happiness waiting to come in and give us our soul's summer in this world even. The storms are short, but the peace is long, and for ever waiting overhead."

"But life is not long," concluded F. Chevreuse, "and it behooves me to be about my work."

He drew the books toward him, and began to work in earnest. He had been comforted in one regard that morning: he would not himself be called into court, the only points on which he could give evidence being better known to others. Jane and Andrew had both seen the condition of his little study, with its bolted window and locked-up desk, after he left the house that fatal night, and both F. O'Donovan and Mr. Macon saw it in the morning before he came home. The other point, relating to the sort of bank-bills he had lost, was of no consequence, as the bankers could not say what sort of money Mr. Schöninger had paid them. Every disposition was shown to spare him unnecessary pain, and they even strained a point for that purpose.

He was not needed, indeed, and the case was being brought rapidly to a conclusion, as his first despatch showed him.

"Old Mr. Grey, from the pond farm, with his granddaughter, have been brought in," Mr. Macon wrote, "and by their help the story has been made to assume form. Mr. Schöninger returned to Crichton that day past their place. He got into a rough road and broke his harness somewhere, and went to their house to borrow a rope to mend it. He had a shawl on his arm when he went up to the door. While the young girl was gone for the rope, he folded the shawl, and put it into my wife's phaeton among the other packages. My wife was then with old Mrs. Grey in the house. Mr. Grey was at work in the garden, and saw what was done. The girl also saw the shawl on his arm when he came, but did not notice it afterward. It is likely to go hard with him."

F. Chevreuse had a very red face when he looked over this note. But he handed it to F. O'Donovan without a word, and resumed his writing again. If he knew well what he was writing is doubtful. That color did not leave his face, and now and then he pressed his hand to his forehead, as if confused.

"Mr. Schöninger has roused himself at last," the next note said. "He seems for the first time to comprehend that he is in danger. He looks like a lion. I hope he may prove to have some of a lion's strength, for his chances are small."

F. Chevreuse handed the paper to his brother priest, who had been out and come in again, and watched his face while he read it.

"Will you tell me frankly your opinion of this?" he said then.

F. O'Donovan dropped his eyes, having, evidently, no mind to be frank on the subject. "I cannot have a settled opinion on a question of which I have heard but one side," he said. "I have been in court this morning, and talked with some people there, and the chances at present seem for a conviction. But we cannot tell the strength of the defence as yet."

In spite of his reserve, there was no mistaking his belief in the prisoner's guilt.

F. Chevreuse shut his book decisively.

"Since I am not needed here, I may as well go and see the bishop," he said. "I was to have gone this week to settle important business with him, but he excused me on the supposition that I would not be allowed to leave Crichton. Can you take care of my people a few days longer?"

"A week longer, if you wish."

"Four days will be enough--two to go and come, two there. You will know where to telegraph for me, if I should be wanted. I will go straight to the bishop's house, and stay there."

"How glad I am that you did not say 'episcopal residence'!" remarked his companion.

F. Chevreuse was already making his preparations for the journey. He glanced up rather imperiously from the valise he was packing.

"Why should I say it?" he demanded. "Never used such an expression in my life. And this reminds me that you have been criticising me before to-day, calling me superstitious, and I don't know what else. In one little corner of my mind I have been thinking the matter over ever since, and have arrived at these conclusions: superstition, being nothing but erratic faith, should be treated with great tenderness; and, besides, you will recollect that I was at that time reading the pagan classics; furthermore, Rome herself was not born in the faith, but is a converted pagan, and she stands there, a Christian Juno, with all Olympus kneeling about her feet; and well so, for any form is good that is capable of holding a Christian soul. Still further, I have concluded that young O'Donovan, whose hair still looks, across the room, quite black, should show a becoming reverence for Chevreuse, who has long since ceased to count his white hairs and begun to count his black ones. I said an elder soldier, not a better. Did I say better? Good-by. God bless you!"

And he was off, glad of the noise and speed of the cars, of the changing faces and scenes, of anything that would help to ease his mind by a momentary distraction. Yet, in spite of every effort, the thought haunted him of Mr. Schöninger rousing himself to do battle for his life. Call up whatever image he would to entertain his mind, that one intruded. He pictured to himself the first dawn of apprehension in the prisoner's face rapidly intensifying to a flash of angry terror, the reddening or the whitening color, the gathering storm of the brows. He tried to guess what he would do and say, by what grand effort he would at last fling off in scorn the accusation which he had not believed could cling to him--if he should be able to fling it off. That doubt was like a thorn, and he hastily called to mind something to banish it. He remembered what F. O'Donovan had been saying of Rome, and tried to recollect something of that old picture-book part of his life, to see again in fancy its shady streets and sunny piazzas, to enter in spirit some dim church starred around with lamps, and lined with precious marbles; but when he had laboriously fashioned the scene, a hand was outstretched to put it aside like a painted curtain, and again he saw the Jewish gladiator, alive and alert, fighting desperately for his life.

"You can see that I have run away to escape disagreeable scenes and talk," were his first words on reaching his destination. "And now to business."

It was quite understood, then, that no one was to tell him anything relating to the trial, nor mention the subject to him; so that when, on the evening of the third day, he started for home, he knew no more of the progress or result of it than he had known on leaving Crichton.

There were but few passengers that evening, and F. Chevreuse established himself in a corner of the car, put his ticket in his hat-band, that he might not be disturbed by the conductor, leaned back and shut his eyes, that he might not be talked to by any one else, and took out his beads to exorcise troublesome thoughts and invoke holy ones. It was a saying of his that the beads, when rightly used, had always one end fastened to the girdle of Mary, and were a flowery chain by which she led the soul directly to the throne of God.

They proved so to him in this case, and one after another the Joyful Mysteries were budding and blossoming under his touch, when presently he found himself somewhat disturbed by the voices of two men who were talking behind him. At first the sound reached him through the long vista of that heavenly abstraction; but soon the distance lessened, and then a single word brought him down with a shock.

"He fought hard at last," one said, "but it was of no use. Everything was against him."

It needed not another word to tell the priest who and what were meant; but other words were spoken.

"His defence was a mere mass of sentimentality," the speaker went on. "He owns to having walked the streets the whole night of the murder, but he says that it was from distress of mind. He had to decide before the next day whether he would abandon all hope of the fortune for which he was contending, and lose with it all that he had expended, or else throw into the chasm the few hundreds he had retained that an accident might not find him penniless. He declared that the state of his mind was such that he could not sleep, nor keep still, nor stay in the house. Now, that part of the story would not have been so bad if he had not been seen near the priest's house, hanging about there, and going away when he was observed, and if he had not declared that, when he went away from Crichton in the morning, he had not heard of the murder. The tracks were not a strong point, for Newcome makes everybody's boots just alike, and there are a good many men in Crichton who have as neat a foot as Schöninger. But the rest of the defence was nonsense. The shawl was what convicted him. It was his shawl; he owned it; and the fragment found in Mme. Chevreuse's hand just fitted the torn corner, thread for thread. I could see that he was confounded when that came up. He says he left the shawl in Mrs. Ferrier's garden in the evening, and went for it early in the morning before anybody was up, and that he found it just where he had left it. He owned, too, that he put it slyly into Mrs. Macon's carriage. He said he knew her and what she was collecting for; had heard all about it at Madison. When he left his broken harness--which, by the way, was not broken, it appears, but only unclasped somewhere--and went to Mr. Grey's, he took his shawl over his arm absent-mindedly, and found it a nuisance while he was going through the woods. Seeing Mrs. Macon's carriage there full of parcels, some gray blankets among them, it occurred to him to add his shawl to the pile without putting any one to the trouble of thanking him. He said that he believed those nuns to be very good women, and that he felt a respect for them for the sake of F. Chevreuse, who had been very polite to him. Fancy a Jew taking off his shawl to give it to a nun, and that to please a priest! The story is too ridiculous, you see. Oh! it is clear. There never was a clearer case of circumstantial evidence. No one could have a doubt. But the verdict is too hard."

"You think it should not have been murder in the first degree?" another voice asked.

"It should not," was the emphatic reply. "It is almost an outrage to make it so. But people became ferocious the moment it was clear that he was guilty, and I believe they would gladly have taken him out and hanged him to the first tree. The fact undoubtedly is that he was pressed for money, and meant to help himself to the priest's. Mme. Chevreuse heard him, and started to alarm the house, and I think he gave her an unlucky push. But nothing of that sort would content the prosecution nor the people. They must have it that at the very best he killed her wilfully when he found that she had recognized him. The female servant testified that there was a candle overturned in the priest's room, which must have gone out in falling. Madame's first thought would naturally be to light a candle. Still, that is not sure. That same servant wished to show that the prisoner had a spite against the priest's mother, and the Carthusen girl had the same story; but if people had been calm, their gossip would have made no impression. Schöninger's lawyer tried to prove that madame's death resulted from the fall; but there was a bad bruise...."

F. Chevreuse gasped for breath. "For God's sake, stop!" he cried out, half turning toward the speaker, then sinking instantly into his seat again.

A perfect silence followed. The priest was struggling with his feelings, and regretting not having withdrawn before his self-control gave way, and the gentlemen behind him were recovering the shock of learning who their neighbor was, and feeling their way to a solution of the difficulty. One of them had an inspiration. "Let's go and have a cigar," he said; and F. Chevreuse was left to himself.

But his solitude was full of terrible images, and in that few minutes all his relations with the Jew had been changed. He would not have said to himself that he believed the man guilty, and he would have said that, guilty or innocent, he wished him no harm; but what his imagination had utterly refused to do in connecting Mr. Schöninger with his mother's tragical fate the plain talk of this stranger had accomplished. He could no longer separate the two; and the sight of the Jew, or the sound of his name even, would, in future, call up associations intolerable to him.

"You know all, then?" was F. O'Donovan's greeting when they met.

The face of F. Chevreuse showed, indeed, that he had no questions, or few, to ask.

"The law has decided," he said, "and, for the present at least, I cannot question its decision. They know better than I how to arrive at the truth. At the same time, I never will say of a man that he is guilty till he has himself told me that he is, or till I have the evidence of my own senses. And now, what have you to tell me about my people? Is it well with them?"

"It is well," was the echo.

The people had, indeed, settled into their usual quiet mode of life again with surprising readiness, as often happens to those who, giving themselves entirely up to an excitement, exhaust its force the sooner. The conviction and sentence of Mr. Schöninger had not only given them a satisfying sense of justice vindicated, but had impressed them with awe. The suddenness of his fall, when they had leisure to contemplate its accomplishment, was startling. But a few weeks before, he had walked their streets with a step as proud as the proudest, and there was not one among them, whatever his prejudices, who was not pleased to receive his salutation; in a few months longer--months of misery and disgrace--he would be called on to suffer the extreme penalty of the law.

Some of them remembered, too, when all was over, the defence the prisoner had made, if defence it could be called, when he was permitted to speak for himself. They were bitter words, full of fierce and haughty defiance and denunciation and at the time their sole effect had been to provoke still further against him the popular rage; but, for some reason, there was a thrilling pathos in the recollection of them, perhaps because they had been uttered in vain, and because they showed with what horror he contemplated his impending doom.

"You seek my destruction because I am a Jew, not because I am a criminal," he exclaimed; "and you condemn me without proof. But do not flatter yourselves that I shall perish so. Do not believe that I shall fall a victim to your insane and presumptuous bigotry. It may triumph for a time, but the triumph will be short."

Not a very pleasant sort of address to be listened to by a judge who had tried to be impartial, and meant to be honest, nor to a jury who were fully convinced of the speaker's guilt, and who had moreover, as juries are likely to have, a more than judicial sense of their own dignity. Yet, for all that, there was not one of them who would have liked to face again those flashing eyes and that white hand pointing like a flame where his words should fall. They were rather afraid of the man, and looked with equal uneasiness toward the execution of his sentence and the possibility of rescue or escape, or of revenge even, which he had seemed to threaten.

For the present, however, the prison was strong and well guarded, and the convict, being in solitary confinement, had no means of communicating with any friends he might have outside. He was still in Crichton, the state prison being near the city jail; and still, if he chose, he could look out from his grated window and see the Christ in air stretching out arms of loving invitation to him.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES:

[274] The beasts of prey have triumphed, and the birds have been driven away.

THE RELIGIOUS POLICY OF THE SECOND EMPIRE.

[The following is the translation of a remarkable memoir presented to Napoleon III. by one of his Ministers of Public Worship. Its authenticity is guaranteed under oath by Leon Pagès, and the date of its presentation seems to be about the year 1860. It furnishes the key to the religious events of the second period of the reign of Napoleon III., and shows how a government calling itself Catholic plotted against, and was gradually destroying the liberty of, the church. The perfidy and falsehoods contained in the document speak for themselves. The programme detailed in the second part of the same was only too faithfully carried out, not only to the ruin of the emperor, but to that of France also. It began to be put in practice in the year 1860, and was persevered in until the day when all power was taken from the hands of its authors and abettors. The key-note to the whole insidious production is contained in the opening sentence--viz., that no matter what is done by the Catholic Church, it must be for the sake of obtaining influence over souls, not for their spiritual and eternal welfare, but for mere temporal and selfish ends--for worldly power. To the Catholic reader this one remark will be sufficient to place him on his guard. We copy from the _Revue du Monde Catholique_.--_Translator._]

I.

The essential tendency of Roman Catholicism has been, is, and always will be, the spirit of secular domination, the inevitable result of transforming a man, the Pope, into the infallible and absolute vicar of Jesus Christ on earth.

If, before the Revolution of '89, the clergy were Gallican--that is to say, national--it was because it had sufficiently attained that end of temporal rule. It was the first order of the state; it possessed great wealth; it had its own organization, and enjoyed considerable privileges; its religion was the exclusively dominant one. What else could it ask, unless it wished to displace royalty itself? The clergy then was much more French and royalist than Roman, solely because it had such enormous interests at stake in the soil and in the constitution of the kingdom.

Again, if we study carefully the so-called maxims and liberties of the Gallican Church, we quickly recognize that between the kings and the clergy these liberties constituted a sort of commutative contract entered into almost wholly at the expense of the Papacy. The bishops, generously treated by royalty, in return consented to sacrifice to royalty many of the Roman pretensions, which, however, were consequences of the spiritual supremacy; and, with more reason, they allowed the sovereign to settle all matters of purely political independence. In the Gallican Church, the king rejected Papal infallibility, because it necessarily implied his temporal supremacy; and the bishops to whom the doctrine would perhaps in any other country have been acceptable, rejected it likewise because it would have disturbed their privileges and their possessions, which they owed to royalty. It ought to be added that all this was according to the ancient traditions of the land, which had rendered better service to the church than any other, and which never desired any foreign interference in its own affairs. But certainly both the French clergy and bishops would have gone back to the pope and to ultramontane ideas, unless their independence, peaceful and magnificent, had been assured them.

After the Revolution of '89, the clergy, deprived of its possessions, its privileges, its constitution, reduced to the condition of salaried functionaries, feeling its utter dependence on the state, felt the necessity of creating for itself a new influence by detaching itself from administrations over-neutral in its regard. For a short time it saluted Napoleon I. as the _restorer of the altar_; then it submitted to his powerful hand; but it hastened to desert him when conquered, calling him _the persecutor of Pius VII._ It came to the support of the Restoration, because of the recollections of the past, and, above all, because it hoped therefrom the re-establishment of many immunities which the Restoration did not dare, in opposition to public opinion, to concede to it. This is the reason that, under the Restoration, it came to pass that the clergy was more occupied in caring for itself than for royalty, so much so that it is from this epoch that the first efforts of return to ultramontanism date their origin. No excuse can be offered for Louis XVIII. and for Charles X. for having allowed the Concordat of 1801 and the organic articles to remain in force, and for not having given to the church an indemnity, as they did to the exiles.

Under Louis Philippe, the clergy was not deluded; it understood very well that a parliamentary and democratic government would never permit it to work for the re-establishment of its power. Consequently, and under the pretext that the church, accepting all _de facto_ governments, ought not to mix in the risks and responsibilities of politics, the clergy proclaimed its absolute neutrality, which was but another name for a complete separation. Hence nothing is easier of comprehension that it quickly gave up all Gallican ideas, to rally to the support of ultramontane doctrines. Isolated, without influence, without wealth, cramped in its sphere of activity, it had no interest in upholding the independence of the state against the Holy See, whilst everything invited it to defend once more the famous thesis of the Catholic Church, directing kings and peoples, and giving to the clergy the influence of a class superior to all others. The anti-Gallican demonstration, aided by the politicians of legitimacy and of the Catholic party, who had adopted as their watchword _free education_, began to develop itself rapidly in the episcopate, amongst the inferior clergy in the seminaries and religious orders, and even in the halls of the two chambers. Everything was prepared for the solemn return to Rome, when the Revolution of 1848 burst forth.

The religious party as well as the legitimists, its auxiliary, at first accepted that revolution because it destroyed the upstart, usurping, and Voltairian party. It afterwards strove with energy to form a coalition of all the elements of public order, so as to escape from the power of the demagogues; it was this same motive which influenced its votes in favor of the president; it thus struck a blow at the democratic and social republic. But when it believed that Napoleon III., who had become successively dictator and emperor, would consent to play the part of another Charlemagne, _Episcopus ad extra_, it became devoted to him and enthusiastic. But the emperor had no such thought; he only wished to attach the clergy firmly to the Empire by honorable laws ensuring its safety and liberty. By so doing he supplied one of the greatest social needs, without, however, departing from a wise public policy; but he had no intention of handing the state over to the church. The clergy, on its part, easily imagined what he desired. Hence we see in 1852 (and this must not be passed over) more earnestness and greater sympathy in that portion of the episcopate which was notoriously ultramontane. It was that portion which had been the best initiated by Rome into its projects of encroachment, which carried them out with the greatest zeal, and which consequently sought to conciliate the good-will of the sovereign and to engage him to pursue a course of liberal toleration.

Thus it came to pass that it immediately insinuated how exceedingly becoming it would be to enter into what was called a compact between the church and state--viz., the negotiation of a treaty which was to replace the organic articles.

Now, as has been said at the beginning of this memoir, Roman Catholicism aiming necessarily at temporal rule, the moment seemed so much the more favorable to advance in that undertaking, as the government seemed to give its consent so easily thereunto. The law of free education already existed. The emperor appeared unwilling to make use of the prohibitions of the organic law regulating public worship and of the law concerning religious congregations of men; consequently, provincial councils were quickly organized and congregations were multiplied.

The design of gaining possession almost entirely of primary education was avowed by bringing the influence of the _curés_ to bear on the various municipal offices, and, by forcing the Christian Brothers to refuse to receive from their rich pupils any compensation whatever for attending their schools, which had been built and were supported by the municipality: in this way the Brothers received from the state a compensation of 3,000,000, at the expense of the lay schools.

The famous decree of 1852 was then proposed to the emperor, but without explaining its import. This destroyed the ancient and wise legislation of the council of state, and allowed the almost unlimited extension of authorizations to establish congregations of women.

In spite of the lively opposition of the majority of the bishops and of the secular clergy, the Roman liturgy was then inaugurated and presented to the emperor as a simple matter of material unity in Catholic worship; care was taken not to avow that this was a deadly blow against the customs and constitution of the Gallican Church, the triumph of Romanism in France, and a tax of more than six millions on the manufactures and municipalities of the Empire. All this was necessary in order to obtain a brief from the Pope in 1858 obliging the clergy to recite in its liturgy the prayer _Domine salvum_, which had been excluded from the Roman Breviary.

Whilst, on the one hand, the clergy sought to gain possession of the people through the medium of primary education, which was solicited for the religious congregations by all the charitable confraternities (of S. Vincent of Paul, of S. Francis Regis, of S. Francis Xavier, etc., etc.), through a multitude of foundations of religious charity, on the other it strove also to enlist in its favor the children of the higher and middle classes of society through the numerous and immense educational institutions of a superior character, founded either by the bishops or by the religious orders of Jesuits, Carmelites, Marists, Dominicans, etc. Thus the law of 1850, hostile to all state education, brought forth its fruits.

As to the education of girls, it was and it is almost exclusively in the hands of religious, from the country infant schools and protectories up to the most splendid educational establishments of Paris; on this point it is impossible for the lay element to contend with the religious element, which, either really or apparently, will always present far better guarantees to families for morality and self-devotion. But the point worthy of consideration here is that this convent education, directed by the inspiration and opinions of the clergy, is not at all in sympathy either with the existing government or with public opinion.

This is the reason why the episcopate and Rome have always resisted any inspection on the part of the state into their institutions, except a purely nominal one, alleging that these religious congregations could submit only to ecclesiastical inspection. In the regulations made in 1852 too much was yielded on that point.

It can be affirmed with truth to-day that there is no class of society which is not to a greater or less degree entangled in the meshes so admirably laid by the congregations and associations called _benevolent_ or _charitable_. They gain entrance even into the army, under the pretext of giving gratuitous instruction and spiritual conferences; they gather together working-men of every condition; they establish a kind of freemasonry, and of equality amongst citizens of every rank; through their trusty friends and adherents they are represented in all the branches of the government; they have possession of the child and of the man in his prime of life, of the poor and of the rich; they are everywhere. This enormous fact becomes a most convincing proof, if we consider the exact meaning of the name of these congregations, associations, and works of every kind, and of the end each of them proposes to obtain. It is almost certain that, directly or indirectly, the Catholic idea permeates them all; and as the direction of that Catholic idea belongs more than ever to Rome, the conclusion is natural that all these means of action so skilfully organized form a kind of secret government, the helm of which is in the hand of the Roman cardinals, prefects of the congregations.

The present religious agitation proves the truth of this assertion. The society of S. Vincent of Paul has thought and acted exactly in the same way as the convents, seminaries, and religious orders; from one end of the scale to the other there is but one opinion, and the pamphlet of M. de Segur can be found in the _salon_ of the nuncio as well as in the workshop--yes, even on the bench of the lowest primary school.

But it was not enough to have thus securely encircled lay society with so many arms employed for the benefit of the religious element. It was necessary to be certain that these arms would always be used conformably to the end in view--viz., the Roman Catholic supremacy. The bishops and secular clergy might perhaps grow restless under this ultramontane domination; they might perhaps, although desiring the development of religion and of their own personal condition, either moderate a too quick movement towards, or, for the sake of their own independence, even oppose themselves to the absorption meditated at Rome. Therefore, the effort was made, especially since the beginning of 1852, to crush out even a show of resistance from the bishops and secular clergy; and the _Univers_, the avowed organ of the Holy See, whilst praising the emperor and attacking violently the parliamentary or liberal Catholic party (de Falloux, de Montalembert, Lacordaire, etc.), undertook to establish a system of ecclesiastical compression, which in the end triumphed. M. Veuillot became the _lay pope of the French_; with as much audacity as talent, he set forth the doctrines of the spiritual and temporal supremacy of the Holy See; he thundered against the schism of the Gallican Church, and against any compact which bound the priest to the state.

And at the same time the Papal nuncios in France surrounded the bishops with an almost intolerable servitude. Near each of them they had devoted ecclesiastics, who spied into and denounced their actions. Any bishop suspected of favoring independence or resistance was the object of those thousands of cunning tricks which Rome has under its command because of the powers it can either grant or refuse to the episcopate.

Any priest of some eminence who did not go over to the ultramontane party was made the object of threats and calumnies, which, it was said, _would break his episcopal cross_. Things came to such a point that a Minister of Public Worship, frightened at the bold and dogmatic tone in which a nuncio pronounced his _veto_ on the episcopal nominees, was forced to make an energetic declaration concerning the rights of the emperor, and to tell that nuncio to bear it in mind.

At the same time, also, Rome endeavored to render the episcopate subservient to itself by interfering in the administration of dioceses by granting the inferior clergy the right of addressing the prefects of the apostolic congregations on all matters which concerned conscience, liturgy, or dispensations. So that the bishops, humiliated, and with their jurisdiction lessened, had no other resource left them to recover their authority than to show themselves ultramontanes, and so gain the good graces of the Holy See.

Provincial councils, wherein zealous men domineered, only served to consummate that ruin of our ancient church and of all opinions which still bound the French clergy to their native land.

More yet was wanted. The better to secure the dependence of the episcopate, the gradual substitution of the regular for the secular clergy was dreamt of. This was the reason why monasteries of religious congregations were multiplied, under the pretext that there was need of auxiliary priests to help the _curés_ and their assistants. They built churches, took possession of the pulpits and confessionals, directed the different confraternities; they thus set aside and banished the parochial clergy. In a few years, things going on in this manner, what would hinder the Pope from saying to the bishops: "You have no further need of seminaries to recruit your clergy; look at the numerous religious houses, from which you can take your _curés_ and assistants." And then what would happen? The clergy of France would no longer possess any national character whatsoever. It would be exclusively a Roman army, under the command of the generals of each congregation. Episcopal authority would be completely annihilated, and the church in France would be under the absolute command of the Pope. In that case, only the most violent struggles--a veritable civil war--could alone save the concordat and the independence of the state!

Nay, even now the Pope, abusing the liberty granted, affects to look on France as a province of his Catholic empire. He freely promulgates the acts and laws of his personal administration, and rules here, just as directly as he would at Ancona or Perugia, the affairs of the episcopate and of the church according to the famous ultramontane formula: "The clergy of France is first Catholic, then French."

Nothing better proves the exactness of these views than the study of the causes and the progress of the existing religious agitation about the Italian question. The greater part of the episcopate cared but little for internal demonstrations; the Pope brought the energetic appeal of two encyclical letters to bear upon them. Each bishop was harassed, forced, menaced in the name of his Catholic conscience, in the name of his obligation of obedience to the Pontiff. Three months were required to wring from each and all the wished-for pastoral letter. And what do the leaders of the ultramontane party say to-day? "The French Church has spoken," cries the Bishop of Poitiers; "she is unanimous."

Yes, by dint of the most violent siege. It began by bending the episcopate under the imposed doctrine of the infallible superiority of the Pope. That subjection was accomplished by all the stratagems of the administrative power of Rome over spiritual matters and diocesan affairs; and when, in consequence, it was certain that there would be no resistance on any question whatsoever, even were it the political question of the Romagna, they boast that the free opinion of the Catholic world has been given; they place the Pope under the protection of the universal church, which is judged to have spoken and acted freely. This is a strange use of power and of trickery!

To recapitulate. Rome, as it never goes out of the path leading to its end, has wished and wishes to create its own supremacy in France, which has been so long prevented by royalty allied to the French clergy.

It has found a clergy not attached to the soil and to the state by great interests of wealth and influence.

Profiting by the situation, it has wished to reduce the clergy into bondage after a precise fashion by the intrusion of all of the doctrines of the ultramontane church, and, to obtain its end, has employed all the powers of polemics, of spiritual administration, and of the regular clergy.

The clergy conquered, it has marched on to possess itself of all classes of society through the medium of educational institutions, of confraternities and congregations of every kind, and has established an organization as vast as it is formidable.

Henceforth Rome rules the clergy and the Church of France, and, through the clergy and the church, it means to rule the country.

II.

Such is a true picture of the religious situation.

However, if the French clergy seem unwilling to oppose any further external resistance to the doctrines, plots, and encroachments of Rome, it must not be forgotten that very many of its members in conscience are far from approving what they call the excesses of ultramontanism, because they fear for their own safety and for that of the true religion.

A great part of the episcopate realizes the fact that the effort is being made to reduce them to the condition of simple vicars apostolic, whose jurisdiction could be recalled, and to suppress the _proprium jus episcopûm_. They foresee that the nation will never go back on the civil and political progress made in order to place itself under any theocracy whatsoever.

Consequently, they are not convinced of the strength of the proposed ultramontane arrangement, which may be set forth in these terms: "Be no longer a French episcopate; acknowledge your absolute dependence on the Pope; and, in recompense, we will have _all_ together the religious government of France." Such a plan would expose religion to many and inevitable conflicts, in which it would be either swallowed up by worldly views, or would be gravely compromised.

As a rule, we may also add that the clergy has no idea of separating itself from the emperor, who is the highest guarantee of social order, and whose religious loyalty it well knows.

Finally, to sum up all, it clearly sees that it must live and die in the bosom of France, where it was born; and that, if it does not enjoy the advantages it did in times past, it yet receives from the state whatever constitutes its sphere of activity, its security, and its existence. For the national clergy to quarrel angrily and irrevocably with the emperor and with the nation is a thing easier said than done, the more so as it hates the religious orders, and has no other support whatsoever for its own independence except the laws and good-will of the government.

It sees only too well what would become of it if the government, judging it irrevocably hostile, should all at once suppress all sympathy towards it, should cut off from it all sources of liberality and of toleration, and should brand it before the country as alien to the national feelings and blindly obedient to ultramontane passions. Here is the key-note to the disagreements which now exist amongst the clergy. The dispute and the declaration of 1682 are buried in the past. The controversy is not a theological one at all. It is exclusively one of our own day, exclusively political, exclusively social; and, if the ultra-montanists of to-day are the same as those of past times, the present Gallicans are by no means like those of the time of Louis XIV. We must live either in our own age or the life of the middle ages; we must be either French or Roman. Such is the true state of the question.

Under such circumstances, what is to be done?

Must we, by abruptly changing our whole system of government, expel the religious congregations of men, modify the law concerning education, apply all the organic articles, and reach such a point that the law, fully carried out, will look very much like persecution? No; for then the sincerity of the sovereign might be called into question on account of his passing so quickly from a generous and affectionate protection to all the rigors of prohibition; it would inflict a deep wound on the entire clergy and on a vast multitude of honorable Catholics; it would give rise to the suspicion that, in spite of all to the contrary, a return was being made to Voltairian prejudices; and perhaps it would necessitate a defence against an anti-religious reaction which would consider all its excesses justifiable.

The measures to be taken ought not to surpass the limits of the abuses to be suppressed, and to be carried out in behalf of the respect due to the supreme power, for the welfare of public tranquillity and of religion well understood. Besides, it is well known that public opinion acts as a kind of police over the faults of the clergy. As often as the clergy departs from its true sphere of action and strives to encroach upon the powers and independence of society, it creates a circle of resistance and opposition which subdues it. To-day men are frightened at what they think are the outbursts of revolutionary passion, but which in reality are only the energetic manifestation of public opinion rebelling against the wishes of those in favor of theocracy. Preserve the uprightness of the religious sentiment of the nation; use no violence; borrow from our public law what is necessary to put a stop to insupportable encroachments; in this way separate the course of religion as sincerely practiced from the arrogance and calculations of the Roman propaganda--such, I think, is a course of action well adapted to the necessities of the hour, and will obtain the approbation of the country.

Taking these general notions for a basis, perhaps the following measures would be most opportune:

1st. Except in cases of local necessity, which is to be well proven, to tolerate no other new establishment of religious communities of men, whether it be a question of conventual houses, churches, chapels, even under the pretext that they are to act as auxiliaries in the sacred ministry, or whether it be a question of institutions for public instruction and works of public charity. The hospitality so generously granted by the emperor to communities of men, although prohibited by law, will, in this way, remain inviolate. "You are numerous enough, and France has not been given to you to drain;" this is a sensible answer, which cannot incur the reproach of exclusion. Besides, why will not those who force themselves into the religious communities enter and recruit the ranks of the secular clergy, the parochial clergy? Where is the necessity of increasing the regular clergy which belongs to the Roman government? There are at present in France 68 associations or congregations of men, 19 only of which are authorized as teaching and charitable communities. They have under their charge 3,088 institutions or schools, they number 14,304 religious and have 359,953 pupils.

2d. Henceforth exercise the greatest severity in granting permission for the establishment of congregations of women, only granting the same when the actual undeniable necessity of public charity or primary education requires it; demand certain proofs that they have sufficient resources for their support; do not easily grant permission for the conversion of local communities into communities subject to a superioress-general, which inundate France with their annexed establishments. True it is that _de facto_ congregations cannot be stopped; but, as they are not recognized by law, they know that every one of their members remains subject to the common law; and the _de facto_ congregation, which collectively has no civil existence, can therefore neither receive gifts nor legacies, neither can it act as a corporation. At present there are in France 236 communities of woman subject to superioresses-general, which have, besides the 236 principal foundations, 2,066 secondary or annexed establishments; and about 700 congregations or communities under local superioresses (each of these last forms a distinct establishment, governed by its own superioress, and independent of the establishments of the same religious order established elsewhere); to which we must add about 250 religious associations of women not yet recognized, but existing _de facto_.

3d. As to what concerns the _authorized_ communities of men or women, let the council of state exercise the greatest severity in the matter of gifts, legacies, and charitable donations it permits them to receive. Here we must consider not only the condition and protests of families demanding a reduction of such donations, but we must also examine into the necessities of the community so rewarded. There is no reason why we should procure for them the means of a useless or abusive extension, by authorizing them to receive what is necessary to defray expenses they ought never to have incurred. Communities once established will remain what they are, if the fruitful source of liberality which they provoke and seek for be wanting to stimulate the natural tendency of these communities to extend themselves indefinitely. The spirit of rivalry which exists amongst them, the lust of propagation and of power, all drive them on towards an incessant development. Once entered on this path, they must have money, and they put their wits to work to find out and appeal for help, for donations, and for alms. If the regulations concerning such gifts and legacies were more severe, if the principle were established that such liberality, which is only an encouragement to the extension of expenses and of establishments, would no longer be tolerated, an abrupt stop would be put to the excess of which we to-day complain.

It must be confessed that these congregations, authorized or non-authorized, have always the means of evading the law and of receiving gifts secretly. This cannot be prevented when the affair is conducted cunningly, and the congregations are not without skilful counsellors or numerous adherents ready to aid them in everything. But even in this case, the amount of these evasions or of manual gifts which deprive families of the livelihood obtained for them by their author is easily appreciable. Whence, for example, have the immense resources of the religious orders, vowed to poverty, proceeded, which they must have consecrated to their numerous and vast establishments? The real estate of the Jesuits surpasses twenty millions. How did they buy or build them? Certainly from private donations. Now, this being a fact, does it not follow that there is an obligation on the state not to tolerate any new establishments, which would necessitate new appeals to private charity, and the certainty that by such a prohibition it would act wisely?

4th. Maintain, as far as possible, without destroying the liberty of choice in the municipal councils, _lay_ primary education. If, through the intelligence and firmness of the prefects, a stop be not put to the incessant plottings of the clergy, forcing the townships to entrust their schools to the Christian Brothers, there will be soon no lay teachers, except in such poverty-stricken localities as the brothers disdain to take. Here we must remark that an effort is being made to multiply congregations of so called _Little Brothers_, who install themselves in isolated country places, whilst the Christian Brothers can only form an establishment in which _three brothers_ will be in the same school. Townships not having resources and population sufficient to receive the Christian Brothers will then be attended to by these _Little Brothers_, called after Lamennais, S. Viator, Tinchebray, etc., and so it will come to pass that lay teachers will be entirely suppressed. As these teachers to-day, modest and useful public officers, are devoted to the emperor, and render notable service in the rural districts, considering that universal suffrage is the law of the land, we would be very much weakened if all primary instruction passed into the hands of congregations which depend more on Rome than on France. Nay, more, it would be wise henceforth not to recognize as places of public utility any congregation of men for primary education. There are at present in France 49,639 _lay_ schools for boys and girls, attended by 2,410,517 children; and 14,602 _conventual_ schools, attended by 1,342,564. Moreover, we must remark that in the academies of young girls directed by congregations, in the free primary schools entrusted to them, as well as in the secondary schools wherein their influence reigns, we meet histories compiled to glorify monarchies of divine right, to exalt religious supremacy, to lower indirectly the civil and political principles acquired since 1789. Truly these establishments, so numerous, are, to a greater or less degree, real branches of the legitimist and Catholic party. On the contrary, it is in our imperial lyceums, in our municipal colleges, in our lay schools, that we find a more robust and popular instruction given, which fosters the national sentiments in the hearts of the children. Where is it that you hear the cry cordially given, _Vive l'Empereur_? Certainly not in the congregational establishments.

5th. Uphold with energy state education, because it is the true national education; place its institutions, by a sufficient budget, in a condition to enlarge their capacity, to perfect their staff and their means of instruction--this is the key to the events of the future. The Catholic legitimist party understood this only too well in demanding under Louis Philippe, with so much ardor, liberty of education, monopolized by the university, and in 1850, under the presidency, in having the law on public instruction passed. Later, under the dictatorship, it had the hardihood to dream of the total abolition of state education, in order to hand it over to the clergy and to the congregations; but the emperor, fully instructed on the intent of such a measure, refused his consent. But it remains a fact, however, that, thanks to the law of 1850, granting to every French citizen liberty to teach, the Catholic legitimist party has been enabled to perpetuate in the young generations that division of castes and of ideas which would have disappeared under the system of a united university education. It has been enabled, through the pupils brought up in congregational houses, to give continued existence to its own social and political doctrines. This is a great evil, no doubt; but, great as it is, it is impossible to think of suppressing the law which guarantees the liberty of the family. That would necessitate an immense struggle, a bloody one, and one contrary to justice. There remains, then, but this one escape, as equitable as it is prudent; everything concurs in it: let us strengthen and favor state education, which fits one for any career in life, which is the most solid and most patriotic, whilst, at the same time, let it be made religious, moral, and paternal.

6th. As far as it can be done without forcing things too far, let us put in execution the organic regulations, which place salutary checks on the encroachments of the Papal power over the clergy and the state; in other words, let us tolerate no new attack against our civil legislation and our political constitution, whether in writings or in the pulpit.

Place the office of the nuncio in France under the same regulations as any other embassador of a friendly power, and do not allow him to correspond at all, in the Pope's name, with the French bishops, nor allow him to perform any act of jurisdiction, nor allow him to have the least say in the choice of bishops.

With a firm hand prevent any act of the court of Rome from either being received, published, or distributed in France without the authorization of the government.

Choose resolutely the bishops from pious and honorable ecclesiastics, but such as are known for their sincere attachment to the emperor, and to the institutions of France.

Suppress all religious journals, the need of which no one dreamt of before the invasion and agitations of the ultramontane party. The clergy has its discipline, its bishops, its priests, its pulpits, its mandates, its pastoral letters, and a complete government. There is no necessity at all of adding the polemics of the press to the ordinary means of publicity for this ecclesiastical government. Besides, the whole of that press has always been the instrument for spreading the doctrines and designs of the Roman theocracy, or parliamentary Catholicism. To-day it supplies the most energetic nutriment towards a religious agitation. Suppress this focus of excitement, which is spreading into every presbytery, and the clergy will remain quiet. The _Univers_ has upset the heads of all the younger clergy by preaching religious supremacy, and the harm done by it will not be effaced for many a long year. To impose the protection of the church on the state; to sap all civil and political liberties; to undermine all lay institutions; to attack incessantly every European alliance, except that with Austria and the Catholic states, thus to introduce, above everything else, and everywhere, the influence, the ideas, and the power of Rome--such is the work of religious journals supported by the legitimist party.

Encourage, finally, the public study of the ancient French liberties, and profess everywhere and with spirit the conservative principles of the independence of the state alongside of that of the Papacy.

7th. Moreover, persevere in a course of loyal protection for the true interests of religion and of deference towards the clergy. Nothing would be wiser, and, at the same time, nothing more just, than to increase the honor paid to the inferior clergy, who in almost the whole of France experience the direst privations. In this way they would be attached to the government. If the episcopate, through weakness or any other motive, abandoned the emperor, he would be compelled to conciliate the inferior clergy, who ask nothing better than to have a little more ecclesiastical independence, and who sometimes suffer from episcopal despotism. At all events, it is of great importance that the religious part of the nation be amazed at the noise occasioned by these Roman quarrels, or remain indifferent concerning them, seeing the national worship always tranquil, protected, and honored. For this reason it is very useful that the grants of the budget be increased towards the construction and repairing of churches, presbyteries, and diocesan buildings.

8th. Finally, perhaps it would be opportune for the government to turn its attention to those large lay associations, such as those of S. Vincent of Paul, of S. Francis Xavier, etc., which, by their administration and the nature of their works, are really in the hands of the clergy and of the legitimist party. The conferences of S. Vincent of Paul to-day are more than nine hundred in number; they penetrate every rank of society, and even into the lyceums and colleges, where they affiliate even the children under the title of _aspirants_. They are connected to a principal conference in each department of the country; they are governed by a general council of that society, which has presented to the Holy Father at Rome a report on the general condition of the French conferences. It is a formidable association, which, as it has at its disposal so many members and such resources, forms, as it were, a secret and complete government. Our laws do not at all admit the independent organization of such associations. Recognizing the charitable and Christian end of the Society of S. Vincent of Paul, the benefits which undoubtedly are to be attributed to it, the excellent spirit of many of its members, it is impossible not to perceive the intentions of the men who have the privilege and inspiration of its government; it is impossible, also, not to grow uneasy at the existence of so vast and so skilful an organization, through which thousands of citizens can receive such or such an impulse, or such or such a word of command. Disinterested benevolence can easily pass to such a society of propagandists; and charitable societies, in order to exist and to do good, have no need of going beyond their own district, nor of affecting a spirit of affiliation and of a cemented union, which up to the present time has only existed in secret revolutionary societies. Is it not to be feared that they will in some sort replace the ancient Catholic associations of the Restoration, which were then named "Jesuits in short-tailed coats, or the Congregation"?

There can be no doubt at all that there is no one who now enters these societies solely for love of charity or to satisfy his taste for religious exercises; they are so numerous, so well filled up from all ranks of society, that a powerful, compact interest is thereby established which offers inducements for the welfare of families and for any career in life. The Society of S. Vincent of Paul, which, as we have seen, initiates the children in our lyceums and colleges, has entered into the polytechnic school and into every branch of the civil administration. It is developing in the army, in the magistracy, at the bar; everywhere, in fine, it manifests its secret influence, and unites all its members by the bonds of mutual support. To be a member of the Society of S. Vincent of Paul to-day is not merely to make an act of religious adhesion; it is to enter into a secret world, strongly organized, acting on all sides upon the opinions and the affairs of society; it is to gain active and influential protectors, and to secure for one's self all the avenues leading to success in the different chances or walks of life. The democrats would have desired to establish a republican unity of interests. The clerics and ultramontanes, allied to the legitimists, _have_ established the mutual support of the S. Vincent of Paul Society. What an immense lever this could become in hostile hands to move political ideas! Yes, we must repeat, the power of these associations is such that men enter them for purely temporal motives. They influence the determinations of families more than one dreams of; and it is a very strange spectacle to see a considerable number of our civil officers enrolled under their banners, whilst their children, avoiding the state institutions, receive their instruction from the Jesuits, the Carmelites, the Marists, the Dominicans.

This memoir has been composed in a spirit of pure frankness and truth. We have wished to dissemble nothing. Yet if the matters treated of in this memoir be serious, we know full well that they do not constitute a fatal danger for the country. We can face them coolly. The material and moral power of the government of the emperor is immense. The majority in France cares very little for clerical pretensions, and will never bow before the theocratical doctrines of Rome nor before the intrigues and lamentations of the coalesced political parties. The country has too much trust in the national interests, and too great faith in the principles of modern society, not to crush, by the very manifestation of its opinions, all this laborious restoration of men and of the theories of the past. But as these are elements of agitation and disorder, it is the duty of a provident government to watch attentively. "Prudence begets safety."

GRACE SEYMOUR'S MISSION.

CONCLUDED.

September was painting the leaves in the wooded valleys of Gloucestershire, and the fields were just bared of their golden crowns. A noble mansion, where generations of Howards had reigned, was waiting for its little lord to come from beyond the seas. In old days, the Howards had been among the truest and bravest of the champions of the old faith; even now their head branches had not thrown off their allegiance to the church, but the glory of the martyr had paled before the renown of the statesman and the fame of the soldier, in the eyes of at least this offshoot of the great Catholic house. Since the reign of James I., these Gloucestershire squires had been the main stay of the Low-Church party, and the family tradition had remained the same to the days of Elizabeth Howard, little George's mother.

One bright day a rather awkward travelling-carriage drove up to the oaken door of Howard Hall, and George Charteris, with his little cousin, dashed up the steps. Grace and her father followed; they were but visitors, with no authority and no influence. Only one day did they remain there, the young lawyer escorting them back to London; the child was left to the care of the elder Charteris and his family.

The young man had not let time pass without making good use of it, and he had already been once refused by the beautiful girl, whose influence over him seemed so strange and unaccountable to himself. Her father had said he was well satisfied at his child's conduct, as she was not one to speak hastily and then repent her words; but George Charteris did not give up all hope.

Grace and Mr. Seymour lived very quietly, even poorly; the guardian of their little George allowed them a scanty sum out of the estate, on his own responsibility, and on the condition that it should be subject to the child's good pleasure when he should have attained his majority. Mr. Seymour had serious thoughts of going abroad to study for the priesthood, and Grace's peculiar religious state had suffered no alteration since her departure from America.

Among the new convert's self-imposed tasks of charity was a weekly visit to one poor family, whose drunken son was their shame and endless burden. Dependent upon him for a precarious living, his old parents, both crippled by an accident on a farm where years ago they had been employed, lodged in a miserable den, which, through a large-heartedness that is oftener seen among the poor than the rich, they had shared with two sickly orphan children, the only ones left of a family of seven, carried off with father and mother by the small-pox. Whatever the drunken man brought home was shared with these desolate little ones; whatever was given in charity was brought to feed them and keep in them the little life they had ever had. Four more helpless beings perhaps hardly existed, and all dependent upon one whose conscience was dead, and whose animal nature hideously survived the paralyzation of his soul's organism. Mr. Seymour and his daughter came upon them by the merest chance, and ever after remained to them the firmest friends, the most gentle benefactors, they had ever dared to dream of. But the zealous convert was anxious to do a greater good than the mere corporal works of mercy implied by his visits to these forlorn creatures. In moments when his demon was not on him, the unhappy son of these poor people sometimes listened to Mr. Seymour's earnest appeals to his buried conscience. With good results for a few hours the poor family had at first to be satisfied; then, as they hoped their infatuated son would gradually reward the efforts of his kind adviser, he would suddenly grow more brutish than before, and more irreclaimable. His companions would jeer at the "gentleman missioner," in those days when gentlemen were the worst preachers because the worst violators of temperance; and the old people would sometimes tremblingly speak to their benefactor of danger and of trouble to come, if he persisted too openly in his religious and moral advice.

But the zeal that burnt within Edward Seymour was no faint light to be extinguished by the first tainted breath of danger-fraught opposition; bravely he spoke and advised and remonstrated, waiting only for a few preliminaries to be arranged, in order to leave for a quiet scene, where in prayer and study he was to prepare himself for tasks as dangerous and as thankless as were his present occupations.

Meanwhile, his daughter, the domestic angel of his silent, shrine-like home, thought and read and pondered deeply, her love for her one companion in life bringing to her heart a longing desire to be at unity with him, to be a sister and a sharer in his faith, and, above all, a partaker in his sacrifice. For she could not bear to see him suffer in earthly comforts, and not feel that she, too, bore a part of his burden; she longed to believe as he did, if only to suffer as he did; for as long as she stood aloof from his inner life, she felt, after all, but as one who should watch sympathizingly on the shore while another human being was battling with the crested, storm-tossed waves beyond. Once or twice, with her father, Grace had gone to a quiet service in a lowly house, where a priest made a temporary chapel whenever he could spend a few days in town. His coming was a joy to a faithful knot of friends, and before his impromptu altar many ranks and stations in life were represented, from the brilliant owner of lordly estates to the poor Irish artisan and the old women who reigned, then as now, over the London apple-stalls. Among the silent, earnest worshippers of this "tabernacle in the desert" was one whose thoughts had been singularly attracted towards Grace. He saw her sit by her father's side, grave and attentive, a sad, wistful look on her pale face, never joining in the simple devotions which evidently were so familiar to her companion, but often fixing her hopeless, passionate gaze upon his faith-illumined features. Sometimes Grace would suddenly feel, like to the rush of a falling star through the purple sky of night, a glimmering perception of at least a possibility of truth existing in this persecuted religion. Perhaps the very persecution roused her pity and her sympathy, and held within itself a fascination uneasily resisted by a noble mind.

Had the faith of her father been presented to her under its gorgeous exterior of uncurtailed ritual and acknowledged supremacy, her heart might have turned away from the glittering triumph; but now, were the followers of this condemned Catholic faith not exiles and wanderers, threatened with prisons and fines, hunted down by prejudice and malignity, oppressed with the worst oppression--social and political ostracism? How could her heart help going out towards them, and crying blindly in the darkness that it felt for them and pitied their woes and admired their self-sacrifice?

The day we have alluded to was one of those on which such awakenings were stirring in her soul, and the fight between the world and God was beginning for the holding of this stray prize, whose purchase had been made, centuries ago, upon the cross of Calvary.

The good priest, who knew of her state through his conversations with her father, took care to infuse a little wholesome and clearly-defined doctrine into the short discourse he gave after Mass. It was not without its effect, and Grace's eager, thoughtful air did not escape the notice of her silent observer, who was not long in persuading the pastor to make him acquainted with Mr. Seymour and his daughter.

He was a young, tall, athletic man, a thorough Saxon, with blue eyes that were truth itself, and a lion-like form that seemed the very embodiment of unconquerable endurance and indomitable bravery. One thought instinctively, on looking at him, of the word "standard-bearer," as if that, and that alone, were a description meet for him, moral and physical in one; the only adequate word wherewith to blazon forth his glorious perfection of man and child combined. As reverent towards God, as loyal towards women, as though he were of those who "always see the Father's face," he was as uncompromising, as frank, as firm towards the world of daily shoals in whose treacherous midst he lived as if temptation were a mythic fear, and the possibility of sin a sealed book to his heart. The child of persecution, the royal offspring of danger that could not appall and repression that could not crush, Edmund Oakhurst was like the mountain-bred hunter who, reared amid the sterile crags of unscalable Alps and sea-girt coasts, leaps from rock to rock, regardless of chasm and torrent, and angry tides rolling over the stone where a moment ago his venturesome but ever-sure foot had lightly rested. The eagles might scream round his head, the sea roar at his feet, the sky darken and the frail bark toss, he cared little, for a brave heart and a bold hand, with God for a guide--are they not equal to resisting the world's treacherous assaults? Such is a slight sketch of the young man who now stood before Grace, bashful yet bold, and looked up into her eyes with such wondering questions mutely brightening his own. Her father was pleased with the stranger, and together they soon fell into a conversation on the position of the faith in America, and of the contrast between its present state and that of triumphant supremacy it had enjoyed in that hemisphere when Spain was the queen of nations.

The young man went home with Mr. Seymour, and it was evening ere they parted. Grace was silently entranced. The faith that had such children as that, and could draw to itself such an one as her father, must it not have some unsuspected vitality which could be none other than _truth_? Often and often their new friend came again, and each time he came the young girl felt a solemn enthusiasm for all things great and noble distil from his every word and glance, and wrap her round in a bewildered dream, the voice of which seemed to sing for ever in her ears, "Go and do thou likewise." Lights broke in upon her from unexpected places; books she had laid down in hopeless reverence, deploring that to her their spiritual beauty was incomprehensible, yet sure that their beauty of language must be the veil of the hidden shrine, she now took up again, and, reading, began to understand. Her father, whose labors among the poor Edmund Oakhurst now joined, was too silently happy to notice, save by gentle, unobtrusive aid, the renovating work going on in his child's soul, and seemed to brighten under this new and blessed influence. Soon his daughter spoke openly to him, and, not many months after the quiet meeting at the chapel, she was under instruction. He delayed his already formed plans, to be at her side at this moment, and, together as ever, the two prayed and read and studied, till life seemed to Grace too full and happy for earth.

George Charteris had ceased visiting his relations much, especially after having once or twice met Edmund Oakhurst. The contact with his accustomed circle of by no means very intellectual or very sensitive friends had soon worn off the interest his better nature had once taken in the thoughtful, earnest life of the convert and his daughter. He, however, very good-naturedly continued to write to them, giving accounts of little George's health and general goings-on.

One night Edward Seymour and his young friend sat alone by the dying fire, while the cold drizzle without veiled the window, and the damp seemed to soak in through every chink and cranny in the poorly furnished room. Both men wore their great-coats, but they hardly seemed to notice the cold.

"It is nearly eighteen months now since we came," said Mr. Seymour, "and I am not off to France yet. However, in less than a month that last step will be taken, and I shall be at peace."

"And the favor I have asked you will be mine--so you assure me," hesitatingly answered Oakhurst.

"I only bid you try yourself, and see if I am not right," said his friend. "Nothing would make me happier; and as to her, I have already told you that she believes it was through your influence that God made the truth plain to her."

"But if she should think that I take her at a disadvantage; or if she should marry me because, being unprotected, she would be grateful for a home--or rather, a husband, for the _home_ is hers--or, worse than all, suppose she thought I was so poor as to need the little she has to give?"

"My dear boy, these are groundless fears. She thinks of nothing but of God and of his leadings in these matters; she never _has_ looked at things from her childhood up with the world's eyes, and I think the mere idea of the possibility of a man's marrying for money would be to her absolutely monstrous and ridiculous. Remember how quiet and lonely her life at home always was, and say if she _could_ be so worldly-wise?"

"It is true. After all, I wrong her; it is unworthy of me to dream of such things; only I feel so utterly beneath her in mind and soul, so simple in the deep things she hides in her heart, so unlearned in the marvellous paths through which she has been led."

"My son," said Seymour gravely, "do not wrong yourself. I never dreamed that I was worthy of her mother, but I knew that, all unworthy as I was, God had chosen me for her guardian; so it is now with you, for she is her mother over again. But whenever was a treasure given to the worthy only? Think you Mary was worthy of being the mother of Jesus, or Joseph of being the spouse of Mary? Are any of us worthy of being sons of God and heirs of heaven? Above all, am I worthy to be a priest of the Most High? But the question lies not there; it lies in God's will, God's decrees, God's call to us, his children. Is the slave worthy to bear the priceless crown, whose gems flash in his dark hands, in some eastern procession? But the king has deputed him to bear it, and his obedience stands for worthiness."

"Mr. Seymour," said the young man earnestly, "you are right, and, if it be my blessed lot to be your child's guardian, God will give me grace to find favor in her sight first, and never betray her trust in me for ever after. I will ask her."

He did ask her a few days later, in simple, manly phrase, and she answered him in silence. Her heart was too full for speech, and he loved her too well to dispute her first, though unspoken, behest. But after a few moments, she knelt down, and hand-in-hand they prayed, without telling each other why and for what, and yet each seemed to know.

In the evening of the same day Mr. Seymour and his friend were to go to the cottage of a poor family, where sometimes a little, informal meeting used to take place--a forerunner of the crowded temperance gatherings our more fortunate age can boast.

Once more the father and daughter stood close together, waiting for Edmund Oakhurst. The pale moon looked in at the narrow casement, the street was slippery with recent rain, and the wind was damp and cold. Within burned one low candle on the table before the fireplace, where the coals were blackening into ashes, and every now and then throwing out a tongue of dim, red flame, only to make the black emptiness more noticeable.

"I will have the fire all right when you come back, darling," said Grace, "and some hot wine and water ready for you. Mind you keep that cloak well about you. O my love! I cannot bear to think we have so few days before us still!"

"Almost a few weeks, Grace," said her father cheerfully.

"It seems to me as if they were days," reiterated the girl; "but I know it is right. My mother would say so, if she could speak to us from her home in the spirit-land. Kiss me, my father, my own!"

There was almost a despairing wail under that quick exclamation. Seymour felt strangely moved, but, unwilling to weaken his child's fortitude, he kissed her and soothed her in the most cheerful way he could, yet tenderly keeping her hands clasped in his. Edmund Oakhurst was not long, and the two men were soon ready to start. Grace took the candle, and led the way down the dark stairs. She motioned her lover to go out first, and then, detaining her father, said in a voice broken by uncontrollable emotion:

"My own precious father, bless me before you go."

He caught her in his arms, and laid one hand on her head, murmuring, "God bless you for ever, my child, as your father does now. Don't give way, my love, my little treasure, and think of me while I am gone. We will have a nice evening together when we come home, my pet." And he gave her a fervent, solemn kiss, and pressed her hands to his heart.

In silence she let him go, but a passionate prayer burst from her lips as soon as he had crossed the threshold. She shaded the flickering light with one hand, while she stepped forth and strained her eyes after him as far as sight could follow. When he disappeared behind a corner, a sob broke from her, and she turned wearily to go up the stairs. A cloud scudded across the face of the moon, and the shrill laugh of a woman sounded clear and cutting down the street. Grace went back to the little room, where the fire was sullenly going to sleep, waking up now and then in a fretful, spectre-like glare and a weird rustle, then leaving utter darkness behind once more. The girl shuddered; she knew not what ailed her. Thoughts came in upon her, maddening her, and she paced up and down the small enclosure with rapid, unsteady steps. She had never felt like this before; when her mother lay dying, she had stepped lightly and softly, her mind clear, her loving heart calm, though crushed. What meant this fever, this horror of something vague, this dread that made her heart beat as the wind creaked the wooden stairs and shook the ill-fitting casement? A crucifix hung on the wall, a Bible lay on the table; to both she looked for comfort and peace, but the one seemed alive with ruddy blood-stains, and the other opened at these words: "I said, In the midst of my days I shall go to the gates of hell; I sought for the residue of my years.... I hoped till morning; as a lion so hath he broken all my bones: from morning even to night thou wilt make an end of me."[275] Grace closed the book with pale cheeks and scared expression, and flung herself on her knees before the burnt-out fire. She sank to the ground, and a kind of mist seemed to dull her senses; yet it was not sleep. A child awoke in the room overhead, and began its wailing, peevish cry; otherwise the stillness was intense. The moon climbed the sky so that its light went beyond the range of the low window; the radiance came, however, wan and misty, up from the street. The clock in the passage ticked, and Grace found herself unconsciously counting its pulses; and when she tried to break off, a spell seemed upon her that compelled her to count on. Again she paced the room, and then, as if impatient of this unaccountable restlessness, she began to make things ready for her father's return. This occupied her some time, and she lingered over the homely task as if in it lay a talisman to shield her against this nameless fear, this importunate, impalpable horror, that seemed to her almost a _presence_. She said aloud, to cheat her own belief, "I must be ill; this is fever;" but her mind was pitilessly alive, and refused this interpretation. She sat down to read; philosophy would surely drive away the unholy phantom. But the pages grew dim before her eyes, and, though unclosed, those eyes saw nothing of what was before them. Twenty times she rose up to look at the passage clock; the time lagged, she thought, as if it dreaded to become the present. The fire burnt brightly again, and hot wine and water were ready on the table. A few flowers that stood in a common cup on the mantel-piece she took down and laid gracefully in a shallow saucer, placing it on the table, in green and scarlet contrast with the white, transparent flagon, and the quaint old silver ewer. Then she thought, as if forcing her mind to leave her unnamed dread behind, of the many vicissitudes this piece of Howard plate had seen; of the drinking bouts of old at which it had figured in the days of the reckless cavaliers; of the mediæval honors it might have won at jousts and tournaments; for its date was carved on a small shield up-born by a griffin and a monk, and went far back into the XVth century. But this speculation was disturbed by sounds of horrid revel in the street, and Grace shiveringly met the old horror face to face again. Something half human seemed to brood over the place; the room seemed tenanted, and, though brave, the girl was thoroughly unnerved. She opened the door, the clock ticked, and she saw it was growing late. From the impatience of two hours ago she rushed back into a shrinking dread of the lateness of the time, now it had come. Her father was still away--why? Had he not looked forward to a quiet evening after his work of charity was done, and would he not have hurried home, that she might not have to wait long after the usual hour? The shadowy terror that all the time had obstinately kept _his_ form as a sort of centre round which it could turn and play in fantastic dreams and ever-changing pictures, crept nearer to her heart now, and strangled it with a more certain fear, a more defined vision. Then a cold wind seemed to blow all round her, and she looked up. It was only the open door into the passage that was swinging on its grating hinges, and letting in a rush of air from the outside. Yes; but whence was the cold air that wrung the frail door? Was not that a sound on the stairs? Her first impulse was to rush out, and meet her father; her second, a scarcely shaped wish to prolong the yet doubtful present. Irresolutely she stood and listened; there were voices on the stairs--whispers.

Then a slow tread came lingeringly up, and through the half-open door she saw Edmund Oakhurst. She knew it all now. Had he rushed up with maddening speed, as if human feet were not swift enough for his errand, she might have hoped. As it was, she saw it all; and when he spoke, she only answered: "Yes."

He stood silent then, and, taking her hand, waited for her to ask him where she must follow him. She passed her other hand over her forehead, and then pointed to the table, with a sort of pathetic smile that wrung her lover's heart.

"He was to have had a nice evening, he said," she murmured in a dreary tone. Oakhurst hardly knew whether or no to answer.

"Come, show me," she said again, taking her shawl, and wrapping it round her, and then, taking the crucifix from the wall, she kissed it and passed it to Edmund.

"My only father now," she whispered to herself. They went down the old stairs in silence, the frightened landlady standing at the door, trembling like an aspen-leaf.

"Tell me," said Grace when they were in the street, "how was it? Did he fall?"

"Yes, he fell," answered he, hesitating; she saw it.

"You can tell me all," she said dreamily; "he was getting short-sighted; from study, you know. Did he stumble? Or was it something struck him?"

"Yes, he was coming out of the house--standing near the door--it did not hurt him much, and he was insensible."

"And was it all over at once?"

"Before we could get him to the hospital."

"Was there a doctor?"

"One came, and accompanied him to the hospital. But he said nothing could be done."

"Did he speak?"

"Not once; but he opened his eyes and looked around, as if seeking something. I said 'Grace,' and then a light came to his eyes, but otherwise there was no recognition. I hardly think he knew me."

"I had his blessing before he left me, thank God!"

Silence fell upon them, and Grace sobbed softly now and then. She thought of the grave under the elms, and of the meeting of those two--those to whom she owed her being--and then of her own lonely heart left behind to drag out its weary vigil. Her self-possession was returning, and when she reached the hospital, it was no wailing, unconscious maniac whom they led to the couch of the calm sleeper, but a grave, silent woman, wrapped in the majesty of sorrow, armed with the shield of peace. She stood a few moments steadfastly by the bed, then dropped on her knees, and kissed the white, still hand. A gash had scarred the high, broad forehead, but its horror had been obliterated as much as possible, and she felt no shrinking. Her long, piercing gaze had made her more strangely calm; a half-smile came to her lips as she thought of the shuddering girl who had stood in formless terror, trembling at every shadow, a few hours since; she could hardly believe that it was herself, so much had the reality of awful grief sobered in her the wild instincts of dimly perceived danger. The blow had come, and with it the grace; the balm had been poured in almost by the same hand that had dealt the wound, and the burden laid upon her had found more than strength enough whereon to rest and weigh. Crushed she might be, but had not the same silent teacher she gazed upon now been as crushed as she by a widely different yet kindred loss, and had not his soul risen again from under the flail with ten times more sweetness in its fragrance, and more strength in its tempered fibre?

She turned and whispered to Edmund. He inclined his head, and, speaking authoritatively, said to the bystanders that the body must be, at Miss Seymour's wish, carried to her lodgings. She then left, and he accompanied her home, promising to return with her father's corpse.

In a short time muffled steps and hushed voices were heard, and the strong man was borne again to the home he had left so cheerfully only a few hours before. Edmund and Grace were alone. All night through they watched, and a few candles burned round the sleeping form. Towards the gray of the morning, when common sounds began to be heard again, and the city woke up once more to its never-intermitted round of strange, wicked, checkered life, the girl, rising and kissing the brow of her dead father, turned to Edmund with a sad look of inquiry.

"Edmund," she said slowly, "you never told me what struck him."

"An iron bar," he answered, with a frightened, startled look. She gazed full in his eyes.

"I do not believe," she said calmly, with sad reproach trembling in her voice, "that you have told me untruly, for that you could not do; but, through kindness and compassion, I _know_ that you have not told me _all_."

"What more is there to tell?" he stammered.

"You know," she answered; "for God's sake, tell me!"

He looked at her with strange meaning. "You do not know what you are asking, Grace. I had hoped, if I had had my way, to keep from you much that would cause you unnecessary sorrow; and you could have left town, and even the country, so as to more completely take from you all association with this terrible grief. But you seem to pierce every veil, and I am not practised at concealing. But, O Grace! it will break your heart! It well-nigh breaks my own to think of it!"

"I know there is something very dreadful in the background," she said; "but I have prayed all night for strength to bear it, and I wish to know it now. Do not hide one thing from me, as you hope for heaven, Edmund."

He paused, and then, thinking that it would be best to get the shock over at once, said, intently watching her the while: "Grace, your father was called of God to be a priest. But God made him a martyr first; for such a murder _is_, in truth, a martyrdom."

She quivered from head to foot, but, recovering herself, she said: "I had suspected something like that."

"How, Grace?"

"I thought I heard some whispered words that were hushed as soon as I went in to that awful place where he lay, and I had seen you flush, and blanch, and hesitate when I questioned you. It was God's will. Tell me everything. But who"--and her voice broke here--"who could have been so lost as to hate _him_?"

"You know, when we left you," hurriedly began the young man, "we went straight to that meeting. Some were there who are as good as cured, and some others came from curiosity, or brought by their friends. A few were not sober. Your father said some prayers, as usual. Then he spoke to the men, as you know he can speak, very simply, very earnestly. There was a disturbance at the door. While he was speaking, half a dozen men, furious with drink, and roaring and swearing like demons, tried to get in. A few opposed them, and in the struggle the rickety door came down, and the long, old-fashioned iron hinge came loose from the rotten wood. One of the men took it up--it was Drake, the son of those poor old cripples. Another, who was of our men inside, wrenched it from him, and your father came down near the door to try and quiet the men. Those of the better sort grouped round him, fearing violence from the men in the front. I was close to him. I saw a man stoop, and the next minute Drake passed something to a comrade of his, who stole behind us, while he himself made a rush at me. I was still grappling with him, when there was a cry. The men sprang apart, and I heard your father say, 'O God!' just as he fell. I flung Drake to the ground with such force that he was stunned, and his head sounded dead on the stone floor. The men on our side had already caught the murderer, with the long iron hinge in his hand. It had struck your father on the back of the head, near the ear, and the scar on the forehead was made by falling forward. The police did not come till it was all over, and then they marched off Drake and the other man--Eldridge is his name, so I was told afterwards. I heard Drake say, with a horrible oath, that it was lucky for your father he had escaped so long; and the murderer grinned as he heard this remark. They seemed sober enough the minute it was over. Drake recovered very soon. The other men seemed stupid with horror. Grace, was it not a martyrdom?"

"Edmund," she answered solemnly, "it was the noblest death he could die, the only one befitting him. Die for the good of others! die for the spread of holiness, for the honor of principle! die that God might be better known and better served!--it was what he lived for; it was what he would have chosen to die for, had he had the choice. O my father! half my soul has gone with him, and my life shall be one eager longing to be made worthy to follow him. Edmund, is it not grand, is it not heroic? Has he not a glorious crown wherewith to meet my mother in heaven?"

Edmund could not help wondering at the quaint suggestions, which, to his less imaginative nature, seemed even extravagant; but when was enthusiasm ever less than extravagant, and when was it more meet than in this case of a glorious, God-ordained death?

After a pause, Grace resumed:

"If I had known this sooner, I should have gone to Drake's parents. I shall go now. You watch while I am away."

And before Edmund could speak, she was gone.

They were sitting over the embers of a mere apology for a fire, these two forsaken cripples, with the little, starveling children cuddled together like frightened rabbits at their feet. When the door opened, and Grace appeared, pale and worn, they shivered, and leaned one upon the other, as if they would gladly have fled from her, had they been able. They were dumb, and seemed to have no instinct but fear within their bosoms. The children stared with great round eyes, and crept further away. Grace went up, and knelt down before the old couple, taking the woman's fingers in her own, and saying softly:

"You are not afraid of me? Did you think I was angry? I have come to tell you I am not, and _he_ would not be, could he speak to you. Won't you say something to me?"

The old woman said something, but her teeth chattered so it was unintelligible. The old man gave a feeble, idiotic laugh, and, for the moment, Grace was startled. But she soon saw that horror had turned his brain, and that he was now beyond the possibility of suffering. His wife seemed verging on the same state. Grace took out some money, and put it into the poor old crone's hand. "You shall live on here, just as usual," she said. "I will help you; never mind. Take care of your husband, and remember I am not angry with you."

The old woman mumbled something under her breath, but appeared quite stupefied yet. "God bless you!" said Grace sadly, turning from this unsatisfactory couple, and going gently up to the children.

"Can you tell me where Eldridge lived?" she said. "And if he has a family?"

The children, also, seemed deaf and dumb for a time; but at last the promise of a silver piece drew forth from the recesses of their memory the address of Eldridge's wife. It was not far off. Grace left the hovel, and took her way down courts and by-streets till she reached the house where the murderer's wife lived. Up many stairs, and through many passages, inquiring her way, Grace went, and at last knocked at the right door. Only a sound of sobbing was heard within. She said to herself, "This is no hardened woman;" and at once her resolve was formed. She gently opened the door; a woman sat by the dingy window, her head buried in her hands, and bent down to her knees. She rocked herself to and fro, and moaned at regular intervals. A child lay in a cradle near her, but she did not heed it. The bed stood at one end of the room, tossed and untidy; the poor little utensils of the wretched home were flung about in disorder, and some dark stains on the deal table gave out a strong, sickening odor.

Grace went up to the woman, and touched her on the shoulder. The woman looked up. Her face was wild and sad, the hair strayed over the cheeks and forehead, matted with tears, and the expression was awful in its utter despair. Grace said:

"You are very unhappy; I am come to comfort you, if you will let me."

"Who are you?" said the woman vacantly.

"A friend to all who are in trouble," answered Grace, with a sob in her voice; "and I thought, if I came to you, it might relieve you."

The woman seemed to try and gather her faculties together. "I do not remember you. The visiting ladies is not like you."

"But you will let me visit you? Perhaps I can do you more good than they can."

"No, no; you are very kind, lady, but 'tan't no use."

"I know what your trouble is, but there is comfort even for that sorrow. He may repent; have you any influence over him?"

She shook her head. Grace pointed to the cradle.

"And has that no influence upon him? To-day, when he is sober, it may have. Take the baby, and go and see him. If you do him good, it will make you happier; if not, you will have done your duty."

"Duty!" flashed out the miserable woman. "What have I ever done but my duty, and to him as used me more as a beast than a woman?"

"Hush! hush! God may touch him yet. Do not despair!"

"Not despair! Lady, it's easy for you as is a lady to say sech things! God be merciful to me, I'm driven mad with despair!"

"Will you tell me what it is that troubles your poor heart?" said Grace, who saw that the unhappy woman must speak out or die.

"Won't I?" was the answer, fearfully prompt. "I married that man three years ago down in Devonshire, and I a farmer's daughter, with a home as never knowed the want of anything. And he fooled me with his handsome face and talk of Lunnon, and his fine trade there. Trade, indeed! It was the devil's trade, if any! And because I listened and liked him, my father he swore he'd disown me. I ran away, and we was married at the nearest church. First night, he came home drunk. He never left off being drunk, and often I thought I'd leave him; but father, he wouldn't have taken me back, and I didn't want for to be called names! Here in Lunnon we lived sometimes here, sometimes there, worse than this often, and he always drunk. He had heaps of money now and then. I know, lady, where it come from; but he never gave me any, and I don't know as I could have touched it if he had. But for days he left me, and I had to beg or starve; he would not have cared if I'd done worse. Then come home drunk, and swear because there was nothing to eat. He beat me and kicked me, and, when he come home, wouldn't let me sleep at night. Other men came, too, and spoke about bad things in whispers; but I heard. They would drink here till they all slept heavy on the floor, and the brandy spilt over their clothes. Then baby was born, and I felt as if I could kill it first; for why bring it up to be like its father? Three days after it came, my husband struck me terrible, and I nearly died. He gave brandy to the child, and I in a faint. Baby was like to die, and I were glad of it. And so it went on--baby better, but me worse, and drink, drink, till he sometimes went tearing mad, swore he saw devils, and called for more drink and more. A few months ago, Drake came--a man my husband knew--and he and the other laughed and said 'some one' shouldn't trouble them long. They had money, in gold, last time I saw Drake. That was four days back. Then my husband, he came home drunk still, and every night it was the same, till last night, when he did not come home at all, but left me not one half-penny, for he had drunk the last in that brandy he spilt on the table."

The woman paused and shuddered.

"My God, my God!" she moaned, "that I should come to this, with my father's home, so peaceful-like, and me not daring to go back. Well, the last I heard of that man were when, at twelve o'clock last night, a neighbor rushed in and says to me, says she, 'Mrs. Eldridge, your old man's been and done it!' And as I looked at her, stupid-like, she says, 'He's killed that preaching gentleman as used to try and get all our men to leave off spirits.' And I fell back on the bed, and knowed nothing for hours."

Grace had listened throughout the pitiful story with calm, patient interest; she now said soothingly:

"Come, Mrs. Eldridge, it is a fearful blow, but God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, does he not? Tell me, you have not tasted anything since yesterday; is it not so? You must be faint, and, if we would bear up against sorrow, we must not lose our health. I have brought you money, but I think it is better I should send for some things for you, as you will hardly care to go out and be seen just now."

"Indeed and indeed it's true," sobbed the poor creature; "but you are a world too good, miss."

"I will read to you while you are waiting; it will soothe you," said Grace, as she went to the door, and called a girl from one of the multitudinous cavities of this warren-like house. She gave her money and instructions, and turned back into the room. The child in the cradle awoke. Grace took it up. The mother shuddered, saying: "Better it should die, lady, than live to be like its father."

The girl looked curiously down at the infant's poor, pinched face, and then answered:

"Let God settle that; it is not for you or I to question his doings towards children. I remember my little brother when he was like this."

"Ah! miss, no doubt he had a different father."

Grace turned pale, and did not answer. The woman was silent, but seemed merged in her own grief again. Then, with the child on her lap, the young girl began to read out of a Catholic Bible she had in her pocket. She thought Mrs. Eldridge would never know the difference, and she preferred her father's gift to herself to all the Bibles she had had during his pastorship. The poor woman seemed entranced. When Grace paused, she said:

"Them visiting ladies never does that, but they brings tracts and groceries. But how peaceful-like that do sound jest like our parson's daughter as used to read to mother at home."

"How old are you, Mrs. Eldridge?" asked Grace.

"Going twenty-four, miss. But, ah! I was a different woman when I got married. If you had a-seen me then, lady, you would not believe it was me."

And, in truth, the poor, wasted face looked old, and hungry, and thin, as if the spirit had aged so that it grew jealous of the once comely mask without, and withered it remorselessly with watching, and weepings, and sharp care. The little messenger came back to the door, bearing with her creature comforts, whose taste had long been unknown to the drunkard's wife. Then Grace rose to leave her, saying, "You shall not want, my poor friend; and whenever you wish to see your husband, I will try and manage it for you. If there is any possibility of saving him, it shall be done. While there is life, there is hope--of the soul as well as of the body. He might repent and be a help and an example to you. And then, no doubt, his wicked companions tempted him much, and the sin was perhaps not all his own. So look to God, and try and bear up, and I will come again."

She left the house with a pure joy at her heart, praying to God that he would keep her for ever in the path on which she had entered, and feeling that, in her weak measure, she had been permitted to bring herself a little nearer to the ideal of her dead father's life. She had laid upon his tomb a garland worthy of him, she had said words his spirit would have approved, and done a deed such as he himself would have bidden her do.

Back again to the dark, silent chamber of the dead she went, and found her watchful lover there; but she did not tell him that she had sought out the murderer's wife. That day came various torturing details, but she allowed Oakhurst to spare her much of their sorrow, and throughout the legal proceedings she never had to appear. The murder caused some stir, as the victim was an American citizen and the father of the young heir of the Howards. George Charteris visited his cousin, and offered her his services in every way, professional or friendly, that she might choose. She was touched by his ready sympathy, but wisely refused his _professional_ assistance.

"You see, George," she said, "it would seem ungenerous to have one so nearly related to him to plead against his murderer; besides, I would rather save the unhappy man from his due punishment, if it can be done."

"What, Cousin Grace!" he echoed, unable to understand her.

"It seems strange to you, I know; but I have not lived with my father all my life without knowing well how full of Christian charity he always was when any personal injury was done to him, and I am following his will, no less than the Christian precepts, when I say I would spare his unhappy murderer as much as lays in my power."

"My dear child, this is perfect quixotism. A fellow who should have been hung long ago!"

"I know you think differently; it is natural you should. You judge things by another standard, and from another point of view. Looked at in the light of the Gospel, things are very different, dear cousin. Do not let us speak about it. If it is romance to you; it is life and truth to me."

"For George's sake! Think what it will be when he learns it by-and-by!"

"You will not tell him now?" she asked in sudden alarm, clasping her hands. "Oh! do not, do not! My mother gave me that boy to watch over and guard from sin with my very life, but God has willed that his angel should be alone to watch him; yet I must ask you, if you have any influence, do not breed thoughts of wicked revenge in his mind--oh! do not, for, if you do, not only he will suffer, but it will fall back upon you all as a curse. God has made this to happen in his childhood, as if on purpose to hide it from him; do not, for pity's sake, run counter to the evident decrees of Providence."

Reluctantly George Charteris promised his cousin he would exert his influence to keep the father's murder a secret from the child. And so passed the terrible weeks of waiting, Grace ministering almost daily help to the wretched murderer's wife, and Edmund seeking to soothe her whom he loved so tenderly and so reverently. A priest was found to give a quiet blessing to the unconscious form they both had loved so well, and then the dark earth hid the body away, and sowed one more seed for the mystic coming harvest, which shall clothe the valley of judgment with such marvellous blossoming beauty.

When the final conviction of the prisoner and his sentence of capital punishment were made known, Grace was the first to break the news to the wretched wife, and the only one to soothe these dire tidings with suggestions of hope and mercy. The poor woman still refused to visit her husband, and it was more the shame of his crime, and the ignominy of his approaching death, than any spark of feeling left within her bosom for the man who had wooed and won her, that tortured her heart and bowed her head. Grace tried repeatedly to soften her, to melt the terrible callousness which was alive only to the earthly aspect of her grief; but for many weeks she tried in vain. The wild, horror-struck eyes of the unfortunate creature would fasten themselves upon her as she spoke--burning orbs, with unspeakable defiance in them, as if, from this day forth, the felon's wife felt herself to be a hunted creature, with the brand of her husband's sin undeservedly scathing her future life and that of her unconscious child.

When Grace hinted of a possible pardon, the poor thing stared with a frightened expression that only seemed to say: "And I must be his slave again," as if the thought of her own bondage were the only thing on earth that could move her. But at last, being appealed to in the name of her own self-respect, she seemed to have a dawning sense that her present course was hardly the one to elevate her once again into the sphere of tranquil content whence her husband's degradation had, three short years ago, so fatally withdrawn her. The dikes of her soul burst suddenly, and the flood of sweet memories of past days, and of the happy hours spent in the old farm-house, of the flood of womanliness and pity, of the sensibility of the mother, of the forbearance of the Christian, broke over her in saving waves, each teaching the same lesson in their infinite variety of tenderest human voices. She rose, took her child in her arms, and followed her young protectress nearly as far as the prison. Grace would go no further, but agreed to wait till the interview with the condemned man was over. The woman came out weeping and softened. Her husband was at least not obdurate, and expressed sincere regret for what he had been led to do. He bade his wife implore of the unknown lady who had so generously befriended them to accept the blessing he was not worthy to give, but which nevertheless was the last and only tribute a dying man could offer. Grace shuddered as this message was conveyed to her through tears and sobs, but her companion was too greatly busied with her own griefs to notice it.

One evening, as Edmund Oakhurst sat, with his promised wife, in the room the presence of the dead had hallowed to their simple, trusting hearts, he was astonished at her unusual agitation, and at the remark she quietly made as the expression of it.

"Edmund, I am going to get a reprieve for Eldridge, and that may lead to a commutation of sentence. He is very penitent, I hear, and, for his wife's sake, I should wish it."

"But, Grace," replied her lover, with characteristic common sense, "if he is penitent and well-prepared, it would be safer even for his own soul's sake that he should suffer the full penalty of the law."

"We are no judges of that, Edmund," she answered, her bright eyes turning, with suppressed enthusiasm, towards the open window, all bathed in wintry sunlight. "God, I think, must mean otherwise for him, or else he would never have put this idea in my mind. I have thought of it ever since he lay there" (pointing to the centre of the room, where the dear dead had rested), "and his spirit seemed to whisper it constantly to my heart, as if it were some message of God's mercy, of which he vouchsafed to make us the bearers to the rulers of earth."

"Grace, I thought your training would have led you a different way. I thought you would be the first to see God's hand in the established law. Darling, this is sentimentalism. You can forgive the wretched man, and pray for him, and help the forsaken ones he leaves behind, without hindering the law in its operations. You will have fulfilled the Christian duty of forgiveness, without interfering with another sphere of equally binding duty on the community."

"I think you might be right in an ordinary case, Edmund, but God seems to put this beyond common rules, to me."

"Is that not pride, Grace?"

"I trust not," she replied, gently but firmly; "it is a call, a command from God, just as my father's conversion, and my still more unexpected one, were calls from on high--direct calls that took our hearts by storm."

"Grace, dear, I cannot help thinking it presumptuous in you to dream of these things; you make them miracles almost!"

"Surely not, Edmund. Supposing a king were to send for his servant, and give him some important order to transmit, which, in the ordinary course of things, should have been conveyed through his prime minister; do you think the servant would be justified in feeling proud, or the person who received the order in feeling hurt, at the unusual way in which the king had been pleased to act?"

"Grace!" exclaimed Edmund, "you talk just as your father used! He always made me feel that he was right. I will not attempt to influence you any longer; I will leave the matter in the hands of God, and pray that you may be guided by him. If I were you, I would speak with a priest, though!"

"I have, dearest," answered Grace, looking less rapt, and perhaps mingling with her high thoughts a little unconscious human spice of innocent triumph.

"Oh!" said her lover, and, smiling, he relapsed into silence. After incredible efforts and unflagging energy had been spent upon the task, Grace succeeded in getting her father's murderer first reprieved, then re-sentenced to transportation for life. The shock of this news, the utter stupor of gratitude into which he was thrown, even though the name of his benefactress still remained a mystery to him, wrought a miracle in his nature, and sobered him for life. Faith came to the help of solemn thankfulness, and the husband and wife secretly became Catholics before leaving England. Grace, for some inexplicable reason, positively refused to see Eldridge, even at his wife's most earnest request. The fact was that she had once been face to face with him, in days when neither dreamed of the strange relations they were fated to bear to each other, and she feared, in her humility, lest he recognize her now. But Edmund, fully aware as he was of how matters stood, resolved that, without wounding his betrothed's sweet lowliness, he would yet reveal to the recipients of her charity the inestimable sacrifice she had made of her natural feelings for the sake of the "new commandment" of love and forgiveness taught by Christ's Gospel. So while the four stood in a group just before the departure of the convict-ship--Grace far apart with the mother, and her back turned to the convict--he slipped into the hand of the murderer a folded paper, saying something under his breath of its being of some little pecuniary use to them in their new home, and adding with a half-smile:

"_She_ knows nothing of it, but her name is written inside. Do not open it till you are on board."

Grace, meanwhile, was comforting the mother, whose little boy was in her arms for the last time, as Grace had wished to have it brought up under her own care.

"I have a little brother, you know," she said, "and, while I cannot fulfil my mother's trust with regard to him, I will lavish all my care on your child, and, please God, in a few years, when your husband earns his freedom, you shall see the boy again in my country, where nothing but good will ever be known of any of you."

So the ship sailed, and the convict's hand clasped the paper nervously. The mother was holding out her arms to her little boy, who struggled and cried in Grace's embrace. The man, standing on the deck, touched his wife's shoulder, and passed the paper to her. Had any one been close enough, he might have seen the swarthy cheek pale to a sickly hue, then flush as suddenly again. Those on shore only saw his face swiftly hidden in his hands, and his whole frame rock violently. Simultaneously the woman dropped on the deck, and Grace thought she must have fainted with the grief of leaving her child behind. Indeed, she was too much occupied with the little one to notice the ship minutely. The poor babe wailed and then struggled by turns, and it was no easy work to keep it quiet till the small party could find a coach to take them home. Edmund took care to look unconcerned and innocent, and, thanks to his betrothed's sweet unsuspiciousness of disposition, as also to the circumstances we have mentioned, his secret was kept until a passionately grateful letter from the poor convict reached her in her own home across the ocean. Edmund was her husband by that time, and she could not find it in her heart not to forgive him!

But we are slightly anticipating.

A few days after the departure of the convict-ship, George Charteris called on his cousin, to report to her about certain arrangements which he had volunteered to take on his own hands. He had now completed them, and had found a responsible and aged companion for Grace on her homeward voyage. The old lady was going out to some relations settled in Virginia, and was delighted to find a young girl of refinement and of good family to bear her company on her somewhat tedious journey.

Edmund had begged Grace Seymour to consent to be married before they left England; but the girl had some unaccountable longing for her own land, which, though he smiled at as childish, he nevertheless was too chivalrous to combat. He was to follow speedily, with George Charteris as groomsman, and an older friend, a priest bound for some of the Indian missions.

So the ocean was crossed once more, and in her own home, the beautiful marriage-gift she brought her husband, Grace Seymour was married. Mr. Ashmead, whom, with characteristic courtesy, she would not exclude from her quiet, unattended wedding, told her solemnly, as he walked by her side to her mother's grave under the thick-shaded elms, that he had had a secret once, which he wished to tell her now.

In grave wonderment she turned her eyes upon him. "My child," he said sadly, but with no shame flushing his clear cheek, "I once dreamt to have you for my own, and I waited from the moment I saw you first, standing here, bending down to look into the unfilled grave, till I saw your mind unfolding and blossoming, as in a cloistered garden, all alone; but when I knew that your faith was disturbed, my heart bled for you and for myself, for I saw that I had no spell wherewith to give you back what you had lost. And since the day your father left us, the dream faded as a thing that God had ordained not to be. So now, though our faiths are widely different, and though the memory of those times is very dear to me still, I can take your hand in all a father's freedom, and give you and your husband a father's blessing. Let us be friends for ever, Grace, will you?"

She had listened to him with a bright blush and attentive expression; she now took his hand, and said earnestly: "Yes, Mr. Ashmead; God bless you!"

The years sped on. Edmund Oakhurst soon owned estates that would have thrice bought the old homestead of his wife's early days; his fields were the fullest, his experiments the most successful, his men the best cared for, his profits the largest, his prosperity the most steady, in the whole country around. People left off calling him the "Britisher," and spoke respectfully of him as the "Squire"; even his religion was favorably regarded in consideration of his position and his well-known generosity. Children like himself rose up around him, and the convict's child seemed only like the elder brother of the rest. Things gradually changed, and Catholic schools and colleges made their appearance in the land. Oakhurst thought it more prudent to send his sons and his so-called nephew to American centres of Catholic education, rather than to the more advanced universities of France; but he reserved for home-teaching the nameless refinement he wished to stamp on his children. His wife was the worthy successor of her mother, whose sweet presence had once been so dear to the villagers of Walcot; only _her_ silent influence was now directed to that end which, after death, had become that of her mother too.

When, fifteen years later, the man who had left England a convict landed in America an emigrant, he found his oldest boy studying for the priesthood, and fast and enthusiastically outstripping his companion and rival in theological learning, Oakhurst's own second son. Again another change and another joy had been added to Grace's life, when her brother, on attaining his majority, came over with his uncle, George Charteris, now a tolerably well-behaved married man, and paid her a long visit within the walls of the old home, untouched and unchanged from what he recollected, save by accumulation of mosses, and a denser growth of creepers round the gables and the porch.

They have all gone to their rest now, these friends with whom we have been treading the past--all, save the sons of Grace and Edmund, and their only daughter, who afterwards married George Howard's son and heir. The old name that had been alternately the watchword of Catholicism and Low-Churchism in Gloucestershire veered round again in their persons to its first allegiance, and contributed unwavering steadfastness to the sum of heroic courage shown forth by that army whose chiefs in England are called Newman, and Manning, and that modern S. Bernardine of Sienna, Frederick Faber.

Walcot, too, though of Puritan breeding, knows the sound of Catholic bells now, and the priest's house is the unchanged old Seymour cottage, while the pastor himself is the English convict's child.

Edmund Seymour's sacrifice had sown the first grain of which Grace Oakhurst's children reaped a hundred-fold.

FOOTNOTES:

[275] Isaias xxxviii. 10, 13.

THE PRINCIPLES OF REAL BEING.

III.

INTRINSIC PRINCIPLES OF PRIMITIVE BEINGS.

We have shown in a preceding article[276] that every primitive being proceeds from three extrinsic principles--the _final_, the _efficient_, and, if we may so call it, the _eductional_ or _pro-material_ principle; that is, the term out of which the being is educed, which term, as we there remarked, holds the place of the material principle still wanting.

We are now ready to prove that every primitive being has also _three intrinsic principles_, not more, and not fewer--a truth the knowledge of which is of the utmost importance in philosophy, as it enables the student to point out without hesitation everything that may enter into the constitution of primitive beings, with the gratifying certainty that, when he has once reached the said three principles, his analysis is perfect, and can go no further. But as our proposition is altogether universal, its demonstration will need the employment of arguments drawn from the most abstract of all philosophical notions; and our readers must bear with us if we fill a portion of the following pages with dry, though not abstruse, reasonings. The determination of the first constituents of things needs precision, not ornament, as it is nothing more than the drawing of the outlines by which the whole building of metaphysics is to be encompassed.

Our first proof is based on the following consideration. Of every existing being two things are cognizable: the first, _that it is_, the second, _what it is_. In other terms, all complete being is knowable both as to its _existence_ and as to its nature or _essence_. But while the existence of any given being is simply _affirmed_ as a fact, the essence is _understood_ as an object. Now, nothing can be understood which does not present itself to the intellect under the form of an intelligible ratio; for to understand is to see a relation of things, as _intelligere_ is nothing but _inter-legere_,[277] "to read between"--a phrase which clearly implies two definite terms, between which a definite relation is apprehended. Accordingly, nothing is intelligible, except inasmuch as it implies two correlatives; and, therefore, since every essence is intelligible, every essence implies two principles conspiring through mutual relativity into an intelligible ratio. These two principles of a primitive essence are themselves intelligible only as correlated; for the constituents of a _primitive_ essence are not other essences, as is evident; and therefore cannot have a separate and independent intelligibility. They are therefore absolutely simple and unanalyzable, and of such a relative character that they cannot exist, or even be conceived, separated from one another. The same is true of existence also, which has no separate intelligibility, as it is utterly simple and unanalyzable, and cannot be conceived or affirmed, except with reference to the essence to which it may belong. It follows, then, that every primitive being can be resolved into three simple principles, of which two constitute its real essence, whilst the third--viz., existence--completes the same essence into real being. Such is our first proof.

A little reflection will now suffice to determine the general nature of the two essential principles just mentioned, and to obtain at the same time a second proof of our proposition. Existence is the actuality of essence. Now, actuality can spring only from actuation; and actuation necessarily implies an _act_, which actuates, and a _term_, which is actuated. Therefore the two constituents of any primitive essence must be a real act whose intrinsic character is to actuate its term, and a real term whose intrinsic character is to be actuated by its act; whilst the actuality of the essence follows as a simple result from the mutual conspiration of these essential principles. Accordingly, every primitive being involves in its constitution three principles--viz., an _act_, its _term_, and the _actuality_ of the one in the other. This last is called the _complement_ of the essence.

Readers accustomed to intellectual speculations will need no additional evidence to be satisfied of the cogency of the two preceding proofs. But those who are less familiar with philosophy may yet want some tangible illustration of our reasonings before they fully realize the nature of the three principles and of their relations. We hope the following will do. Physicists show that if a material point moves for a time, _t_, with a uniform velocity, _v_, through a space, _s_, the relation of the three quantities will be expressed by the equation--

_s_ / _v_ = _t_

It is plain that the three quantities, _s_, _v_, _t_, are the three intrinsic principles of movement. In fact, the velocity, _v_, is the _act_, or the form, of movement; whence the epithet of _uniform_ applied to all movement of constant velocity; the amount, _s_, of space measured is the _term_ actuated by the said velocity; the time, _t_, is the duration of the movement, that is, its _actuality_; for as movement is essentially successive, its actuality also is successive, and constitutes a length of time. Here, then, we have most distinctly the three principles of movement. Let us remark that the first member of the equation is the _ratio_ of the term to its act, and therefore represents the essence of movement; whilst the second member exhibits the duration of its existence. The sign of equality between the two members does not mean that the essence of movement is the same thing as the existence of movement, but only that both have the same _quantitative value_. For it should be remarked that, although a ratio is usually defined as "the quotient of a quantity divided by another of the same kind," nevertheless the quotient is not exactly the ratio, but its result or value; and is not the equivalent of the ratio in quality, but in quantity only. In pure mathematics, which are exclusively concerned with quantities, the distinction between the ratio and its value may not be important; but when a ratio is viewed in its metaphysical aspect, the distinction is of great consequence. For a metaphysical ratio is not looked upon as the ratio of two quantities, of which the one is the measure of the other, but as the ratio of two realities, of which the one actuates the other, and which, though belonging to the same kind of being, are, however, of a relatively opposite character, as is evident from the very example we are considering. The space, _s_, and the velocity, _v_, are, in fact, conceived as quantities of the same kind, only because velocity is mathematically expressed in terms of the space measured through it in a unit of time; yet velocity is certainly not space, but is that by which matter is compelled to move through space; so that while the extent of the space measured in a unit of time corresponds to the velocity with which it is measured, velocity itself has no extension, but intensity only. Hence the ratio of space to velocity, metaphysically considered, is a ratio of extension to intensity, or of potency to act, as we shall presently explain.

The third proof of our proposition is very simple. The intrinsic principles of being must correspond to its extrinsic principles, each to each respectively. For were any of the extrinsic principles not represented in the principiated being by something real proceeding from it, and corresponding to it, such an extrinsic principle evidently would principiate nothing, and would be no principle at all. Now, we have seen that the extrinsic principles of primitive being are three. It is evident, therefore, that its intrinsic principles likewise must be three. The extrinsic principles, as before stated, are God's volition of bringing something into existence, the term of its eduction, and the creative power exerted in its production. Hence it follows that every thing created must contain within itself an _act_ as the product of the Creator's action, a _term_ as an expression of the term of its eduction, and an _actuality_ as the accomplishment and fulfilment of the volition of bringing it into existence.

We may here remark that the _act_ of the created being is produced _by_ God as its efficient _cause_, proceeds _from_ God's omnipotence as its efficient _principle_, and is produced _through_ action as the proximate _reason_ of its causation and principiation.

The _term_ of the created being, on the contrary, comes _out of_ mere nothingness, acquires its reality _through_ the mere position of an act, is not made, but actuated, and therefore has no efficient cause, but only a formal principle, the reality of which is the sole reason why the term is called real, and the disappearance of which would leave nothing behind. As a spherical form, by the necessity of its own nature, gives existence to a geometric centre, without need of an efficient cause, so does the essential act to its essential term. Let the spherical form be annihilated, and the centre will be gone; let the essential act vanish, and the essential term will have vanished together with it.

Finally, the _actuality_ of the created being proceeds from the act and the term as making up its formal source, or the _principium formale quod_; while the formal reason, or the _principium formale quo_, of its proceeding is the actuation of the latter by the former, and the completion of the former in the latter; for to actuate a term is to give it actuality, and to be actuated is to become actual; and therefore the result of such an actuation is the actuality of the act in its term, and of the term in its act, or the complete actuality of the created essence and of the created being.

Thus the whole being, by its act, its term, and its complement, points out adequately and with the utmost distinction the three extrinsic principles whence it proceeds.[278]

The fourth proof is as follows: Every created being possesses an intrinsic natural activity and an intrinsic natural passivity. It possesses activity; for every creature must have an intrinsic natural aptitude to reveal, in one way or another, the perfections of its Creator, as such is the end of all creation; but to reveal is to act; and, therefore, every creature possesses its intrinsic aptitude and determination to act--that is, _activity_. It also possesses passivity; for all contingent beings are changeable, and therefore capable of receiving new intrinsic determinations; and such an intrinsic capability is what we call _passivity_, or _potentiality_. The consequence is, that every creature possesses something by reason of which it is active, and something on account of which it is passive; which amounts to saying that every creature possesses its intrinsic principle of activity, or, as it is styled, its _act_, and its intrinsic principle of passivity, or, as we call it, its _potency_ or its _potential term_. Hence the well-known fundamental axioms of metaphysics: "Every agent acts by reason of its act," and "Every patient suffers on account of its potency."[279] Now, since the same being that can act can also be acted on, it is evident that that by reason of which it can act, and that on account of which it can be acted on, are the principles of one and the same actual essence, and therefore conspire into one formal actuality, which completes the essence into being. Accordingly, in all creatures, or primitive complete beings, we must admit _act_ and _potency_ as the constituents, and _actuality_ as the formal complement, of their essence.

These four proofs more than suffice to show that all primitive complete beings consist of _act_, _term_, and _complement_ as their intrinsic principles. But, as I am satisfied that on the right understanding of such principles the soundness of all our metaphysical reasonings finally depends, I think it necessary, before we proceed further, to make a few considerations on their exact notion, character, and attributions.

The _term_ of a primitive being owes its reality to its act. Before its first actuation, it had no being at all; it was only capable of acquiring it, and therefore was, according to the language of the schools, a reality _in mere potency_; since everything that has no being, but can be actuated into being, has received the name of _pure potency_.[280] Now, pure potency, though it is nothing real, is infinite and inexhaustible; not that nothingness can have any such _intrinsic_ attribute, but simply because no limit can be assigned to the possible eduction of beings out of nothing through the exercise of God's infinite and inexhaustible power. And it must be added that such a potency is thus infinite not only with regard to the substances that can be created out of nothing, but also with regard to the accidents which can be produced in those substances, and with regard to the modes resulting from the reception of such accidents. This being admitted, it is evident that, when the term of a created being acquires its first reality, a pure potency is actuated by an act; but is not actuated to the full amount of its actuality, which is infinite and inexhaustible. Indeed, no act gives to its potency the plenitude of all being; but every act gives that being only which corresponds to its own specific nature. And therefore the term of a primitive being, though actuated in its first actuation as much as is needed to make it the real term of a determinate essence, remains always capable of further and further actuation; in other words, such a term is still, and always will be, entirely _potential_ in regard to all other acts compatible with the nature of the first by which it is actuated.

Hence we come to the conclusion that every created being, for the very reason of its having been educed out of nothing, retains potency, as the stamp of its origin, in its essential constitution. _All creatures_, then, _are essentially potential_, and therefore imperfect; as potency means perfectibility. _God alone is free from potency_, as he is the only being that did not come out of nothing.

A second conclusion is that the essential term of a created being may be considered under two aspects--viz., as to the _reality_ it borrows from its act, and as to the _potentiality_ it inherits from its previous nothingness. Hence such a term must be called a _real potency_; the word _real_ expressing the fact of its actuation, and the word _potency_ expressing its ulterior actuability. Reality and potentiality constitute _passivity_.

It is not unusual to confound substance with the term actuated by a substantial act. Of course, the term cannot be thus actuated without the substance becoming actual; but, though this is true as a matter of fact, it does not follow that substance can be confounded with its intrinsic term. Sphericity actuates a centre; and yet the centre thus actuated is not a sphere, but only the intrinsic term of sphericity. In like manner the act actuates its potency; but this potency is not the substance itself; it is only one of its constituents.

The potential term, such as it is found in material substance, is called _the matter_. Hence all that plays the part of potency in any being whatever is called its _material_ constituent, although such a being may not contain matter properly so called. Thus we say, for instance, that the genus is the _material_ part of an essential definition, because the genus is potential respecting some specific difference, by which it may be further determined. In such cases the word _material_ stands for "that which receives any determination," whether it receives it in fact or in thought only. In English, the words _material_ and _immaterial_ are sometimes used in the sense of important and unimportant. This meaning may be perfectly justifiable, but is not adopted in philosophy.

With regard to the _act_ by which the essential term of a being is first actuated, it is necessary fully to realize the fact that this act is neither God's creative power nor God's creative action, but something quite different. It is true that all actions are measured or valued by their effects, that is, by the acts in which they end; thus we measure the amount of motive action by the quantity of movement[281] produced. Nevertheless, it is quite evident that the production of a thing, and the thing produced, cannot be confounded with one another. And, since action is nothing but the production of an act, the action and the act produced cannot be confounded with one another, even though they are represented by one and the same word. Thus the action of a painter is not the painting (substantive), although such an action is also called "painting" (participle). Again, the momentum of a falling drop of rain is not the action of the earth, although it is directly from it. And in the same manner the act produced by the Creator is not his creative action, though it is directly from it. Still less can we confound the act produced with the power by which it is produced; for though every effect is virtually contained in its efficient power, we know that it is not contained formally; otherwise the painting should pre-exist within the painter, and the momentum of the falling drop within the earth. As, then, the momentum of the falling drop has no formal existence in the earth, but only in the drop itself while it is falling, so also the act which proceeds from God has no formal existence in God, but only in the term actuated. To say that a created act is God's creative action or creative power, is no less a blunder than to say that a circle described on a blackboard is the power or the action of describing it.

The act which actuates its essential term, in the case of material substance, is called _the form_. Hence all that plays the part of an act in any being whatever is called its _formal_ constituent. Thus we say that the specific difference is the _formal_ part of the essential definition, because the difference is conceived as actuating the genus into species. In such cases the word _formal_ stands for "that which gives any determination," whether it gives it in fact or in thought only.

Finally, the _actuality_ of the created being corresponds, as we have already explained in the preceding article, to the finality of creation, inasmuch as it perfects the essence into being. This actuality has received different names, according to the different light in which it can be viewed and the different connotations of which it affords the ground. It is called the _complement_ of the essence, its _formal existence_, its _formal unity_, its _individuality_. It is called "complement" of the essence, inasmuch as it satisfies all its requirements, and completes it into actual being; its "formal existence," inasmuch as it is the formal result of active and passive actuation; its "formal unity," inasmuch as it arises from two principles conspiring into unity of essence, and therefore of existence also; its "individuality," inasmuch as it is the unity of a _concrete_ being; for individuality is nothing but "that on account of which a thing is formally _one_ in its concrete being."

Some philosophers of the Scotistic school hold that "individuality" and "formal unity" are different things. They say that formal unity is not individual, but universal; because it does not include in its conception the individuative notes. They accordingly teach that the universal is to be found to exist _formally_ in the individual; whence they have been surnamed _Formalists_, or _Ultra-realists_.[282] But it is not true that the formal unity does not include in itself the individuative notes. In fact, all existing essence contains in its own principles the adequate reason of its individuation, and therefore it cannot, by the real conspiration of its principles, be formally _one_ without being _individual_ also. Accordingly, formal unity, though universal in our conception, is individual in the thing itself.

It is evident that the actuality resulting from the act _giving_, and the term _receiving_, existence, exhibits itself as existence _given_ and _received_--that is, as _complete_ real existence. On the other hand, all real result has a real opposition to the formal principles of its resultation; for all that really proceeds has a real relative opposition to that from which it proceeds. A real relative opposition is therefore to be admitted between the real essence and its formal existence; and consequently essence and existence must be considered as really distinct. Not that the essence of a real being does not imply its existence; but because in the essential act and the essential term existence is contained only radically or virtually, not formally, in the same manner as the conclusion is virtually contained in the premises from which it follows, or as equality is contained in the quantities from whose adequation it results. Hence, as in the logical order the formal conclusion is distinct from the premises in which it is virtually implied, so also in the real order is the formal existence of any being to be distinguished from the real principles of the essence in which it is virtually implied. As, however, the act and the term, notwithstanding their real relative opposition and distinction, identify themselves really, though inadequately, with the _essence_ of the actual being, so also the actuality of the being, though having a real relative opposition to the act and the term from which it results, identifies itself really, yet inadequately, with the complete _being_ of which it is the actuality.[283] Whence we conclude that every primitive being, though strictly one in its physical entity, consists of three metaphysical constituents _really_ distinct from one another on account of their real relative opposition.

We must here notice that the last of these three constituents--actuality--is scarcely ever mentioned by the scholastic philosophers. They, in fact, consider all natural beings as constituted of _act_ and _potency_ only. It may have appeared to them that by simply stating the fact of the concurrence of act and potency into one actual essence, the fact of the unity and actuality of that essence would be sufficiently pointed out. They may have had another reason also for omitting the mention of our third principle; for in speculative questions it is the essence of things, and not their existence, that comes under consideration; and essence, as such, involves two principles only--viz., the _act_ and the _term_, as we have stated above. It is obvious, then, that in their analysis of the "quiddity" of beings, they had no need of mentioning our third principle. A third reason may have been that the act and the potency, or the form and the matter, in the opinion of those philosophers, were two things separable, as the Aristotelic theory of substantial generations implied; whereas the actuality of the being was not considered as a third thing separable from either the form or the matter, and therefore was not thought worthy of a separate mention.

But, the reality of this third principle being universally admitted, there can be no doubt about the convenience, and even the necessity, of giving it a distinct and prominent place in the constitution of any complete being. This has been already shown in the preceding pages; but, for the benefit of those who have never paid special attention to the subject, we will give a summary of the principal reasons why in metaphysical treatises the actuality of being should be methodically granted as distinct a place among the intrinsic principles of things as is allotted to the essential act and its term.

First, then, all being that has existence in nature is something complete, not only _materially_--that is, by having its term--but also _formally_, by having its own complete constitution or actuality. The difference between material and formal completion will be easily understood by an example. The sculptor carves the marble and makes a statue. The marble is the _material_ term, and the figure resulting in the marble is the _formal_ term, of his work. Hence the work of carving is _materially_ complete in the marble and _formally_ complete in the figure,[284] which is the actuality of the statue as such. And it is evident that, in speaking of a statue, such a figure is as worth mentioning as the marble and the carving. And therefore, as in the analysis of being we give a prominent place to the term which completes the act, we should do the same with regard to the actuality, which completes the essence. A writer in the _Dublin Review_, who has cleverly treated this subject, makes the following remark: "The constituents _actus_ and _terminus_, or _forma_ and _materia_, are recognized in the schools. The third constituent is not expressly mentioned there. But you hear of _essentia_ and _esse_; and _esse_ is the _complementum_. I have a fancy that the much-canvassed distinction between the ἐνέργεια and the ἐντελέχεια of Aristotle is really this, that ἐνέργεια is the _actus_, and ἐντελέχεια the _complementum_."[285] This remark is very judicious; for it is as certain that the complete being consists of essence and existence as it is certain that the essence consists of act and term; and, moreover, there is no less a distinction between the essence and its existence than between the act and its term. Hence the same reasons that led metaphysicians to give a conspicuous place to the act and its term in the analysis of the essence, show that a similar place should also be given to essence and its actuality in the analysis of the being.

In the second place, the formal complement of being is the only ground on which many different and opposite things can be predicated of one and the same being; as, for instance, activity and passivity, action and passion, to be, to be one, to be good, etc. It is, therefore, important not to leave in the shade that principle, without which no unity of being can be conceived.

Thirdly, an explicit knowledge and mention of such a complement is indispensable, in a great number of cases, when we have to explain how accidental modes _not received_ in a substance can _intrinsically_ belong to that substance--a thing which will never be radically explained without an explicit reference to the formal complement of the being in which those modes are to be found.

Fourthly, in the intellectual as well as in the sensitive nature the appetitive faculty cannot be accounted for, nor distinguished from the cognoscitive, unless we have recourse to this same formal complement, which constitutes the _affectibility_ of the same natures--a truth which we must here simply state, as its demonstration belongs to special metaphysics.

Fifthly, it is unwise to expose the reader to the danger of confounding things having a metaphysical opposition to one another; for instance, the uniting with the union accomplished, the constituting with the complete constitution, the actuation with the actuality. But if the actuality is kept out of view when we give the principles of beings, such confusion will be almost unavoidable. I believe that it is owing to the omission of this third principle that even great philosophers have not unfrequently mistaken attitudes for acts, and actualities for forms.

Sixthly, after we have analyzed a primitive complete being, and found it to consist of three intrinsic principles, it is nothing but reasonable to keep them all equally in sight, and to make them all serve in their turn for the simplification of metaphysical investigations; especially as the distinct recollection of the act, of its term, and of the actuality of both will also draw the student's attention to the corresponding extrinsic principles--viz., to the creative power from which that act proceeds, to the nothingness out of which that term was educed, and to the last end for which that actuality obtained a place in the real order of things.

Lastly, by the consideration that these _three_ intrinsic and relatively opposite principles constitute _one_ primitive complete being, it becomes possible to account philosophically for the known fact that every creature bears in itself, _in vestigio_ at least, as S. Thomas puts it, a more or less imperfect image of God's unity and trinity--a topic on which much might be said, were this the place for discussing the analogy between beings of different orders.

_A few corollaries._ From the resolution of complete beings into their intrinsic principles, and from the different character of these principles and of their principiation, a number of useful corollaries can be drawn, among which the following deserve a special attention:

1. It is a great mistake, and one which leads straight to pantheism, to assert, as Gioberti did, that creatures are not _beings_, but only _existences_. For if creatures have their own actual essence, they are not _mere_ existences, but complete beings; and, if they have no essence, they cannot exist; as all existence is the actuality of some essence. Hence to assert that creatures are not beings, but only existences, amounts to saying that creatures have no essence, and that their existence is the existence of nothing--that is, _non-existence_. Moreover, mere existence is a simple actuality, and does not exhibit an intelligible ratio; hence, if creatures were mere existences, they would be intrinsically unintelligible, not only to us, as Gioberti pretends, but to God himself, who certainly does not understand what is intrinsically unintelligible. There is no need of insisting on such an unavoidable conclusion.

That the same assertion leads straight to pantheism is likewise evident. In fact, the absurdity of admitting existences which would be existences of nothing could not be escaped but by trying to pin them on the substance of God himself, and by saying, with the pantheist, that all such existences are nothing but divers actualities, or attitudes, or forms assumed by the divine substance. Thus, to escape one absurdity, we would fall into another.

2. Inasmuch as the actuality of a given essence makes a given thing formally complete, one, and perfect according to its entitative degree, it is to such an actuality that everything owes that it is formally good, and that it answers to the finality of its creation. Such a goodness implies two things: the first, that every creature is good in its _absolute_ being, for it is in such a being that God's design is fulfilled of communicating his goodness outside of himself; the other, that every creature is good in its _relative_ being also--that is, in its intrinsic aptitude and determination to manifest God's perfections in a manner and degree proportionate to the kind and degree of its entity. Accordingly, every created being is good not only as it is a _thing_, but also as it is _a principle of action_. In the first capacity it fulfils the immediate end of its creation, and in the second it fulfils by its action the ultimate end for the sake of which it has been made to exist.

3. Hence we further infer, that the essence of every created being is its _nature_ also. For _nature is a principle of motion_, according to Aristotle, whether motion is taken as the action proceeding from that nature itself, or as the reception of an action proceeding from an extrinsic agent. Now, we have seen that all creatures are manifestative of God's perfections, and therefore that they have in themselves an act which is a principle of action; on the other hand, we have also seen that every creature has its potential term, and therefore passivity, or receptivity of new determinations. Accordingly, every created being, by the very nature of its essential constituents, is a complete principle of motion. Essence and nature are, therefore, the same thing in reality, though they are distinguished from one another in our conception. S. Thomas considers that these three words, _nature_, _essence_, and _quiddity_, apply to one and the same thing viewed under three distinct aspects; the word _nature_ meaning the essence of the thing as connoting operation, since there is no natural being without active power; whereas the word _quiddity_ means the same essence viewed as an object of definition; and the word _essence_ is used to express the fact that in it and through it a thing has its own being.[286] Whence it follows that a complete being is no sooner endowed with existence than with activity, and is no sooner a being than an individual nature. And therefore a complete being and a concrete nature are really one and the same thing. Malebranche's theory, denying that creatures have any true causality, is therefore utterly untenable, as it cannot be reconciled with the first principles of metaphysics.

4. The entity of the active power contained in the nature of any being cannot be anything else than its essential act; that is, the very act produced by God in its creation. In fact, we have just seen that in all creatures the essence and the nature are the same reality, and that the constituents of the nature are nothing but the constituents of the essence. Accordingly, the nature of every creature consists of an essential act and an essential term; the one being its principle of activity, as the other is its principle of passivity. "The form," says S. Thomas, "is that by which the agent acts," and "By what a thing is, by that it acts," and "The principle of being is the principle of acting," and "Every agent acts inasmuch as it is in act." These axioms are accepted by all real philosophers. Hence the active principle of any complete being, and its essential act, are the same thing in reality, though they are distinguished from one another in our conception, in the same manner as are nature and essence; for the _essential act_ connotes the intrinsic term of the essence, to which the act is essentially terminated, whilst the _active principle_ connotes any extrinsic term to which the action proceeding from the same act is, or can be, accidentally terminated. This is what S. Thomas means when he says that "a natural form is a principle of operation, not inasmuch as it is the permanent form of the thing to which it gives existence, but inasmuch as it has a leaning towards an effect."[287] Such a _leaning_ (_inclinatio_) should be taken to mean a natural _ordination_ or _determination_ to act.

Philosophers agitate the question, whether created substances act by themselves immediately, or by the aid of accidents. The Scotistic school holds the first opinion, whilst the Thomistic supports the second. For reasons which it would take too long to develop in this place, we are inclined to believe that natural accidents are not active, and that their bearing on the action of substance is not of an efficient, but of a formal, character; by which we mean that accidents have no play in the production of effects, except inasmuch as their presence or absence entails a different formal determination of the conditions in which the agent is to exert its power. It is true, indeed, that created substances never act independently of accidental conditions; but it is true, at the same time, that they always act by themselves without the aid of accidents, inasmuch as the active power they exert is so exclusively owned by them that it cannot even partially reside in any of their accidents.

As the active principle is really nothing else than the act by which the agent is, so also the passive principle is really nothing else than the essential term by which that act is completed. Here again the same reality presents itself under two distinct aspects; for the phrase _essential term_ connotes the essential act by which the term is essentially actuated, whilst the phrase _passive principle_ connotes any accidental act by which the same term is liable to be accidentally actuated.

5. Since a being possessing its three intrinsic principles is so fully and adequately constituted as to require nothing additional to exist, it is obvious that such a being contains in its perfect constitution the sufficient reason of its aptitude to exist _non in alio et non per aliud_, but _in se et per se_; that is, in itself and by itself. Now, to exist in itself is to be a _substance_, and to exist by itself is to be what philosophers call _suppositum_--_i.e._, a thing having separate subsistence; and, therefore, such a being, if simply left to itself, will be both a substance and a suppositum. In fact, the essential act of a created being, though always needing positive conservation on account of its contingency, needs no termination to, or sustentation from, a subject, as it already holds under itself its own intrinsic term, by which it is sufficiently terminated and sustained. And in the same manner, the essence of a complete being needs no union with any extraneous nature to be made completely subsistent, as it is already sufficiently complete on account of its formal actuality and individuality. Thus it is manifest that _nothing positive is to be added_ to a complete being in order to make it a substance and a suppositum; it suffices to leave it alone without further sustentation and without further completion. By the first of these two negations, the being will exist _non in alio_, but in itself; and by the second it will subsist _non per aliud_, but by itself. Hence it is that the first negation is called _the mode of substance_, and the second _the mode of the suppositum_.

6. To be, to be true, to be one, to be good, to be a thing or a being, are convertible expressions so far as their real objective meaning is concerned, and are distinct only on account of their different connotations. A thing is called _a being_, inasmuch as it has existence. It is called _true_, inasmuch as its act suits its term, and _vice versa_. For the objective truth of things--_i.e._, their metaphysical truth--is nothing but their intelligibility; and the whole intelligibility of a being consists in the agreement of an essential act with its essential term; that is, in this: that the one adequately satisfies the wants of the other, and thus constitutes with it one perfect intelligible ratio or essence. Hence the termination of the proper act to the proper term makes a thing objectively true; just as the application of the proper predicate to the proper subject makes true a proposition. This objective or metaphysical truth is perfectly independent of our knowledge of it; it has, however, the reason of its being in God's intellect, in which the archetypes of all that is intelligible are contained, and to which the whole ideal order is to be traced as to its original source. A thing is called _one_ on account of the formal unity of its essence and of its existence. It is called _good_, objectively and metaphysically, inasmuch as it is materially and formally complete in the manner above described, and consequently perfect, so as to require no further intrinsic endowment to exist.

The objective goodness of any being arises from its truth; for it is the mutual fitness of the essential act and of the essential term that accounts for their mutual agreement in unity of existence; whence it follows that the being will naturally exist in itself, and subsist by itself, without any further addition, as though finding rest in its own reality. But, that in which anything finds rest is its own good; and therefore everything that exists in itself completely is good to itself, while its act and its term, as the intrinsic factors of such a goodness, are good also, but only of an initial and relative goodness--viz., so far as the one is good to the other. Lastly, the word _thing_ expresses the whole being as it is in its concrete essence--that is, the whole reality implied in its three intrinsic principles. _Thing_ in Latin is _res_; and _res_, as well as _ratio_, are connected with the verb _reor_ (to judge) in the same manner as _pax_ (peace) and _pactio_ (compact) are connected with the verb _paciscor_ (to make a compact); and accordingly, as peace implies the compact, of which it is the result, and by which its conditions are duly determined, so also _res_ implies the _ratio_, of which it is the concrete result, and by which it is confined between the bounds of a determinate quiddity. Whether the English words _thing_, _thought_, and _to think_ bear to one another the same relation as the Latin _res_, _ratio_, and _reor_, we are not ready to decide.

7. The verb _to be_ has not exactly the same meaning, when applied to a complete being, as when applied to its constituent principles. Of the complete being we say that _it is_ simply and completely. Of the essential act we also say that _it is_, but not absolutely nor completely, because it has no existence apart from its term; existence being the result of the position of the one in the other. Of the essential term we should not say precisely that _it is_, but rather that _it has being_. This adjective predication is here employed, because the being of the term is wholly due to its act, without which the term would be nothing, as we have already shown; and therefore the term _is not a being_, but only _has the being_ borrowed from its act, just as the geometric centre has no being but that which it receives from the circumference. Of the complement we do not say that _it is_, or that _it exists_, because the complement is the formal existence, not of itself, but of the being of which it is the complement, and therefore must be predicated of the existent being, not of itself. Thus we cannot correctly say that _loquacity talks_, nor that _velocity runs_: and for the same reason we should not say that _existence exists_; for as it is _the woman_ that talks by her loquacity, and _the horse_ that runs with its velocity, so it is _the complete being_ that exists by its own existence.

Nevertheless, the verb _to be_, when used in a logical sense to express the existence of an agreement between a predicate and a subject, or any other mental relation between objects of thought, applies equally to all things conceived, whatever their degree of reality; because, inasmuch as such things are actually known, they are all equally actual in our intellectual faculty.

And now, with regard to the essence itself of a complete being, the question arises whether it should be held _to be_, or to _have being_, in the sense of the distinction already made. S. Thomas seems to hold that the essence of creatures cannot be said _to be_, but only _to have being_; for he teaches that in creatures the essence is to its existence as a potency is to an act. If this doctrine were to be applied to _possible_ essences only, we might admit it without discussion; but the holy doctor seems to apply it to the _actual_ essence also; for "_to be_," says he, "is the most perfect of all realities, because it performs the parts of an act with regard to them all; as no thing has actuality but according as it is; and therefore _to be_ is the actuality of all things, even of the forms themselves; and for this reason existence is not compared to any existing thing as a recipient to that which is received, but rather as that which is received to its recipient. For when I mention the existence of a man, or of a horse, or of anything else, _existence_ stands for something formal and received, and not for that to which it belongs."[288]

It is clear, however, that the actuality of anything is not an act really received in the essence of the thing as in a potency. For, according to S. Thomas himself, nothing is educed from potency into act, except through an act which is not originated by that potency; and therefore _no potency contains in itself the formal reason of its actuation_, but all potency is actuated by an act originated by an extrinsic agent. Now, such is not the case with _real_ essences; for every _real_ essence contains in itself all that is required to give rise to its actuality, as we have proved; and consequently, as soon as the essential act actuates the essential term, the actuality of the essence springs forth by spontaneous resultation, as the consequence from the premises, with no need of an extrinsic agent producing a new act. Granting, then, that existence is something _formal_, as S. Thomas truly says, yet it does not follow that it is _an act received_; it is only a _resulting actuality_. And therefore the real essence is not the potency of existence, but its formal reason. Existence is the complement of real essence, and presupposes it; and consequently gives it nothing but the real _denomination_ of existent--and, perhaps, this is all that S. Thomas intended to teach, though his words seem to imply a great deal more. For, on the one hand, he very often employs the word _potentia_, not in the sense of passive potency, but in that of virtuality; and, on the other, he frequently gives the name of forms to those formalities from which things receive their proper denomination, and considers them as received in the things to which they give such a denomination. But in such cases their reception is of course only logical, not real, and accordingly the thing denominated by them is only a logical, not a real, potency, as it already possesses the reality of that by which it receives its special denomination. Thus we say that in man rationality is to animality as act is to potency; but this is true in a logical sense only, because man's animality implies in its constitution a rational soul, and therefore is already in possession of rationality.

To conclude: the essence of all actual beings is to be said _to be_ or _to exist_ rather than _to have being_ or _to have existence_; and in the same manner the essence of a possible being is to be called a potency _of existing_ rather than _of receiving existence_, so far, at least, as it is considered in connection with its intrinsic principles. The reader, if not accustomed to metaphysical investigations, will think that we, in this last question, have only amused ourselves with splitting hairs; to correct such a judgment, he has only to ask himself whether between _being rich_ and _holding borrowed riches_ the difference be important or trivial.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES:

[276] CATHOLIC WORLD, Feb., 1874, page 578.

[277] S. Thomas says _intus-legere_, "to read within," which amounts to the same.

[278] This third proof and the following apply to created beings only; but creatures, as we hope to explain later, inasmuch as they are _beings_, are so many imperfect likenesses of their Creator, and unmistakably show that he himself is an infinite Act actuating (out of himself, not out of nothing) an infinite Term, and possessing an infinite Actuality. And accordingly, what we have said of the intrinsic constitution of a created being must be true, in an eminent manner, of the Creator also.

[279] _Omne agens agit in quantum est in actu; et omne patiens patitur in quantum est in potentia._--S. Thomas, _passim_.

[280] Pure potency is _quod potest esse et non est_, according to S. Thomas, _Opusc. De Princ. Naturæ_.

[281] We say _movement_, not _motion_, though we know that these two words are considered as synonymous. Motion corresponds to the Latin _motio_, whilst movement corresponds to the Latin _motus_. _Motio_ means the motive action--that is, motion properly--both as proceeding actively from the agent, and as passively received in the patient; _motus_, on the contrary, signifies the result of the _motio_ given and received; and this result is movement. As in philosophy we have to distinguish between action and its result, we must keep up a distinction between the words also. Very probably movement and motion would never have been accepted as synonymous, had the verb _to move_ exclusively retained its original active signification; but, as people imagined that movement was a kind of action, they thought it right to say not only that the horse moves the cart, but also that the cart _moves_, instead of saying that it is moved. Even Newton has been so misled by the popular use of this verb as to write more than once _corpus movet_, instead of _corpus movetur_. It was but natural that "movement," too, should be transformed into "motion." Are we too late to restore to these two words their distinct meanings?

[282] See Kleutgen, _The Old Philosophy_, diss. 2, c. 4.

[283] We cannot here explain the different kinds of identity; but we hope we shall take up this matter in one of our future articles.

[284] The same distinction may be very properly expressed by saying that the carving is _materially_ terminated to the marble, and _formally_ to the statue.

[285] _Dublin Review_, January, 1873, pp. 70, 71.

[286] Nomen naturæ videtur significare essentiam rei secundum quod habet ordinem vel ordinationem ad propriam operationem rei; quum nulla res propria destituatur operatione. Quidditatis vero nomen sumitur ex hoc quod per definitionem significatur. Sed essentia dicitur secundum quod per eam et in ea res habet esse.--S. Thomas, _De Ente et Essentia_, c. 1.

[287] _Summa Theol._, p. 1, q. 14, a. 8.

[288] _Esse_ est perfectissimum omnium; comparatur enim ad omnia ut actus; nihil enim habet actualitatem nisi in quantum est; unde ipsum _esse_ est actualitas omnium rerum, et etiam ipsarum formarum; unde non comparatur ad alia sicut recipiens ad receptum, sed magis sicut receptum ad recipiens. Quum enim dico _esse_ hominis, vel equi, vel cujuscumque alterius, ipsum _esse_ consideratur ut formale et receptum, non autem ut illud cui competit esse.--_Summa Theol._, p. 1, q. 4, a. 1.

THE JANSENIST SCHISM IN HOLLAND.

JANSENISM IN THE CHURCH OF UTRECHT.

FROM LES ETUDES RELIGIEUSES. BY C. VAN AKEN.

CONCLUDED.

II.

Such was the system of Jansenius, at least as to its main points; its five famous propositions forming the most important conclusions of the system. If they are not all to be found, _in so many words_, in the _Augustinus_--which neither pope nor theologian has ever pretended they are--they are the soul of the book, in the words of Bossuet. This soul, this breath of error, is revived in Quesnel and in the false Synod of Pistoia. Now, are the proofs called for of its existence in the pretended church of Utrecht? Then we have only to let the hierarchy intruded in Holland speak for itself through its letter addressed to Scipio Ricci. So far as I know, this letter has never before been published. We give it as faithfully transcribed from the original in the archives at Florence:[289]

"MONSEIGNEUR:

"We have just read with astonishment a bull of Pope Pius VI., in which the Synod of Pistoia, held by you in 1786, is condemned, and your episcopal administration calumniated, upon grounds which are incomprehensible. Conduct such as this in regard to a bishop and an ecclesiastical assembly of the highest repute in the church, and the spirit of partisanship which characterizes the bull generally, have certainly not been imitated from the great Doctor of Grace, S. Augustine, whom the latter seems intended to honor, since it is dated on his feast.

"Your synod, monseigneur, was for years, as the public well knew, under examination by Roman censors; and it is evident that they would not have occupied themselves with it for so long a time[290] if, instead of laboriously seeking for pretexts to condemn it, they had sought in it for that truth which is everywhere displayed in it with clearness, dignity, and unction. We need not, therefore, have expected a confirmation of this synod as the result of such an examination. We are no longer in the days when the popes used the authority of their see only for edification, and not for destruction. Your synod, monseigneur, reveals nothing which is unworthy of the full approbation of the head of the church, and which would not have been cordially received by the popes of former times. But God permits that those of later times should be swayed by prejudices and by the dominating influence of a court which, although foreign and even contrary to the divine institution of the Holy See, pretends, nevertheless, to identify itself with the chair of S. Peter, and has consequently taken upon itself to dictate the bulls of the popes conformably to its own interests--interests often greatly opposed to those of the church and of the Holy See.[291] It finds that these human interests have not been made much of by the Synod of Pistoia, which kept in view only the good of souls and the disinterested exercise of the functions of the pastorate. It could not, therefore, approve this synod, since its decrees preach the new covenant, of which we are ministers, in the spirit and not in the letter. The ancient one, in which the spirit was sacrificed to the letter, and in which God was honored by the lips, while the heart was far from him, is the only one in accord with the political maxims and views of a court entirely devoted to the _éclat_ of the pontifical throne, and to the externals of religion. The fathers of the synod, most reasonably convinced that the true and only object of the ministry established by Jesus Christ is to give to God adorers in spirit and truth, have endeavored, so far as these evil times permitted, to bring back Christian worship to its primitive purity and simplicity. But this could not be suffered by a court which applies itself exclusively to fostering abuses in ecclesiastical discipline and in the administration of the sacraments, and to all the new devotions and superstitions[292] which give a false idea of Christian piety, and cause the faithful to forget the true spirit of Christianity; not reforming, as it ought, this Judaical worship, but making its profit of it, and taking it under its protection, on all occasions.

"In the synod you held, monseigneur, there were useful reforms proposed, and even commenced. Still greater ones were desired. If the wise regulations made in it were put in practice and everywhere adopted, as they deserve to be; if its wishes were attended to, true piety would flourish again, the church would possess good ministers, their labors would produce abundant fruits, the observance of the canons would restore the salutary discipline of the early days, the hierarchical order would enjoy all its rights, its head, the Holy See, would be listened to and respected, but the Roman court would become nothing. It is this, monseigneur, which excites its resentment against you and your synod. It is the court alone which has produced this extraordinary bull, which is an injury to the chair of S. Peter, more even than to the Synod of Pistoia, and the Pope has been dishonored by causing him to adopt it.

"It was already sufficiently a scandal that Rome alone gave no sign of approving this synod, while it was receiving praises everywhere else; that she alone seemed to take no interest in the good results of which it was susceptible, and appeared even aggrieved and offended at that which gave joy to all true children of the church.[293] But this was not enough for the jealous and vindictive policy of the Roman court. It wished to brand, by a public and solemn censure, the acts of the Synod of Pistoia; and although it must have been infinitely painful to the censors to find no matter for condemnation, yet, by condemning, at whatever detriment to itself, that which all the world approved, it has capped the climax of scandal--_scandali mensuram implevit_.

"Injustice vainly attempts a disguise: it often betrays itself by the clumsy precautions it takes to disguise itself. This, monseigneur, is what we see in the bull of August 28, in which God permitted that its compilers should, against all prudence, depart from their ordinary method of making qualifications _in globo_, so convenient, and even so necessary, where there is question of condemning good books. By applying to each of the propositions censured by them particular qualifications, they have thought to give to their censure an appearance of greater rectitude and equity, and by this very means they have rendered evident to all the spirit of deception and bad faith which characterizes them. In fact, monseigneur, if the use of this kind of censure be even just and equitable in itself, it would be impossible to abuse it more grossly than they have done in the matter of your synod. Every one knows that, when propositions are bad and condemnable, they are so in themselves and in the sense they express. It is, then, in themselves and in reference to this sense that they should be condemned.[294] This, however, is not what has been done in regard to the greater number of the propositions drawn from the Synod of Pistoia. They are not condemned in themselves nor in their proper sense, but relatively to the imaginary sense attributed to them. The truths they express are passed over, in order to condemn the errors they do not express; and while it would be against all evidence to attribute to them an erroneous sense, to which the words are repugnant, they are nevertheless condemned conditionally--that is to say, by virtue of a gratuitous and often absurd supposition that this erroneous or in some wise reprehensible sense may be conveyed therein. They dare not condemn Jesus Christ, or, what is the same thing, the truth in its own name; but they give him the name and the dress of Barabbas, in order to have the right of sending him to punishment as a malefactor--_Et cum iniquis reputatus est_.

"We have just said, monseigneur, that the bull violated grossly in your regard good faith and justice by this indirect and captious manner in which it condemns the greater number of the propositions drawn from your synod. But there are others, in the censure of which the interests of the faith and of the teachings of the church are equally disregarded. They do not hesitate to sacrifice these to the pernicious opinions of obnoxious theological schools, the defence of which is taken up against your decrees, under the pretext that the Holy See tolerates them under the name of Molinism--a _Pelagian doctrine_[295] rejected by all tradition. Thus error, or rather a number of most dangerous errors, is put on a level with truth; and the hand of Pius VI. is made use of to replace beside the ark that idol of Dagon so often overturned to its base by the censures of the church and the writings of her doctors. What idea have they, then, of the teachings of the church, and of the rights of bishops and their co-laborers in reference to this doctrine? Because Paul V. did not choose to do in regard to the doctrine of Molina _that which his successors did in regard to the doctrine of S. Augustine in their bulls against Jansenius and Quesnel_;[296] because they have not published, with condemnation, the system of equilibrium, of _gratia sufficiens_, of the state of pure nature, of the _scientia media_, of limbo, etc.; and have allowed to be taught the sufficiency of attrition without the love of God, and the ignorant devotion to the Sacred Heart to be practised, shall pastors no longer be permitted to oppose to these novelties the principles and the language of Scripture and tradition? And shall they no longer warn the faithful of the snares spread for their faith and piety, because those who spread them have not yet been declared heretics by the Sovereign Pontiffs?

"They have not contented themselves, monseigneur, with making a crime of your private sentiments, however irreproachable, but have quarrelled with you for having, in your synod, adhered to a doctrine so authoritative, so precious in all churches and all states, as that contained in the four articles of the assembly of the clergy of France in 1682. They have so poor an opinion of the present clergy and of the Gallican Church itself as to imagine that this clergy would feel offended at the praises you give to the celebrated declaration of that assembly, and to take the insertion you have made of it in the acts of the Synod of Pistoia as an injury. But if the synod does an injury to the French clergy by adopting its maxims, what does the Pope's bull do, which rejects and condemns them?

"You may be sure, monseigneur, that a bull like this--a censure as manifestly unjust at bottom as singular and indecent in form--is not likely to shake or diminish in the least either our attachment for you or our esteem and admiration for the acts of your synod, _in the doctrine of which our clergy recognize their own_, through the chapter of Utrecht, whose act of adhesion was sent to you in November, 1789,[297] shortly after the French publication of the synod. The efforts which are now being made to cry down its results, and to render them abortive, are so much more a motive for our confirming this adhesion, and of renewing to you the expression of our interest in your cause, afflicted, as we are, to the bottom of our heart, that our Holy Father, Pope Pius VI., who ought to show us the example of like sentiments, shows himself in his bull entirely opposed to them. We sympathize with you, monseigneur, no less in the personal offence that has been offered you than in the annoyances which cannot fail to arise to you as well as to the faithful clergy of your ancient diocese. But God, who has enabled you long to foresee these things, and who has already prepared you for them by preliminary trials, will give you grace to bear all this with continued courage and confidence in his protection and assistance.

"Considering the affair in itself, nothing can be weaker than the attack that has been made upon you by this bull, which is more likely, in view of its whole contents, to justify your doctrine than to render it an object of suspicion. But if we pay attention to the fact that it is the very purity of this doctrine, and your enlightened zeal for the house of God, that have drawn upon you this unjust treatment; that it is the testimony you render fearlessly and without disguise to the most important truths, so combated in our days, of dogma, of morals, and of discipline in the church, which renders the Synod of Pistoia odious to the enemies of these truths, nothing can be grander nor more worthy of a bishop than the cause you will have to defend. Consequently, nothing can impel us more to invoke upon you, monseigneur, by our prayers, and upon all those whom divine Providence will associate with you in the same defence, the lights and graces of the Holy Ghost. Ask them also for us, who long preceded you in the same career of tribulations and trials, and whose cause has not been separated from yours, since it has been attempted to injure your synod by comparing it, in the new bull, to our council--a comparison most just and natural, and which cannot but do honor to both.

"We are, with respect and tender attachment in our Lord Jesus Christ, monseigneur, your most humble and obedient servants,

✠ GAULTH. MICH., _Archbishop of Utrecht_.

✠ ADRIEN JEAN, _Bishop of Harlem_.

✠ NICHOLAS, _Bishop of Deventer_.[298]

"UTRECHT, October 31st, All-Saints' Eve."

This letter renders evidence against the clergy of Utrecht that may justly be called crushing, and would be sufficient in itself to close the debate. It sheds light, also, on the whole history of the schismatical church of the United Provinces. Now, to complete the demonstration entered upon, let us retrace our steps, and make research into the origin and the peculiar character of the Jansenism of Holland.

III.

In the beginning of the XVIIth century the University of Louvain was in a most flourishing condition; the purity of doctrine that prevailed there, its attachment to the Holy See, and the example of loyal and perfect submission it had recently given before the world by repudiating the errors of Baius, gained for it the respect and good wishes of all Christendom. Some of its professors, however, had not entirely renounced Baianism; and unhappily, in their case, distinguished talents were joined with uncommon activity. The most eminent of these men was Jacques Janson, who was the professor and, as it were, the father of Jansenius. He made the third of the party of whom the future Bishop of Ypres and the Abbé de Saint-Cyran were the other two. Louvain then became the centre of a set of ideas of which the doctrines of Baius formed the basis, and which were ripened and developed by Jansenius during nearly thirty years, to be finally brought forth in his famous _Augustinus_. It was also at the school of Jacques Janson that Philip Rovenius and several eminent individuals among his clergy received their theological training; they therefore drank of Jansenism at its very source.

The _Augustinus_ was issued in 1640 from the press of Jacques Zegers, of Louvain. Immediately, Philip Rovenius, Archbishop of Philippi, _in partibus infidelium_, and Vicar Apostolic of the United Provinces; Jean Wachtelaer, his vicar-general; Baudoin Catz, afterwards the successor of Jacques de la Torre; Leonard Marius, professor in the College Hollandais at Cologne, and several besides, gave a public and entire approval to the book of Jansenius, coupled with the most flattering praises. There was at once in Belgium, as well as in Holland, and on the part of many virtuous and well-meaning priests, an infatuation, an enthusiasm, exhibited for the _Augustinus_, of which the reception given almost in our day to the first volume of the _Essai sur l'Indifference_ will give only a faint idea. But Holland distinguished herself in this concert of praises; S. Augustine himself, people said, had spoken by the mouth of Jansenius; Jean Wachtelaer averred that the Netherland priests were never wearied with reading and meditating this incomparable work; Rovenius went further, and formed a league with the Canon of Furnes, a nephew of Jansenius, and several other partisans of the new doctrines, to prevent the Council of Brabant from putting in execution the first measures taken by the Holy See against the _Augustinus_. These were the circumstances that preceded the bull _In eminenti_, published at Rome on the 19th of June, 1643, in which the famous work was proscribed as containing propositions previously condemned;[299] we are thus made aware of the sentiments of the clergy, and the spirit in which the young Levites of the United Provinces were formed. Rovenius submitted to the pontifical definition; in his book on the Christian Republic,[300] printed at Anvers, in 1648, he even renders solemn homage to the infallibility of the Vicar of Christ. This important doctrine was then, as always, held in honor at the University of Louvain. Rovenius had learned it there, and to this powerful preservative he owed the honor and fidelity that attended his last days.

The clergy of Holland seemed at first to imitate the humble obedience of its chief; but it soon became evident that this submission was neither as general nor as perfect as was desirable. Left to its ancient traditions of respect for the Holy See, the Church of Holland would perhaps have escaped shipwreck; but it shortly received as vicar apostolic a man of whom Sainte-Beuve has truly said that he was "the great auxiliary of Port Royal in Holland."[301] Jean Neercassel, priest of the Oratory, had had a share in the government of the mission since the year 1652. Consecrated Bishop of Castoria, _in partibus_, in 1662, he shortly after became, by the death of Baudoin Catz (1663), the sole vicar apostolic in the United Provinces, and continued so to be for the long period of twenty-three years. The illustrious Archbishop of Malines, who knew, by a painful but glorious experience, how greatly firmness and devotion on the part of a chief pastor were needed in those sad times, said: "I shall always commiserate those bishops who are even on terms with a single one of these innovators."[302] Neercassel invited these innovators all to Holland, and made it a place of refuge for them. Arnauld, du Vaucel, Gerberon, Quesnel, and a multitude of apostate monks and fugitive priests, all in revolt against the decisions of the church, cast themselves upon the poor mission as upon a prey provided for them. From Arnauld's correspondence, and the papers found on Gerberon, Quesnel, and others, we see that the direction of the most important affairs of the vicariate apostolic then passed into the hands of the patriarchs of Jansenism. In this school, the clergy of the Netherlands learned the wretched distinction between _right_ and _fact_ (le _droit_ et le _fait_). As this distinction tion forms one of the bases of the resistance offered by that clergy to the definitions of the Holy See, it would be proper to give a brief explanation of it.

The five famous propositions having been referred to the tribunal of the Sovereign Pontiff by eighty-five French bishops, the so-called disciples of S. Augustine sent a deputation to Rome to defend the sense of Jansenius. They prepared, on this occasion, the celebrated _Ecrit à trois Colonnes_, in order, said they, "to show fully the state of the controversy, and to furnish the Pope with the means of knowing exactly upon what he had to give judgment." For each proposition there is distinguished, 1st, the sense of Luther or of Calvin, which is condemned; 2d, the natural sense, _prout a nobis defenditur_, the sense of Jansenius--in a word, that said to be the sense of the church and of S. Augustine;[303] 3d, and last, the Pelagian or semi-Pelagian, which is rejected like the first. At this time, then, the party acknowledged, in an official and authentic document, that it defended the five propositions in the sense of Jansenius, and that this sense was the only natural and legitimate one. The whole question was to know if this sense were heretical or not. It was upon this point that the Pope's decision was invoked both by the bishops and by the partisans of Jansenius.

The decision was given the 31st of May, 1653, in the bull _Cum occasione_, which condemned the five famous propositions. The church evidently aimed a blow at the spirit of the book, which alone conveyed the error. The Jansenists understood it as every one else did at the time, and were confounded by it. But in their farewell audience, the deputies of the party asked the Pope if he had been understood to condemn the opinion in regard to efficacious grace by itself--the doctrine of S. Augustine. Certainly not, replied the Holy Father. The whole of Jansenism was embraced in this equivocal question; for the Jansenists reasoned thus: the _Augustinus_ contains nothing but the pure doctrine of S. Augustine; we can therefore submit to the bull without rejecting the sense of Jansenius.

To prevent and eliminate in advance every pretext for disobedience, Pope Alexander VII., in 1665, ordered, in a new bull, that the condemnation of the five propositions in the sense of Jansenius should be subscribed to; he directed at the same time, according to the ancient usage of the church, that the signature should be attached to a formula in these words: "I,----, submit to the Apostolic Constitution of Pope Innocent X., dated the 30th of May, 1653, and to that of the Sovereign Pontiff Alexander VII., dated the 16th of October, 1665; I condemn and reject heartily and in all sincerity the five propositions taken from the _Augustinus_ of Cornelius Jansenius in the same manner as they are condemned by the said constitutions; I condemn them in the sense of that author; thus I swear. May God help me and this holy Gospel!"

Then it began to be said in the camp of Jansenius: The pope and the bishops may well decide if the propositions are heretical; it is a question of _right_. _Créance au droit!_ But _are_ the propositions taken from the _Augustinus_, and do they convey its sense? That is a question of _fact_, in regard to which the church might be mistaken. Nevertheless, _respect au fait_! After this, it was signed, excluding (_en exceptant_) the sense of Jansenius. The more determined refused their signature; after the time of Pierre Codde, the successor of Neercassel, this was the general rule.

No one, in my opinion, has more fully set forth the state of this question than the author of the _Provincial Letters_, whose genius demonstrates conclusively the absurdity of this celebrated distinction.[304] He thus expresses himself in a passage wherein he maintains his opinion against Arnauld, Nicole, and others: "The whole dispute is in ascertaining if there be a fact and a right disconnected from one another, or if there be only a right; that is, if the sense of Jansenius ... does nothing but indicate the right. The Pope and the bishops are on one side, and they claim that it is a point of right and of faith to say that the five propositions are heretical in the sense of Jansenius; and Alexander VII. declares in his constitution that, to be in the true faith, we must say that the words, 'sense of Jansenius,' express only the heretical sense of the propositions, and that thus _it is a fact which carries with it a right_, and makes an essential part of the profession of faith; as if we should say: The sense of Calvin on the Eucharist is heretical, _which is certainly a point of faith_."[305]

Nothing could be better said. But what is the conclusion? It is this, and Sainte-Beuve himself says the same in other words:[306] the church must be denied all infallibility on the question of right; we must allege that she can be mistaken even as to the true and natural sense of her own decrees, if we would maintain that she could err as to the fact in Jansenius. In a word, we must either completely break with the church, or condemn the sense of Jansenius.

M. Réville seems to know very little of the question of fact as regards Jansenius. One might say that, to form his opinion on this point, he had consulted only a report of the Jansenist Bishop of Utrecht, which contains an account of the latter's interview in 1828 with the Papal nuncio, Mgr. Capaccini. In this, the representative of the Holy See is made to use absurd and ridiculous language; the author of _Port Royal_, who was not any too well versed in theology, had a better knowledge of the question than this nuncio. How could M. Réville regard this as a serious relation? Has a witness who could neither understand the Catholic theologians nor Pascal himself the right to be believed on his word when he reports, word for word, a long conversation with his opponent, a kind of diplomatic passage-at-arms, wherein it was greatly to his interest to make the best figure for himself? And, besides, what guarantee of exactitude have we in a relation published for the first time twenty-three years after the interview, and six after the death of Cardinal Capaccini, the only person able to rectify the assertions of his interlocutor?[307]

That a Protestant or a free-thinker should encourage the "Friends of Holland" in resisting the Holy See, that he should even go so far as to do honor to that resistance, I can conceive; but that he should share in the inveterate obstinacy of the Jansenists concerning fact and right defies logic and common sense. M. Réville seems likewise to confound the bull _Unigenitus_ with that of Alexander VII. concerning the formulary. This leads us to speak of the second point on which the opposition of the clergy of Utrecht to the Holy See is founded.

The Jansenist discussions on _le fait_ and _le droit_ were still proceeding, when the patriarch of the sect, the ex-Oratorian, Pasquier Quesnel, threw off the mask, and in his _Réflexions Morales_ renewed the principal dogmas of Baius and Jansenius.[308] Pope Clement XI. ordered the book to be examined; he proceeded in this affair, says Döllinger, "with perfect prudence and deliberation. The Jesuits had been charged with being bitterly opposed to the _Réflexions_; he chose examiners from religious orders whose teachings had the least affinity with those of the Society of Jesus. He himself presided at twenty-three sessions of the examiners, and the discussion lasted for nearly two whole years.[309] Finally, on the 8th of September, 1713, the bull _Unigenitus_ appeared, condemning one hundred and one propositions taken from Quesnel's book. Among them are some which at first sight appeared inoffensive; but they cunningly convey Jansenist error, and intimately coalesce with the system; in others, expressions are skilfully worded to infect the reader with prejudices against the teachings or the general discipline of the church; many clearly announce the dogmas of Jansenius."[310]

Here, seeing that the one hundred and one propositions were found word for word in the condemned book, the distinction of right and of fact (_du droit et du fait_) was impossible. Quesnel, on hearing of the decree condemning it, exclaimed: "The Pope has proscribed one hundred and one truths!" The whole party echoed this exclamation, and our Netherland sectaries followed the impulse given by the patriarch of Jansenism. This, then, in two words, is the attitude of Jansenism in Holland: it refuses to condemn the sense of Jansenius by signature to the formulary of Alexander VII.; it refuses adherence to the bull _Unigenitus_. All the efforts made by the Holy See to bring back the Jansenists of Utrecht to Catholic unity have failed, from a persistence in this double refusal. Among these efforts at reconciliation, there is one which deserves special mention.

In 1826, Mgr. Nazalli, Papal nuncio, opened a conference with the Holland Jansenists. He announced to them that Rome exacted of them nothing more than an adhesion pure and simple to the constitutions of Innocent X., Alexander VII., and Clement XI., and he proposed for their signature the formula previously referred to, with the following addition: "I moreover submit, without distinction, reticence, or explanation, to the constitution of Clement XI., dated September 8, 1713, and beginning with the word _Unigenitus_; I accept it purely and simply, and thus I swear. May God help me and this holy Gospel!"[311]

The bull _Unigenitus_ was, even under the Gallican point of view, obligatory on all Catholics, since it had been accepted by the entire episcopate with that _moral unanimity_ of which so much was said about the time of the last council. However, the schismatic archbishop and bishops of Holland declined the overtures of the Sovereign Pontiff. Their reply is a true model of Jansenist style; every member of a phrase hides a restriction or an equivocation:

"We replied frankly (_honnêtement_) that none of the bishops or clergy would hesitate to recognize with sincerity, by means of an unequivocal declaration in _general_[312] terms, all that the Holy See _might_ exact on their part, and that they would have no difficulty in declaring, for example, that they agree, and that they even swear, if needs be, to accept, without any exception whatever, all the articles of the Holy Catholic faith: not to maintain nor to teach, now or hereafter, any opinions but those which have been established, determined, and published at all times by our holy mother, the church, _conformably to Scripture, tradition, the acts of œcumenical councils, and, lastly, to that of Trent_; that, besides, they especially reprehend, reject, and condemn the five propositions which the Holy See has condemned, _and which are pretended to be found in the book of Jansenius, known as the Augustinus_." All the rest is in this spirit. But what follows was quite unforeseen:

"We therefore leave it to the decision of the world whether a declaration so frank and so sincere ... does not offer incontestable proof of entire submission to the Holy See; and whether the general terms in which it is conceived do not embrace all the specialties of which acknowledgment can reasonably be expected from us, but into the details of which we are not permitted to enter by citing bulls which we cannot in conscience accept--bulls which have not been recognized by the government, and which we are therefore not permitted to mention without incurring grave penalties.... It is, in fact, sufficiently well known that the said constitutions (of Innocent X., Alexander VII., and Clement XI.) are not only not adopted nor obligatory in several countries, but that they cannot be adopted or enforced in a country where they have never received the _placet_ of the government, and where their acceptance as such is interdicted under threat of severe punishments. In the northern countries, to the jurisdiction of which the clergy of Utrecht belonged, such acceptance was strictly forbidden by the edicts of the 24th February and 25th May, 1703, the 14th December, 1708, and of the 20th and 21st September, 1730--edicts in which the principle was established _that it belongs to the sovereign alone to permit the publication and execution of such bulls_, and that without his _visa_ or _placet_ neither is permitted."[313]

Can one imagine baser or more servile language? In presence of a heterodox power, the pretended successors of S. Boniface, of the martyrs and victims of Calvinist persecution, dare to take sides with power, and to concede to it a right to dominate over faith and ecclesiastical discipline! At that very time William I. was oppressing his Catholic subjects, and endeavoring to deprive the bishops of the right of bringing up in their seminaries young aspirants to the priesthood. Need it be added that no law in vigor in 1826 interdicted the acceptance pure and simple of the Apostolical Constitutions of Alexander VII. and Clement XI.?

The Revolution had overridden ancient laws, and not a single Catholic was molested on account of his adhesion to the decrees of the Holy See. But the worship of the state as God makes progress in proportion as respect for the church is banished. For a bishop especially independence is impossible; when he refuses to walk in the royal way of submission to the Vicar of Christ, he becomes, by a just punishment, the plaything of a party or the slave of the secular power.

And this is the church which the neo-Protestants declare is calumniated when the accusation of Jansenism is brought against it; the church which, infected with this poison at the very sources whence it poured itself abroad on the world, has always kept its arms open to receive the followers of Jansenius; which has always shown its readiness to sign formularies like those of Quesnel and Ricci, and has obstinately rejected the profession of Catholic faith; this, in fine, is the church which precipitated itself into schism in order to remain faithful to the errors of Jansenius, and of Saint-Cyran, and of Quesnel!

FOOTNOTES:

[289] Ricci Collection, vol. xcvii., No. 226. I have done nothing but add explanatory notes and underline the more important passages.

[290] When the popes hasten to condemn an error, they are accused of acting precipitately or from the influence of some passion; when they take their time, they are still found fault with.

[291] This distinction between the court of Rome and the Holy See, when there is question of solemn acts of pontifical authority, is highly ridiculous. The so-called "Old Catholics" of Germany have never committed the error of imitating the Jansenists in this.

[292] Evidently an allusion to the decrees of the synod concerning the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the _cultus_ and invocation of the saints, etc.

[293] Aside from the Jansenists of Holland, who always took good care to be on good terms with their Calvinist government, we find none in communion with Ricci except a small number of worshippers of power in Tuscany, Austria, Portugal, and Spain. As to the French constitutionals, their approbation was a just chastisement for the Jansenists. De Potter, after stating that Ricci received on all sides the most flattering adhesions, cites as authorities only the schismatics of Utrecht and Prof. Le Bret, of Tübingen.

[294] From the time of Arnauld, the Jansenists, in order to maintain their doctrine intact in the _sense of Jansenius_, the spirit of (_à l'âme de_) his book, pretend to interdict the church from the condemnation of errors according to their sense in a system and in a book--that is to say, in an assemblage of propositions--as if the grammatical construction alone of every phrase completely determined the sense conveyed. In this time especially, when there is question of delicate matter treated by men who are constantly crying out, "Truth, truth!" but who ever have equivocations on their lips, no one, not even Sainte-Beuve, the titled panegyrist of Port Royal, has dared to exculpate the Jansenists for their indirect and tortuous course since 1653.

[295] This is a characteristic complaint in the camp of Jansenius. Between the Molinism which the church tolerates and the Jansenism she rejects there are other opinions tolerated, especially the Catholic doctrine professed by the Thomists and Augustinians in common with the disciples of Molina.

[296] After this declaration, if Döllinger still pretends that his friends in Holland are not Jansenists, he ought to maintain that neither Quesnel nor Jansenius ever were. _O science Allemande!_

[297] We find also in the Ricci archives (vol. xci. part 11, No. 136) the letter accompanying this act of adhesion. It bears the signature of "Gabriel du Pac de Bellegarde, ancien comte et chanoine de l'église primatiale de Lyon." It begins thus: "Monseigneur the Archbishop of Utrecht, messeigneur's his suffragans, and the messieurs of the Metropolitan Chapter of Utrecht, have given me, monseigneur, the honorable and agreeable commission of addressing to you _the act of adhesion to your holy synod of 1786_."

[298] Gautier Michel van Nieuwenhuizen, Adrien Jean Brœckman, Nicholas Nelleman.

[299] The bull is dated March 6, 1641--that is to say, 1642, the year beginning March 25--and was received in the Low Countries in 1643. The last signature of the clergy of Utrecht in favor of the _Augustinus_ is dated Feb. 10, 1642.

[300] _Reipublicæ Christianæ_, _libri duo_, p. 102 _et seq._

[301] _Port Royal_, vol iv. p. 20, in note.

[302] Archives of Malines, MS. volume entitled _Monumenta originalia et authentica de Jansenismo_, No. 32. The more I study facts by the light of these and several other documents preserved in the same archives, the more I am persuaded that historians have greatly overlooked the credit due to Humbert de Precipiano, while exalting that of his successor, the Cardinal of Alsace. Humbert de Precipiano inflicted terrible blows upon Jansenism in the Low Countries; he died just as the triumph for which he had prepared the way began.

[303] They added: "We are prepared to prove by Scripture, the councils, the testimony of the fathers, and especially by the authority of S. Augustine, that the doctrine set forth in this second column is the true doctrine of the church." This promise was not carried out until after the condemnation of Quesnel's _Réflexions Morales_; the monstrous book of the _Hexaples_ is the principal effort the Jansenists have attempted with this view.

[304] In the _Provinciales_, xvii. and xviii., Pascal himself defended the distinction between faith and right. (See Maynard, _Les Provinciales_.)

[305] _Œuvres_, ed. Bossutel biblioth. Mazarine, T., 2199.

[306] _Port Royal_, vol. iii. p. 92 and further.

[307] The French account of this interview was communicated, it is said, by the archbishop himself to Dr. Tregelles, who translated it into English, and inserted it in the _Journal of Sacred Literature_, No. 13, 1851. Neale reproduces it in his history. A Dutch translation was published at Utrecht in 1851--_Jaarbocken van Wetensch. Theol._, p. 749, etc. Capaccini died June 19, 1845, only a few months after his elevation to the cardinalate.

[308] See above, our general analysis of the Jansenist system.

[309] An author, unfortunately too well known, but who had before him all the original documents of this celebrated case, states in his _Breve Istoria delle Variazioni del Giansenismo_ (see also _Analecta Juris Pontificii_, 4th series, vol. ii. p. 2, col. 1251) that the Pope consulted with all the cardinals of the Holy Office, one after the other; that he himself took note of all the votes, which are still preserved. "The opinions of the Pontiff alone," he observes, "fill more than six large folio volumes."

[310] _Handbuch_, ii. 2, p. 827. _Cours_, manuscript of 1855.

[311] _Declaration_ addressed by the Archbishop of Utrecht and his suffragans to the Catholic world in 1826. This document is written in Latin; parallel with it is a French translation, from which this is taken.

[312] This word is italicized in the _Declaration_.

[313] _Declaration_, pp. 17, 19, 21.

A LOOKER-BACK.

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

II.

Leaving Christ's Hospital, and rambling on, one soon comes to a church partly covered with ivy, in a yard filled with shrubbery and autumn flowers. It is S. Sepulchre's, the burial-place of Captain John Smith, the Virginia pioneer. It is almost a sacred duty to pay a passing tribute to his memory, notwithstanding a lifelong grudge against him for not rounding off his romantic career by wedding the dusky Pocahontas. The clock of this church has the sad distinction of regulating the hanging of criminals at Newgate. The tower has four pinnacles, each one bearing a vane with its own notions as to rectitude, which has given rise to the saying that "unreasonable people are as hard to reconcile as the vanes of S. Sepulchre's tower, which never looked all four upon one point of the heavens."

In old times, the bell of this church was tolled as criminals passed to Tyburn, and the bell-man cried: "All good people, pray heartily unto God for these poor sinners, who are now going to their death;" for which he received the sum of one pound, six shillings, and eight pence. A hand-bell was likewise rung for them to stop for a nosegay of flowers. It must have been a great consolation to them! And yet who knows but such silent messengers of God might not have spoken to many a heart inaccessible to human tongue?

In the XVIIth century a legacy of fifty pounds was left to S. Sepulchre's on condition that, before execution-day, some one should go to Newgate in the dead of night, and give twelve solemn tolls with a hand-bell by way of calling attention to the following appeal:

"All you that in the condemned hole do lie, Prepare you, for to-morrow you must die: Watch, all, and pray, the hour is drawing near That you before the Almighty must appear: Examine well yourselves, in time repent, That you may not t' eternal flames be sent; And when S. Sepulchre's bell to-morrow tolls, The Lord have mercy on your souls! Past twelve o'clock!"

Plucking an ivy-leaf from the wall of S. Sepulchre's, our pilgrim kept on his way. West Smithfield at the corner of a street brought our friend Fox and his martyrs to mind, and he turned down towards the square where John Rogers met his fate. A tablet of Scotch granite fastened to the wall of S. Bartholomew's Hospital marks the spot. This tablet is protected by a grating, the upright rods of which terminate in gilded flames of most portentous brightness. He did not see any such tablet around London recording the numberless Catholic martyrs of Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth's time.

No dispassionate reader of history can regard the church as responsible for the sufferings of the so-called "Marian Martyrs." But let us thank God that such severe penalties are now obsolete in Catholic and Protestant lands alike!

Smithfield was the ordinary place of execution before Tyburn was used. The patriot Wallace was executed here on S. Bartholomew's eve, 1305. Shakespeare makes Henry V. say: "The witch in Smithfield shall be burned to ashes." In Henry VIII.'s time, poisoners were here boiled to death, as the old chronicles of the Grey Friars testify. Here is one quotation: "The x day of March was a mayde boyllyd in Smythfelde for poysing of divers persons." Evelyn records as late as 1652: "Passing by Smithfield, I saw a miserable creature burning, who had poisoned her husband."

But there are pleasanter memories connected with Smithfield, or Smoothfield, as it was originally called. It was once a famous tilting-ground. Froissart tells us how in 1393 "certain lords of Scotland came into England to get worship by force of arms in Smithfield." Here Edward III. celebrated the victories of Cressy and Poitiers by jousts and feats of arms; and Richard II., at the time of his marriage, ordered here a tournament of three days.

Passing through Smithfield market, one soon comes to the Charter House (a corruption of the French word Chartreuse), the old monastery of the Carthusians. The arched gateway is the original entrance into the realm of silence of those old monks. Over it two lions grotesquely carved support an en-tablature. The lion is typical of solitude and the wilderness, and is often found represented beside the hermits of the desert. A porter leads the way at once to the chapel by a passage paved with tombstones and hung with memorial tablets. One familiar name on the wall makes the heart leap, though a modern name:

GULIELMUS MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, CARTHUSIANI CARTHUSIANO.

H. M. P. C.

Natus, MDCCCXI. Obiit, MDCCCLXIII.

Alumnus, MDCCCXXII-MDCCCXXVI.

Beside this white marble slab is one precisely like it in memory of John Leech.

The Elizabethan chapel is solemn and interesting with its dark oaken pews, its arched roof, on the keystones of which are carved the Charter House arms, and the monumental tombs here and there. A bright coal-fire in an open grate gives it a comfortable, homelike aspect that must be grateful to the aged pensioners. And there are hassocks of straw for them all to kneel upon. Over one of the doors is an arch of modern stained glass, but with colors of unusual richness, or seemed so, coming in from the neutral tints of a dense fog. There is Magdalen with her golden hair, and the other Maries, with beautiful faces and purple, red, and amber robes.

At the north of the chancel is the tomb of Thomas Sutton, the founder of the Charter House Hospital, in the style of James I.'s reign. He lies, cut in marble, on a marble tomb, with ruff and long gown, and hands folded palm to palm as peacefully as if they never itched to acquire riches. Two men in armor support an inscription attesting his beneficence. Some persons of a qualifying turn do say that he was, like many others who are very charitable with their money when they see the impossibility of keeping it any longer in their grasp, guilty of what has been called the "good old gentlemanly vice of avarice," and was the original of _Volpone the Fox_. However that may be, the many who are sheltered here have reason to roar as loudly as they can, and as we are told they do, on the 12th of December, with cracked voices and half-palsied tongues, the chorus of the Carthusian melody:

"Then blessed be the memory Of good old Thomas Sutton, Who gave us lodging--learning, And he gave us beef and mutton."

Catholics, however, cannot forget that when young he took part in the Italian wars, and was present at the sacking of Rome. At a later period he commanded a battery as a volunteer at the siege of Edinburgh, when that city held out for poor Queen Mary. And he aided in the expedition against the Spanish Armada by fitting out a ship named Sutton for himself, which captured a Spanish vessel worth twenty thousand pounds. When he came to London to reside, it was reported that his purse was fuller than Queen Elizabeth's exchequer, and in time he became the banker of London, and had the freedom of the city.

On the 12th of December there is a great festival here in honor of the _Fundator_, and before it is over the pensioners and school-boys assemble in the chapel, which is lighted, as Thackeray tells, "so the founder's tomb, with its grotesque carvings, monsters, and heraldries, darkles and shines with the most wonderful shadows and lights."

At the south end of the chapel is a fine statue of Lord Ellenborough by Chantrey, in a sitting posture, robed as chief-justice. He was buried here at his own request, having been educated in the Charter House, and one of its governors.

As at Christ's Hospital, the visitor is allowed to wander alone through cloisters and quadrangles, as hushed and peaceful as when occupied by the Carthusians themselves. The pensioners (the school has been removed) seem to lead a kind of friar-life here, and in their seclusion ought to taste something of the peace of the cloister. They only lack the consecration of religion. One of them in cloak and cap came up, bowing with remarkable flexion of body considering his years, and politely offered to show the way with quite an air of proprietorship. His manner was gentlemanly, and he looked as if he might be some "disabled invalide from the campaign of vanity." In these days, when old people are apt to be regarded as unduly persistent about living, it is delightful to feel there are places of refuge for them like this, which confer a kind of dignity on fallen fortunes and declining life which is always a certain going down in the world.

We wonder if there is any service in the English ritual when these old gentlemen take shelter here. There surely ought to be. Some _Vade in pace_ ought to follow them under these arches, dying away little by little with the hours and fragrance of life, and leaving behind silence and repose of soul.

There is a touching custom here of giving the bell at night a number of strokes corresponding to the number of pensioners; and when one of them dies, his decease is notified by one stroke less than on the preceding evening. It was at the evening hour, as the chapel-bell began to toll, that Col. Newcome lifted up his head, said _Adsum_ with a smile, and died.

A bell like this must always have a knell-like solemnity of tone. It is a kind of curfew-bell, reminding the brothers that the evening of life has come, and its fires must be put out before lying down to rest. We can fancy them counting the strokes one by one every night, to learn if some light is for ever extinguished. The thought often occurs how we old people will find heaven--whether a place all youth, and freshness, and beauty. Are there to be no shades and gradations in Paradise, no stars differing from one another in glory, or faces in sweetness and serenity? Are the very angels that are to minister to us there all so full of grace and loveliness, and perfection of form, and crowned with everlasting youth? "Will there not be some comforting ones, shabby and tender, whose radiance does not dazzle nor bewilder; whose faces are worn perhaps, while their stars shine with a gentle, tremulous light more soothing to our earth-bound hearts than the glorious radiance of brighter spirits?" Who that is old and sorrow-stricken, or belongs to the poor and unloved ones of this world, does not feel the need of some such spirits to greet him there--need of some shadowy, sequestered spot where the brightness and love of that ineffable region will be tempered for us who have had but little cheer on earth, at least till our unaccustomed souls are fitted for loftier heights?

Many such--perhaps too human--dreams of heaven flitted across the mind while sitting on a bench beside some old graves in a yard at the Charter House that gloomy afternoon. Weary with climbing old staircases, going through old passages and old halls, where one only breathed the atmosphere of old times, perhaps the soul had become infected by the gloom of the place.

Borders of dull chrysanthemums grew along the gravelled walks--apparently a favorite flower in England, for they are to be found everywhere. A few trees with blighted leaves, instead of bright autumn foliage as in America, stood around with nothing in the world to do but look well, any more than Voltaire's trees, but, like many poor mortals, did not succeed very well. They looked weary of the struggle, and had a certain bowed, resigned look that was pathetic. How could anything look fresh and vigorous in that field of death? One cannot imagine the place peopled with boys full of life and fun, as it used to be.

The land on which the Charter House stands was a graveyard at the time of the great plague, five hundred years ago, being consecrated to that purpose by Bishop Stratford, of London, in 1348. Distressed that so many of his flock should be buried out of consecrated ground during the prevalence of the plague, he bought three acres of land called "No Man's Land" for a burial-ground, and erected a chapel thereon, where Masses could be said for the repose of the dead. The place became known as Pardon Churchyard and Chapel. We read of an early instance of lynching on No Man's Land previous to this time. A wealthy merchant, one Anthony of Spain, so exasperated the public by an excessive duty on wine that a mob dragged him barefoot to this spot, and here beheaded him, in November, 1326--doubtless on just such a dismal, foggy day as this, supremely adapted to give one desperate views, and aggravate the natural ferocity of the human animal.

The plague continuing to increase, the churchyard was enlarged through the charity of Sir Walter Manny, of knightly fame, who purchased a piece of land adjoining. An old ballad says:

"Thou, Walter Manny, Cambray's lord, The bravest man those times record, Didst pity take on the wand'ring ghosts Of thy departed friends, Didst consecrate to the Lord of Hosts Thy substance for religious ends."

The next Bishop of London, Michael de Northburg, when he died, in 1361, bequeathed two thousand pounds, with all his leases, rents, and tenements, towards the foundation of a Carthusian monastery at Pardon Churchyard, together with an enamelled vessel of silver for the Host, another for holy water, a silver bell, and all his theological works. Sir Walter Manny, desirous of co-operating in this work, petitioned for a royal license to build a monastery here, to be called "The House of the Salutation of the Mother of God," and gave to it the land he had bought for a graveyard, consisting of thirteen acres and one rod. Sir Walter's charter was witnessed by the Earl of Pembroke, Edward Mortimer, Earl of March, and others. The monastery was completed in 1370, and was the fourth of the Carthusian Order in England.

The London Charter House was furthermore endowed by several other persons. Two hundred and sixty marks were bestowed in perpetual frank-almoign to build a cell for a monk who should offer daily suffrages for the souls of Thomas Aubrey and Felicia his wife, as well as all the faithful departed. Richard Clyderhowe, in 1418, gave up, "from reverence to God and the Blessed Virgin Mary, and for the health of his own soul and that of his wife Alicia, who was buried in the church of the convent, a lease of land he held in Rochester, that these religious might, in their orisons, remember him, his soul, the soul of his wife, the souls of his relations, children, and all his benefactors, and devoutly recommend them to God."

It is pleasant to find the Charter House interchanging charitable offices with its neighbor, the priory of S. John of Jerusalem. They exchange lands, and the prior of the Charter House offers a trental of Masses "that the soul of Brother William Hulles, Prior of the Hospital of S. John of Jerusalem, might the sooner be conveyed, with God's providence, into Abraham's bosom."

In the XVth century the Charter House became, for the space of four years, the residence of Sir Thomas More, who here gave himself up to devotion and prayer without taking upon himself any vow.

This monastery flourished about three centuries with a constant reputation for strict observance of the rules of the order and for holiness of life. It was during the time of Prior John Houghton, in 1534, that it was visited by the royal commissioners appointed by Henry VIII. to inspect all the monasteries of the kingdom, and draw up an account of their rules, customs, and revenues.

Most of the monks refused to subscribe to the king's supremacy, and the prior and procurator were committed to the Tower. They afterwards yielded to advice which they respected, but, suspected of disaffection, were summoned to renew the oath, and the prior was arraigned for speaking too freely of the king's proceedings, and, with two other Carthusians, was condemned to be hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn for refusing to acknowledge the king head of the church in England. As they were leaving the Tower to be executed, they were perceived by Sir Thomas More, imprisoned there for the same reason, who said to his favorite daughter, as if envying them: "Lo, dost thou not see, Meg, that these blessed fathers be now as cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms to their marriage?" This was not long before his own martyrdom. There is at the South Kensington Museum a painting of Sir Thomas and his daughter, depicting this very scene. He stands looking down through the grated window. Margaret, tall and stately, with her father's left hand in hers, has her deep violet eyes raised steadfastly to heaven with the most appealing expression; her whole face calm and holy, but inexpressibly sad.

The heads of these monks were suspended over London Bridge--a bridge built, too, by religious--and Prior Houghton's mangled body was hung up over the gate of the Charter House. The next month three more monks of this house were executed for a like reason, and the remainder were called upon three times in one year to take the oath of supremacy--a proof that they were regarded as specially loyal to the pope. Of the ten who had subscribed two years before, nine now refused, and were committed to prison at Newgate, where they were chained in a filthy dungeon and starved to death. Their end was announced to Cromwell as "by the hand of God." Their keeper, Bedyll, gave him a list of these poor martyrs, adding: "There be one hole." This _whole_ one survived an imprisonment of four years, only to be executed at last.

All this did not take place without some supernatural manifestations to fortify the poor monks. It is recorded that "unearthly lights were seen in their church," and, at the burial of one of their number, all the lamps of the church were miraculously lighted, and one of the deceased brethren appeared to the monk who had nursed him in his last illness, saying that "the angells of pease did lamment and murn wᵗowt measur," and that my "lord of Rochester" and "oʳ Father" (Houghton) were "next unto angells in hevyn."

The remainder of the English Carthusians went to Bruges, where they remained till the accession of Mary, who, at the suggestion of Philip, it is said, invited them back, and gave them the old Carthusian monastery at Shene, near Richmond. They were exiled again in Elizabeth's reign, and returned to Belgium.

The south wall of the present chapel formed part of the old church in which were buried Sir Walter Manny, and Margaret his wife, and many other knights and dames. Prior Houghton's remains are supposed to be buried somewhere within the wall now marked by a cross and a huge I. H. It is recorded of him that he was so meek and humble that if any one addressed him as "my lord," or with any unusual deference, he immediately rebuked him, saying: "It is not lawful for poor Carthusian monks to make broad their phylacteries, or to be called rabbi by their fellow-men."

The Charter House was given to John Bridges, yeoman, and Thomas Hale, groom, as a reward for the safe keeping of the king's tents and pavilions which had been deposited here, but it afterwards passed through several hands. While owned by Lord North, Queen Elizabeth spent four days here, which so diminished his lordship's resources that he was obliged to live in retirement the rest of his life. James I. also passed a few days here when it was in possession of Lord Thomas Howard, in order to show his respect for a family that had aided and suffered for his mother. While here, he knighted more than eighty gentlemen--let us hope less awkwardly than he knighted Sir Richard Monopilies, of Castle Collop!

The Charter House was finally purchased by Thomas Sutton, the founder of the hospital. It is delightful to step from the noise and bustle of the streets into these secluded courts with grass-plots to refresh the eye, lime-trees to give shade, here a fountain in the midst of a garden, and there some old tombs, perhaps of the monks; on this wall some holy symbol left here ages ago, but not in vain, for it still speaks to the heart; and scattered around are seats for the pensioners to enjoy the sun and air.

The kitchen fireplace is capacious enough to roast fifteen surloins. What extensive means are always used to provide for the body which perisheth! If at least equal provision were made, as in the times of the old monks, to supply the needs of the soul! Does that get its three meals a day, and now and then a lunch or some refreshing draught? Are there none who labor day after day to supply the soul's hunger, as multitudes do to satisfy the cravings of the body? Yes, thank God! there is still an army of such spiritual people in the cloister and in the world, who only live to feed their higher natures. If they care for the body, it is merely enough to enable it to serve the soul. The world may call them "drones," but they are necessary in order to preserve the moral balance of the world, as an offset to the materiality of the day. Yes, the hermit, the contemplative, contributes in his degree to sustain the world, and this is why the suppression of such a class is an irreparable loss to society.

A BLOCK OF GOLD.

"France paid the Prussian indemnity like a proud debtor; it seemingly did not cost her any trouble to do so. Few nations could do as France has done within the past two years; none have ever excelled her in cancelling a monetary obligation." One hears such remarks occasionally; they were quite common a few months past. But what was the French indemnity? Five milliards of francs--that is, five thousand millions of francs, or one thousand millions of dollars in gold! To think of the sum is to make one feel covetous of a chip of the block; to see the whole sum in one block of gold is almost enough to make one cry out with Timon--

... "Thou valiant Mars! Thou ever young, fresh, lov'd, and delicate wooer."

"_Ce que c'est que cinq milliards en or monnaye!_"

Well, we did not exactly know what five milliards of francs in gold or copper were. The cool February evening in the year of grace 1873, we were accosted in front of No.--Boulevard St. Denis by the above question. At the same time a polite French boy hands us a handbill, which told us that _un bloc d'or_, eight metres long, five metres high, and three and two-third metres deep, could be seen for fifty centimes--ten cents. This cube of one hundred and fifty metres contained one hundred thousand _rouleaux_ of fifty thousand francs each; each one of the rolls--_rouleaux_--contained two thousand five hundred pieces of twenty francs, and the whole two hundred and fifty million (250,000,000) pieces.

We paid the admission fee, and were ushered into the room where the gilded cube stood. A stout lady sat near the door knitting; the master of ceremonies was young and thin. We were the only visitor at 8 P.M. on the evening of February, 1873. We surveyed the cube, and admired the ingenuity displayed in its make-up; but it occurred to us at the time that, as a speculation, it was a failure. People, I thought, who have to pay a large debt don't care about being told the length, breadth, and height of their indebtedness; that it would be, perhaps, a success at Berlin. We thanked the thin master of ceremonies for his attention, respectfully bowed to the stout woman plying her knitting-needles; and walked along the boulevard with our back to the Pont St. Denis, asking ourselves what we could or would do with one or five milliards of dollars.

The other day we saw an old copy of the New Orleans _Propagateur Catholique_. It contained an article on the five milliards, which it credits to the Christian Brothers--_Les Frères des Ecoles Chrétiennes_. It recalled our ten-cent investment of last February, and is so interesting, especially to all who are mathematically inclined, that we translate it.

In bank-notes of one thousand francs, the weight of each note being estimated at two grams,[314] the five milliards in paper would weigh ten thousand kilograms;[315] in gold, one million six hundred and twelve thousand nine hundred; in silver, twenty-five millions; in copper, five hundred millions. It would take one hundred men to carry the five milliards in bank-notes of one thousand francs each, allowing one hundred kilograms to each man; sixteen thousand one hundred and twenty-nine, in gold; two hundred and fifty thousand, in silver; five million, in copper. It would take a man to count the five milliards, at the rate of ten hours per day, and counting every minute sixty notes of one thousand francs--fifty pieces of twenty francs, sixty pieces of one franc, sixty pieces of five centimes--to count the notes, four months and nineteen days; the gold, nineteen years and ten days; the silver, three hundred and eighty years, six months, and eight days; the copper, seven thousand six hundred and ten years, four months, and seven days.

To remove this great sum of money in bank-bills one wagon would suffice, it being capable of bearing ten thousand kilograms; in gold, one hundred and sixty-one and one-third wagons; in silver, two thousand five hundred; in copper, fifty thousand. Allowing ten metres[316] to each wagon, those carrying the gold would extend sixteen hundred and ten metres; the silver, twenty-five thousand metres; the copper, five hundred thousand metres.

Placing the notes of one thousand francs one upon another, and giving each one a space of one tenth of a millimetre,[317] they would ascend to a height of five hundred metres. The diameter of the five-franc piece being equal to thirty-seven millimetres, the five milliards placed in the same direction, side to side, would form a chain thirty-seven millions of metres in length--almost the circumference of the earth, which is forty millions. With one-franc pieces placed as the preceding, they would encircle the globe twice and seven-eighths; with fifty centimes--ten-cent pieces--four times and one-half; with sous--cents--sixty-two times and one-half!

The Franco-Prussian war did not commence till July, 1870. Inside of three years the greatest of modern battles have been lost and won, and the heaviest fine ever laid upon a nation paid, and without interfering with the commercial classes or any important interest or branch of business in the fair land. Great in science, in war, in religion, she has given the world a proof of her magnificent resources, and that her children are still proud of _la belle France_, and filled with the "_sacré amour de la patrie_."

FOOTNOTES:

[314] Nearly equal to fifteen and one-half grains Troy.

[315] Equal to two pounds three ounces and 4.65 drams.

[316] The metre is equal to 39.37 inches.

[317] The thousandth part of a metre.

VIGIL.

Mournful night is dark around me, Hushed the world's conflicting din; All is still, and all is tranquil, But this restless heart within!

Wakeful still I press my pillow, Watch the stars that float above, Think of One, for me who suffered-- Think, and weep for grief and love!

Flow, ye tears! though in your streaming Oft yon stars of his grow dim; Sweet the tender grief he wakens, Blest the tears that flow for him!

R. S. W.

LENT, 1874.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

LOUISE LATEAU OF BOIS D'HAINE: HER LIFE, HER ECSTASIES, AND HER STIGMATA. A Medical Study. By Dr. F. Lefebvre, Professor of General Pathology and Therapeutics in the Catholic University of Louvain, Honorary Physician to the Lunatic Establishment in that town, Titular Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium. Edited by J. Spencer Northcote, D.D. London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

We enjoy very much the chagrin and discomfiture of sceptical physicians, scientists, and other materialists, both learned and vulgar, in view of the great number of preternatural facts, both divine and diabolical, which have been thrust upon their unwilling sight during this present half-century. Heaven and hell appear to rival each other in startling the shallow self-complacency and incredulity of the hard-headed set who have filled the world with their boastful pretence to have overcome the superstitions of ages by their experiments and inductions. They have tried hard to ignore all the supernatural or preternatural facts and phenomena of the mystic order which have multiplied around them and challenged their investigation. But this proves to be a signal failure. Especially when men who belong to their own professional fraternity, whose learning and ability in their own class of sciences are undoubted, exhibit the results of careful study and investigation by means of experiment and induction from observed facts, as proving, on their own principles, the folly of their stubborn unbelief, do they cut a very sorry figure by persisting in ignoring and giving the _transeat_ to that which will not be ignored or passed over. The puerile banalities in vogue, such as "manifest imposture," "unscientific absurdity," "something which no intelligent person can believe," merely show to what straits the individuals are reduced who are forced to use them. They are like allusions to the color of an opponent's hair, or the shape of his nose, or the behavior of his relatives.

The effort at some kind of scientific explanation of the strange phenomena of spiritism, or the wonders of the divine mystical order which the former class of manifestations ape, which is occasionally attempted, fares no better. It breaks down at a certain point. Up to that point there is a common ground of physiology, psychology, and the higher spiritual science; and many things which appear to be beyond natural power or law may be explained and accounted for without supposing preternatural causes. But, ill-defined and uncertain as the boundary line may be, there is one, and one cannot pass it very far without being aware of the fact. We do not complain of scientists for being critical and difficult in respect to facts and evidence. We do not, in reference to the present case, inculpate their refusal to believe on motives of pure faith. The charge against them is that they are recreant to their own avowed method of investigation by experiment, observation, and induction.

No one can prove this so conclusively, or rout them so completely on their own ground, as one of themselves, who is conversant with physics, and at the same time has some logic, philosophy, and sound theology in his head; in a word, is, what they are not, a completely educated man. The volume before us is a specimen of what we are speaking of. We need not enlarge on the case of Louise Lateau, of which we have spoken before, and which is generally known. Sufficient to say that the book before us is a treatise on her remarkable ecstasies and stigmata by a physician, and written after the method of medical science, which establishes beyond a doubt their miraculous cause and origin.

THE HOLY MASS: The Sacrifice for the Living and the Dead. By Michael Müller, Priest of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. New York and Cincinnati: F. Pustet. 1874.

This is a work written in the true spirit of S. Alphonsus. It is not a reprint of the work entitled _The Holy Eucharist our Greatest Treasure_, by the same author, but an entirely new treatise. Its theology is sound and solid, its spirit most devout, and its style simple and popular. It is surprising that so hard-working a priest as F. Müller has been able to write so many excellent and edifying books, in a language, too, which is to him a foreign tongue. Every pious Catholic who reads this book will be charmed with it, and will find it most instructive and profitable. We are happy to be able to give it our unqualified commendation, and to recommend it in the most earnest manner to all the faithful, as well as to Protestants who are seeking for the truth.

THE LIFE OF THE VEN. ANNA MARIA TAIGI. Edited by Edward Healy Thompson, M.A. London: Burns & Oates; New York: F. Pustet. 1874.

Mr. Thompson's biographies are of the first class in every respect. This one has a special interest on account of the relation which the life and prophecies of the venerable Roman matron sustain to recent and pending events of the greatest moment in human history. It is unfortunate that a most meagre and imperfect life of Anna Maria Taigi, which contains serious misstatements, afterwards discovered and regretted by the author, Mgr. Leuquet, has been already translated and circulated in this country. That life states that its subject fell into a grievous sin against her marriage vows, and remained without confession for a considerable time afterwards. This is proved to be false, and the fact is fully established that Anna Maria was pious and irreproachable throughout her whole life, and especially so during her whole career as a wife and the mother of a large family.

Apart from her supernatural gifts, the sanctity and virtue displayed by this wonderful and admirable matron, in a laborious and humble sphere, present a most beautiful picture and a most engaging example to woman in the married state.

The extraordinary graces granted to Anna Maria Taigi, her supernatural knowledge, and her remarkable predictions, have made her name famous throughout the world. This part of his subject Mr. Thompson has treated fully and judiciously. The exact fulfilment of the predictions she is known to have made of events already passed, especially those relating to Pius IX., who was elevated to the pontifical throne nine years after her death, has awakened a most intense curiosity respecting some others attributed to her regarding the present time and the approaching future. These are under the hands of the commission engaged with the process of her beatification, and have not been officially published. Those which are certainly known are inserted in the _Life_, and others, which are probably genuine, are added in the appendix.

The appendix closes with the following very apposite remarks, extracted from an extremely able and interesting article on modern current prophecies which appeared some time ago in the _Civiltà Cattolica_:

"It cannot be denied that the agreement of so many and various presages in divining events the expectation of which is in the hearts of the greater number of Catholics, possesses a persuasive force, and is a kind of seal of high probability, if not certainty. Wise Christians are unanimous in admitting that the church is a prey to a diabolical and universal persecution hitherto unexampled; wherefore God must come to her aid with succors proportioned to the need, that is extraordinary. We find ourselves in this extreme case: that the salvation of society, no less than of the church, requires an unaccustomed intervention of Omnipotent power. If this be so, how should we not believe that come it will?"

PLEADINGS OF THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS. From the French, with Introduction by a Catholic Priest. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1874.

This little work bears the imprimatur of Cardinal Cullen. The introduction states the devotion to the Sacred Heart succinctly. The work itself consists of a reading for every day in the month. Each reading contains an instruction followed by a "reflection" and a "practice," together with a suitable example. Everything is excellent. We most warmly recommend the book to all who have or wish to acquire true devotion to the Sacred Heart.

LENTEN SERMONS. By Paul Segneri, of the Society of Jesus. Vol. II. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1874.

The present volume seems to us to contain a better selection of sermons than the one published two years ago. Those on "Avoiding the Occasions of Sin," on "Gaining a Brother," on "The Love of God in Afflicting us," on "The Cure of Disquieting Thoughts about Predestination," and "Encouragement to the Greatest Sinners to become the Greatest Saints," are perhaps especially remarkable. A translation necessarily labors under some disadvantages, but we think that the work has really been well done in the present case, and that small blemishes and misconceptions of the author's meaning are not more frequent than must always be expected when a work is rendered from one language into another. The English style of the book is good.

All those who have the first volume will, we think, desire to supply themselves with the second; and those who get the second will no doubt send for the first also. Another volume, to complete the set, will, we believe, be prepared.

THE DOVE OF THE TABERNACLE; or, The Love of Jesus in the Most Holy Eucharist. By Rev. T. H. Kinane, C.C., Templemore. With a Preface by His Grace the Most Rev. Dr. Leahy, Archbishop of Cashel. New York: P. M. Haverty. 1874.

Though several very good manuals of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament have lately appeared, this little book will not be a superfluity. It seems to us the most practical of them all, and the best calculated to induce the faithful to frequently hear Mass and worthily receive Holy Communion. In these latter days of the world and of the church, the sacraments are more than ever the special channels of God's grace, and every word tending to increase devotion to the Most Holy Eucharist is peculiarly valuable.

MEMORIAL OF THOMAS EWING OF OHIO. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

Without being a formal biography, this book presents us with the leading and many of the minor incidents in the life of an eminent statesman and jurist covering a period of over fourscore years. The scope of the work embraces an autobiography, a brief biography by the Hon. Henry Stanbery, and a judicious collocation of original letters and selections from current journals, thus enabling the reader to trace with little difficulty the various stages of a remarkable career, and form an estimate of an equally remarkable character. The value of the volume is enhanced by some delicate sketches, original and selected, prepared by the daughter of the subject, and editor of the _Memorial_, Mrs. Ellen Ewing Sherman, wife of Gen. W. T. Sherman.

The life of Thomas Ewing furnishes a very interesting study to the rising youth of our country, showing, as it does, how great difficulties may be overcome by industry and perseverance, how purity of character and a noble ambition win enduring fame, and, above all, how one who was singularly free from the corruptions of worldly prosperity, and undebased by the temptations of power, found at last the grace and strength which the sacraments of the church impart.

The child of an industrious frontiersman, whose first lessons were conned by the light of a pine knot, and whose primary education was paid for by his labor as a salt-boiler in Virginia, Mr. Ewing rose to the first rank at the American bar, was twice elected United States senator, and made a member of two successive Cabinets. Without wealth or friends, but with what to him was better, brains, industry, and an unstained reputation, he ascended to some of the highest positions in the land, and left them with ever-increasing honor. As a lawyer, he stood at the head of his profession before half his life was spent; in the Senate, he was the compeer of Webster✠ Calhoun, Clay, and Benton; as Secretary of the Treasury under Harrison, and of the Interior under Taylor, his foresight, honesty, and executive ability were freely and fully acknowledged by his associates.

But great as was his life--if genius and goodness constitute greatness--he was even greater in his death. For nearly forty years he had been contemplating the possibility of becoming a Catholic; for, though entertaining a profound respect for Christians of all denominations, he could not satisfy his acute and logical mind with the teachings of any of the sects. It was, however, only a week before his death that the grace of communion was vouchsafed him, and then, at his own request, he was admitted into the church, and shortly before his death received the last sacraments from the hands of the Most Rev. Archbishop Purcell, of Cincinnati. His long years of conscientious study and examination, his sincere prayers and unostentatious charity, were at length rewarded, and he was made a child of the church to which his beloved wife (long since deceased) belonged, and of which his children are faithful members. In these days of doubt and official dishonesty, few better examples could be held before the coming statesmen of the country.

We cannot close this notice without calling attention to the very elegant manner in which the _Memorial_ has been brought out. The paper is superior, the type large and distinct, the illustrations excellent, and the binding in rare good taste.

THE WORKS OF S. AUGUSTINE. Vol. IX. On Christian Doctrine, The Enchiridion, etc. Vol. X. Lectures on S. John, Vol. I. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

We have expressed our opinion so fully of the value of the previous translations in this series, that we only deem it necessary to say that the high reputation already achieved is well sustained by the present issues.

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.

From DICK & FITZGERALD, New York: The Only Complete Ready Reckoner. 18mo, pp. 213.

From P. O'SHEA, New York: The Pride of Lexington. By William Seton. 12mo, pp. 365.

From KELLY, PIET & CO., Baltimore: In Six Months. By Mary M. Meline. 18mo, pp. 299.

From BURNS & OATES, London (Sold by The Catholic Publication Society, New York): True to Trust. 12mo, pp. 344.

From SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO., New York: My Kalula. By Henry M. Stanley. 12mo, pp. xiv.-432.

From THE SOCIETY: Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Session of the American Philological Society, held at Easton, Pa., July, 1873. 8vo, paper, pp. 34.

From THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR: Annual Report of the Operations of the Department for the year 1873. 8vo, paper, pp. 36.

From J. R. DALY & CO., St. Louis: Response of the Hon. John Manvers to a Resolution of the National Labor Council; also, An Address by the Hon. R. F. Wingate on American Finance. 8vo, paper, pp. 32.

From P. F. CUNNINGHAM & SON, Philadelphia: A Sermon by the V. Rev. James O'Connor, D.D., preached at the Month's Mind for the V. Rev. Edward McMahon, Nov. 12, 1873. 8vo, paper, pp. 15.

From T., New York: Truth. 12mo, paper, pp. 46.

From THE AUTHOR: Speech of Alderman Samuel B. H. Vance in Relation to the Nomination of Police Justices for the City of New York. 8vo, paper, pp. 21.

From HURD & HOUGHTON, New York: Cæsarism. By "Burleigh," of the _Boston Journal_. 8vo, paper, pp. 36.

From MASTERS, LEE & STONE, Syracuse: College of Fine Arts of the Syracuse University. 8vo, paper, pp. 11.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

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Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors.

Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.

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