CHAPTER VIII.

A STARTLING DISCLOSURE.

And how had things fared at The Lilies all this time? Sir Simon had behaved in the strangest way. Immediately after Clide’s departure, he came, according to his promise, and explained it after a plausible fashion to M. de la Bourbonais, who, unsuspecting as an infant, accepted the story without surprise or question.

At the end of a week Sir Simon knew that the worst fears were confirmed; the identity of the supposed Isabel had been disproved, and the existence of the real one ascertained beyond the possibility of doubt. Clide was on her track, but when or how he should find her was yet the secret of the future.

The one thing clear in it was, that it was a miserable business and could end in nothing but shame and sorrow for every one connected with it. Sir Simon was helpless and bewildered. He was always slow at taking in bad news, and when he succeeded in doing it, his first idea was, not to take the bull by the horns and face the facts manfully, but to stave off the evil day, to gain time, to trust to something turning up that would avert the inevitable. He had never in the whole course of his life felt so helpless in the face of evil tidings as on the present occasion. He foresaw, all too plainly, what the effect was likely to be on the innocent young creature on whom he had brought so terrible a share in the catastrophe. It was no comfort to him that it was not his fault. He would willingly have taken the fault on his own shoulders, if thereby he could have lifted the pain from hers. He was too generously absorbed in the thought of Franceline’s trouble to split hairs on the difference between remorse and regret; he cursed his own meddling as bitterly as if he had acted like a deliberate villain towards her; he felt there was nothing for him to do but blow his brains out. He passed the day he received the admiral’s letter in this suicidal and despairing state of mind. The next day his indignation against himself found some solace in vituperating Clide’s ill-luck, and the villainy of the woman who had led him such a devil’s-dance. This diversion soothed him; he slept better that night, and next morning he awoke refreshed; cheered up according to his happy matutinal habit, and took a brighter view of everything. It remained no doubt a most unfortunate affair, look at it as one might, but Franceline would get over it by and by. Why not? All the nicest girls he knew when he was a young fellow had been crossed in love, and they had all got over it, and married somebody else and lived happily ever after. Why should not Franceline do the same? De Winton was a very nice fellow, but there were other nice fellows in the world. There was Roxham, for instance. If he, Sir Simon, was a pretty girl, he was not sure but he should like Roxham best of the two; he was deuced good-looking, and the eldest son of a peer to boot; that counts with every girl, why shouldn’t it with Franceline? “But is she like every girl? Is she a butterfly to be caught by any candle?” whispered somebody at Sir Simon’s ear; but he pooh-poohed the unwelcome busybody, as he would have brushed away a buzzing fly. She must get over it; Roxham should come in and cut out this unlucky Clide. The worst of it was that conversation Sir Simon had had with Raymond before Franceline’s visit to London. If he had but had the wit to hold his tongue a little longer! Well, biting it off now would not mend matters. Roxham must come to the rescue. He had evidently been smitten the night of the ball. Sir Simon had intentionally brought him into the field to rouse Clide’s jealousy, and bring him to the point; he had invoked every species of anathema on himself for it ever since, but it was going to turn out the luckiest inspiration after all. While the baronet was performing his toilet, he arranged matters thus satisfactorily to his own mind, and by the time he came down to breakfast he was fully convinced that everything was going to be for the best. He read his letters, wished a few unpleasant little eventualities to the writers of most of them, and crammed them into a drawer where they were not likely to be disturbed for some time to come. The others he answered; then he read the newspapers, and that done, ordered his horse round, and rode to Rydal, Lady Anwyll’s place.

The conversation naturally fell on the recent ball at the Court, and from that to the acknowledged belle of the evening, Mlle. de la Bourbonais. In answer to the plump little dowager’s enthusiastic praises of his young friend’s beauty the baronet remarked that it was a pity she did not live nearer The Lilies. “It is dull for the little thing, you see,” he said; “Bourbonais is up to his eyes in books and study, and she has no society to speak of within reach; she and the Langrove girls don’t seem to take to each other much; she is a peculiar child, Franceline; you see she has never mixed with children, she has been like a companion to her father, and the result is that she has fallen into a dreamy kind of world of her own, and that’s not good for a girl; she is apt to prey upon herself. I wish you were a nearer neighbor of ours.”

“I am near enough for all intents and purposes,” said Lady Anwyll, promptly; “what is it but an hour’s drive? There’s nothing I should like better than to take her about, pretty creature, with her great gazelle eyes; but I dare say she would bore herself with me; they don’t care for old women’s society, those young things--why should they? I hated an old woman like a sour apple when I was her age.”

“Oh! but Franceline is not a bit like most girls of her age; she would enjoy you very much, I assure you she would,” protested Sir Simon warmly. “There is nothing she likes better than talking to me now, and I might be your father,” he added, with more gallantry than truth; but Lady Anwyll laughed a contemptuous, little, good-humored laugh without contradicting him. “She has seen very little and read a great deal--too much in fact; you would be surprised to see how much she has read about all sorts of things that most girls only know by name; her father was for teaching her Greek and Latin, but I bullied him out of that nonsense; it would have been a downright crime to spoil such a creature by making her blue. I’ve saved her from that, at any rate.”

“I dare say that is not the only good service she owes you,” observed the dowager, “nor is it likely to be the last. When is your young relation coming back?”

“De Winton, you mean? He’s hardly a relation--a connection at most. I don’t know when he is likely to turn up; I believe he’s on his way to the North Pole at present.”

“Really! I thought there was a magnet drawing him nearer home.”

“What! Franceline, eh? Well, I thought myself he was a trifle spooney in that quarter,” said the baronet, bending down to examine his boots, “but it would seem not, or he would not have decamped; he’s an odd fish, Clide--a capital fellow, but odd.”

“I thought him original, and liked him very much, what little I saw of him,” replied Lady Anwyll. “However, I am glad to hear it is not a case between him and your pretty friend; if there is a thing I _hate_”--with ten drops of vitriol in the monosyllable--“it’s chaperoning a girl in love. You have no satisfaction in her; nothing interests or amuses her; she is ready to bite the nose off any man that looks civil at her; she is a social nuisance in fact, and I make a point of having nothing to do with her.”

Sir Simon threw back his head and laughed.

“How about young Charlton?” resumed the dowager; “he is the match of the county. Has he gone in for the prize?”

“He’s too great an ass,” was the rejoinder.

“Humph! Asses are proof, then, against the power of a beautiful face? It’s the first time I’ve heard it.”

“The fact is, I don’t think he has had a chance yet,” said Sir Simon; “Bourbonais is peculiar, and does not encourage people to go and see him; he only admits a select circle of old fogies, and I think he fancies Charlton is a bit of a puppy.”

“Perhaps he’s not much out in that,” assented the lady.

“Roxham struck me as being rather smitten the other night; did you notice anything in that direction,” inquired Sir Simon carelessly, as he rose to go. “I was too busy to see much of what was going on in the way of flirtation, but I fancied he was rather assiduous!”

“Now, that would be a very nice thing!” And the mother who had made many matches brightened up with lively interest. “I should like to help on that; it would be quite an exciting amusement, and I have nothing to do just now.”

“Take care!” and Sir Simon raised his finger with a warning gesture; “you may have a social nuisance on your hands before you know where you are.”

“Oh! I don’t mind when it’s of my own making,” said the dowager; “that quite alters the case.”

“Then you will drive over to-morrow or next day and call at The Lilies?”

Sir Simon mounted Nero in high good humor; whistled a hunting air as he dashed through the stiff Wellingtonias that flanked the long avenue at Rydal, and never drew rein until he alighted at his own door.

M. de la Bourbonais greeted Lady Anwyll with the innate courtesy of a grand seignior, and never let her see by so much as a look that her visit was not an agreeable surprise. Yet it was not so. Since that conversation with Sir Simon about Franceline’s fortune, an uneasy feeling had possessed him, and he had shrunk back more sensitively than ever into his shell of reserve and isolation. He had been content, or rather compelled, to leave matters entirely in Sir Simon’s hands, or in the hands of fate, but he did not feel at rest, and he had no mind to launch out into new acquaintances just at a moment when his mind was disturbed by strange probabilities, and his habitual abstraction broken up by vague anxieties, that could not take any definite shape as yet. But Lady Anwyll saw nothing of this in the old gentleman’s courtly greeting; she saw that Franceline had welcomed her with a warmth that was unmistakable--childlike and gleeful, and fettered by no ice bands of conventional politeness.

The dowager’s visit was indeed welcome; the utter silence that had succeeded to the stir and agitation of the past few weeks had fallen upon Franceline like a snow-drift in the midst of summer; the return to the old stagnant life was dreadful--she felt chilled to death by it. The reaction was natural enough to one of her age and circumstances; but we know that there was a deeper reason for her sense of loneliness and weariness than the mere relapse into routine and dulness after a season of excitement. Where was Mr. de Winton, and why had he gone off in that strange way, without a sign or a word, leaving her trembling and expectant on the threshold of her awakened womanhood?

It was more than a week now since he went, and she had not heard his name once mentioned, and there was no prospect of her hearing any one speak of him; since neither her father nor Sir Simon did so. Lady Anwyll came like a messenger and a link; Lady Anwyll was in Clide’s world, the wide, wide world beyond her own small sphere where no one knew him. This was unconsciously the reason of Franceline’s joyous greeting. Sir Simon had come with the dowager; they had walked down through the park together, and it was the first time in her life that Franceline was not thoroughly glad to see him. He was not quite like his usual self either, to her, she fancied. He rattled on in his own way, telling stories and making jokes, and then catching up some chance words of Raymond’s and quarrelling with them, until their author waxed warm, and was drawn out into an elaborate refutation of some meaning that he never dreamed of giving them, but into which Sir Simon had purposely twisted them; and finally accomplishing his aim of keeping the conversation on abstract subjects and not letting it slip into the dangerous path of personal or local events.

“So you will let me come and take you out for a drive sometimes,” Lady Anwyll said, as she rose to take leave, “and by-and-by, when you get used to the old woman, perhaps you will come and spend a day or two with her in her big, lonely house? You will not be always afraid of her?”

“I am not afraid of her now,” protested Franceline, looking with her radiant dark eyes straight into the old lady’s face, “you don’t look wicked at all.”

“Don’t I? Then more shame for me; that shows I’m a hypocrite, a whitened sepulchre, my dear,” and she nodded emphatically at Franceline, and gave a little groan.

“For goodness’ sake don’t come Miss Bulpit over us!” cried Sir Simon, holding up his hands. “I’ll bolt at once if you take to that.” And with this pretence of alarm he hurried out of the room.

“Then, since you are not frightened at me, you will promise to come very soon. Let us settle it at once--for Thursday next?” and she held the young girl’s hand in both her own, and looked to M. de la Bourbonais for assent.

But Raymond began to settle his spectacles, and was for explaining how difficult it would be for him to part with his daughter even for a day, and how unaccustomed she was to going anywhere alone, when Sir Simon called out from the garden:

“Tut, tut, Bourbonais, that’s precisely why she must go; you must not mope the child in this way; she must gad about a bit, like other girls. It will do her good; it will do her good.”

The three came out and joined him, walking round to the back entrance through which the visitors were going to re-enter the park.

“I shall get a few young people together, so it will not be so very dull for you, my dear,” continued Lady Anwyll, as they walked four abreast on the grass; “and I can mount you; I know you ride.”

“Oh! I don’t think she would care--” began Raymond; but Sir Simon cut him short again.

“Is your son coming down for a shot at the partridges?”

“Not he; at least not that I know of; he is off fishing near Norway, or was the last time I heard of him; but for all I know he may have joined your friend young De Winton at the North Pole by this. Well, good-by, my dear. I should dearly like a kiss. Would you mind kissing the old woman?”

Franceline put her soft, vermilion lips to the wrinkled cheek. Neither Lady Anwyll nor Raymond saw how instantaneously the blood had forsaken them, leaving them white as her brow; but Sir Simon did, and it smote him to the heart. He walked on before the good-bys were over, ostensibly to give some order about the carriage that was drawn up at a turn in the avenue, but in reality to avoid meeting Raymond’s glance.

Late that evening a note came to The Lilies to say that he was obliged to start at a moment’s notice for the south of France, where his step-mother, Lady Rebecca, was dangerously ill. He was sorry to have to rush off without saying good-by, but he had not a moment to lose to catch the express.

Sir Simon did start by the express, and after a day or two in London, where he saw Admiral de Winton, and ascertained that nothing new had turned up in Clide’s affairs, he thought he might just as well go to the south of France, where he would be within reach of his interesting relative in case she should need him, or die, which the older she grew the less she seemed inclined to do, in spite of Mr. Simpson’s periodical tolling of her death-knell. Fate, that abstract divinity invoked by pagans and novelists, interfered with the fulfilment of Franceline’s engagement to Lady Anwyll. A letter--a real letter--awaited her at home from her son-in-law, saying that his wife was taken suddenly ill, and entreated her mother to come to her without delay. Franceline was rather glad than sorry when the note came to postpone her visit. The desire to go to Rydal was gone. She wanted to be left alone. She was not equal to the effort of seeming amused. And yet, again, in another way she regretted it. A day or two’s absence from her father would have been a relief; the strain of keeping up false appearances before him was worse than it need have been amongst strangers; it would have sufficed them to be calm; at home she must be gay. After the sudden shock which those words so carelessly uttered by Lady Anwyll had caused her, Franceline’s first thought was to screen her feelings from her father. She was helped in her effort to do this by her certainty that he had no key to them, that he had not for a moment connected her and Clide de Winton in his thoughts. If she had known how much had been disclosed to him, how closely he had watched her ever since that fatal conversation with Sir Simon, concealment would have been impossible. As it was, she found it hard enough; but there was an unsuspected strength of will, a vitality of power in her, that enabled her to act the part she had resolved upon. She called up all her love for her father and all her native woman’s pride and maiden delicacy to the effort, and she achieved it. Her father watched her with the jealous eye of anxious affection, but he could see nothing forced in her spirits; he heard no hollow note in her laugh; he saw no trace of sadness in her smile. She was merrier, brighter, more talkative for several days after Lady Anwyll’s visit than he remembered to have seen her. Raymond sighed with relief many times a day as he heard her singing to herself, or caressing her doves with new names of endearment and fresh delight. She succeeded perfectly in blinding him, but not in silencing the wild tumult of her own heart. It was all mystery yet; pain and wonder were predominant, but hope was not absent from the chaos of conflicting emotions, and there was nothing of wounded self-respect, no definite feeling of reproach towards Clide. It seemed as if everything were a mistake; no one had done anything wrong, and yet everything had gone wrong. Was it all a dream the life she had been living for those few blissful weeks? Was his devotion to her, his exclusive assiduity during all that time, nothing but the customary demeanor of a gentleman to a young girl in whose society chance had thrown him? Franceline asked herself this over and over again, and could only find one answer to it--the echo of her own heart. But what did she really know about such things--what standard had she to go by? What had she ever seen to guide her in forming a reasonable conclusion?--for she wanted to be reasonable: to judge calmly without listening to the longings and tyrannical affirmations of this heart. “He may have been so assiduous in attending me in my rides simply to please Sir Simon,” whispered reason; but the response came quickly: “Need he have looked and spoken as he did to please Sir Simon? And that night of the ball, was it to please Sir Simon that he was stung and angry when I deserted him for Lord Roxham? Was it for that that he spoke those words that had set my every fibre thrilling? ‘What does anything matter to us, Franceline, as long as we are not angry with each other?’ To what melting tenderness was his voice toned as he uttered them! How his glance sought mine and rested in it, completing all that the words had left unsaid! And I am to believe that he had meant no more than the customary gallantries of a man of the world to his partner in the dance?” She laughed to herself as the outrageous question rose in her thoughts. Then, apart from this unanswerable testimony, there was evidence of Clide’s feelings and motives towards herself in his conduct towards her father. How anxious he had shown himself to please M. de la Bourbonais, to secure his advice and follow it, and make her aware that he did so! No; she had not assuredly been won unsought. This certainty supported and cheered her. If she had been sought, she would be sought again. Clide would return and claim what he had won. It was impossible to doubt but that he would. Whenever Franceline arrived at this point in her cogitations her spirits rose to singing pitch, and she would break out into carol and song, like a bird, and run down to Angélique and tease her to exasperation, pulling out her knitting-needles and playing tricks like a kitten, till she drove her nearly frantic, and sent her complaining to M. le Comte that _la petite_ was grown as full of mischief as a squirrel; there was no being safe a minute from her tricks once your back was turned. And Raymond would look up with a beaming face, and beg pardon for the culprit. “She keeps life in our old veins, ma bonne,” he would say; “what should we do without our singing bird?”

But there were days when the singing bird was silent, when there was no music in her, and when she could have broken into passionate tears if they had not been restrained by a strong effort of will. These alternations, however, passed unobserved by the two who might have noticed them. Raymond had made up his mind that Sir Simon’s brilliant scheme had failed, and that as the failure had dealt no blow at Franceline’s happiness, it was not to be regretted. It had been altogether too brilliant to be practicable; he felt that from the first, and his instinct served him better than Sir Simon’s experience, shrewd man of the world though he was. “Kind, foolish friend, his affection blinded him and made him see everything as he desired it for Franceline, and now he is vexed with himself, and ashamed very likely, and so he keeps away from me. Perhaps he imagines I would reproach him. This poor, dear Simon has more heart than head.”

And with these indulgent reflections, Raymond sank back into his dreamy historical world, and left off watching the changeful aspects of his child. She was safe; things were just as they used to be.

A month went by; during that time one letter had come from the baronet, affectionate as ever, but evidently written under some feeling of restraint. He talked of the annoyances he had had on the road, and the loss of some of his luggage, and about French politics. M. de le Bourbonais fancied he saw through the awkwardness; he answered the letter in a more than usually affectionate strain; was very communicative about himself and Franceline, who was growing quite beyond Angélique’s and his control, he assured his friend, and required Sir Simon’s hand to keep her within bounds, so he had better hasten home as quickly as possible if he had any pity for the two victims of her tyranny and numberless caprices. This letter had the effect intended; it brought another without many days’ delay, and written with all the _abandon_ and spirit of the writer’s most cheerful mood.

Lady Anwyll returned at the end of the month, and bore down on The Lilies the very next day. Franceline would have fought off if she could have done so with any chance of success; but the dowager was peremptory in claiming what had been distinctly promised, and she agreed to be ready the next day to accompany the old lady to Rydal.

Angélique put her biggest irons in the fire, and smoothed out her young mistress’s prettiest white muslin dress, and set her sashes and ribbons in order, and was as full of bustle as if the quiet visit a few miles off had been a wedding.

“I am glad the _petite_ is going; it will do her good,” she observed, complacently, as she brought in the lamp and set it down on the count’s table that evening.

“Why do you think it will do her good? Is she suffering in any way?” said the father, a sudden sting of the old fear giving sharpness to his voice.

“Bonté divine! How monsieur takes the word out of one’s mouth!” ejaculated Angélique, throwing up her hands like an aggrieved woman; “why, a little distraction always does good at mamselle’s age; look at me: it would put new blood into my old veins if I could go somewhere and distract myself.”

“You find it very dull, my good Angélique?” And the master turned a kindly, almost penitent glance on the nut-brown face.

“Hé! listen to him again! One does not want to be dying of _ennui_ to enjoy a little distraction; one does not think of it, but when it comes one may like it!” She gave the shade a jerk that made it spin round the lamp, and walked off in high dudgeon.

Franceline was conscious of a pleasurable flutter next day, when she heard the carriage crunching the gravel, and presently Lady Anwyll came round on foot, followed by the footman, who carried off her box and secured it in some mysterious part of the vehicle. She was flushed when she kissed her father and said good-by; he thought it was the pleasure of the “little distraction” that heightened her color, and that took away the pang of the short parting.

“Yes, decidedly, a change does her good,” he mentally remarked; “I must let her take advantage of any pleasant one that offers.”

It was an event in Franceline’s life, going to stay at a strange house. The Court was too much like her own home, and she had known it too long and too early to feel like a visitor there, or to be overpowered by its splendors. Rydal was not to be compared to it either for architectural beauty or magnitude, or for the extent and beauty of the grounds and surrounding scenery. The Court was a grand baronial hall; Rydal was an old-fashioned manor house; low-roofed, straggling, and picturesque outside; spacious and comfortable inside; with enough of the marks of time on the furniture and decorations to stamp it as the abode of many generations of gentlemen. A low-ceiled square hall, with sitting-rooms opening into it on either side, and quaint pictures and arms ornamenting its walls, received you with a hospitable hearth, where a huge log was blazing cheerily under a high, carved oak mantel-piece. It was not flagged with marble, nor supported by majestic columns like the Gothic hall of the Court, but it had a charm of its own that Franceline felt, and expressed by a bright exclamation as she alighted in it.

“Come in and sit down for a moment in the drawing-room,” said Lady Anwyll. “I always rest before toiling up-stairs, my dear; and you must fancy yourself an old woman and do so too.”

Franceline followed her into the handsome square room. Two projecting windows thrust themselves out to the west to catch the last rays of the setting sun at one end, and another bulged out southward to sun itself in the noon-tide warmth; an old-fashioned sofa was drawn close to the fire. Franceline fancied she saw the soles of two boots resting on the arm facing the door; and was beginning to wonder where the body was that they might belong to, when the dowager suddenly cried out in tones of amazement rather than delight:

“Good gracious, Ponce! what brought you back, and when did you come? I verily believe you have got some talisman like Riquet with the Tuft for flying about the world like a bird! Where have you come from now?”

She stooped down to kiss the invisible head that lay at the other end of the figure, and a voice from the cushions answered: “I pledged my word I would be back in a day and a month; did you ever know me break my word, lady mother?”

“You so seldom commit yourself by pledging it to me that I hardly remember; however, now that you are here, I am glad to see you, and to be able to offer you a reward for your punctuality. Come here, my dear, and let me introduce my son Ponsonby to you.”

The recumbent giant was on his feet in an instant, with an involuntary “Hollo!” as Franceline advanced at his mother’s bidding.

“This is Mlle. de la Bourbonais, Ponce; my son, Captain Anwyll.”

“It is not often punishment overtakes the guilty so fast,” said the gentleman, with a very low bow, and an awkward laugh; “I so seldom indulge in the laziness of stretching my long legs on a sofa, that it’s rather hard on me that I should be caught in the act by a lady. Mother, you ought to have given me notice in time.”

“Served you right! I’m glad you were caught; and, my dear, don’t you mind his _seldom_; when he is not flying through the air or over the water, this big son of mine is stretching himself somewhere. Come, now, and get your things off.” As they were leaving the room, she looked back to ask her son if he “had brought the regiment down with him,” and on hearing that he had left that appendage in Yorkshire, his mother observed that it was like him to leave it behind just when it might have been useful.

There are some people who, though inert and quiet themselves, have a faculty for putting everybody about them in a commotion. Ponsonby Anwyll was one of these. When he came down to Rydal it was as if an earthquake shook the place. He wanted next to no waiting on, yet somehow every servant in the house was busied about him. He was like a baby in a house, exacting nothing, but occupying everybody.

He was constantly either overturning something, or on the point of doing it. Like so many men of the giant type, he was as gentle as a woman and as easily cowed; and like a woman, he always wanted somebody at his elbow to look after him. If he attempted to light a lamp, ten to one he upset it and spoiled a table-cover or a carpet, or he let the chimney fall, and cut his fingers picking up the bits to prevent some one else’s being cut. He took next to no interest practically in the estate; yet his tenantry were very fond of him; he never bothered them about improvements or abuses, and they were more obliged to him for letting them alone than for benefiting them against their will. Whenever he interfered it was to take their part against the agent, who could not see why the tenants were to be let off paying full rents because the harvest happened to be a failure one year, when it had been good so many preceding ones. Lady Anwyll would bully and storm and protest that he was ruining the property, and that they would all end in the Union; but Ponsonby soon petted her into good humor. In her heart of hearts she was proud of her big, easy-going son, who cared so little for money, and she was as pleased to be patronized by him as a little kitten is when the powerful Newfoundland condescends to a game of romps with it.

When Franceline, in her white muslin dress, floated into the drawing-room, like a summer cloud, the Newfoundland was standing on the hearth-rug, with its eyes fixed expectantly on the door. Lady Anwyll was generally down long before her son. Ponce took an age to get out of one set of clothes and into another; but he had the start of her to-day.

“You have had a nice drive from Dullerton,” he began; how else could he begin? “But I fear the weather is on the turn; those clouds over the common look mischievous.”

“Are you weatherwise?” inquired Franceline, following his eyes to the window.

“Not he, my dear! He’s not wise in anything!” answered a voice from behind her.

“Mother, this is positively too bad of you! I protest against your taking away my character in this fashion, before I have a chance of making one with Miss Franceline. You begin by making me out the laziest dog in Christendom, and now you would rob me of my one intellectual quality! You know I am weatherwise! They call me Girouette in the 10th, because I can tell to a feather how the wind is blowing; ’pon my honor they do, Miss Franceline!”

Franceline was going to assure him of her entire faith in this assertion when dinner was announced, and they crossed the hall into the dining-room.

“Now, tell us something about where you’ve been and what you’ve seen and done,” said the dowager; “and try and be as entertaining as you can, for you see there is no one else to amuse my young friend.”

“I’m sure I should be very proud; I wish I could remember something amusing to tell; but that’s the deuce of it, the more a fellow wants to be pleasant the less he can. Do you care to hear about fishing?” This was addressed to Franceline. There was something so boyish in his manner, such an entire absence of conceit or affectation, that, in spite of other deficiencies, she liked the shy hussar, and felt at ease with him.

“I dare say I should if I understood it at all; but I do not. But I am always curious to know about foreign places and people,” she said.

“Oh! I’m glad of that; I can tell you plenty about no end of places,” answered the traveller promptly; “but I dare say you’ve seen them all yourself; everybody goes everywhere nowadays.”

“I have never been out of Dullerton since I came here as a child, but once for a few days to London,” said Franceline; “so you can hardly go wrong in telling me about any foreign place.”

“How odd! Well, its rather refreshing too. I suppose you are nervous, afraid of the water, or the railway?”

“Not the least. I am too poor to travel.” She said it as simply as if she had stated that the rain had prevented her going for a walk.

“Oh, indeed! That is a hindrance to be sure,” blundered out Ponsonby; “but people are better off that stay at home. One is always within an inch of getting one’s neck broken, or one’s eye put out; and people very often do come to grief travelling. I dare say you wouldn’t like it at all.”

“Getting her eyes put out? I should think not!” chimed in his mother, with a mocking chuckle.

“I meant the whole thing,” pursued Ponce. “The only chance one has is to go straight through like a letter in the post, from one place to another, and stick there, and not go posting about from place to place, as we did in Rome, now. That is a pleasant place to go to. I bet anything you’d enjoy Rome awfully; everybody does; and now they’ve got good hotels, and you can get as good a dinner as any fellow need care to eat. Only you would not like the popish ways of the place. That’s the deuce of it, you can’t get out of the way of that sort of thing; it’s in the air, you see; but one grows used to it after a while, as one does to the bad smells.”

“I should not suffer from that. I am a Catholic,” said Franceline, her color rising slightly.

“Oh, indeed! I beg your pardon; I had no idea; of course that makes all the difference,” stammered the hussar, mentally comparing himself to Patrick, who could never open his mouth without putting his foot in it.

Lady Anwyll had now despatched her dinner, or as much of the long meal as she ever partook of. Feeling that the conversation was not progressing very favorably between her son and her guest, she took the reins in her own hand, and by dint of direct questions and an occasional touch of the spur she managed to make time trot on in a straggling but on the whole amusing style of talk, half narrative, half anecdote, until dinner was ended, and she and Franceline migrated to the drawing-room, leaving the captain to discuss the claret in solitary state.

* * * * *

The next morning at breakfast Lady Anwyll proposed that the two young people should go for a ride after lunch. Franceline demurred, on the plea that she had never ridden but one horse and was afraid to trust herself on any other. The captain, however, settled this difficulty, by volunteering to send a man over to Dullerton for Rosebud. She would come at an easy pace, and after an hour’s rest be ready for the road. On seeing the point so satisfactorily arranged, Franceline immediately dismissed her terrors, and thought it would be rather desirable to try how she could manage on a strange horse. She could not plead that she had forgotten her riding habit, for Angélique had remembered it, as well as the hat and gloves and whip, all of which had been packed up with her other clothes.

The weather was fine, a bright sun beamed from a stainless sky; the furze on the common was yellow enough still to illuminate the flat expanse of the country round Rydal, and as Franceline dashed through the golden bushes on her spirited steed, her youth vindicated itself, the young blood coursed joyously through her veins, her spirits rose, and soon the exercise that she begun reluctantly became one of keen enjoyment. Capt. Anwyll was not a very interesting companion, but he was natural and good-natured, and anxious to please; he knew now what ground he was treading, too, and made no more blunders, but chatted on without shyness or effort, and was pleasant enough.

“Roxham is coming to dinner. You know Roxham? A capital fellow; a dead shot; a clever fellow too; goes in strong for politics and philanthropy and so forth. He’ll be in the ministry one of these days I dare say, and setting the country by the ears with his reform crochets, and that sort of thing: his head is full of them.”

“Not a bad sort of furniture either. Why don’t you follow his example?” demanded Franceline.

“Me! How satirical you are! That’s not my line at all. I don’t go in for politics--only for soldiering, if there were any to do. They set me up as liberal candidate for the last elections, but when I found it was not to be a walk-over, and that I was to contest it, I backed out. My mother was dreadfully savage. But bless her! she does not understand it a bit. I’m no hand at making speeches and addressing constituents. Now, Roxham can hold forth by the hour to a mob, or to any set of fellows; it’s wonderful to see how he spins out the palaver--and first-rate palaver it is, I can tell you. You should hear him on the hustings! We’ll make him describe a great row he and the liberal candidate had at the last elections, when Roxham beat him out of the field in grand style; he was no match for Roxham anyhow, and besides he had a stutter, and when he was in a passion he couldn’t get a word out without stamping like a vicious horse. It’s great fun to hear Roxham tell it; we’ll make him do so this evening. It will amuse you.”

Franceline laughed. The name of Lord Roxham and the mention of his electioneering feats recalled a scene that was seldom absent from her memory now. Every trifling detail of that scene rose vividly before her as she listened to Captain Anwyll. Would he never allude to one figure in it that overshadowed every other? If she could but lead him to speak of Clide! Perhaps he could tell her something of his present movements; throw some light on her perplexity.

“Lord Roxham has a very handsome cousin, Lady Emily Fitznorman; do you know her?” she asked, carelessly.

“Yes. A very nice girl as well as handsome.”

“I wonder she’s not married already.”

“You think she’s on the wane! Wait a while; you won’t think three-and-twenty so antique by and by.”

“I did not mean that; I thought she was about my own age,” protested Franceline with vivacity; “but when one is so much admired as Lady Emily seemed to be that night at Dullerton, one wonders she is not carried off by some devoted admirer.”

“Then you noticed that she had a great many? Would it be unfair to ask a few names?”

“Mr. de Winton for one seemed very devoted.”

“De Winton! Humph! Who else?”

“Why do you say ‘humph’? Is there reason why he should not be amongst the number?”

“Rather--that is to say perhaps--in fact, thereby hangs a tale.” His face wore a quizzical expression as he spoke.

“What tale?” She looked round with a quick, curious glance.

“Oh! it’s not fair to tell tales out of school, is it?”

“Certainly not; I had no idea there was a secret in the way,” said Franceline, bridling.

Ponsonby was not gifted with the knack of calm irrelevance; instead of dropping the subject and turning to something else, he resumed presently:

“De Winton is a capital shot too--better than Roxham; I went boar-hunting with him in Germany three years ago, and then black-cock shooting in Prussia, and I never knew him to miss his aim once.”

“He will come home laden with bears this time no doubt,” she remarked with affected coolness.

“Bears! not he. He has other game to follow now. Are you up to taking that fence, or shall we go round by the bridle-path? It makes it a good bit longer?”

“I don’t care to take the fence. Let us go round.”

She put her horse at a canter, and they scarcely spoke again until they reached Rydal.

Lady Anwyll’s voice sounded from the drawing-room, summoning her to come in before going upstairs, but Franceline did not heed it. She went straight to her room; she must have a few moments alone; she could not talk or listen just now. While she was flying through the air, it seemed as if motion suspended thought, and kept her poised above the mental whirlwind that Capt. Anwyll’s words had evoked; but once standing with the ground firm under her feet, thought resumed its power, and shook off the temporary torpor. She closed her door, and proceeded quietly to take off her habit. As she did so a voice kept repeating distinctly in her ears, “He has other game to follow now!” What did it, could it mean? Why, since he had said so much, could he not in mercy have said something more? But what did Capt. Anwyll know about mercy in the matter? What was Mr. de Winton to her in his eyes? Nothing, thank heaven! Nor in any one else’s. It was from mystery to mystery; she could make nothing out of it. One fact alone grew clearer and clearer to her amidst the dim chaos--Clide de Winton was the loadstar that was drawing her thoughts, her longings, her life after him wherever he was. Everything else was vague and undefined. She could not blame any one; she could not grieve or lament; she could only lose herself in torturing conjecture. It wanted more than an hour to dinner-time. Franceline had not the courage to spend it in the drawing-room, where she would be the object of Lady Anwyll’s motherly petting, and Ponsonby’s flat gossip; she must have the interval to school herself for the effort that was before her for the rest of the evening. There were steps on the landing; she opened her door; one of the maids was passing.

“Please tell her ladyship that I am a little tired, and shall lie down for half an hour before I dress.” The servant took the message.

Franceline did not lie down, however; she seated herself before the window, and thought. The exercise was not soothing, but it was a respite; and when she made her appearance in the drawing-room, there was so little trace of fatigue about her that Lady Anwyll rallied her good-naturedly on the cruelty of having stayed away under false pretences.

Lord Roxham met her with the frankness of an old acquaintance, and had many pretty speeches to make about their last meeting. Franceline responded with sprightly grace, and hoped he had come prepared to complete her education in parliamentary matters. The evening passed off gaily. Lord Roxham was a fluent if not a brilliant talker, and under the animating influence of his lively rattle, Franceline’s spirits rose, and her hosts, who had hitherto seen her rather willing to be amused than amusing, were surprised to see with what graceful spirit she kept the ball going, bandying light repartee with Lord Roxham, and pricking Ponsonby into joining in the game with a liveliness that astonished him and enchanted his mother. The dowager chuckled inwardly, and applauded herself on the success of her little matrimonial scheme; she already saw Franceline a peeress, and happily settled as a near neighbor of her own. None of the party were musical, but they did not miss this delightful element of sociability, so unflagging was the flow of talk and anecdote; and when Lord Roxham started up at eleven o’clock to ring for his horse, every one protested he must have heard the clock strike one too many.

“Come and lunch to-morrow, and join these two in their ride,” said Lady Anwyll, as she shook hands with him.

“Am I going to ride home?” inquired Franceline, surprised.

“Certainly not! Nor drive either. You don’t suppose I’m going to let you off with one day’s penance?”

“O dear Lady Anwyll! papa will expect me to-morrow, and he will be uneasy if he does not see me; I assure you he will,” pleaded Franceline.

“I can remove that obstacle,” said Lord Roxham promptly. “I must ride over to Dullerton early to-morrow morning, and I can have the honor of calling at M. de la Bourbonais’, and setting his mind at rest about you.”

“The very thing!” cried Lady Anwyll, shutting up Franceline, who had an excuse ready; “you can call at The Lilies on your way back, and tell the count he is to expect this young lady when he sees her.”

Luckily Franceline was ignorant of the juxtaposition of the various seats round Dullerton, or it might have struck her as odd that Lady Anwyll should propose the messenger’s going a round of fifteen miles to call at The Lilies “on his way back.” But she suspected nothing, and when Lord Roxham alighted at Rydal next day punctually as the clock struck two P.M. she greeted him with unabashed cordiality, and was all eagerness to know if he had seen her father, and what the latter had said.

She had slept restlessly, but she had slept; her anxiety had not as yet the sting in it that destroys sleep. She did not fail to notice with renewed wonder that Lord Roxham had studiously avoided mentioning Mr. de Winton’s name. Studiously it must have been; for what more natural than to have mentioned him when discussing the fairy _festa_ where they had first met? She felt certain there must be a motive for so palpable a reticence, and the thought did not tend to reassure her. She had dressed herself before luncheon, so when the horses came round, they mounted at once. Franceline, on starting, had mentally resolved to make Lord Roxham speak on the subject that was uppermost in her mind--to put a direct question in fact, if everything else failed--but, strive as she might, he would not be lured into the trap, and her courage sank so much on seeing this that she dared not venture on a direct interrogation.

They stayed out until near sundown; the day was breezy and bright, and Franceline looked radiant with the excitement and exercise.

“Let us ride up to the knoll and see the sun go down behind the common,” proposed Capt. Anwyll, as they were about to pass the park gate; “the sunset is the only thing we have worth showing at Rydal, and I’d like Mlle. de la Bourbonais to see it.”

His companions gladly assented, and the party turned off the road into a bridle-path across the fields which led to the elevation commanding an unbroken view of the spectacle. It seemed as if everything had been purposely cleared away from the landscape that could divert attention for an instant from the glorious pageant of the western skies. Not a house was visible, and scarcely a habitation; the cottages were hid in the flanks of the valley, and only reminded you of their existence by a thin vapor that curled up from a solitary chimney and quickly lost itself in the trees. Nothing gave any sign of life but the sheep browsing on the gilded emerald of the shorn meadows. The red and gold waves flooded the vast expanse of the horizon, flowing further and higher as the spectators gazed, until half heaven was on fire with a conflagration of rainbows. Swiftly the colors changed, crimson and orange first, then deep and tender shades of purple and green, until all melted into uniform violet, the herald of the gathering darkness. They stood watching it in silence, Franceline with bated breath. The sunset always had a solemn charm for her, and she had never seen so vast and gorgeous a one as this. It was like watching the dying throes of a divinity.

“The play is over, the audience may retire!” said Ponsonby, breaking the pause; even he had been subdued by the sublimity of the scene.

“If I were a pagan I should be a fire-worshipper,” said Franceline, as they moved away. “I think the worship of the sun is the most natural as well as the most poetic of all forms of idolatry.”

“That’s just what De Winton said the first time he saw the sun set from here!” exclaimed Capt. Anwyll triumphantly; “how comical that you should have hit on the very same idea! He said, by the way, that it was the finest sunset he had ever seen in England; it’s so wide and low, you see; he showed me a sketch he made of a sunset somewhere in the Vosges that he said it reminded him of. I forget the name of the valley; but it was uncommonly like; do you know the Vosges?”

“No; I have never been to that part of France.”

Lord Roxham glanced at her as she said this in a clear, low voice. He saw nothing in her countenance that afforded a clew to whatever he was looking for.

It had grown chilly now that the sun had set, and they had been standing several minutes on the knoll. Of one accord the three riders broke into a gallop as they entered the park, and dashed along between the pollard Wellingtonias, standing stiff and stark as tumuli on either side of the long avenue.

Lady Anwyll had gone to visit some poor sick woman in the neighborhood, and had not yet returned. The gentlemen went round to the stables, and Franceline to her room. She dressed herself quickly, wrote a short letter to her father according to her promise of writing to him every day during her absence, and then threw the window wide open and sat down beside it. It was fresh enough, and she wore only her muslin dress, but she did not feel the freshness of the air--she was too excited to be conscious of any external influence of the kind. She sat as motionless as a statue, gazing abstractedly over the empurpled sky where the moon appeared like a shred of white cloud. She had not sat there long when the fragrant fumes of a cigar came floating in through her window, followed soon by a sound of footsteps and voices. Ponsonby and his guest were coming in. Franceline did not close the window or move away, though the voices were now audible; the speakers had not entered the house; they were walking under the veranda that ran round the front. What matter? They were not likely to be talking secrets; she was welcome to listen, no doubt, to whatever they might have to say.

“There is the carriage coming,” said Ponsonby; “my mother is out too late with her rheumatism; I’ll pitch into her for it.”

“Yes; it doesn’t do to stay out after sunset when one has any chronic ailment of that sort. By the way, you mentioned De Winton just now; have you heard of him lately?”

“No; not since he left Berlin. It seems he was very near kicking the bucket there; he was awfully bad, and nobody with him but his man Stanton.”

“How did you hear about it?”

“Through Parker, a fellow in our regiment whose brother is _attaché_ at Berlin; the story made a sensation there, but no one knew of it until De Winton had left.”

The speakers passed on to the end of the veranda, and Franceline could catch nothing more until they drew near again. Lord Roxham was speaking.

“Poor fellow! It’s tremendously hard on him, and I believe there is no redress; nothing to make out a case for divorce.”

“I fancy not; but even if there were it would not be available, since he’s a Romanist.”

“Ah! to be sure; I forgot that; but what a mystification the whole business is! I’ve known De Winton since we were both boys--we were Eton chums, you know--but he never breathed a word of it to me. Yet he’s not a close fellow; quite the contrary. And who the deuce is the woman? Where did he come across her?”

They passed out of hearing again, and when they returned the tramping of horses and the crunching of wheels overtopped their voices. The sounds all died away; Lady Anwyll had come in, and gone to her room--every one was waiting in the drawing-room, but Franceline did not appear. Her hostess, thinking she had not heard the dinner-bell, sent for her. Presently the maid came rushing down the stairs and into the forbidden precincts of the drawing-room with a scared face.

“Please, my lady, she’s in a dead faint! I found her all in a heap on the floor, ready dressed. I lifted her on to the bed, but she don’t move!”

An exclamation burst simultaneously from the three listeners. In a moment they were all in Franceline’s room; there she lay stretched on the bed, as the woman had said, white and still as death, one hand hanging, and her hair, that had been loosened in the fall, dropping on her shoulder. The usual restoratives were applied, and in about a quarter of an hour she gave signs of awakening--the veined lids quivered, the mouth twitched convulsively, and a short sigh escaped her. Lady Anwyll signed to her son and Lord Roxham to withdraw; they had scarcely left the room when Franceline opened her eyes and stared about her with the blank gaze of returning consciousness. She swallowed some wine at Lady Anwyll’s request, but soon put the glass away with a gesture of disgust. In answer to her hostess’ anxious entreaties to say where she suffered, and why she had swooned, the young girl could only say she had felt tired and weary, and that she longed to be left alone and go to sleep. Lady Anwyll agreed that sleep would be the best restorative, and insisted on staying till she saw her settled in bed; then she kissed her, and promising to come soon and see if she was asleep, she left the room with a noiseless step.

“What is it? Is there anything much amiss, mother?” was the captain’s exclamation. Lord Roxham was equally concerned.

“Nothing, except you have nearly killed her, both of you. You have ridden the child to death; she is not accustomed to it, and she has overdone herself; but she will be all right I hope in the morning. There’s nothing the matter but fatigue, she assures me.”

Ponsonby rated himself soundly for being such a brute as to have let her tire herself; he ought to have remembered that she was done up the day before after a much shorter ride. He was awfully sorry. His remorse was no doubt quite genuine, but when they sat down to dinner he proved to demonstration that that feeling is compatible with an unimpaired appetite. Lady Anwyll left them before they had finished to see how Franceline was going on; she found her awake, but quite well, and going to sleep very soon, she assured the kind old lady.

“Then, my dear child, I will not have you disturbed again; if you wake and want anything, strike this gong, and Trinner will come at once. I will make her sleep in the room next yours to-night.”

Franceline protested, but the dowager silenced her with a kiss; put out the light, and left her.

She lay very still, but there was no chance of sleep for her. Sleep had fled from her eyes as peace had fled from her heart. She longed to get up, and find relief from the intolerable strain of immobility, but she dared not; her room was over a part of the drawing-room, and she might be heard. The evening seemed to drag on with preternatural slowness. She could hear the low hum of voices through the ceiling. Once there was a clatter of porcelain--probably Ponce overturning the tea-tray. At last the stable-clock struck eleven; there was opening and shutting of doors for a while, and then silence. Franceline sat up and listened until not a sound was anywhere to be heard. Every soul in the house had gone to bed. Trinner had come last of all to her room. The star made by her candle gleamed through the key-hole for a long time; at last it disappeared, and soon the loud, regular breathing told that she was fast asleep. Franceline rose, threw her dressing-wrapper round her, and drew back the curtain from the window. It was a relief to let the night-lights in upon her solitude; the glorious gaze of the moon seemed to chase away phantoms with the darkness. She felt awake now. All this time, lying there in the utter darkness, it seemed as if she were still in a swoon, or held in the grip of a nightmare; she shook herself free from the benumbing clutch, and sat down close by the window, and tried to collect her thoughts. There was one phantom which the moonlight could not dispel; it stood out now distinctly as she looked at it with revived consciousness. Clide de Winton was a married man. It was to the husband of another that she had given her heart with its first pure vintage of impassioned love. He who had looked at her with those ardent eyes, penetrating her soul like flame, had all along been another woman’s husband. There was no more room for hope, even for doubt; suspense was at an end; the period of dark conjecture was gone. It was clear enough, all that had been so inexplicable,--clear as when the lightning flashes out of a lurid sky, and illuminates the scene of an earthquake; a sea lashed to fury by winds that have lost their current, ships sinking in billows that break before they heave, the land gaping and groaning, trees uprooted, habitations falling with a crash of thunder, all live things clinging and flying in wild disorder. Franceline considered it all as she sat, still and white as a stone, without missing a single detail in the scene.

Violent demonstration was not in her nature. In pain or in joy it was her habit to be self-contained. She had as yet been called upon but for very slight trials of strength and self-control; but such as the experience was it had left behind it an innate though unconscious sense of power that rose instinctively to her aid now. She had fainted away under the first shock of the discovery; but that tribute of weakness paid to nature, she would yield no more. Tears might come later; but now she would not indulge in them. She must face the worst without flinching. What was the worst? Clide was a married man. That was bad enough in all conscience; yet there might be worse behind. Circumstances might cast a blacker dye even on this. Lord Roxham had spoken in a tone of sympathy: “Poor fellow! It’s tremendously hard on him.…” He would have spoken differently if there were any villany in question. But if Lord Roxham had not thus indirectly acquitted him, Franceline would have done so spontaneously. Yes, even in the first moment of despair, while the flood was sweeping over her, she acquitted him. He had dragged her down into unsounded depths of agony and shame, but he had not done it deliberately; he was neither a liar nor a traitor. Had he not been brought to the jaws of death himself only a month ago? There was an indescribable comfort in the pang those words had inflicted. He too, then, was suffering; they were both victims. Clide had never meant to deceive her; she would have sworn it on the altar of her unshaken faith in him; she wanted no stronger evidence than the promptings of her own heart. She was confident there would be some adequate explanation of whatever now seemed ambiguous, when she should have learned all. No; she need not separate the attribute of truth and honor from his image; she could no more do it than she could separate the idea of light from the pure maiden moon that was looking down on her from heaven; she would see darkness in light before she would believe Clide de Winton false.

This irrepressible need of her heart once satisfied--Clide judged and acquitted--what then? Granted that he was innocent as yonder stars, how did it affect her? What did it signify to her henceforth whether he was innocent or guilty, true or false? He was the husband of another woman; as good as dead to Franceline de la Bourbonais; parted from her by a more impassable barrier than death. If he were only dead she might love him still, hold him enshrined in her heart’s core with a clasp that death could not sever--only strengthen. But he was worse than dead; he was married. She must banish him even from her thoughts; his memory must henceforth be as far from her as the thought of murder, or any other crime that her crystal conscience shuddered even to name. She might acquit him, crown him with the noblest attributes of manhood; but that done, she must dismiss him from her remembrance, and forget him as if he had never lived.

Franceline had remained seated, her hands locked passively in her lap, while these thoughts shaped themselves in her mind. When they reached the climax, expressed in these words: “I must forget him as if he had never lived!” she rose to her feet, clasped her forehead in both hands, and an inarticulate cry broke from her: “It would be easier to die!… If I had anything to forgive, that would help me! But I have nothing to forgive!” It would not have helped her, though she fancied so; it would have turned the bitterness of the cup into poison. But she could not realize this now. It seemed harder to renounce what was good and beautiful than to cast away what was unworthy. If the idol had uttered one false oracle, demanded anything base, betrayed itself before betraying her, it would have been easier, she thought, to overturn it. Indignation would have nerved her to the deed, and she would have dealt the blow without compunction. But it had done nothing to forfeit her love and trust, and nevertheless she must dash it down and cast the fragments into the fire, and not preserve even the dust as a precious thing. What a merciful doom his death would have been compared to this!

How was she to do it? Who would help her to so ruthless a demolition? Did any one speak in the silence, or was it only the unspoken cry of her own soul that answered? She had fancied herself alone; she had forgotten that a Presence was close to her, waiting to be invoked, patient, faithful, and protecting even while forgotten. The voice sounded sweet in its warning solemnity, and filled the lonely chamber with a more benign ray than ever shone from midnight sky or blazing noon. Franceline stretched out her arms to meet it, and with a loud sob fell upon her knees. “O my God! forgive me! Forgive me, and help me! I have sinned, but my punishment is greater than I can bear!” The floodgates were thrown back; the tears fell in hot showers, the sobs shook her as the storm shakes the sapling. She knelt there crouching in the darkness, her head leaning on her folded arms, and gave herself up to the passionate outburst, like a child weeping itself to sleep on its mother’s breast. But this could not last. It was only a truce. The real battle, the decisive one, had only now begun; what had gone before were but the preliminaries. Hitherto she had thought only of her grief and humiliation; she was now brought face to face with her sin--the sin of idolatry. She had made unto herself an idol of clay, and placed it on the altar of her heart, and burned incense before it with every breath she drew; the smoke had made a mist before her eyes, but it was dissolving. She looked into the desecrated sanctuary, and struck her breast with humility and self-abasement. Her tears were flowing copiously, but they were not all brine; she was drawing strength from their bitterness. Victory was not for “the days of peace,” but for such an hour as this. She had been trained from childhood in the hope of heaven, in the firm belief that this life was but the transitory passage to the true home; that its sorrows and joys were too evanescent, too unreal to be counted of more importance than the rain and wind that scatter the sunshine of a summer’s day; she had been taught, too, that the bliss of that immortal home is purchased by suffering--a thing to be taken by violence, a crown to be grasped through thorns. Hitherto her adherence to this creed had been entirely theoretical; she accepted it, but in some vague way felt that she, personally, was beyond its action. Her father had suffered; her mother, too, cut off in her happy bloom, had won the crown by a lingering illness and an early death; but she, Franceline, enjoyed, it would seem, some privileged immunity from the stern law. Such had unawares been her reasoning. But now she was undeceived; her hour had come, and she must meet it as a Christian. Now was the time to prove the sincerity of her faith, the strength of her principles; if they failed her, they were no better than stubble and brass that dissolve at the first breath of the furnace.

A duel to the death is always brief: the foes close in mortal conflict; the thrusts come fast and sharp; one or other falls. When Franceline lifted her head from her arms, the expression of the tear-stained face showed which way the battle had gone: the victor stood erect with his foot upon the victim’s neck, unscathed, serene, and pitiless. Love lay bleeding and maimed, but Conscience smiled in triumph. “I will not let thee go until thou hast blessed me,” the wrestler had said, and the angel had blessed her before he fled.

The night was nearly spent when Franceline rose up from her knees, numbed and shivering, although the weather was not cold. She walked rapidly up and down for a few moments to warm herself; there was a spring in her step, a light in her eyes, that told of recovered energy and unshaken purpose; her nerves might tingle, her heart might grieve, but they would neither faint nor quail. She dropped on her knees again for one moment and uttered a prayer, more of thanksgiving this time than supplication, and then lay down and soon fell asleep.

* * * * *

When Franceline came down next morning, after breakfasting in her room as if she had been ailing, there was scarcely any trace in her aspect of the conflict of the night. Eyes do not retain the stains of tears very long at eighteen, and if she was a trifle paler than usual, it was accounted for by the over-exertion which had brought the fainting fit. She expressed a wish to go home as early as was convenient to her hosts, and they consented with reluctance, but without offering any resistance. Lady Anwyll said the child was weary and dull, and that the next time she came to Rydal they should make it livelier for her.

With what a feeling of regaining a haven of rest did Franceline enter the little garden at The Lilies, where her father, warned by the sound of the wheels, hastened out and stood waiting to clasp her!--Angélique graciously letting him have the first kiss, before she claimed her turn.

“We have been like fishes out of water without thee!--have we not, ma bonne?” was Raymond’s joyful exclamation, as he gathered his child to his heart, and then held her from him to look wistfully into the sweet, smiling face.

“Yes, we were dull enough without our singing bird, though I dare say she didn’t miss us much!” was Angélique’s rejoinder. Franceline declared she would go away very soon again to teach them to value her more.

But the singing bird was not the same after this. The spirit that had found utterance in its joyous voice was dead. A lark rises from the clover-field, and pours out its sweet, “harmonious madness” over the earth; swiftly it soars away--away--into fathomless space, and while, spell-bound, we strain after the fading notes, lo! the sportsman’s arrow hisses by, a cry rends the welkin, the songster is struck--he will never sing again.

Perhaps you despise Franceline for allowing the loss of an imaginary possession to put the light out of her life in this way. As if our lives were not made desolate half the time by the loss of what we never had! You will say that self-respect and pride ought to have come to her aid, and enabled her to quench in blood, if needs be, the fire that her conscience pronounced guilty. But is the process so quickly accomplished, think you? Franceline was doing her best; she was concentrating all the energies of her mind and soul in the struggle, but it was not to be done in a day; the very purity of her love constituted its strength. If there had been the smallest element of corruption in it, it would have died quicker; but its fibres were enduring because they were pure.

Yet she was not forgetful of her father and of all that he had hitherto been to her, and she to him; far from it. The effort to conceal her sufferings from him was a great help to her in controlling them, though it often taxed her strength severely. Sometimes, when the feeling of isolation pressed on her almost beyond endurance, when she felt that she must have the solace of his sympathy, cost what it might, she would steal into his study, determined to speak and let the murder out; but the sight of the venerable head bowed over his books, absorbed, and happy in his unconsciousness, would arrest her words and choke them back into silence. The strain was hard, but was it not a mercy that she had as yet only her own burden to bear? What a price would she not have to pay for the momentary relief of leaning it on him! What might not be dreaded from the effect of the revelation on his sensitive pride, and still more sensitive love? And then the inevitable breach between him and his oldest, almost his only friend, Sir Simon! They would leave The Lilies and go forth she knew not where. No; silence indubitably was best. To speak might be to kill her father.

This state of things lasted for a week, and then there was granted an alleviation. Father Henwick had been called to a distance to see his mother, who was dying; he arrived in time to assist her with his filial ministry in the last passage; remained to settle all that followed, and then came back to resume the even tenor of his life at Dullerton.

Father Henwick was one of those men whom you may know for a lifetime, and never find out until some special circumstance reveals them. There was no sign in his outward man of anything remarkable in the inner man. He had not acquired, or at any rate retained, any French polish or grace from his early sojourn at the French seminary. His manners were very homely, and abrupt almost to brusqueness; he was neither tall nor small, but of that height which steers between the two, and so escapes notice; his voice had the unmistakable ring of refinement and early education, yet he seldom associated with his equals, his intercourse being confined chiefly to the poor. These and their children were his familiars at Dullerton. The latter looked on him as their especial property, and took all manner of liberties with him unrebuked--hanging on to his coat-tails, and plunging their audacious little paws into the sacred precincts of his pockets, whence experience had taught them something might turn up to their advantage: penny whistles, Dutch dolls, buns, lollypops, and crackers were continually issuing from those mysterious depths which the small fry sounded behind Father Henwick’s back, and apparently unbeknown to him, while he administered comfort of another description to their elders.

The fact of his having been educated in France, and speaking French like a Frenchman, accounted to the general mind of Dullerton for the eccentric habits and unconventional manners of the Catholic priest, especially for his shyness with his own class, and undue familiarity with those in the humbler ranks. It ought to have established him on the footing of close intimacy at The Lilies; and yet it had not done so. M. de le Bourbonais professed and felt the greatest esteem for him, and made him welcome in his gracious way; but Father Henwick was too shrewd an observer of human nature not to see exactly how far this was meant to go. Franceline’s early instruction had been confided to him, and the remembrance of the pains he had taken with the little catechumen, the fondness with which he had planted and fostered the good seed in her heart, made a claim on Raymond’s gratitude; but it did not remove an intangible barrier between the father in the flesh and the father in the spirit. M. de la Bourbonais was a Catholic; if anybody had dared to impugn by one word the stanchness of his Catholicity, he would have felt it his painful duty to run that person through the body; but, as with so many of his countrymen, his faith ended here; it was altogether theoretical; he was ready at a moment’s notice to fight or die for it; but it did not enter into his views to live for it. For Franceline, however, it was a different thing. Religion was made for women, and women for religion. With that tender reverence for his child’s faith, which in France is so often the last bulwark of the father’s, Raymond had been at considerable pains to hide from Franceline the inconsistency that existed between his own practice and teaching. When the great event was approaching which, in the life of a French child especially, is surrounded by such touching solemnity, he made it his delight to assist Father Henwick in preparing her for it, making her rehearse his instructions between times, or teaching her the catechism himself. Then, to anticipate awkward questions and impossible explanations, he made a point of rising early on Sundays and festivals and going to first Mass before Franceline was out of bed. The habit once contracted, he continued it; so it came about naturally that she took for granted her father did at a different hour what he attached so much importance to her doing. In conversation with Father Henwick she had more than once incidentally let this belief transpire; but he was not the one to undeceive her, or tear away the veil that parental sensitiveness had drawn between itself and those childlike eyes. Neither was he one to broach the subject indiscreetly to M. de la Bourbonais. A day might come for speaking; meanwhile he was content to be silent and to wait.

The day Father Henwick returned to Dullerton after his mother’s funeral, his confessional was surrounded by a greater crowd than usual; his parishioners had a whole week’s arrears of troubles and questions, spiritual and temporal, to settle with him, and it was late when he was able to speak to Franceline. The conference was a long one; by the time it was over the church was nearly empty; only a few figures were still kneeling in the shadows as the young girl, coming out through a side-door, walked through the graves with a quick, light step and proceeded homewards. Tears were falling under her veil, and a sob every now and then showed that the source was still full to overflowing; but her heart was lighter than it had been for many days, her will was strengthened and her purpose fixed. She was bent on being courageous, on walking forward bravely and never looking back. She blessed God for the comfort she had received and the strength that had been imparted to her. Oh! she was glad now that she had resisted the first impulse to speak to her father, and had been silent.

That evening M. de la Bourbonais and Angélique remarked how cheerful she was. She stayed up later than usual reading to Raymond, and commenting spiritedly on what she read; then bade him good-night with almost a rejoicing heart, and slept soundly until long past daybreak.

TO BE CONTINUED.

A VISIT TO IRELAND IN 1874.

“Yes,” said Mr. Bernard at the close of a long discussion, “it _is_ quite marvellous how little Englishmen know about Ireland! And their prejudices are the necessary consequence of such ignorance! I wish they could be _made_ to travel there more!”

No one, perhaps, more heartily agreed with him than I did, taught by my experiences of last autumn, which occurred in the following manner.

I had been sometime absent from that country, a resident in London, when I unexpectedly received a pressing invitation last September, from a friend living in the County Westmeath, to cross St. George’s Channel and pay her my long-promised visit. “Westmeath!” exclaimed my London circle--“Westmeath! You must not dream of it! You’ll be shot, my dear!” said one old lady. “Taken up by the police!” said another. “It’s ridiculous, absurd!” cried a third. “Remember the Peace-Preservation Act and all that implies--murders, Fenians, Ribbonmen, police! Don’t risk your precious life amongst them, or we shall never lay eyes upon you again!” And they all looked as solemn as if they had received an invitation to attend my Requiem, and were meditating what flowers to choose for the wreaths each meant to lay upon my coffin.

Nothing, however, made me hesitate. Go I would, in defiance of all their remonstrances; for, I argued, if my friend, who herself owned land in Westmeath, could live there and see no impropriety in asking me, as a matter of course I should run no risk in accepting her invitation. At length, finding me obstinate, my cousin, Harry West, came forward, and, volunteering to escort me, promised my relatives that he would judge for himself, and if he saw danger would insist on my returning with him. He was a middle-aged man, land agent of an estate in Buckinghamshire--one of the most peaceful counties in the United Kingdom--had never set foot in Ireland, but, having been studying the Irish question--as he thought--and poring over the debates on this same Peace-Preservation Act last session, held even gloomier views concerning Ireland than any of my other numerous acquaintances. In consequence, I looked upon this as the most self-sacrificing act of friendship he could possibly offer. At the same time, I accepted it.

Accordingly, we started by the night mail which leaves Euston Square at twenty-five minutes past eight P.M.

For the first two hours I was haunted, I confess, by the dread of the Scotch limited mail running into us, as I knew it was to leave the same spot only five minutes later; and both trains being express, if any hitch should occur to us between the stations, we might “telescope” each other without any means of preventing it. At least, so it seemed to my ignorant mind. Harry fortunately knew nothing of this; but his thoughts were none the less running upon danger, remembering some terrible accidents to this same Irish mail--notably the one some four years ago, when Lord and Lady Farnham, Judge Berwick and his sister, and others we knew, were reduced to a heap of ashes in a few minutes by an explosion of petroleum which caught fire in a collision. Luckily, Harry fell asleep on quitting Chester, and never noticed the fatal spot, nor awoke until we drew up at five minutes past three A.M. alongside the mail packet _Leinster_ some way out on the pier at Holyhead.

The night was fine, the sea calm, the passengers tired; so every one slept tranquilly until the stewardess, rushing into the ladies’ cabin, announced that we had passed the Kish light some time, and should be “in” in half an hour.

Without conveying any meaning to an English lady close by, the word quickly roused me; for it was full of memories--sad, yet happy. Many and many an evening, when living once on the Wicklow shore, had I sat watching on the far horizon the sparkling light which marked the well-known light-ship nine miles off the Irish coast. Of a summer’s night it shone like a twinkling star, suggestive of cool, refreshing breezes far away upon the calm waters, when perchance a hot breeze hung heavily over the land; but in winter the simple knowledge of its existence, with two men living there on board in a solitude that was broken only once a month, while the winds and waves raged fiercely around the ship, often haunted my dreams and made the stormy nights doubly dreary all along the Wicklow sea-board.

“The Kish light! Has not that a delightful, pleasant home sound?” said a middle-aged woman near, looking at me as if she had divined my thoughts. “And these boats--there are no others to be compared to them! The English have no excuse for not coming to Ireland,” she continued, “with vessels of this kind, that are like true floating bridges, so steady, swift, and large. Who could be ill in them? No one!”

I was puzzled to think who she could be; for though the face was not unfamiliar, I could give it no name. It was that of a lady, certainly, with a bright, intelligent, happy expression; but I saw that her garb was coarse as she bent and rummaged for something in her bag. In a moment, however, the mystery was solved by her lightly throwing a snow-white piece of linen over her head, which, as if by magic, took the form of the cornet of a Sister of S. Vincent de Paul.

“Sister Mary!” I exclaimed, “whom I knew at Constantinople!”

“The same,” she answered. “I thought I knew you!” And shaking hands cordially, we sat down to talk over the past.

She was a native of Ireland--her accent alone betrayed her, though she had not seen her native land for years--and I had known her in the East, after which she had been to Algiers and various other parts. Now, to her great joy, she had been ordered for a while to one of the convents of the order in Dublin--a joy which, though she tried, nun-like, to subdue it, burst forth uncontrollably the nearer we approached the land. Coming with me on deck to watch our entrance into Kingstown Harbor, the first person we met was Harry West, who eyed my companion with amazement; for he had never seen a Sister of Charity in living form before, though he entertained that sort of romantic admiration for them which the most rigid Protestants often accord to this order, though they deny it to every other. Turning round again, my surprise was great at encountering the Bishop--the _Catholic_ Bishop--of ----shire, on his way to the consecration of a church in the far west of Ireland. “Quelle heureuse rencontre!” said his lordship playfully; for we were very old friends. “You see I am attracted also to the _dear_ old country! You smile,” he continued, noticing my amused expression as I introduced Harry to him. “Oh! yes, I know I am a Saxon, _pur sang_. But we English bishops and priests always feel as if we were at home the instant we put our foot on shore in the Green Isle. There’s Kingstown and its church, where I shall go to say Mass the moment we land. Watch, now!” he added, as we drew up alongside the jetty; “you’ll see how civil the men will be the instant they perceive I am a bishop.” As he spoke a porter rushed by, and an impulse seized me to give him a hint to this effect. At once the man knelt down, in all his hurry, “for his lordship’s blessing;” nor did he limit his attentions to this, but insisted on carrying his luggage, not only on shore, but up to the hotel, refusing, as the bishop later told us, to accept a penny for his time and trouble--“the honor of serving his lordship and of getting his blessing was quite reward enough!”

Harry, standing by, could not believe his eyes. It was a phase of life quite unknown to him. But there was no time for meditation; the train was on the pier, the whistle sounded, and we were soon on the road to Dublin.

It was Sunday--the one day of all others which, had I wished to show Harry the difference between the two countries, I should have purposely chosen; the one morning in the week when Dublin is astir from early dawn, and London, on the other hand, sleeps. Residents in the latter, Catholic residents especially, are painfully aware of the difficulty of finding cab or conveyance of any kind to take them to early Mass, and know how, in the finest summer weather, they may wander through the parks without meeting a human being until the afternoon. In England church-going commences, properly speaking, at eleven o’clock only, and then chiefly for the upper classes; the evening services, on the contrary, are largely attended by the servants and trades-people, to meet which custom a vast majority of families dine on cold viands, or even relinquish the meal altogether, substituting tea, with cold meat--or “heavy tea,” as it is generally called--for the ordinary social gathering. In Ireland, as in every Catholic country, the whole system is reversed, as the natural consequence of the church discipline, which enjoins the hearing of Mass on the whole community, high and low; and--contrary to the Protestant system--once this obligation fulfilled, the attendance at evening service is necessarily much smaller. Harry never having even been out of England, except for a “run up the Rhine” some years before, and knowing no Catholic but myself, it never occurred to him to think of these distinctions, nor to suppose that he would find anything in Ireland different from English ways, except that unlimited lawlessness the existence of which he believed made life so impossible there.

He was in the process of recovering from his astonishment at the unfamiliar phraseology of the Westland Row railway porters when our passage to the cab was impeded by a crowd suddenly rushing along the footway, met by an advancing one from the opposite direction, composed of the very poorest class, men, women, and children. Harry’s lively imagination and preconceived ideas led him at once to conclude that it must be a Fenian Hyde Park mob _renforcé_; and the bewildered horror of his countenance at thus finding his worst fears realized the instant he arrived at the Dublin terminus was beyond all description comic.

“Ah! sure, your honor, it’s the seven o’clock Mass that’s just over, and the half-past seven that is going to begin,” explained the cabman, pointing to the large church which stands at Westland Row adjoining the railway station. “Sure, this goes on every half-hour until one o’clock. An’t we all obliged to hear Mass, whatever else we do?” And as we proceeded, I cross-questioned him for the benefit of my cousin. We discovered that this same man had been to church at six o’clock that morning, belonged to a confraternity, approached the sacraments regularly, and performed various acts of charity in sickness and distress amongst his fellow-members, in accordance with the rules of the said society; yet he was but poorly clad, and showed no outward signs of the remarkable intelligence with which he answered me on every point.

As usual on these occasions, the choice of a hotel had been puzzling, the Shelbourne, Morrison’s, Maple’s, each having their distinctive advantages; but at last we decided in favor of the Imperial, a quiet but comfortable establishment facing the General Post-Office in Sackville Street. The streets were alive with people as we crossed Carlisle Bridge, past Smith O’Brien’s white marble statue; and Harry could not help noticing the contrast to England at that early Sunday hour.

Refreshed by our ablutions and clean toilets, we were comfortably seated at breakfast, when sounds of music approaching caused us to rush to the window, and showed us a wagonette full of musicians in green uniform, playing “Garry Owen” and “Patrick’s Day,” followed by half a dozen outside cars full of men and women.

“Fenians!” cried Harry. “I told you I could not be mistaken.”

“Only some trade guild going out for an innocent day’s pleasure in the country; after having been to Mass too, I have no doubt,” observed a gentleman close by, whose accent was unmistakably English. “This is not the only custom that will seem new to you, if you are strangers,” he continued, addressing Harry, and smiling meanwhile. “No two countries ever were more different than England and Ireland. I shall never forget my astonishment on arriving here two years ago. I could not get accustomed to it at all at first. I remember one circumstance particularly which greatly struck me. I arrived on a Sunday morning, as you have done, and taking up the _Freeman’s Journal_--one of the best Dublin papers--on Monday, perceived a short paragraph in a corner, headed, ‘A Bishop Killed,’ so small that it might easily have escaped notice. Nor was there any allusion to it in any other part of the paper; but, reading on, you may conceive my surprise at finding that ‘a bishop’ was no one less than the Bishop of Winchester, _the_ leading bishop in England, whose death by a fall from his horse, you will remember, convulsed that country through its length and breadth. Not one of my acquaintances even--and I had many in Dublin--took the smallest interest in it. They had not followed his career; he had not the slightest influence in Ireland; and few knew his name, or that he was any relation to the great Wilberforce. On the other hand, they were at the time living upon news from the North, where a police officer was on his trial for the murder of a bank manager--a fact which no one in England gave the smallest heed to. I had never heard of it. But that same afternoon the head waiter of the hotel, unable to conceal his excitement, came up and whispered to me, ‘He is condemned, sir! I have got a telegram from Omagh myself this instant.’ I had only been thirty-six hours in Ireland at the time, and, having merely glanced at the newspaper, knew nothing of the trial; so I was electrified and mystified beyond measure, and had no remedy but to sit down and study it. I then discovered it was deeply interesting from its bearing upon all classes, and I could not resist writing to some of the English papers and endeavoring to excite them on the subject. But it would not do! No paper inserted my letter. The similarity of interest is not kept up continuously between the two countries, owing very much, I think, to the little interchange of newspapers between them. I hope you have ordered your _Times_ to be forwarded, sir,” he continued; “for you can’t expect to find one to buy in Dublin. They’ll always give you the _Irish Times_, if you merely ask for the _Times_; they never think about the latter--far less than on the Continent.”

This was a dreadful blow to Harry; for, like all Englishmen, he could not exist without his _Times_ at breakfast, and, though I proposed that he should write for it by that night’s mail, his reviving spirits were sadly checked by the feeling of being in a land which apparently did not believe in _his_ guide and vade-mecum. I felt it would be heartless under such circumstances to leave him alone; yet, I should go to Mass. At length, not liking to let me wander by myself in “such a dangerous city,” he offered to accompany me and give up his own service for the day. A little curiosity, I thought, lurked beneath the kindness; but if so, it was amply rewarded.

Following the porter’s direction of “first to the right and then to the left,” we soon reached the handsome church in Marlborough Street, opposite the National Schools. As at Westland Row, so here an immense crowd was pouring out, but a far larger one pushing in; so that, although long before twelve o’clock, we considered ourselves fortunate in getting any places whatever. Unaware that this was the cathedral, and without any expectations regarding it in consequence, our surprise was great when a long procession moved up the centre, closed by His Eminence Cardinal Cullen, in full pontificals, blessing us as he passed. “Those are the canons who attend on all great occasions, and the young men are the students at Clonliffe Seminary,” whispered a young woman next me in answer to my inquiries, while his eminence was taking his seat on the throne, to Harry’s infinite edification. “And we shall have a sermon from Father Burke after Mass,” she continued--“‘our Prince of Preachers,’ as the cardinal calls him. I came here more than an hour ago, in order to get a place. I promise you it’ll be worth hearing. Oh! there’s no one like him. God bless him!”

And as she said, so it happened. The instant Mass was over, not before, the famous Dominican was seen ascending the pulpit. The centre of the church was filled with benches, and a standing mass in the passage between, while the aisles were so packed by the poorest classes that a pin could not be dropped amongst them. Of that vast multitude not one individual had stirred, and in a few seconds they hung with rapt attention upon every word spoken by the gifted preacher. By their countenances it was easy to see how they followed all his arguments, drank in every sentiment, and--who could wonder at it?--were entranced by his lofty accents. Harry himself was mesmerized. The subject was charity, and the cause an appeal for schools under Sisters of Charity. In all his experience of English preachers--and it was varied--Harry confessed that he had never heard anything like this. Whether for sublime language, beautiful, delicate action, pathetic tone, quotations from Scripture Old and New, or eloquence of appeal, he considered it unrivalled. It lasted an hour, but seemed not five minutes. As we passed out of the door, the plates were filled with piles of those one-pound notes which in Ireland represent the gold. I saw Harry’s hand glide almost unconsciously into his pockets, and beheld a sovereign fall noiselessly amongst the paper.

“One certainly is the better of a fine sermon,” he remarked, as we sauntered back to the hotel; “and I never heard a finer. Altogether, it was a remarkable sight, and the people looked mild enough. But we must not trust to appearances nor be deceived too easily, you know,” he added after a few moments.

I knew nothing of the kind, but thought the best reply would be a proposal to follow the multitude who were now crowding the tram-carriages that start from Nelson’s Pillar to all the suburbs. “In half an hour the streets will be deserted until evening,” said our English acquaintance, whom we again met accidentally, and who recommended a walk on the pier at Kingstown as the least fatiguing trip, volunteering, moreover, to accompany us part of the way, as he was going to visit friends on that line at the “Rock,” as Blackrock is usually called. It was contrary to Harry’s customs on the “Sabbath”; yet, after all the church-going he had seen that morning, he could not deny that air and exercise were most legitimate. Accordingly, entering a crowded train to Westland Row, we soon found ourselves retracing the route we came a few hours before.

Most truly has it been said that no city has more varied or beautiful suburbs than Dublin, and no population which so much enjoy them. Hitherto we had seen few but the lower and middle classes; for the wealthier side of Dublin is south of the Liffey. Moreover, being autumn, the “fashionables” were not in town. They were either travelling on the Continent or scattered in the vicinity. The train, however, was full of smart dresses and bright faces, “wreathed in smiles” and brimming over with merriment. Every one, too, seemed more or less to know every one else, and even our English friend was acquainted with many. “That is Judge Keogh,” he said, as he bowed to a short, square-built man waiting on the platform near us--“Keogh, of the celebrated Galway judgment--a man of first-rate talent, as you may guess from his broad forehead and long head; but he has ruined himself by his violence on that occasion. He is quite ‘broken’ since then, and his spirits gone; for he knows what his fellow-countrymen think of him, and he rarely appears in public except upon the bench. He is probably going to Bray now, where he is spending the summer quietly and unnoticed. And that is Judge Monahan getting into the next carriage with those ladies--he who presided at the Yelverton trial; also of great legal capacity and a most kindly, tender-hearted man, always surrounded by his children and grandchildren. Sir Dominic Corrigan, the eminent physician, is in that corner yonder; his fame has doubtless reached you too,” he continued, addressing Harry, who had been contemplating the two legal celebrities, well known to him through his oracle, the _Times_, which, from their connection with the above-named events, had noticed them on both occasions. “I could point out many others, if I could escort you to Kingstown”; but as we halted at the Blackrock Station a smart carriage was awaiting and carried him off inland, whilst we dashed onwards, the blue waters of Dublin Bay, bounded by the hill of Howth, on our left, and rows of terraces and pretty villas along the shore on our right.

It was a bright afternoon, with a cool, refreshing breeze, and the pier was one gay mass of pedestrians. The whole of Dublin might have been there, so great was the gathering; but we afterwards found that every other side of the capital was equally frequented. Fully an English mile in length, it is of substantial masonry, which on the outer side slopes by large blocks of granite into the sea, while a broad road skirts the inner line next to the harbor, terminated by a lighthouse at the extreme point. Old and young were here congregated; children playing amongst the granite rocks; clerks and shop-girls, mixed with whole families of the professional classes of the capital, perambulating in groups, dressed in their prettiest and brightest, looking the very pictures of enjoyment and friendly intercourse. A man-of-war was anchored in the harbor, which was also full of graceful yachts and alive with boating parties rowing about in all directions. A more healthful, innocent afternoon it were difficult to conceive, and even Harry admitted the general _brio_ which seemed to pervade the air. Nor could he any longer deny the proverbial beauty of the Dublin maidens; and I found him quite ready to linger on a seat and watch the clear complexions and faultless features that passed in such constant succession before us.

After some time that tinge of melancholy common to strangers in a crowd began imperceptibly to steal over us, as we awoke to the recollection that we alone seemed without acquaintances in that throng, and we moved to the station on our way Dublin-ward. Suddenly the one defect to us was repaired; for on the platform we found the Bishop of ----shire going to Dalkey to dine with some old friends. Harry had made rapid strides since the morning; for his face brightened as he recognized our fellow-passenger, and the next moment, undisguisedly admitting that he had spent a charming day, he dwelt with earnestness on the splendid sermon of the morning.

“Oh! yes,” observed a priest who accompanied his lordship, “even a Protestant clergyman told me lately that he considered the only orators in the true sense of the word now in the United Kingdom to be Gladstone, Bright, and Father Burke. But Father Burke has something more than mere oratory,” said he, smiling. “You ought to hear him at his own church in Dominic Street, where he is to preach again to-night. He is more at home there than anywhere else. If you want a real treat in the matter of preaching, I recommend you to go there.”

The remark was dropped at random; but, to my excessive surprise, Harry caught fire, and, finding me willing, he hurried through his dinner in a manner that was perfectly astounding. Then, in feverish haste, we made our way to S. Saviour’s. It was not yet eight o’clock, but still the church was so full that entrance was quite impossible. There was no standing room even, said those at the door, and we were turning away, to Harry’s deep disappointment, when a beggar-woman accosted us with “Won’t your honor give me something for a cup of tea? Sure, I dreamt last night that your honor would give me a pound of tea and her ladyship a pound of sugar. Ye were the very faces I saw in my drame. And may God reward ye!”

“Dreams go by contraries,” replied Harry testily, so vexed at missing the sermon that he was in no humor to be teased.

“Indeed! then, that’s just it,” answered the woman, an arch wink lighting up her wizened features. “It’s just your honor, then, that’s to give me the sugar and her ladyship the tea; so it’ll be good luck for me anyhow! And may God bless you and his holy Mother watch over you!” she continued, as Harry, unable to resist a hearty laugh at the woman’s readiness, drew out his purse and handed her a shilling. “And now, sure, I’ll show ye how to get in to hear his riverence! There’s no one all the world over like Father Burke!--the darlin’. It would be a sin for you to go away without hearing him; so I’ll bring ye round to the sacristy door, and you’ll get in quite comfortable!”

“You must be very much at home here, if you can manage that,” observed Harry, amused at the whole performance, as we meekly followed our tattered guide.

“Oh! then, don’t I spend half my time in the church, your honor! A poor body like me can’t work; but sure an’ can’t I pray? I hear three Masses every Sunday and one every week-day. Sure, it’d be a sin if I didn’t. Oh! I don’t mane it’d be a sin on week-days, but it’d be a mortal sin if I didn’t hear one on Sundays. Sure, every one knows that!” …

This was, however, precisely the kind of knowledge in which Harry was utterly deficient. Mortal sin and venial sin were to him, as to most Englishmen, unknown terms, and he gaped with bewilderment as this ragged woman proceeded to develop to him the difference in the clearest possible language. There is no saying to what length the catechetical instruction might have extended, if we had not reached the sacristy door, where, true enough, the clerk, noticing we were strangers, led us into reserved seats beside the sanctuary, though even there but scant room then remained.

S. Saviour’s, built by the Dominicans within the last fifteen years, is an excellent specimen of Gothic, and, filled to overflowing with a devout, earnest congregation, upon whom brilliant gaseliers now shed a flood of light, no sight could be more impressive. The devotions, so fitting in a Dominican church, commenced with the Rosary, which being over, the black mantle, white robe, and striking head of the favorite preacher rose above the pulpit ledge. His text was again on charity; and if anything were needed to show his powers, the versatility with which he treated the same theme would have been all-sufficient. Harry was lost in admiration, especially as it was extempore, in contradistinction to the Protestant habit of _reading_ sermons; nor could he believe, on looking at his watch, that we had once more been listening for an entire hour. He could have remained there for many more quarters; and, to judge from their countenances, so could the whole congregation, even to the very poorest. Benediction followed, and, as deeply impressed as in the morning, we pursued our way back with the crowd through Dominic Street into Sackville street and to our “home” at the Imperial Hotel.

Next morning Harry West was a different man. I sought, however, for an explanation in vain. No _Times_, it is true, was forthcoming; but then it was Monday, and in his Buckinghamshire retreat this likewise happened on the first day of the week. The Irish papers doubtless irritated him by their paucity of English news--not even “a bishop killed!”--and their volubility on topics quite unfamiliar to him was very vexatious. Still this was not sufficient to account for the change which had come over the spirit of his dream. At length, by a slight hint, I discovered that he thought he had allowed himself to be carried away giddily by the excitement of the previous day, and that he must look at matters more soberly if he really were to be an impartial judge. This was the day of our departure for Westmeath, and he would not be influenced by any one. Our train did not leave until three P.M., and I urged a ramble through the town; but in his present mood he viewed everything askance, and would not even smile at the many witticisms and pleasant answers which I found it possible to draw forth from the guides, porters, and cabmen, almost unconsciously to themselves.

At last we started from the Broadstone station. The afternoon was cloudy, and, as we advanced, the country became dull and uninteresting. The line ran beside a canal--on which there seemed but poor traffic--bordered by broad fields of pasture, so thinly stocked with cattle, however, and so deserted-looking, though in the vicinity of Dublin, that the effect was even depressing upon me. Two ladies in our compartment, certainly, noticed it as something unusual, saying some mysterious words about Ballinasloe fair and how different it would be when that event took place; but they left the carriage immediately, so we had no opportunity of cross-questioning them. In the course of two and a half hours we reached our terminus at Athboy, and the porter, asking if we were the friends expected by Mrs. Connor, handed me a note just brought from her. It explained that one of her horses being laid up and she likewise ailing, she could neither come herself nor send her carriage; she hoped, therefore, that we might be content with the “outside car,” a cart going at the same time for our luggage. Content I certainly was, for I loved the national vehicle; but Harry had never tried one, and in his present temper nothing pleased him. The civility of the coachman even provoked him, and made him whisper something about “blarney” in my ear. However, putting our cloaks and bundles in the “well,” we got up back to back, one on each side and the coachman on the seat in the middle.

Athboy, too, known to Harry from the debates as a focus of Ribbonism, was an unlucky starting-point, and the number of barefooted though well-made, handsome children running about its streets, greatly shocked him.

Whether the coachman really urged on the horse faster than on subsequent occasions, or the turnings were sharper, or that Harry was startled by the difficulty every novice experiences in holding on, I have never since been able to ascertain; but, looking around at him in less than five minutes after we left, his piteous expression convulsed me with laughter. From him, however, it met with no response, and he either could not or would not admire the brilliant sunset sky, which in autumn is often so exquisite in this part of Ireland. With every step the road grew prettier, thickly overshadowed by the large, spreading trees of the beautiful gentlemen’s seats in this district; though here and there a wretched roadside cabin startled Harry from his revery, and the recurrence of a black cross now and again on a wall attracted his attention.

“O sir! that’s only where some one was killed,” answered Dan, the coachman, most innocently, making Harry shudder meanwhile; though in the same breath he added: “This is where Mr. W---- was killed by a fall from his horse, and the last one was put up where poor Biddy Whelan was thrown out of the cart when returning from market at Delvin two years last Michaelmas, by the old horse shying. She died on the spot in a few minutes, and these crosses are painted that way on the wall to remind us to say a prayer for the poor souls. God be merciful to them!”

Harry’s sidelong glances towards me, however, plainly proved that he mistrusted the man’s words and gave them a very different meaning. By degrees--as always does happen on these cars, which amongst their many advantages cannot boast their adaptation for conversation--we grew silent, and no one had spoken for the next ten minutes, when we turned down a long, straight road, rendered still darker by the magnificent elms which stretched across it as in a high arch. Suddenly a feeble shot was heard not far off, and at the same moment Harry jumped off the car, put his hand to his heart, and cried out: “I’m killed! I’m killed!” What words can express my horror? To this day I know not how I too jumped off; I only know that I found myself standing beside him in an agony of mind. Had all my vain boasting, all my obstinacy, resulted in this? Was poor Harry West thus to be sacrificed to my foolhardiness? But the agony though sharp was--must I betray my cousin’s weakness, and confess it?--short. I looked for blood, for fainting, for anything resembling my preconceived notions of a “roadside murder”; when, as quickly as he had jumped off the car, so quickly he now seemed to recover. Ashamed of himself he certainly was, when, taking away his hand, he was obliged to admit “it was all a mistake!” After all, he had never been touched! But the shot had been so unexpected, and he had at the time been brooding so deeply over all the stories he had read of “agrarian outrages,” that he had positively thought he had been hit; and very natural it seemed to him, as no doubt he had been already recognized as a _land agent_ by the Irish population![178] Quite impossible is it to describe my mingled feelings of vexation at the needless fright and of uncontrollable amusement at my English friend’s unexampled folly. Dan, the coachman, underwent the same process, only in an aggravated form; for, while he felt indignant at the implied insult to his countrymen, every feature in his face betrayed the most uncontrollable amusement, mixed with supreme contempt; for he declared that the shot was fired by his own son running in search of hedge-sparrows, as was his wont at that hour, and he pointed him out to us in the next field, which belonged to Mrs. Connor. The gate of her avenue was only a few yards further on.

If I had wished to break the ice on our arrival at Mauverstown, this incident would effectually have accomplished it. But the party consisted of Mrs. Connor; her son, a youth of twenty; Katie, a daughter of twenty-nine, and a handsome, black-eyed, fair-complexioned young lady, Miss Florence O’Grady, come on a visit “all the way from Kerry.” Poor Harry! At a glance I saw that he was in my power, and he gave me such an imploring look that my lips were sealed, in the hope of saving him from the tender mercies of the merry young ones. Not a word did I say of the adventure. It was not to be expected, however, that Dan would show him equal mercy; and young Connor’s roguish expression next morning, when he came in late to breakfast after a visit to the stables, told me that he had heard the story, and, moreover, that it had lost nothing in the telling. Fortunately Harry, who was by nature the kindest and most amiable of men, had thoroughly recovered his ordinary good temper, and joined in the laugh against himself so cordially that the hearts of all were at once gained. Had he by chance done otherwise, his life would have been made miserable; but now one and all declared that they would only punish him by making him acquainted with every hedge and bush in the country, and that he should not leave until he “made restitution” by singing the praises of “ould Ireland.” Charlie Connor would help him in the shooting, the young ladies could take him across country--for “cub-hunting” had begun, though it was too early yet for the regular hunt--while Mrs. Connor mentioned a list of gentlemen’s places far and near which she would show him, that he might tell his English friends it was not quite so barbarous a land as they evidently imagined.

Good-natured though he was, Harry’s face lengthened at a prospect which would involve a longer stay than he had intended; but there was no time for reflection, for Charlie led him off to inspect the farm, the young ladies took him through the pleasure-grounds on his return, and in the afternoon we all drove to a croquet party more than eight miles off.

Henceforward most faithfully did they carry out their resolutions, leaving no morning or afternoon unappropriated to some pleasure. Of all counties in Ireland, Westmeath is remarkable for its many handsome seats, well-timbered parks, and the pleasant social intercourse maintained amongst their owners. At this season, too, every one was at home, and croquet parties, _matinées musicales_, or dinner parties were countless. The shooting filled a certain place in the programme for the gentlemen, no doubt; still, Harry, announcing that he saw more of the country by following the ladies, always managed to accompany us. The gardens and conservatories interested him, he said; and the luxuriance of the shrubs and evergreens always attracted his admiration, and was an invariable excuse for a saunter with the young ladies, though oftener with only one of the party. When we had inspected those in our immediate vicinity, a flower-show at Kells, in the bordering county of Meath (also under the Peace-Preservation Act!), displayed to us in addition the “beauty, gallantry, and fashion” of both neighborhoods. Nothing, perhaps, on these occasions is more striking to a stranger than the sort of family life which seems to exist in Irish counties, every one knowing the other from boyhood intimately--nay, from generation to generation. Above all is it remarkable how every one can tell at once by the family name what part of Ireland a new-comer springs from, or whether Celtic, of “the Pale,” or Cromwellian, with most unerring accuracy. The majority of land-owners in Meath and Westmeath belong to the latter--Cromwellian--class; but this in no way hinders their living on the best terms--unlike what occurs in the “Black North”--with their Catholic neighbors, few and far between though these undoubtedly are.

One of the prettiest and most interesting places in this neighborhood--Ballinlough Castle--belongs to the descendants of the very ancient sept of O’Reilly, although within the present century they have taken the name of Nugent, in consequence of a large property having been left to them by one of that family. As the word implies, it is situated on a lough, or small lake, and the house consists of an old building to which several large rooms have been added within the present century. The northwest front is now completely covered with ivy, thickly intermingled with Virginia creepers, the deep-red leaves of which amidst the dark green of the ivy made a beautiful picture at this autumnal season. Embedded in the foliage, a tablet over the door records the date, 1614--thirty-five years before the invasion of Ireland by Cromwell. In the dining-room are two deep recesses, still called by the family Cromwell’s stables; for tradition relates that in one his horse, in the other his _cow_, rested during the one night he slept in the castle. Early on the following day he left the place to continue his march; but before he had proceeded far, having repented that he had not seized so fine a property, he sent back one of his officers with an order to the O’Reilly, the owner, to surrender at once, giving the officer permission--as was his wont on such occasions--to take and keep the castle for himself. Not so easy was this, however, as they had imagined from their previous day’s experience; for “forewarned is forearmed,” and the instant Cromwell departed the house had been barricaded. His messenger, therefore, seen returning along the avenue, was communicated with now only from behind closed doors. Yet the owner did not refuse in so many words. He merely presented the house-key hanging on the end of a pistol, through an opening over the door, desiring the man to seize it if he dared! Not of a daring character, however, was the officer, and he took a few moments to consider; then, throwing a _would-be_ contemptuous look at the coveted house and land, he turned away, was soon out of sight, and no Cromwell or Cromwellian ever troubled Ballinlough again.

The castle contains, besides some most beautiful carvings from Spain, Aubusson tapestries from France, marble chimney-pieces and paintings from Italy, collected in his travels by Sir James Nugent some fifty years since; also many relics of past times--for example, one very fine Vandyke; a full-length portrait of Lady Thurles, widow of the Duke of Ormond’s son, and afterwards allied to the O’Reillys; another, of the famous Peggy O’Neil, only daughter of Sir Daniel O’Neil, the hero at the battle of the Boyne, who is said to be the one who exclaimed when the day was over: “Change kings, and we will fight the battle over again.” He then accompanied King James to France, but, being subsequently pardoned by William and recalled to take possession of his estates, he died at Calais on his road home. King William, strange to relate, is stated notwithstanding, in a fit of generosity, to have given a large dower to this his only daughter Peggy when she soon afterwards married Hugh O’Reilly, of Ballinlough Castle, and thus became the ancestress of the present family. A satin quilt embroidered by her hands still exists amongst the castle treasures; but most interesting of all the relics is an old chalice dating from that period.

On our road thither we had passed by the ruins of a small chapel carefully preserved, standing in a field still called Cromwell’s field, because there the priest was saying Mass when a scout returned and gave the alarm that the invader and his troops were speedily advancing. In consternation, the congregation fled; but the priest neither could nor would interrupt the Holy Sacrifice, and he had just time to finish it when the enemy’s soldiers appeared in sight. Then, and then only, he took flight across the fields; but his foot slipped as he was crossing the nearest hedge, and the chalice which he held in his hand was bent by his fall. And this same chalice, notched and bent, we now saw carefully preserved by the gracious _Dame-Châtelaine_ of Ballinlough. And here it may be noticed that similar relics and traditions are found all over Ireland. Another family of our acquaintance possesses the diminutive, plain chalice used by a priest of their blood--his name being engraven on the base--for saying Mass behind a hedge when even this was penal both for priest and people. In that particular case, too, this steadfastness to his duty did end fatally; for this same priest was one of those killed at Drogheda. In the grounds of another friend a small, thickly-wooded eminence is shown, with a grotto which served to shelter the priest when officiating, whilst the congregation knelt in groups around, with scouts outside ready to give warning of any unfriendly approach. Elsewhere the “priest’s hill,” enclosed within the demesne walls, bears its name from the sad fate of another of the sacred ministry killed there whilst caught in the act of saying Mass. Two hundred years and more have elapsed since Cromwell’s day, but it is no wonder that the memory of these events is still fresh in the minds of a faithful posterity, or that they should delight to speak of deeds which would honor any people.

Deeply impressed as Harry West was by traditions which until then had been unknown to him, he was further edified by the manner in which the Irish poor flock from far and near on Sunday mornings to the parish church, often walking thither many a long mile in hail, rain, and snow. Sometimes it stands at a central point, on a hill or in the middle of a field, no village even near; but many handsome new churches are in course of erection from contributions gathered chiefly amongst the poor. Some of these collections are wonderful, considering the localities, seven and eight hundred pounds--nay, a thousand--being often the result of the “laying the foundation-stone,” or “opening day,” in a district solely inhabited by farmers and peasants--especially, be it added, if the favorite Father Burke be the preacher. Many and many a time, however, large sums are sent on such occasions back from America from some old parishioner whose fortune has increased since he left the “dear ould country,” but whose heart still clings to it faithfully and tenderly. Most remarkable, too, is the correspondence kept up by emigrants with their families, and the large presents in money “sent home” from sons to fathers, brothers to sisters. It was our friend’s custom--as it is at Ballinlough Castle and many other houses--to let the poorer cottagers come up to the hall-door for doles of bread, or presents of clothes at certain seasons, and at all times for medicine, of which the ladies have knowledge just sufficient for all minor wants. One morning I was watching Mrs. Connor’s distribution, when old Biddy Nolan produced a letter which she begged her honor to read for her. The postmark was Chicago, and it came from her son _Mike_, who had not written since he left home; but now he gave a full account of his adventures, winding up by enclosing his mother, who was bathed in tears of joy, a draft for twenty pounds--his savings during the last few months!

Another characteristic of the County Westmeath consists in its many pretty lakes; and as picnics, fishing and boating excursions, were not forgotten in the Connor hospitalities, these--Lough Derrevarra in particular--could not be omitted. The road to the lakes lay across a bog, moor, and wild, deserted-looking tract, the exact reverse of the neighborhood we were living in. Dismal enough it was returning sometimes in the dark without meeting a human being perhaps for miles, and difficult to me now and then to resist a shudder. Strange, however, is the world, and in nothing did it appear to me stranger than in Harry West’s air of tranquillity and perfect security.

He never dreamt of jumping off of the car (he would have left a pretty neighbor if he had!), nor seemed to remember the existence of the police, Ribbonmen, or Peace-Preservation Act! He heard no one mention them, and he had given up thinking about them.

Truly, a second change had come over the spirit of his dream. And in proportion to his aversion to my Irish visit, so now he was the one that experienced difficulty in ending it. Not days but weeks passed by; yet there he lingered, to the inconceivable surprise of his friends at home. Not to mine, however. The cause was patent to every one on the spot; nor could I wonder when, one morning, throwing off his customary reserve, he asked me to welcome as a cousin his Irish _fiancée_, the beautiful Florence O’Grady. Short had been the wooing, he said, but none the less thorough his conversion. A curious mixture of love and religion those outside-car excursions must certainly have been (these two never would avail themselves of carriage or other vehicle); for not only had she conquered his Saxon, but even his religious prejudices so fully that he voluntarily offered to place himself at once under some able teacher.

Christmas was not long in coming round under these circumstances, nor Harry West in returning as a Catholic to claim his Kerry bride, blessing me for having accepted his escort, whilst I regarded the event as a reward for that act of self-denial on his part. Nor could he, at the joyous wedding breakfast, resist describing the scene of his leap from the car on the evening of his arrival, giving a cheer at the same time for the Peace-Preservation Act, which, to him at least--although only from the terror it had inspired--had been the primary cause of so much happiness.

THE LEGEND OF FRIAR’S ROCK.

The thing long hoped for had come to pass (though, alas! by what a way of grief) and I was visiting my school friend, Anne d’Estaing, in Bretagne. It was six years since we had met, but we had kept up a constant correspondence; and by letter when absent, as well as by word when together, I had become so familiar with her home and her family that I did not go there as a stranger.

They lived in an old castle partly fallen into picturesque decay. In the eastern tower was a small chapel, which they had put into complete repair, and there daily they had service, and Anne found her great delight in decking the altar with flowers, and keeping everything in exquisite order and neatness with her own hands. They had had great sorrows in the six years of our separation. Only Anne and her parents were left of the loving family that once numbered eleven. Two of the sons fell in battle, a contagious disease swept off the three youngest children in one week; Anne’s favorite brother Bertrand became a missionary priest, and went to China under a vow never to return; and her twin sister faded away in consumption.

It had seemed to me, in my Irish home, as if such sorrows could scarcely be borne; but I had never been able to come to my friend with visible, face-to-face, heart-to-heart consolation, for my daily duty was beside a couch where my precious mother lay, suffering from an incurable disease. When her long trouble was at last over my strength and spirits were much shattered, and I longed to accept Anne’s pressing invitation. My father was very unwilling that I should go--he thought it would be so sad and dreary there; but Anne’s letters had revealed to me such a life of peace and prayer and happy service that it seemed to me that Château d’Estaing must be a very haven of rest.

And so I found it. From the moment that I looked on Anne’s pale but placid face; from the time that her mother’s arms held me as those other arms, which I had missed so sorely, used to do; from the first words of fatherly welcome that the old count gave me, I was at home and at peace. And when at sunset I went to Vespers, and the dying light shone in through the lancet windows, along the aisle, and on the richly-decorated altar, and Anne’s voice and fingers led the soothing _Nunc Dimittis_, it was as if the dews of healing fell on my bruised heart.

They made no stranger of me; they knew too well what sorrow was, and how its sting for them had been withdrawn. So together, in the early dawn, we knelt for the holiest service, beginning the day in close intercourse with Him whose “compassions fail not,” and finding that they are indeed “new every morning.” Together we kept the Hours, and did plain household duties, and visited in the village, dispensing medicines, reading to old women, caring for the sick. Two afternoons in the week classes came to the castle for instruction; every Wednesday evening the children came to practise the church music--and, oh! how sweet that music was; and on one afternoon we used to mount our shaggy ponies and ride to a distant hamlet, to teach the children there. Together we took care of the garden, where grew the flowers for the altar and for weddings and funerals; and of the trellis of rare grapes, from which came the sacramental wine. Every pleasant day we went out upon the bay in Anne’s boat, rowed by two strong-armed Breton girls, visiting the rocky coves and inlets, startling the sea-fowl from their nests, and enjoying the sea-breeze and crisp waves.

Where the bay and the sea join is a headland, which commands the finest view for miles around; yet, much as we loved that view, we were oftenest to be found at the base, where we sat idly, while the boat rocked on the water, which lapped with lulling sound against the rock. It was a pretty sight, the face of that cliff, where wild vines crept and delicate wild flowers bloomed, and an aromatic odor rose from the herbs that grew there, and some small, weather-beaten firs found footing in the crevices. On the summit were a few ruins. But the chief natural point of interest, and that from which the Head derived its name, was a curious rock which stood at its base. It was called the Friar. At first I saw little about it which could lay claim to such a name; but the more I watched it, the more the likeness grew upon me, till it became at times quite startling. It was a massive stone, some thirty feet above the water at low tide, like a human figure wrapped in a monk’s robe, always facing the east, and always like one absorbed in prayer and meditation, yet ever keeping guard. One day I asked Anne if there was not some legend about it, and she replied that the country people had one which was very interesting, and partly founded on fact. Of course I begged for it, and she was ready to tell me.

As I write, I seem to see and hear it all again--the rocking boat; the two girls resting on their oars and talking in their broad _patois_; the twittering, darting birds; the butterfly that fluttered round us; the solemn rock casting its long shadow on the water, that glittered in the light of a summer afternoon; Anne’s pale, thin, sparkling face, and earnest voice. I see even the children at play upon the shore, acting out the old Breton superstition of the washerwomen of the night, who wash the shrouds of the dead; and their quaint song mingles with Anne’s story:

“Si chrétien ne vient nous sauver, Jusqu’au jugement faut laver; Au clair de la lune, au bruit du vent, Sous la neige, le linceul blanc;”

and the little bare feet are dancing through the water, and the little brown hands wash and wring the sea-kale for the shrouds, and it all seems as yesterday to me. But it was years and years ago.

“You know that this is a very dangerous coast,” Anne said. “The tide runs fast here, and the rocks are jagged and dangerous. Row out a few strokes, Tiphaine and Alix, and let Mlle. Darcy see what happens.”

A dozen strokes of the oars, and we were in an eddy where it took all the strength of our rowers to keep back the boat; and beyond Friar’s Rock the tide-race was like a whirlpool, one eddy fighting with another.

“We would not dare go further,” Anne said. “No row-boats venture there, and large sailing-vessels need a cautious helmsman. In a storm it is frightful, and the men and the boats are not few that have gone down there. But never a board or a corpse has been found afterwards. There is a swift under-current that sweeps them out to sea. Now, Tiphaine, row back again.”

A white, modern lighthouse stands on a rock on the outer shore; its lantern was visible above the Head. Anne pointed to it.

“That has been there only a century,” she said. “Before it we had another and a better light, we Bretons. Where those ruins are, Joanne dear, there was a small chapel once, and on the plain below the Head was a monastery. It was founded hundreds of years ago, by S. Sampson some say, and others by the Saxon S. Dunstan himself, or, as they call him here, S. Gonstan, the patron of mariners. I do not know how long it had been in existence at the time of the legend, but long enough to have become famous, quite large in numbers, and a blessing to the country round about. The monks were the physicians of the place; they knew every herb, and distilled potions from them, which they administered to the sick, so that they came to the beds of poverty and pain with healing for soul and body both. They taught the children; they settled quarrels and disputes; on Rogation days they led the devout procession from field to field, marking boundary lines, and praying or chanting praises at every wayside cross.

“But that which was their special work was the guarding of this coast. Instead of that staring white lighthouse, there was on the top of the chapel’s square tower a large lantern surmounted by a cross, and all through the night the monks kept it burning, and many a ship was saved and many a life preserved by this means. At Vespers the lamp was lighted, and one monk tended it from then till Nocturns, giving his unoccupied time to prayer for all at sea, both as to their bodily and spiritual wants, and to every one in any need or temptation that night. At Nocturns he was relieved by another monk, who kept watch till Prime. Such for three centuries had been the custom, and never had the light been known to fail.

“It must have been a strange sight--that band of men in gown and cowl engaged in the never-omitted devotions before the altar, then departing silently, leaving one alone to wrestle in prayer for the tried souls that knew little of the hours thus spent for them. O Joanne! what would I not give to have it here again; to know that this was once more the Holy Cape, as it used to be called; and that here no hour went by, however it might be elsewhere, that prayers and praises were not being offered to our dear Lord, who ever intercedes for us!”

Anne was silent for a while, and I felt sure that she was praying. When she roused herself, it was to bid the rowers pull home fast, as it was almost time for Vespers.

“You shall hear the rest, dear,” she said, “when we go up-stairs to-night.” So after Compline, and after Anne and I had played and sung to her parents, as we were wont to do, she came into my room and lighted the fire and the tall candles, and we settled ourselves for a real school-girl talk. Anne showed me a sketch which her brother Bertrand had made, partly from fancy, and partly from the ruins, of the monastery and chapel.

“It looks like a place of peace and holiness, where one might be safe from sin for ever,” I said; but Anne shook her head.

“The old delusion,” she sighed. “As if Satan would not spread sore temptations just in such abodes as these. Don’t you remember how often we have spoken of it--the terrible strength and subtlety of spiritual temptations, simply because they are less obvious than others? The legend of the Friar witnesses to that, whether you take the story as true or false. I am going to give myself a treat to-night, and I am sure it will be one to you. Bertrand wrote out the legend after he made the sketch. Will you care to hear it?”

“Indeed I would,” I answered; and Anne unfolded her precious paper.

“It is only a fragment,” she said, “beginning abruptly where I left off this afternoon; but perhaps it will show you more of what Bertrand is.”

“Anne,” I asked suddenly, “don’t you miss him--more than any of the others?”

“No--yes,” she answered, then paused thoughtfully. “Yes,” she said at last, “I suppose I do. Because, so long as I know he is living somewhere on this earth, it seems possible for my feet to go to him and my eyes to see his face. But, after all, none of them seem far away. We are brought so near in the great Communion, in prayers--_in everything_. In fact, Joanne--does it seem very cold-hearted?--oftenest I do not miss them at all; God so makes up for every loss.”

I was crying by this time, for my heartache was constant; and Anne came and kissed me, and looked distressed. “I ought not to trouble you,” she said. “Did I? I did not mean to hurt you.”

“Oh! no,” I answered. “Only why should I not be as resigned as you?”

“Joanne darling!” she exclaimed, “you are _that_ much more than I am. Can’t you see? You feel--God causes you to feel it--keenly. That is your great cross; and so, when you do not murmur, but say, ‘God’s will be done,’ you are resigned. But that is not the cross he gives to me. Instead, he makes bereavement light to me by choosing to reveal his mercies; and I must take great care to correspond to his grace. Bertrand warned me solemnly of that. And yet this is not all I mean. Perhaps you will understand better when you have heard the legend.”

She sat on the floor close beside me, and held my hand. I thanked God for her, she comforted me so. I was always hungry then for visible love; but by degrees, and partly through her, he taught me to be content with a love that is invisible.

“There was once a monk,” she read, “the youngest of the brotherhood, who was left to keep the watch from midnight until dawn. Through the windows the moonbeams fell, mingling with the light that burned before the tabernacle, and with the gleam of the monk’s small taper. Outside, the sea was smooth like glass, and the stars shone brightly, and a long line of glory stretched from shore to shore. Lost in supplication, the monk lay prostrate before the altar. His thoughts and prayers were wandering far away--to the sick upon their beds of pain, to travellers on land and sea, to mourners sunk in loneliness or in despair, to the poor who had no helper, to little children, to the dying; most of all, to the tempted, wherever they might be.

“He was intensely earnest, and he had a loving temperament and a strong imagination which had found fitting curb and training in the devout practice of meditation. The prayers he used were no mere form to him; he seemed actually to behold those for whom he interceded, actually to feel their needs and sore distress. This was nothing new, but to-night the power of realization came upon him as never before. He saw the dying in their final anguish; he suffered with the suffering, and felt keen temptations to many a deed of evil, and marked Satan’s messengers going up and down upon the earth, seeking to capture souls. Sharper than all else was the conflict he underwent with doubts quite new to him--doubts of the use or power of his prayers. Still he prayed on, in spite of the keen sense of unworthiness to pray. He would not give place for a moment to the suggestion that his prayers were powerless. Again and again he fortified himself with the Name of all-prevailing might. And then it seemed to him, in the dim candle-light and among the pale moonbeams, that the Form upon the crucifix opened its eyes and smiled at him, and that from the lips came a voice saying, ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do.’

“The hour came to tend the light; he knew it. But he knew, too, that the sea without was calm, even like the crystal sea before the Throne, save where the wild currents that never rested were surging white with foam and uttering hoarse murmurs. He knew that the night was marvellously still; that there was no wind, not even enough to stir the lightest leaf. What mariner could err, even though for once the light of the monks grew dim--nay, even if it failed? Could he leave that glorious vision, in order to trim a lantern of which there was no need; or cease his prayers for perishing souls, in order to give needless help to bodies able to protect themselves? These thoughts swept through his mind, and his choice was hastily made to remain before the altar; and even as he made it the vision faded, yet with it, or with his decision, all temptation to doubt vanished too. If devils had been working upon him to cause him to cease from intercession, they left him quite free now to pray--with words, too, of such seeming power as he had never used before.

“Suddenly a sound smote upon his ear--such a sound as might well ring on in one’s brain for a lifetime, and which he was to hear above all earthly clamor until all earthly clamor should cease. It was the cry of strong men who meet death on a sudden, utterly unprepared; the crash of timbers against a rock; the groan of a ship splitting from side to side. He sprang to his feet and rushed to the door. Already the great bell of the monastery was tolling, and dark, cowled figures were hastening to the shore. He looked up. In the cross-topped tower, for the first time in man’s knowledge, the lamp of the monks was out. Just then the prior hurried by him and up the stairs, and soon, but all too late, the beacon blazed again.

“With an awful dread upon his heart he made his way to the coast. The water foamed unbroken by aught save rocks; but pallid lips told the story of the vessel that had sailed thither, manned by a merry crew made merrier by drink, careless of their course, depending on the steadfast light, and sure, because they did not see it, that they had not neared the dangerous whirlpool and hidden rocks. Only one man escaped, and, trembling, told the story. He had been the only sober man on board; and when he warned the captain of their danger, he was laughed and mocked at for his pains, and told that all true mariners would stake the monks’ light against the eyes of any man on earth. It was not the Holy Cape that they were nearing, but Cape Brie, they said, and every one knew it was safe sailing there. With jests and oaths instead of prayers upon their lips, with sin-stained souls, they had gone down into that whirling tide, which had swept them off in its strong under-tow to sea. There were homes that would be desolate and hearts broken; there were bodies drowned, and souls launched into eternity--perhaps for ever lost--for lack of one little light, for the fault of a single half-hour. And still the stars shone brightly, and the long line of glory stretched from shore to shore, and the night was marvellously still; but upon one soul there had fallen a darkness that might be felt--almost the darkness of despair.

“Monk Felix they had called him, and had been wont to say that he did not belie his name, with his sweet young face and happy smile, and his clear voice in the choir. He was Monk Infelix now and while time lasted.

“In the monastery none saw an empty place; for the man whose life had been the only one preserved in that swift death-struggle had begged, awed and repentant, to be received into the number of these brethren vowed to God’s peculiar service. But in village and in choir they missed him who had gone in and out among them since his boyhood, and under their breath the people asked, ‘Where is he?’ No definite answer was given, but a rumor crept about, and at length prevailed, that Monk Felix had despaired of pardon; that day and night the awful death-cry rang in his ears; and day and night he besought God to punish here and spare there, imploring that he might also bear some of the punishment of those souls that had passed away through his neglect. And a year from that night, and in the very hour, the last rites having been given to him as to the dying, the rock now called the Friar’s had opened mysteriously. Around it stood the brotherhood, chanting the funeral psalms very solemnly; and as the words, “De profundis clamavi ad Te, Domine,” were intoned, one left their number, and, with steady step and a face full of awe and yet of thankfulness, entered the cleft, and the rock closed.

“Years came and went, other hands tended the lantern, till in the Revolution the light of the monks and the Order itself were swept away, and the monastery was laid in ruins. But the legend is even now held for truth by simple folk, that in Friar’s Rock the monk lives still, hearing always the eddying flood about him, that beats in upon his memory the story of his sin; and they say that with it mingles ever the cry of men in their last agony, and the cry is his name, thus kept continually before the Judge. There, in perpetual fast and vigil, he watches and prays for the coming of the Lord and the salvation of souls, and the rock that forms his prison has been made to take his shape by the action of those revengeful waves. What he knows of passing events--what added misery and mystery it is that now no longer the holy bell and chant echo above him--none can tell. But there, they say, whatever chance or change shall come to Bretagne, he must live and pray and wait till the Lord comes. Then, when the mountains fall and the rocks are rent, his long penance shall be over, and he shall enter into peace.”

Anne looked at me. “Was it very hard--too hard?” she asked.

“O Anne!” I cried, “it is not true?”

She smiled. “I have more to read,” she said; “more of fact, perhaps.” So she went on.

“There is, in the archives of this domain, an account of a settlement some twenty miles from here, where a horde of outlaws dwell in huts and caves, their hand against every man, and every man’s hand against them. It was as much as one’s life was worth to go among them, unless one was ready to live as they lived, and sin as they sinned. But it is recorded that in the same year in which is also recorded the loss of a Dutch vessel by reason of the failure of the light of the monks--an event never known before, and never again till the Revolution in its great guilt quenched it and shattered the sacred walls--there came to these men a missionary priest, seeking to save their souls. They say he was a man who never smiled, yet his very presence brought comfort. Little children loved him; and poor, down-trodden women learned hope and patience from him; and men consented to have him there, and not to slay him.

“Yet what he underwent was fearful. He lived in a hovel so mean that the storms drove through it, and the floor was soaked with rain or white with frost or snow. No being in that place poorer, more hungry, more destitute of earthly comfort. Yet his crusts he shared with the beggar, his pallet of straw far oftener held the child turned out from shelter, the sick, the dying, than him. There the leper found a home, and tendance, not only of pity but of love--hands that washed, lips that kissed, prayers that upbore him in the final struggle.

“We read of temptations from devils which the saints have undergone; there are those who presume to doubt them. This man wrestled with temptations from his brother men, who seemed like very fiends, and often, often, the anguish of despair came upon him, and he thought he was already lost, and a wild desire almost overwhelmed him to join them in their evil ways. For, by some horrible instinct, they seemed to divine that pain to the body would be slight to him compared to the tortures which they could invent for his soul. They came to his ministrations, and mimicked him when he spoke, and set their ribald songs to sacred tunes. Before his door they parodied the holiest rites. They taught the children to do the same things at their sports.

“And he--it is said that in the pauses of midnight or noontide rout and wild temptation they heard him praying for them, and praying for himself, like one who had bound up his own life in the bundle of their lives, and believed that he would be lost or saved with them. It is said that at times he rushed out among them like S. Michael, and his voice was as a trumpet, and he spoke of the wrath of God; and, again, he would open his door, and his face would be like death, and he would tremble sorely, as he begged them, like some tortured creature, to cease from sin. What they did was to him as if he did it. He was so of them that their temptations were his also, till he often seemed to himself as sunk in sin as any of them.

“Yet, one by one, souls went to God from that fiend-beleaguered place; babes with the cross hardly dry upon their foreheads; children taught to love the God whom once they had only known to curse; some of those sick made for ever well, some of those lepers made for ever clean. The priest set up crosses on their graves, and sacrilegious hands broke them down; but no hands could stop his prayers and praises for the souls that by God’s blessing he had won. He tried to build a little chapel, and they rent it stone from stone; but none could destroy the temple of living stones built up to God out of that mournful spot.

“A Lent came when as never before he strove with and for these people. It was as if an angel spoke to them. An angel? Nay, a very man like themselves, as tempted as any of them, a sinner suffering from his sin; yet a man and a sinner who loved God, believed in God, knew that he would come to judge, yet knew he was mighty to save. That Lent, Satan himself held sway there; new and more vile and awful blasphemies surged through the place; it was his last carnival, and it was a mad one. Men held women back from church if they wished to worship, but followed them there and elsewhere to darker deeds of sacrilege and revelry than even they had known before. Yet in the gray dawn, when sleep overpowered the revellers, a few people crept to that holy hut round which the sinners had danced their dance of defiance and death and sin, and there sought for pardon and blessing, and knelt before the Lord, who shunned not the poor earth-altar where a priest pleaded daily for souls, as for so long he had done, except on the rare occasions when he would be gone for a night and a day, they knew not where, and return with fresh vigor and courage.

“Thursday in Holy Week he kept his watch with the Master in his agony. Round him the storm of evil deeds and words rose high. In the midst of it the rioters thought they saw a vision. It was a moonlight night, and marvellously still; no wind moved the trees, and the water was like glass. But all the silence of earth was broken by hideous shout and song, and all its brightness turned to darkness by such deeds of evil as Christians may not name. Before those creatures steeped in sin, wallowing in it, one stood suddenly, haggard, spent as beneath some great burden, wan as with awful suffering. The moonbeams wrapped him in unearthly light, he seemed of heaven, and yet a sufferer. He did not speak; how could he speak, who had pleaded with them again and again by day, and spent his nights in prayer, for such return as this? He lifted up his eyes, and spread his arms. He looked to them like one upon a cross. ‘The Christ! The Christ!’ they murmured, awestruck. And then, ‘Slay him!’ some one shouted frantically. There came a crash of stones, of wood, of jagged iron, and in the midst a distinct, intense voice, ‘O Lord Jesus, forgive us.’ They had heard the last of the prayers that vexed them.

“On Good Friday morning, as the brotherhood came from Prime, a strange being, more like a beast than a man,, approached them. ‘Come to us,’ he said in a scarcely intelligible dialect--‘come to the _Dol des Fées_: The abbot asked no questions, and made no delay. He bade one of the older monks accompany him, and together they sought the place. Before they reached it, sounds of loud, hoarse wailing were borne to them upon the breeze; and their guide, on hearing them, broke forth into groans like the groans of a beast, and beat his breast, and cried, ‘My father, my father! My sin, my sin!’

“They saw hovels and caves, deserted; among the poorest, one still poorer; about it, men, women, and children wrung their hands or sobbed and tore their hair, or lay despairing on the ground. Entering, four bare walls met their view; then a pallet, where an idiot grinned and pointed. Following his pointing finger, they saw an earth-altar where the light still burned. Before it one lay at rest. Wrapped in his tattered robe; his hands clasped, as though he prayed yet, above the crucifix upon his heart; hands, neck, and face bruised and battered and red with blood; his face was of one at peace. The contest was ended. He who lay there dead lay there a victor, by the grace of God. Around him his people, for whom he gave his life, begged for the very help they had so long refused. And soon, where so long he labored, sowing good seed in tears, the reapers went with shouting, bringing their sheaves with them. That which had been the abode of sinners has become years since the abode of saints.

“Thanks be to God!”

“But it was such a little sin,” I said, as Anne put the paper by.

“How great a sin lost Eden?” she asked gravely. “Besides, we cannot tell what spiritual pride or carelessness, unknown or hidden, may have led to such a fall. But, dear, it was not anything of that sort I wanted to talk about, but the mercy, and how it explains what we were speaking of.”

“The mercy?” I repeated.

“Yes,” she said fervently. “To be punished, and yet the very punishment to contain the power to pray on still--to speak to God--to plead with him for souls, the souls he died for on the cross. What though one were shut for all time in Friar’s Rock, if one trusted that at the end the Vision of God would be his for ever, and till then could and must ask him continually to have mercy on immortal souls? Or who would not live that living death in _Dol des Fées_ to live it in prayer at the altar, and to die a martyr’s death?

“Joanne, my darling, what, after all, are sorrow and death and separation and loneliness to us who can speak to God? In him we are all brought near. His blood makes each of his children dear to those who love him. Day by day to forget self in them, in him; day by day to let grief or pleasure grow less and less in one absorbing prayer that his kingdom come; day by day to lose one’s self in him--_that_ is living, and _that_ is loving. I cannot mourn much for my precious ones that are only absent from my sight, but safe and present with him; my tears are for souls that are _not_ safe, the wide world over; and I cannot miss much what I have never really lost. A thousand times Friar’s Rock speaks to me, and this is what it says:

“‘If thou, Lord, wilt mark iniquities, Lord, who shall stand it?

“‘For with thee there is merciful forgiveness; and by reason of thy law I have waited--_for thee_, O Lord.

“‘From the morning watch even until night, let Israel hope in the Lord.

“‘Because with the Lord there is mercy, and with him plentiful redemption.

“‘And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.’”

It was years ago, as I have said, that Anne d’Estaing told me this legend. Since then, her parents have died, the château has passed into other hands, she is head of a convent in Bretagne, and I--I lie here, the last of my name, a hopeless invalid, with not a penny to call my own. Rich once, and young, and fair, and proud; sad once, and doubting how to bear a lonely future, I know the meaning of Anne’s story now. “I have waited _for thee_, O Lord! And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.”

While I wait for him, I pray. It does not grieve me that I do not hear from Anne. La Mère Angélique is more to me, and nearer to me, than when, in days long past, we spoke face to face. For I _know_ we meet in the sure refuge of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and that, with saints on earth and saints in glory, and the souls beneath the altar, we pray together the same prayer--“Thy kingdom come.”

DUNLUCE CASTLE.

(COUNTY ANTRIM.)

Oh! of the fallen most fallen, yet of the proud Proudest; sole-seated on thy tower-girt rock; Breasting for ever circling ocean’s shock; With blind sea-caves for ever dinned and loud; Now sunset-gilt; now wrapt in vapor-shroud; Till distant ships--so well thy bastions mock Primeval nature’s work in joint and block-- Misdeem _her_ ramparts, round thee bent and bowed, For thine, and on _her_ walls, men say, have hurled The red artillery store designed for thee:-- Thy wars are done! Henceforth perpetually Thou restest, like some judged, impassive world Whose sons, their probatory period past, Have left that planet, void amid the vast.

AUBREY DE VERE.

SPACE.

III.

Bodies have bulk or volume, whereby they are said to occupy a certain place, and to fill it with their dimensions. Hence, to complete our task, we have now to consider space in relation with the volumes and places of bodies. To proceed orderly, we must first determine the proper definition of “place,” and its division; then we shall examine a few questions concerning the relation of each body to its place, and particularly the difficult and interesting one whether bodies can be really bilocated and multilocated.

_Place._--Aristotle, in the fourth book of his _Physics_, defines the place of a body as “the surface by which the body is immediately surrounded and enveloped”--“_Locus est extrema superficies corporis continentis immobilis._” This definition was accepted by nearly all the ancients. The best of their representatives, S. Thomas, says: “_Locus est terminus corporis continentis_”--viz., The place of a body is the surface of the body which contains it; and the Schoolmen very generally define place to be “the concave surface of the surrounding body: _Superficies concava corporis ambientis._” Thus, according to the followers of Aristotle, no body can have place unless it is surrounded by some other body. Immobility was also believed to be necessarily included in the notion of place: _Superficies immobilis._ Cardinal de Lugo says: “the word _place_ seems to be understood as meaning the real surface of a surrounding body, not, however, as simply having its extension all around, but as immovable--that is, as attached to a determinate imaginary space.”[179] We do not see what can be the meaning of this last phrase. For De Lugo holds that “real space” is the equivalent of “place,” and that space, as distinguished from place, is nothing real: _Non est aliquid reale._[180] His imaginary space is, therefore, a mere nothing. How are we, then, to understand that a real surface can be “attached to a determinate imaginary space”? Can a real being be attached to a determinate nothing? Are there many nothings? or nothings possessing distinct determinations? We think that these questions must all be answered in the negative, and that neither Cardinal de Lugo, nor any one else who considers imaginary space as a mere nothing, can account for the immobility thus attributed to place.

The reason why Aristotle’s definition of place came to be generally adopted by the old Schoolmen is very plain. For, in the place occupied by any given body, two things can be considered, viz., the limiting surface, and the dimensive quantity which extends within the limiting surface. Now, as the ancients believed the matter of which bodies are composed to be endowed with continuity, it was natural that they should look upon the dimensive quantity included within the limiting surface as an appurtenance of the matter itself, and that they should consider it, not as an intrinsic constituent of the place occupied, but as a distinct reality through which the body could occupy a certain place. According to this notion of dimensive quantity, the limiting surface was retained as the sole constituent of the place occupied; and the dimensions within the surface being thus excluded from the notion of place, were attached to the matter of the body itself, as a special accident inhering in it.

This manner of conceiving things is still looked upon as unobjectionable by those philosophers who think that the old metaphysics has been carried to such a degree of perfection by the peripatetics as to have nothing or little to learn from the modern positive sciences. But whoever has once realized the fact that the dimensions of bodies are not continuous lines of matter, but intervals, or relations, in space, will agree that such dimensions do not _inhere_ in the matter, but are extrinsic relations between material terms distinctly ubicated. What is called the volume of a body is nothing but the resultant of a system of relations in space. The matter of the body supplies nothing to its constitution except the extrinsic terms of the relations. The foundation of those relations is not to be found in the body, but in space alone, as we have proved in our last article; and the relations themselves do not _inhere_ in the terms, but only _intervene_ between them. Hence the dimensive quantity of the volume is intrinsically connected with the place it occupies, and must enter into the definition of place as its material constituent, as we are going to show.

As to the Aristotelic definition of place, we have the following objections: First, a good definition always consists of two notions, the one generic and determinable, as its material element, the other differential and determinant, as its formal element. Now, Aristotle’s definition of place exhibits at best only the formal or determinant, and omits entirely the material or determinable. It is evident, in fact, that the surface of any given body determines the limits and the figure of something involved in the notion of place. But what is this something? It cannot be a mere nothing; for nothing does not receive limits and figure, as real limits and real figure must be settled upon something real. This something must therefore be either the quantity of the matter, or the quantity of the volume enclosed within the limiting surface. And as we cannot admit that the quantity of the place occupied by a body is the quantity of matter contained in the body (because bodies which have different quantities of matter can occupy equal places), we are bound to conclude that the quantity of the place occupied by a body is the quantity of the volume comprised within the limiting surface. This is the determinable or material constituent of place; for this, and this alone, is determined by the concave surface of the surrounding body. In the same manner as a cubic body contains dimensions within its cubic form, so also a cubic place contains dimensions under its cubic surface; hence the place of a body has volume, the same volume as the body; and therefore it cannot be defined as a mere limiting surface.

Secondly, the definition of a thing should express what every one understands the thing to be. But no one understands the word “place” as meaning the exterior limit of the body which occupies it, therefore the exterior limit of the body is not the true definition of place. The minor of this syllogism is manifest. For we predicate of place many things which cannot be predicated of the exterior limit of the body. We say, for instance, that a place is full, half-full, or empty; that it is capable of so many objects, persons, etc.; and it is plain that these predicates cannot appertain to the exterior limit of the body, but they exclusively belong to the capacity within the limiting boundary. Hence a definition of place which overlooks such a capacity is defective.

Thirdly, to equal quantities of limiting surfaces do not necessarily correspond equal quantities of place. Therefore, the limiting surface is not synonymous with place, and cannot be its definition. The antecedent is well known. Take two cylinders having equal surfaces, but whose bases and altitudes are to one another in different ratios. It is evident by geometry that such cylinders will have different capacities--that is, there will be more occupable or occupied room in the one than in the other. The consequence, too, is plain; for, if the room, or place, can be greater or less while the limiting surface does not become greater or less, it is clear that the place is not the limiting surface.

Fourthly, what Aristotle and his school called “the surface of the surrounding body,” is now admitted to be formed by an assemblage of unextended material points, perfectly isolated; and therefore such a surface does not constitute a continuous material envelope, as it was believed in earlier times. Now, since those isolated points have no dimensions, but are simply terms of the dimensions in space, the so-called “surface” owes its own dimensions to the free intervals between those points, just as the dimensions also of the volume enclosed owe their existence to similar intervals between the same points. Therefore the same terms which mark in space the limit of place, mark also its volume; and thus the volume under the surface belongs to the place itself no less than does the limiting surface.

Fifthly, a body in vacuum would have its absolute place; and yet in vacuum there is no surface of surrounding bodies. Therefore an exterior surrounding body is not needed to constitute place. In fact, the body itself determines its own place by the extreme terms of its own bodily dimensions. This the philosophers of the peripatetic school could not admit, because they thought that the place of the body could not move with the body, but ought to remain “attached to a determinate imaginary space.” But, in so reasoning, they confounded the absolute place with the relative, as will be shown hereafter. Yet they conceded that a body in vacuum would have its place; and, when asked to point out there the surface of a surrounding body, they could not answer, except by abandoning the Aristotelic definition and by resorting to the centre and the poles of the world, thus exchanging the absolute place (_locus_) for the relative (_situs_), without reflecting that they had no right to admit a relative place where, according to their definition, the absolute was wanting.

Sixthly, the true definition of place must be so general as to be applicable to all possible places. But the Aristotelic definition does not apply to all places. Therefore such a definition is not true. The major of our argument needs no proof. The minor is proved thus: There are places not only within surfaces, but also within lines, and on the lines themselves; for, if on the surface of a body we describe a circle or a triangle, it is evident that a place will be marked and determined on that surface. Its limiting boundary, however, will be, not the surface of a surrounding body, but simply the circumference of the circle, or the perimeter of the triangle.

For these reasons we maintain that place cannot properly be defined as “the surface of the surrounding body.” As to the additional limitation, that such a surface should be considered as “immovable”--that is, affixed to a determinate space (imaginary, of course, according to the peripatetic theory, and therefore wholly fictitious)--we need only say that even if it were possible to attach the surface of a body to a determinate space, which is not the case, yet this condition could not be admitted in the definition of place, because the _absolute_ place of a body is invariably the same, wherever it be, in absolute space, and does not change except as compared with other places. Absolute place, just as absolute ubication, has but one manner of existing in absolute space; for all places, considered in themselves, are extrinsic terminations of the _same_ infinite virtuality, and are all _equally_ in the centre, so to say, of its infinite expanse, whatever be their mutual relations.

_True Notion of Place._--What is, then, the true definition of place? Webster describes it in his _Dictionary_ as “a particular portion of space of indefinite extent, occupied, or intended to be occupied, by any person or thing, and considered as the space where a person or thing does or may rest, or has rested, as distinct from space in general.” This is in fact the meaning of the word “place” in the popular language. The philosophical definition of place, as gathered from this description, would be: “Place is a particular portion of space.” This is the very definition which all philosophers, before Aristotle, admitted, and which Aristotle endeavored to refute, on the ground that, when a body moves through space, its place remains intrinsically the same.

We have shown in our last article that space considered in itself has no parts; but those who admit portion of space, consider space as a reality dependent on the dimensions of the bodies by which it is occupied--that is, they call “space” those resultant relative intervals which have their foundation in space itself. If we were to take the word “space” in this popular sense, we might well say that “place is a portion of space,” because any given place is but one out of the many places determined by the presence of bodies in the whole world. On the other hand, since space, properly so called, is itself _virtually_ extended--that is, equivalent in its absolute simplicity to infinite extension, and since _virtual_ extension suggests the thought of _virtual_ parts, we might admit that there are _virtual_ portions of space in this sense, that space as the foundation of all local relations corresponds by its virtuality to all the dimensions and intervals mensurable between all terms ubicated, and receives from them distinct extrinsic denominations. Thus, space as occupied by the sun is virtually distinguished from itself as occupied by the moon, not because it has a distinct entity in the sun and another in the moon, but because it has two distinct extrinsic terminations. We might therefore admit that place is “a virtual portion of space determined by material limits”; and we might even omit the epithet “virtual” if it were understood that the word “space” was taken as synonymous with the dimensions of bodies, as is taken by those who deny the reality of vacuum. But, though this manner of speaking is and will always remain popular, owing to its agreement with our imagination and to its conciseness, which makes it preferable for our ordinary intercourse, we think that the place of a body, in proper philosophical language, should be defined as “a system of correlations between the terms which mark out the limits of the body in space”; and therefore place in general, whether really occupied or not, should be defined as “a system of correlations between ubications marking out the limits of dimensive quantity.”

This definition expresses all that we imply and that Webster includes in the description of place; but it changes the somewhat objectionable phrase “portion of space” into what people mean by it, viz., “a system of correlations between distinct ubications,” thereby showing that it is not the absolute entity of fundamental space, but only the resultant relations in space, that enter into the intrinsic constitution of place.

By “a system of correlations” we mean the adequate result of the combination of all the intervals from every single term to every other within the limits assumed, in every direction. Such a result will therefore represent either a volume, or a surface, or a line, according as the terms considered within the given limits are differently disposed in space. Thus a spherical place results from the mutual relations intervening between all the terms of its geometric surface; and therefore it implies all the intervals which can be measured, and all the lines that can be traced, in all directions, from any of those terms to any other within the given limits. In like manner, a triangular place results from the mutual relations intervening between all the terms forming its perimeter; and therefore it implies all the intervals and lines of movement which can be traced, in all directions, from any of those terms to any other within the given limits.

In the definition we have given, the material or determinable element is the system of correlations or intervals which are mensurable within the limiting terms; the formal or determinant is the disposition of the limiting terms themselves--that is, the definite boundary which determines the extent of those intervals, and gives to the place a definite shape.

Thus it appears that, although there is no place without space, nevertheless the entity of space does not enter into the constitution of place as an intrinsic constituent, but only as the extrinsic foundation. This is what we have endeavored to express as clearly as we could in our definition of place. As, however, in our ordinary intercourse we cannot well speak of place with such nice circumlocutions as are needed in philosophical treatises, we do not much object to the common notion that place is “space intercepted by a limiting boundary,” and we ourselves have no difficulty in using this expression, out of philosophy, owing to the loose meaning attached to the word “space” in common language; for all distances and intervals in space are called “spaces,” even in mechanics; and thus, when we hear of “space intercepted,” we know that the speakers do not refer to the absolute entity of space (which they have been taught to identify with nothingness), but merely to the intervals resulting from the extrinsic terminations of that entity.

Most of the Schoolmen (viz., all those who considered void space as imaginary and unreal) agreed, as we have intimated, with Aristotle, that the notion of place involves nothing but the surface of a surrounding body, and contended that within the limits of that surface there was no such chimerical thing as mere space, but only the quantity of the body itself. Suarez, in his _Metaphysics_ (Disp. 51, sect. 1, n. 9), mentions the opinion of those who maintained that place is the space occupied by a body, and argues against it on the ground that no one can say what kind of being such a space is. Some have affirmed, says he, that such a space is a body indivisible and immaterial--which leads to an open contradiction--though they perhaps considered this body to be “indivisible,” not because it had no parts, but because its parts could not be separated. They also called it “immaterial,” on account of its permeability to all bodies. But this opinion, he justly adds, is against reason and even against faith; for, on the one hand this space should be eternal, uncreated, and infinite, whilst on the other no body can be admitted to have these attributes.

Others, Suarez continues, thought that the space which can be occupied by bodies is mere quantity extending all around without end. This opinion was refuted by Aristotle, and is inadmissible, because there cannot be quantitative dimensions without a substance, and because the bodies which would occupy such a space have already their own dimensions, which cannot be compenetrated with the dimensions of space. And moreover, such a quantity would be either eternal and uncreated--which is against faith--or created with all other things, and therefore created in space; which shows that space itself is not such a quantity.

Others finally opine, with greater probability, says he, that space, as distinct from the bodies that fill it, is nothing real and positive, but a mere emptiness, implying both the absence of bodies and the aptitude to be filled by bodies. Of this opinion Toletus says (4 _Phys._ q. 3) that it is probable, and that it cannot be demonstratively refuted. Yet, adds Suarez, it can be shown that such a space, as distinct from bodies, is in fact nothing; for it is neither a substance nor an accident, nor anything created or temporal, but eternal.

Such is the substance of the reasons adduced by Suarez to prove that the space occupied by bodies is nothing real. Had he, like Lessius, turned his thought to the extrinsic terminability of God’s immensity, he would have easily discovered that, to establish the reality of space, none of those old hypotheses which he refuted were needed. As we have already settled this point in a preceding article, we will not return to it. It may, however, be remarked that what Suarez says regarding the incompenetrability of the quantity of space with the quantity of the body is based entirely on the assumption that bodies have their own volume independently of space--an assumption which, though plausibly maintained by the ancients, can by no means be reconciled with the true notion of the volume of bodies as now established by physical science and accepted by all philosophers. As all dimensive quantity arises from relations in space, so it is owing to space itself that bodies have volume; and therefore there are not, as the ancients imagined, two volumes compenetrated, the one of space, and the other of matter; but there is one volume alone determined by the material terms related through space. And thus there is no ground left for the compenetration of two quantities.

S. Thomas also, in his Commentary to the _Physics_ of Aristotle (4 _Phys._ lect. 6), and in the opuscule, _De Natura Loci_, argues that there is no space within the limiting surface of the body, for two reasons. The first is, that such a quantity of space would be an accident without a subject: _Sequitur quod esset aliquod accidens absque subjecto; quod est impossibile_. The second is, that if there is space within the surface of the body, as all the parts of the body are in the volume of the same, so will the places of all the parts be in the place of the whole; and consequently, there will be as many places compenetrated with one another as there can be divisions in the dimensions of the body. But these dimensions admit of an infinite division. Therefore, infinite places will be compenetrated together: _Sequitur quod sint infinita loca simul; quod est impossibile_.

These two reasons could not but have considerable weight in a time when material continuity formed the base of the physical theory of quantity, and when space without matter was considered a chimera; but in our time the case is quite different. To the first reason we answer, that the space within the surface of the body will not be “an accident without a subject.” In fact, such a space can be understood in two manners, viz., either as the foundation of the intervals, or as the intervals themselves; and in neither case will there be an accident without a subject. For, the space which is the foundation of the intervals is no accident; it is the virtuality of God’s immensity, as we have proved; and, therefore, there can be no question about its subject. Moreover, such a space is indeed within the limits of the body, but it is also without, as it is not limited by them. These limits, as compared with space, are extrinsic terms; and therefore they do not belong to space, but to the body alone. Lastly, although without space there can be no place, yet space is neither the material nor the formal constituent of place, but only the extrinsic ground of local relations, just as eternity is not an intrinsic constituent of time, but only the extrinsic ground of successive duration. Whence it is manifest that the entity of space is not the dimensive quantity of the body, but the eminent reason of its dimensions.

If, on the other hand, space is understood in the popular sense as meaning the accidental intervals between the limits of the body, then it is evident that such intervals will not be without their proportionate subject. Relations have a subject of predication, not of inhesion; for relation is a thing whose entity, according to the scholastic definition, consists entirely of a mere connotation; _cuius totum esse est ad aliud se habere_. Hence all relation is merely _ad aliud_, and cannot be _in alio_. Accordingly, the intervals between the terms of the body are _between_ them, but do not inhere in them; and they have a sufficient subject--the only subject, indeed, which they require, for the very reason that they exist _between_ real terms, with a real foundation. Thus the first reason objected is radically solved.

To the second reason we answer, that it is impossible to conceive an infinite multitude of places in one total place, unless we admit the existence of an infinite multitude of limiting terms--that is, unless we assume that matter is mathematically continuous. But, since material continuity is now justly considered as a baseless and irrational hypothesis, as our readers know, the compenetration of _infinite_ places with one another becomes an impossibility.

Yet, as all bodies contain a very great number of material terms, it may be asked: Would the existence of space within the limits of place prove the compenetration of a _finite_ number of places? Would it prove, for instance, that the places of different bodies existing in a given room compenetrate the place of the room? The answer depends wholly on the meaning attached to the word “space.” If we take “space” as the foundation of the relations between the terms of a place, then different places will certainly be compenetrated, inasmuch as the entity of space is the same, though differently terminated, in every one of them. But, if we take “space” as meaning the system of relative intervals between the terms of a body, then the place of a room will not be compenetrated with the places of the bodies it contains; because neither the intervals nor the terms of one place are the intervals or the terms of another, nor have they anything common except the absolute entity of their extrinsic foundation. Now, since place is not space properly, but only a system of correlations between ubications marking out the limits of the body in space, it follows that no compenetration of one place with another is possible so long as the terms of the one do not coincide with the terms of the other.

S. Thomas remarks also, in the same place, that if a recipient full of water contains space, then, besides the dimensions of the water, there would be in the same recipient the dimensions of space, and these latter would therefore be compenetrated with the former. _Quum aqua est in vase, præter dimensiones aquæ sunt ibi aliæ dimensiones spatii penetrantes dimensiones aquæ._ This would certainly be the case were it true that the dimensions of the body are materially continuous, as S. Thomas with all his contemporaries believed. But the truth is that the dimensions of bodies do not consist in the extension of continuous matter, but in the extension of the intervals between the limits of the bodies, which is greater or less according as it requires a greater or less extension of movement to be measured. The volume of a body--that is, the quantity of the place it occupies--is exactly the same whether it be full or empty, provided the limiting terms remain the same and in the same relation to one another. It is not the matter, therefore, that constitutes its dimensions. And then there are, and can be, no distinct dimensions of matter compenetrating the dimensions of place. But enough about the nature of place. Let us proceed to its division.

_Division of Place._--Place in general may be divided into _real_ and _imaginary_, according as its limiting terms exist in nature or are only imagined by us. This division is so clear that it needs no explanation. It might be asked whether there are not also _ideal_ places. We answer, that strictly ideal places there are none; for the ideal is the object of our intellect, whilst place is the object of our senses and imagination. Hence the so-called “ideal” places are nothing but “imaginary” places.

Place, whether real or imaginary, is again divided by geometers into _linear_, _superficial_, and _cubic_ or solid, according to the nature of their limiting boundaries. A place limited by surfaces is the place of a volume or geometric solid. A place limited by lines is the place of a surface. A place limited by mere points is the place of a line.

The ancients, when defining place as “the surface of the surrounding body,” connected the notion of place with the quantity of volume, without taking notice of the other two kinds just mentioned. This, too, was a necessary consequence of their assumption of continuous matter. For, if matter is intrinsically extended in length, breadth, and depth, all places must be extended in a similar manner. But it is a known fact that the word “place” (_locus_) is used now, and was used in all times, in connection not only with geometric volumes, but also with geometric surfaces and with geometric lines; and as the geometric quantities have their counterpart in the physical order, it is manifest that such geometric places cannot be excluded from the division of place. Can we not on any surface draw a line circumscribing a circle or any other close figure? And can we not point out the “place” where the circle or figure is marked out? There are therefore places of which the boundaries are lines, not surfaces. And again, can we not fix two points on a given line, and consider the interval between them as one of the many places which can be designated along the line? The word “place” in its generality applies to any kind of dimensive quantity in space. Those who pretend to limit it to “the surface of a volume” should tell us what other term is to be used when we have to mention the place of a plane figure on a wall, or of a linear length on the intersection of two surfaces. It will be said that the ancients in this case used the word _Ubi_. But we reply that _Ubi_ and _Locus_ were taken by them as synonymous. The quantities bounded by lines, or terminated by points, were therefore equivalently admitted to have their own “places”; which proves that the definition of place which philosophers left us in their books, did not express all that they themselves meant when using the word, and therefore it was not practically insisted upon. With us the case is different. The _Ubi_, as defined by us, designates a single point in space, and is distinct from _locus_; hence we do not admit that our _ubi_ is a place; for there is no place within a point. But the philosophers of the old school could not limit the real ubication of matter to a mere point, owing to their opinion that matter was continuous.

Thus we have three supreme kinds of place--the linear, with one dimension, length; the superficial, with two dimensions, length and breadth; the cubic or solid, with three dimensions, length, breadth, and depth. The true characteristic difference between these kinds of place is drawn from their _formal_ constituents, viz., from their boundaries. The cubic place is a place terminated by surfaces. The superficial place is a place terminated by lines. The linear place is a place terminated by two points.

These supreme species admit of further subdivision, owing to the different geometrical figures affected by their respective boundaries. Thus the place of a body may be tetrahedric, hexahedric, spherical, etc., and the place of a surface may be triangular, polygonal, circular, etc.

Place is also divided into _absolute_ and _relative_. It is called absolute when it is considered _secundum se_--that is, as to its entity, or as consisting of a system of correlation within a definite limit. It is called relative when it is considered in connection with some other place or places, as more or less distant from them, or as having with respect to them this or that position or situation.

The absolute place of a body, whatever our imagination may suggest to the contrary, is always the same as long as the body remains under the same dimensions, be it at rest or in movement. In fact, whenever we speak of a change of place, we mean that the place of a body acquires a new relation to the place of some other body--that is, we mean the mere change of its relativity. When the world was believed to be a sphere of continuous matter with no real space outside of it, the absolute place of a body could be considered as corresponding to one or another definite portion of that sphere, and therefore as changeable; but since the reality of infinite space independent of matter has been established, it is manifest that absolute place has no relation to the limits of the material world, but only to the infinity of space, with respect to which bodies cannot change their place any more than a point can change its ubication. Hence, when a body moves, its relative place, or, better, the relativity of its place to the places of other bodies, is changed; but its absolute place remains the same. Thus the earth, in describing its orbit, takes different positions round the sun, and, while preserving its absolute place unchanged, it undergoes a continuous change of its relativity.

Lastly, place is also divided into _intrinsic_ and _extrinsic_. Omitting the old explanations of this division, we may briefly state that the intrinsic place is that which is determined by the dimensions and boundary of the body, and therefore is coextensive with it. The extrinsic place of a body is a place greater than the body which is placed in it. Thus Rome is the extrinsic place of the Vatican Palace, and the Vatican Palace is the extrinsic place of the Pope; because the Vatican Palace is in Rome, and the Pope in the Vatican Palace.

_Occupation of Place._--We have now to answer a few questions about the occupation of place. The first is, whether bodies fill the space they occupy. The second is, whether the same place can be simultaneously occupied by two bodies. The third is, whether the place limits and conserves the body it contains. The fourth is, whether the same body can be miraculously in two places or more at the same time.

That bodies fill place is a very common notion, because people do not make any marked distinction between filling and occupying. But to fill and to occupy are not synonymous. To fill a place is to leave no vacuum within it; and this is evidently impossible without continuous matter. As we have proved that continuous matter does not exist, we cannot admit that any part of place, however small, can be _filled_. Place, however, is _occupied_. In fact, the material elements of which bodies are ultimately composed, by their presence in space occupy distinct points in space--that is, take possession of them, maintain themselves in them, and from them direct their action all around, by which they manifest to us their existence, ubication, and other properties. This is the meaning of _occupation_. Hence the formal reason of occupation is the presence of material elements in space. Therefore, the place of a body is occupied by the presence in it of discrete material points, none of which fill space--that is to say, the place is occupied, not filled. The common expression, “a place filled with matter,” may, however, be admitted in this sense, that when the place is occupied by a body, it does not naturally allow the intrusion of another body. This amounts to saying, not that the place is really filled, but that the resistance offered by the body to the intrusion of another body prevents its passage as effectually as if there were left no occupable room. So much for the first question.

The second question may be answered thus: Since space is not filled by the occupying bodies, the reason why bodies exclude one another from their respective places must be traced not to a want of room in them, but only to their mutual opposite actions. These actions God can neutralize and overcome by an action of His own; and if this be done, nothing will remain that can prevent the compenetration of two bodies and of their respective places. It is therefore possible, at least supernaturally, for two bodies to occupy the same place. Nevertheless, we must bear in mind that, as the elements of the one body are not the elements of the other, so the ubications of the first set of elements are not the ubications of the second, and consequently the correlations of the first set are not identically the correlations of the second. Hence, if one body penetrates into the place of another body, their places will be intertwined, but distinct from each other.

The third question must be answered in the negative, notwithstanding the contrary opinion of all the Peripatetics. The place does not limit and conserve the body by which it is occupied; it is the body itself that limits and conserves its own place. For what is it that gives to a place its formal determination, and its specific and numeric distinction from all other places, but its extreme boundary? Now, this boundary is marked out by the very elements which constitute the limits of the body. It is, therefore, the body itself that by its own limits defines the limits of its own place, and constitutes the place formally such or such. There is the same connection between a body and its place as between movement and its duration. There is no movement without time, nor time without movement; but movement does not result from time, for it is time itself that results from movement. Hence, the duration of the movement is limited by the movement itself. In like manner, there is no body without place, and no place without a body; but the body does not result from the place, for it is the place itself that results from the presence of the body in space. Hence, the place of the body is formally determined by the body itself. Therefore, it is the body that limits and conserves its place, not the place that limits and conserves the body.

This conclusion is confirmed by the manner in which our knowledge of place is acquired. Our perception of the place of a body is caused, not by the place, but by the body, which acts upon our senses from different points of its surface, and depicts in our organs the figure of its limits. This figure, therefore, is the figure of the place only inasmuch as it is the figure of the body; or, in other terms, it is the body itself that by its limits determines the limits of its place.

From this it follows that, when a body is said to be in a place _circumscriptively_, we ought to interpret the phrase, not in the sense that the body is circumscribed by its place, as Aristotle and his followers believed, but in this sense, that the body circumscribes its place by its own limits. And for the same reason, those beings which do not exist _circumscriptively_ in place (and which are said to be in place only _definitively_, as is the case with created spirits) are substances which do not circumscribe any place, because they have no material terms by which to mark dimensions in space.

The fourth and last question is a very difficult one. A great number of eminent authors maintain with S. Thomas that real bilocation is intrinsically impossible; others, on the contrary, hold, with Suarez and Bellarmine, that it is possible. Without pretending to decide the question, we will simply offer to our reader a few remarks on the arguments adduced against the possibility of real bilocation.

The strongest of those arguments is, in our opinion, the following. The real bilocation of a body requires the real bilocation of all its parts, and therefore is impossible unless each primitive element of the body can have two distinct, real ubications at the same time the one natural and the other supernatural. But it is impossible for a simple and primitive element to have two distinct, real ubications at the same time, for two distinct, real ubications presuppose two distinct, real terminations of the virtuality of God’s immensity, and two distinct, real terminations are intrinsically impossible without two distinct, real terms. It is therefore evident that one point of matter cannot mark out two points in space, and that real bilocation is impossible.

To evade this argument, it might be said that it is not evident, after all, that the same real term cannot correspond to two terminations. For to duplicate the ubication of an element of matter means to cause the same element, which is _here_ present to God, to be _there_ also present to God. Now this requires only the correspondence of the material point to two distinct virtualities of divine immensity. Is this a contradiction? The correspondence to one virtuality is certainly not the negation of the correspondence to another; hence it is not necessary to concede that there is a contradiction between the two. It may be added that the supernatural possibility of bilocation seems to be established by many facts we read in ecclesiastical history and the lives of saints, as also by the dogma of the Real Presence of Our Lord’s Body in so many different places in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Lastly, although real bilocation is open to many objections on account of its supernatural character, yet these objections can be sufficiently answered, as may be seen in Suarez, in part. 3, disp. 48, sec. 4.

These reasons may have a certain degree of probability; nevertheless, before admitting that a point of matter can mark two points in space at the same time, it is necessary to ascertain whether a single real term can terminate two virtualities of God’s immensity. This is a thing which can scarcely be conceived; for two distinct ubications result from two distinct terminations; and it is quite evident, as we have already intimated, that there cannot be two distinct terminations if there be not two distinct terms. For the virtualities of divine immensity are not distinct from one another in their entity, but only by extrinsic denomination, inasmuch as they are distinctly terminated by distinct extrinsic terms. Therefore, a single extrinsic term cannot correspond to two distinct virtualities of divine immensity; whence it follows that a single material point cannot have two distinct ubications.

As to the facts of ecclesiastical history above alluded to, it might be answered that their nature is not sufficiently known to base an argument upon them. Did any saints ever _really_ exist in two places? For aught we know, they may have existed really in one place, and only phenomenically in another. Angels occupy no place, and have no bodies; and yet they appeared in place, and showed themselves in bodily forms, which need not have been more than phenomenal. Disembodied souls have sometimes appeared with phenomenal bodies. Why should we be bound to admit that when saints showed themselves in two places, their body was not phenomenal in one and real only in the other?

The fact of the Real Presence of Christ’s body in the Blessed Sacrament, though much insisted upon by some authors, seems to have no bearing on the present question. For, our Lord’s body in the Eucharist has no immediate connection with place, but is simply denominated by the place of the sacramental species, as S. Thomas proves; for it is there _ad modum substantiæ_, as the holy doctor incessantly repeats, and not _ad modum corporis locati_.[181] Hence, S. Thomas himself, notwithstanding the real presence of Christ’s body on our altars, denies without fear the possibility of real bilocation properly so called.

Though not all the arguments brought against real bilocation are equally conclusive, some of them are very strong, and seem unanswerable. Suarez, who tried to answer them, did not directly solve them, but only showed that they would prove too much if they were applied to the mystery of the Real Presence. The inference is true; but S. Thomas and his followers would answer that their arguments do not apply to the Eucharistic mystery.

One of those arguments is the following: If a man were simultaneously in two places, say, in Rome and in London, his quantity would be separated from itself; for it would be really distant from itself, and relatively opposed to itself. But this is impossible. For how can there be real opposition without two real terms?

Some might answer, that a man bilocated is one term _substantially_, but equivalent to two _locally_, and that it is not his substance nor his quantity that is distant from itself, but only one of his locations as compared with the other. But we do not think that this answer is satisfactory. For, although distance requires only two _local_ terms, we do not see how there can be _local_ terms without two distinct beings. One and the same being cannot be actually in two places without having two contrary modes: and this is impossible; for two contraries cannot coexist in the same subject, as S. Thomas observes.[182]

Another of those arguments is based on the nature of quantity. One and the same quantity cannot occupy two distinct places. For quantity is the formal cause of the occupation of place, and no formal cause can have two adequate formal effects. Hence, as one body has but one quantity, so it can occupy but one place.

This argument cannot be evaded by saying that the quantity which is the formal cause of occupation is not the quantity of the mass, but the quantity of the volume. In fact, the duplication of the volume would duplicate the place; but the volume cannot be duplicated unless each material term at the surface of the body can acquire two ubications. Now, this is impossible, as a single term cannot correspond to two extrinsic terminations of divine immensity, as already remarked. Hence, the quantity of volume cannot be duplicated in distinct places without duplicating also the mass of the body--that is, there cannot be two places without two bodies.

A third argument is as follows: If a body were bilocated, it would be circumscribed and not circumscribed. Circumscribed, as is admitted, because its dimensions would coextend with its place; not circumscribed, because it would also exist entirely outside of its place.

This argument, in our opinion, is not valid; because it is not the place that circumscribes the body, but the body that circumscribes its own place. Hence, if a body were bilocated, it would circumscribe two places, and would be within both alike. It will be said that this, too, is impossible. We incline very strongly to the same opinion, but not on the strength of the present argument.

A fourth argument is, that if a thing can be bilocated, there is no reason why it could not be trilocated and multilocated. But, if so, then one man could be so replicated as to form by himself alone two battalions fighting together; and consequently such a man might in one battalion be victorious, and in the other cut to pieces; in one place suffer intense cold, and in another excessive heat; in one pray, and in another swear. The absurdity of these conclusions shows the absurdity of the assumption from which they follow.

This argument is by no means formidable. Bilocation and multilocation are a duplication and multiplication of the place, not of the substance. Now, the principle of operation in man is his substance, whilst his place is only a condition of the existence and of the movements of his body. Accordingly, those passions of heat and cold, and such like, which depend on local movement, can be multiplied and varied with the multiplication of the places, but the actions which proceed from the intrinsic faculties of man can not be thus varied and multiplied. Hence, from the multilocation of a man, it would not follow that he, as existing in one place, could slay himself as existing in another place, nor that he could pray in one and swear in another. After all, bilocation and multilocation would, by the hypothesis, be the effect of supernatural intervention, and, as such, they would be governed by divine wisdom. Hence it is unreasonable to assume the possibility of such ludicrous contingencies as are mentioned in the argument; for God does not lend his supernatural assistance to foster what is incongruous or absurd.

To conclude. It seems to us that those among the preceding arguments which have a decided weight against the possibility of real bilocation, are all radically contained in this, that one and the same element of matter cannot have at the same time two modes of being, of which the one entails the exclusion of the other. Now, the mode of being by which an element is constituted in a point, _A_, excludes the mode of being by which it would be constituted in another point, _B_. For, since the ubication in _A_ is distant from the ubication in _B_, the two ubications are not only distinct, but relatively opposed, as S. Thomas has remarked: _Distinguuntur ad invicem secundum aliquam loci contrarietatem_; and therefore they cannot belong both together to the same subject. On the other hand, we have also proved that a single element cannot terminate two distinct virtualities of God’s immensity, because no distinct virtualities can be conceived except with reference to distinct extrinsic terms. Hence, while the element in question has its ubication in _A_, it is utterly incapable of any other ubication. To admit that one and the same material point can terminate two virtualities of divine immensity, seems to us as absurd as to admit that one and the same created being is the term of two distinct creations. For this reason we think, with S. Thomas, that bilocation, properly so called, is an impossibility.

AN EPISODE.

The caption “episode” is advisedly adopted, inasmuch as we are going to transcribe only one short chapter from a large manuscript of several hundred pages containing “The Life of Sixtus V.”

However, it is to be regretted that such a life is not published. For it would reveal unto us the _man_, whereas Ranke and Hübner describe only the _prince_.

Sixtus V. fell into that mistake, which has proved disastrous to many popes, and has afforded a weapon, however silly and easily broken, yet a real weapon to the enemies of the Papacy--nepotism. The charge is exaggerated of course: in fact, what our enemies assert to have been the universal failing of all the popes, the true historian avers to have been the mistake of a few, whereas the examples of heroic detachment from kindred given by the vast majority of the Pontiffs are wonderful. S. Gregory the Great says, “better there should be a scandal than the truth were suppressed”; and surely the church needs no better defence than the truth. For the present purpose, suffice it to quote the Protestant Ranke, who, after a thorough investigation of the subject, gave it as his honest opinion that only _three_ or _four_ popes are really liable to the charge of nepotism. It is pleasant to be able to quote such an opinion of an eminent non-Catholic writer against scores of wilful men, who sharpen their weapons and discharge their shafts, not after honest study and investigation, but merely on the promptings of blind hatred.

Pope Sixtus V. was the second son of Piergentile Peretti of Montalto.

His eldest brother was Prospero, who married Girolama of Tullio Mignucci, and died A.D. 1560, without issue.

Camilla was his only sister. She was led to the altar by Gianbattista Mignucci, brother to Girolama. To an exquisite correctness of judgment, and great generosity of heart, she joined a quick apprehension of the importance of circumstances by which she might find herself suddenly encompassed. The _Anonimo_ of the _Capitoline Memoirs_ says that when Camilla was unexpectedly raised from the obscure life of a _contadino’s_ wife to the rank of a Roman lady, she was not stunned, but felt perfectly at ease, whilst her society was coveted by the choicest circles of the nobility. Cardinal d’Ossat, in his _Letters_, informs us that she was greatly esteemed and dearly beloved by Louise de Lorraine, queen-dowager of the gifted but perverse Henry III. of France. The works of her munificence and public charity in her native Grottamare are many, and enduring to our day.

Father Felix Peretti had already mounted all the rounds but one of ecclesiastical preferment--the cardinal’s hat was almost within his reach. He was a bishop, and occupied some of the highest offices in the _Curia Romana_. He thought the time had come to satisfy a long-felt desire--the ennoblement of his family. Hence, in 1562, he called his sister to Rome, having obtained a sovereign’s rescript by which his brother was allowed to change his name, Mignucci, into that of Peretti. On the 17th day of May, 1570, Pius V. raised Mgr. Felix Peretti to the dignity of cardinal. Thenceforward he is more generally known in history as Cardinal Montalto, from the place of his nativity.

Thus, even previous to his brother-in-law’s elevation, Gianbattista Mignucci enters Rome transformed into Peretti, to join his wife and their two children Francis and Mary.

_O fallaces cogitationes nostras!_ The friar hopes his name, made illustrious by himself, will not become extinct; but he is mistaken; if recorded on the tablets of time it will not surely be by a worldly alliance, which is doomed to a dishonored extinction. The church will inscribe the Peretti name and fame on the adamantine records of her immortality.

Verily, if we understand aright the professions of recluses, the Franciscan friar should have done away with his relations for ever; at least, so far as not to allow himself to be blinded by human affection. He should have remembered that he was under no obligation to them, that from his earliest boyhood he had been taken in hand by churchmen, and that only through scientific and moral resources acquired in a friary he had received strength to climb up so high in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The world is keen in its observations, and Peretti did not escape its strictures, seldom erring when established on principles and facts universally admitted, and moreover sanctioned by divine teaching. And has not _the_ example been set for those who profess the perfection of evangelical counsels of how they should behave towards their kindred?

Be that as it may, Fra Felice paid dearly for his ambition.

His niece, Donna Maria Peretti, was soon married, and a dowry granted her from the revenues of her uncle of three thousand crowns a year. Mary’s children, two boys and two girls, became allied to some of the most distinguished families of Italy, and the plebeian blood of Peretti mingled with that of the simon-pure aristocracy. Out of this issue arose eminent men who did honor to cross and sword. But enough of this branch of the friar’s adoption.

About the time of Mgr. Felix Peretti’s elevation to the cardinalate, his nephew Francesco was wedded to Donna Vittoria Accoramboni of Gubbio, in Umbria, praised by the _Gentiluomo_, Aquitano (vol. ii., b. vi.), as “a woman of high mind, of great beauty of soul and body.” Her family still exists in Italy, and a lineal descendant occupies important posts in the household of Pius IX.. Her suitors had been many and of princely caste; among the rest Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, formerly married to the sister of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Francesco Medici. Paolo, _homo ruptus disruptusque_, stands charged in history with the murder of this his former wife, the accomplished Isabella, daughter of Cosmo, whom he strangled on the 16th of July, 1576. But Vittoria’s father cut short all suits, and gave her in holy wedlock to Francesco Peretti, nephew of the mysterious cardinal, whose future elevation to the papal throne was held _in petto_ by every discerning Roman.

However, Vittoria’s mother gave her consent reluctantly; for wearing the ducal coronet seemed preferable to being the prospective niece of the sovereign--_uccello in tasca è meglio che due in frasca_[183] the shrewd Italian lady thought. But whereas Lady Accoramboni forgot that the Orsini family owed their power to Nicholas III. (A.D. 1277-80), an Orsini by birth, who, by the lever of nepotism, had raised an already celebrated family to the highest standing of European nobility, her husband, on the other hand, said to her: “Can’t you see? Vittoria will be the head of a new, powerful family!” Still Lady Accoramboni did not see it, and the loss of the coronet rankled for ever in her breast.

Indeed, in these days when tales of fiction are the almost exclusive reading of the youth of both sexes, an accomplished writer might weave out of the following events a story of stirring interest; not sensational, indeed, but freighted with most salutary lessons.

Vittoria Accoramboni Peretti had three brothers:

Ottavio was, through the recommendation of Cardinal Peretti, nominated by the Duke of Urbino for, and by Gregory XIII. appointed to, the bishopric of Fossombrone. He adorned his see with all the virtues becoming a scholar, a gentleman, a patriot, and a true apostolic prelate.

Giulio became one of the private household of Cardinal Alessandro Sforza, by whom he was held in great favor, and employed as confidential secretary.

Marcello was outlawed for his misdeeds, and a price set on his head. But Cardinal Peretti obtained his pardon; yet leave to return to Rome was not granted to him.

“A wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish will pull down with her hands that also which is built,” saith the Wise Man. The house of Francesco and Maria Peretti _was_ built, and it was the home of comfort and honor, enclosing within its walls the choicest gifts of the world; and of its brightest ornament, the Lady Vittoria Peretti, it might be said she was the cynosure of Roman society. The evening _conversazioni_ drew the _élite_ of Rome, graced as they were by the presence of the cardinal, who, with his proverbial regularity, would attend them for a definite length of time. His wise sayings, dignity of deportment, and agreeableness of manners, mingled with an independence of character that made him almost redoubtable at the Roman court, enhanced the charm of the family circle. Young prelates prized highly the privilege of being admitted amongst the visitors. The spacious halls of the Villa Negroni were adorned with paintings and statuary, and the noblest specimens of the art of painting; the gardens were reckoned the most tasteful of those of any princely family in Rome. While he was scrupulous in his attention to consistorial meetings, and the affairs of the _Curia Romana_ over which he was appointed, Cardinal Peretti never gave his time to what he would consider frivolous etiquette. His library, his gardens, afforded him all the relaxation he needed; his life was most exemplary and devout. Happy, indeed, was the home built by such hands; but a foolish woman pulled it down!

At the depth of night, not many months after Vittoria had been wedded, a note is hurriedly carried by a chambermaid to Francesco; it had been left at the entry by a well-known friend, and the messenger had left immediately. It was written by Marcello, who at times entered the city under protection of night, or of some leaders of political factions, with which the city swarmed--barons and princes who, under the mild government of Gregory XIII., had everything their own way.

The letter summoned Francesco to repair at once to the Esquiline hill, there to meet some gentlemen on a business the nature whereof could not be entrusted to paper, and admitted of no delay. Hurriedly does the devoted man dress himself, and, his sword under his arm, forces his way through the servants who beseech him to halt, disentangles himself from his wife and mother, who, prostrated before him, cling to his knees, begging of him not to trust himself to the outlawed Marcello. In vain! Preceded by a servant with torch in hand, no sooner had he reached the brow of the Quirinal than the contents of three arquebuses were lodged in his breast; whereupon four men fell upon him, and finished him with their stilettos. “Thus,” says an old historian, “fell a youth whose only crime was to be the husband of a most beautiful woman.” Another chronicler calls Francesco _Cale e di gran correttezza di costumi_.

The commotion in the family when the ensanguined and ghastly corpse was carried home can easily be imagined. The lamentations of the women and the uproar of the servants awoke the cardinal, who slept in a distant apartment--his palace, the Villa Negrone, as mentioned above, and by that name known to modern tourists, extending from the Esquiline (Santa Maria Maggiore) to the Piazza de’ Termini. It is said that on hearing the dreadful news Montalto fell upon his knees, and prayed God to grant rest to the soul of his nephew, and to himself fortitude, such as became his character and dignity. His presence not only brought, but forced calm on the distracted household. On the next day the Holy Father was to hold a Consistory, and, contrary to the expectation of all, Cardinal Montalto was at his post, as usual, among the first. His colleagues offer their condolence, which he accepts with a resignation almost akin to stoicism. But when he approaches the throne to give his opinion on the matters debated, and the pope, with moist eyes and greatly moved, expresses a heartfelt sympathy in the cardinal’s affliction, pledging his word that the perpetrators shall be visited with summary and condign punishment, Montalto thanks the Pontiff for his kind sympathy, protests that he has already forgiven the murderers, and begs that all proceedings may be stayed, lest the innocent should be punished for the guilty. Having thus disposed of the matter, he proceeds with his wonted calmness to discuss that which was before the Consistory.

Referring to this impassiveness of Peretti, the pope remarked, with an ominous shake of the head, to his nephew, Cardinal San Sisto, “Indeed, Montalto is a great friar!” And those of Peretti’s own times, and subsequent historians, seem to have had an insight of his mind and motives. In the sober language of Ranke, “His character does not appear to have been so guileless as it is occasionally represented. As early as 1574 he is described as learned and prudent, but also crafty and malignant. He was doubtless gifted with remarkable self-control. When his nephew was assassinated, he was himself the person who requested the pope to discontinue the investigation. This quality, which was admired by all, very probably contributed to his election” to the papal throne.

Those among our readers who have resided among Italians, and especially in Rome, need not be told of the tremendous excitement which seized the holy city as it awoke on that dreadful morning. Cardinal Peretti of Montalto became the observed of all observers; nobles and prelates thronged the avenues to his villa to assure him of their loyalty and condolence; very few, indeed, as the world goes, honestly and sincerely; many simply from custom; almost all, however, moved by a motive of curiosity to see how the “Picenian packhorse” bore the great calamity, and, above all, what feelings he would betray towards Paolo Giordano Orsini, to whom the finger of public opinion already pointed as the murderer of Vittoria’s husband. By some manœuvre of the “gossiping committee” the day and the hour on which even Giordano would present himself at the palace became known, and the throng at the drawing-rooms was exceedingly great. When the murderer stood face to face before his victim’s best friend and only avenger, not the least twitch in the cardinal’s nerves, not a falter in the voice, nor the slightest change of color betrayed the conflict in his soul. He received Orsini’s treacherous sympathy as he had received the truest expressions of condolence. Peretti stood there, the prince, not the avenger. Even the accursed soul of Giordano was lost in wonderment; he became embarrassed and disconcerted, and he was reported to have exclaimed as he re-entered his carriage--“Montalto is a great friar; no mistake about it!” (Montalto è un gran frate; chi ne dubita!)

Vittoria had no children. Hence, after the funeral, the cardinal sent her home to her mother, bestowing upon her costly gifts, and giving her the jewels, plate, and precious articles of furniture and apparel, which had been the bridal presents of husband and friends. _Ora ti credo_, said Pasquino to Marforio, in allusion to Montalto’s forbearance and disinterested magnanimity.

The sequel to this tragedy is so thrilling in interest, so characteristic of the times about which we write, and must have taxed the feelings of the future pope so much, that a succinct account thereof cannot but prove interesting to our readers.

Gregory XIII. urged with energy and perseverance the necessary inquests to ferret out the murderers of Francesco Peretti. But wily old Giordano Orsini (he was on the other side of fifty) knew how to baffle the requisitions of justice, by no means a difficult task in those lawless times. He sent the waiting-maid to Bracciano, to be protected by the feudal immunities of the Orsini castle. Vittoria and her mother were sheltered in Rome in the Orsini palace. The feudal power was still great in those days, and often a franchise was secured to the premises of Roman nobles by foreign princes, to the infinite annoyance of the local sovereign, and often clogging the workings of justice. One Cesare Pallentieri, an outlawed ruffian, was then bribed to write to the governor of Rome avowing himself the plotter of Peretti’s death to revenge himself for personal injuries received at that gentleman’s hands. Nobody believed the story; and the verdict of public opinion was sanctioned when, in February, 1582, Mancino, the bearer of the fatal note, declared, under oath and without compulsion, that the whole plot had been woven by Vittoria’s mother; that the servant-maid had been made privy to it; and moreover revealed the names of two of the emissaries, it being well known in whose pay they bore arms, although he stated no employer’s name.

At this stage of the proceedings Cardinal Montalto, with persevering endeavors with the pope and the interposition of friends, stayed all prosecutions, and on December 13, 1583, obtained from the sovereign pardon for Mancino, who was, however, banished from Rome, and relegated--_interned_, in modern parlance--to Fermo, his native city, being forbidden to quit it under penalty of death. But it was too evident that there was a trifling with justice, and in the uncertainties between which public opinion seemed to fluctuate, wiser counsels attempted to vindicate the necessity of a just retribution. Hence, at the instance of several cardinals and of the Spanish ambassador, Gregory was prevailed upon to confine Vittoria to the castle Sant’ Angelo, and by a special decree forbade her marrying Paolo Giordano Orsini, unless by a reserved dispensation from himself or his successor, under attaintment of felony. However, after two years of imprisonment she was declared innocent of any share in or knowledge of the plot, and discharged. This happened on the very day of Gregory’s death, April 10, 1585. Still Orsini could not wed her, because of the forbidding clause in the pope’s order. But some accommodating casuist came to the rescue, and averred that the defunct pope’s brief was binding no more. Whereupon the duke hastened, by special couriers on post-horses, to notify the good Bishop of Fossombrone of his intended alliance with Vittoria, and to solicit his gracious consent. Mgr. Ottavio refused his assent decidedly, nor would he allow himself to change his refusal, although Orsini despatched messenger after messenger, anxious, as he was, to accomplish his purpose ere a new pope was elected. But the new pope was elected far sooner than the duke or any one else expected, and in defiance of the express command of the defunct pontiff, and in shameless disregard of the feelings of the new sovereign, the very morning on which Cardinal Peretti, Vittoria’s uncle, was proclaimed, she was wedded to Paolo Orsini, Duke of Bracciano. Rome was bewildered at the announcement; and although no one could guess what the consequences of the rash act might be, or how the pope would show his displeasure, because Fra Felice never made any one the confidant of his thoughts, yet the general impression was that sooner or later the duke would be made to pay dearly for his daring and reckless disregard of the commonest principles of decency.

Rome was on the alert. Duke Orsini is admitted to offer his obeisance to the Pontiff Sixtus V. amid the solemn assembly of cardinals, foreign envoys, and Roman princes and senators; the expression of his liege words, his prostration at the sovereign’s throne, and his courtly homage meet with the simple response of a look from Sixtus. That look gave rise to the most clashing interpretations in the observing minds of the beholders; it was a look of benignity, weighty with authority, crushing with power, such as to subdue at once the haughty and defiant princely ruffian. From that moment Paolo Orsini never raised his head; his day was gone. Within a few days a sovereign decree, worded as only Sixtus V. knew how to pen them, in terms at which no one would dare to cavil, Orsini was forbidden to shelter outlaws. The duke solicited an audience; of what occurred at that meeting no one could ever surmise; but Orsini found no more charm in what he could heretofore call _his_ Rome. Accordingly, within two months after the inauguration of Sixtus’ pontificate, he left the papal city. In sooth, he was an exile, voluntary, as if by courtesy. Great was the bitterness galling Vittoria’s heart, and she was pitied by all--the victim of a mother’s rash ambition, she had to flee that Rome where she could still have reigned the queen of society for her beauty, her great gifts, and close relationship to the sovereign. Donna Camilla reigned in her stead. Nor was this all. The handsome, youthful, accomplished niece of Sixtus was then the slavish, unhappy wife of a cumbrous quinquagenarian prince, covered with loathsome blotches from the sole of his feet to the crown of his head, the penalty of his dissipations; one of his legs so ulcered with cancer that it had swollen to the size of a man’s waist, and had to be kept bandaged (the chronicler says), with slices of _some other animal’s meat_, that the acrid humor would not eat into _his own_ live flesh--a fretful old debauchee, overbearing, universally loathed for his lecherous habits, hated for his cruelties, and made intractable by a conscience gnawed by despair.

Poor Vittoria! On their way to Salò, near the lake of Garda in Lombardy, her husband, consumed by ulcers and tortures of soul, died suddenly whilst being bled in his arm!

Forlorn Vittoria! the first paroxysm of grief being over, raised a pistol to her head, but it was happily snatched from her in time by her brother Giulio, and she was spared a violent, unprepared, and cowardly death! Thus left alone, unprotected in her beauty and youth, she was at the mercy of Ludovico Orsini, her husband’s cousin, who despised her on account of the great disparity of their birth. Her late husband had indeed bequeathed to her one hundred thousand crowns, besides silver plate, horses, carriages, and jewelry without stint. All this Ludovico coveted, and stepped forward under pretence of protecting the rights of Flaminio Orsini, Giordano’s son by his former wife; but unable to break the will, he summoned one Liverotto Paolucci of Camerino to come to Padua--whither Vittoria had repaired immediately, and, aided by such as he might chose, to murder Vittoria and her brother! The bloody ruffian answered the summons, and entering the princess’ apartment through a window, in the depth of the night, his men fell at first upon Giulio, and into his breast discharged the contents of three muskets. The victim crawled to his sister’s room and crouched under her bed. There he was finished with _seventy-three_ thrusts of white arms, encouraged all the time by Vittoria, anxiously repeating--“Forgive, Giulio; beg God’s mercy, and willingly accept death for his sake.”

It is recorded in the life of her sainted brother, the Bishop of Fossombrone, that, upon the death of the duke, he without delay wrote to his sister, exhorting her to amend her life, and devote herself to works of atonement and piety; for, said he, “your days will not be many.” And we have it from authenticated records of those times that she did truly repent of her worldliness, and, having placed herself under the protection of the Republic of Venice, retired to Padua, where she lived in great retirement, dividing her time between practices of devotion in the church, deeds of charity, and protracted orisons at home. She also begged of the Pope leave to repair to Rome, the asylum of the wretched, and spend the remainder of her life in a convent, for which purpose her generous uncle had signed a remittance of five hundred gold crowns on the very day he received the sad account of her death. Her brother, the bishop, had so strong a presentiment, some say a revelation from above, of the impending catastrophe, that on the 22d of December he ordered special prayers to be offered by the clergy of his diocese in her behalf.

And she _did_ fall a victim to Ludovico’s dagger on the 22d of that month!

After Giulio had breathed his last, bathed in his own blood, Count Paganello, one of Liverotto’s band, took hold of the devoted woman by both arms, and holding her in the kneeling posture in which she had been found at her prayers, bade one of his bravoes to tear open her dress on the right side, whereupon she indignantly protested that she should be allowed to die in her dress, as it became an honest woman and the _wife of Giordano Orsini_! The brute plunged a stiletto into her bosom, and kept trepanning towards the left side in search of the heart. She offered no resistance, but during the horrid butchery of her form she ceased not repeating, “I pardon you, even as I beg of God to forgive me.… Jesus!… Jesus!… Mercy and forgiveness!” And with these words of forgiveness dying on her lips she fell lifeless on the floor.

Thus ended, by a cruel death, yet heroically met, one of the most remarkable women of her time--a woman renowned for her admirable beauty, talents, and misguided ambition. Having been the pet of European society, she died almost an outlaw; the niece of Pope Sixtus V., she died without a home of her own; a lamentable instance of the ignominious end awaiting those who have been endowed by a kind Providence with the noblest of gifts, but have made a wrong use of them.

THE CROSS IN THE DESERT.

Some few years ago a pilgrim sailed across the blue waters of the Mediterranean, smitten with the love of the cross, and bearing in his hand “the banner with the strange device.”

It was a lovely summer’s evening. The fierce African sun was sinking to his rest behind the hill on which the ruins of the old city of Hippo stand; and as the pilgrim, who had climbed to its summit, stood gazing around him, the glow of the western sky bathed his dusty garments in a golden light, touching the ruins with a splendor of its own, and lighting up the sea, that heaved gently down below, with the brightness of amber and gold.

This, then, was all that remained of the proud old city whose name Augustine had made famous to the end of time!

These crumbling walls were once the school where he taught, the halls where his youthful eloquence fired the hearts of the great scholars of the day; here were the baths where he lounged in his idle hours with pleasure-loving companions; here the streets where every day he came and went from Monica’s quiet home to the busy haunts of learning, of sophistry, and science; here was the place where she had wept so bitterly over him, the spot where that salutary fountain of a mother’s tears had had its source; here he had sinned; hence he had gone forth in search of truth, and, having found it, hither he had come back, transformed into a confessor and a doctor of the church; here, finally, he died, full of years, leaving behind him a name great amongst the greatest saints whom the church has raised to her altars.

And what now remained to Africa of this light which had shed such glory on her church? Where did his memory live? And the faith that he had practised--whither had it fled?

The pilgrim sat down upon a stone, and, after indulging in reflections such as these for some time, he rose and descended slowly towards the plain.

Was it a fancy born of recent musings, or did he hear a voice issuing from the massive fragment of a wall which still supported a majestic dome, once probably the thermæ of the luxurious and wealthy citizens of Hippo? Did he really see a light burning, or was it an hallucination born of the mystic hour and the suggestive surroundings? He drew closer, looked in, and beheld two white-bearded Arabs placing each a light on the highest point of the wall. Was it some idolatrous rite, a spell, or an incantation they were performing?

“What are you doing?” inquired the pilgrim.

“We are burning lights to the great Christian,” was the reply.

“Who is that? What is his name?”

“We do not know it; but we honor him because our fathers taught us to do so.”

So, then, the memory of Augustine survived in the land, though his name had perished!

The pilgrim murmured a prayer to the great Christian, as the Arabs called him, and turned away, carrying in his heart a hope that he had not known an hour ago--a hope that Augustine was still watching for the resurrection of the cross in the land of his birth, and hastening its advent by his intercession at the throne of Him whom he described as “patient because he is eternal.”

It is a fact, as striking as it is consoling, that within the last few years the faith has been making rapid conquests amidst the barbarous nations, where in the days of S. Augustine, and long after, it flourished so magnificently. Perhaps it is more surprising that this result should not have been universal after nearly half a century of the rule of a Catholic power; but the mistaken policy of the French government, and, alas! we must add, the evil example of the French themselves, instead of breaking down existing barriers, have raised new and insurmountable ones against the spread of Christianity amongst the conquered tribes. France proclaimed her intention of not alone tolerating, but protecting, Islamism throughout her African dominion. She carried this policy so far for many years that it was made punishable by French law to convert a Mussulman to the Catholic faith, whilst, on the other hand, it was perfectly lawful for any number of Catholics to turn Mussulmans. The priests who went out as missionaries were thwarted at every step by the French authorities. “Our adversaries, the men who worry us and stand in the way of our making converts, are not the Arabs or even their marabouts,” said one of these devoted men to us only a few days ago; “it is our own countrymen, Frenchmen calling themselves Catholics, _whom we have chiefly_ to contend against.” And he went on to describe how, during the famine of 1867, when the Arabs were dying like flies all over the country, the French authorities were constantly on the alert to prevent the missionaries baptizing them, even _in extremis_. They actually sent detachments of spahees to the various places where the poor famine-stricken creatures congregated in greater numbers to die; and when the priest was seen approaching them, as they lay gasping in their agony, the soldiers rushed forward to stop him from administering the sacrament of regeneration. One little missionary father contrived to outwit the authorities, however, and, in spite of the lynx-eyes that were fixed on him, he managed to baptize numbers from a little bottle of water hid under his burnose.

No wonder the Arabs make small account of men who set such pitiful store by their religion. They, call the French “sons of Satan,” and the French priests and good Christians among the seculars will tell you themselves that the name is well deserved; that the employees of the government, military and civil, make the most deplorable impression on the natives, and by their lives present a practical example of all the vices which it is the boast of civilization to destroy. They are so untruthful that the French missionaries declare they surpass even the Arabs in lies. The Arab is abstemious by nature, and the law of the Koran compels him to the most rigid sobriety; the Christians give him an example of excesses in eating and drinking which excite his disgust and contempt.

There is a legend current amongst the Arabs in the French dominions that on a certain day Mahomet will arise and precipitate the sons of Satan into the sea. When a Frenchman, in answer to this prophecy, points to the strength of his government, its enormous resources, the power of steam, and the monuments he has built in Algeria, the Mussulman with grim contempt replies in his grave, sullen way: “Look at the ruins of the old Roman monuments! They were mightier than any you have raised; and yet, behold, they lie in ruins throughout the land, because Allah so willed. It is written: Allah will cast you into the sea as he did the Romans.”

All those who can speak from experience agree that there are no people so difficult to evangelize as the Mussulmans; the pure idolater is comparatively an easy conquest to the missionary, but it requires almost the miraculous intervention of divine grace to make the light of the Gospel penetrate the stolid fatalism of the Mahometan.

One of the greatest obstacles to the reception of truth in the Arab is the intuitive pride of race which arms him against the idea of receiving religious instruction from a race of men whom he despises with a scorn which is actually a part of his religion, and who in their turn look down on the children of the desert, and treat their manners and customs with contempt. In order to overcome this first obstacle towards the success of their ministry, the missionaries conceived the idea of identifying themselves, as far as possible, with the natives, adopting their dress, their manner of eating and sleeping, and in every way assimilating outwardly their daily lives to theirs.

They tried it, and the system has already worked wonders. How, indeed, could it be otherwise? If faith can move mountains, cannot love melt them? Love, the irresistible, the conqueror who subdues all hard things in this hard world--why should it fail with these men, who have human souls like our own, fashioned after the likeness of our common God? Just five years ago a handful of priests, Frenchmen, gone mad with the sweet folly of the cross, heard of how these Arabs could not be persuaded to receive the message of Christ crucified, but repulsed every effort to reach them. They were seized with a sudden desire to go and try if they could not succeed where others had failed; so they offered themselves to the Archbishop of Algiers as missionaries in his diocese. The offer was gladly accepted; but when the first presented himself to obtain faculties for saying Mass in the villages outside Algiers and in the desert, the archbishop signed the permission with the words _visum pro martyrio_, and, handing it to the young apostle, said: “Do you accept on these conditions?”

“Monseigneur, it is for that I have come,” was the joyous reply. And truly, amongst all the perilous missions which every day lure brave souls to court the palm of martyrdom, there is not one where the chances are more in favor of gaining it than in this mission of Sahara, where the burning sun of Africa, added to material privations that are absolutely incredible, makes the life of the most fortunate missionary a slow and daily martyrdom. His first task, in preparation for becoming a missionary, is to master the language and to acquire some knowledge of the healing art, of herbs and medicine; then he dons the dress of the Arabs, which, conforming in all things to their customs, he does not quit even at night, but sleeps in it on the ground; he builds himself a tent like theirs, and, in order to disarm suspicion, lives for some time in their midst without making the least attempt at converting them; he does not even court their acquaintance, but waits patiently for an opportunity to draw them towards him; this generally comes in the form of a sick person whom the stranger offers to help and very frequently cures, or at least alleviates, cleanliness and the action of pure water often proving the only remedy required. The patient, in his gratitude, offers some present, either in money, stuffs, or eatables, which the stranger with gentle indignation refuses. Then follows some such dialogue as this: “What! you refuse my thank-offering? Who, then, pays you?”

“God, the true God of the Christians. I have left country and family and home, and all my heart loves best, for his sake and for his service; do you think you or any man living can pay me for this?”

“What are you, then?” demands the astonished Arab.

“I am a marabout of Jesus Christ.” And the Mussulman retires in great wonder as to what sort of a religion it can be whose marabouts take neither money nor goods for their services. He tells the story to the neighbors, and by degrees all the sick and maimed of the district come trooping to the missionary’s door. He tends them with untiring charity. Nothing disgusts him; the more loathsome the ulcers, the more wretched the sufferer, the more tenderness he lavishes on them.

Soon his hut is the rendezvous of all those who have ailments or wounds for miles round; and though they entreat him, sometimes on their knees, to accept some token of thanks for his services, he remains inexorable, returning always the same answer: “I serve the God of heaven and earth; the kings of this world are too poor to pay me.”

He leads this life for fifteen months before taking his vows as a missionary. When he has bound himself to the heroic apostleship, he is in due time ordained, if not already a priest, and goes forth, in company with two other priests, to establish a mission in some given spot of Sahara or Soodan, these desolated regions being the appointed field of their labors. The little community follows exactly the same line of conduct in the beginning of its installation as above described; they keep strictly aloof until, by dint of disinterestedness and of devotion and skilful care of the sick, they have disarmed the fierce mistrust of the “true believers,” and convinced them that they are not civil functionaries or in any way connected with the government. The Arab’s horror of everybody and of everything emanating from French headquarters partakes of the intense character of his fanaticism in religious matters. By degrees the natives become passionately attached to the foreign marabouts, who have now to put limits to the gratitude which would invest them with semi-divine attributes. The great aim of the missionaries is of course to get possession of the children, so as to form a generation of future missionaries. Nothing short of this will plant the cross in Africa, and, while securing the spiritual regeneration of the country, restore to that luxuriant soil its ancient fertility. Once reconciled to civilization by Christianity, those two millions of natives, who are now in a state of chronic suppressed rebellion against their conquerors, would be disarmed and their energies turned to the cultivation of the land and the development of its rich resources by means of agricultural implements and science which the French could impart to them. Nor is it well to treat with utter contempt the notion of a successful rebellion in Algeria. At the present moment such an event would be probably impossible; but there is no reason why it should be so in years hence. The Arabs are as yet not well provided with arms and ammunition; but they are making yearly large purchases in this line at Morocco and Tunis, and the study of European military science is steadily progressing. The deep-seated hatred of the Mussulmans for the yoke of the stranger is moreover as intense as in the first days of their bondage; and if even to-morrow, unprepared as they are materially, the “holy war” were proclaimed, it would rouse the population to a man. The marabouts would get upon the minarets, and send forth the call to every son of Mahomet to arise and fight against the sons of the devil, proclaiming the talismanic promise of the Koran: “Every true believer who falls in the holy war is admitted at once into the paradise of Mahomet.” The number who would call on the prophet to fulfil the promise would no doubt be enormous, and the French would in all human probability remain masters of the desert; but a kingdom held on such tenure as this state of feeling involves is at best but a sorry conquest. If the Gospel had been, we do not even say enforced, but simply encouraged and zealously taught, by the conquerors, their position would be a very different one in Algeria now. After all, there is no diplomatist like holy church. “Our little systems have their day” and fall to pieces one after another, perishing with the ambitions and feuds and enthusiasms that gave them birth, and leave the world pretty much as they found it; but the power of the Gospel grows and endures and fructifies wherever its divine policy penetrates. No human legislation, be it ever so wise, can cope with this divine legislator; none other can take the sting out of defeat, can make the conquerors loved by the conquered, and turn the chains of captivity from iron to silk. Even on the lowest ground, in mere self-interest, governments would do well to constitute themselves the standard-bearers of the King who rules by love, and subdues the stubborn pride of men by first winning their hearts. The supremacy of this power of love is nowhere more strikingly exemplified than amidst these barbarous Arab tribes.

The story of every little dark-eyed waif sheltered at the Orphanage of S. Charles, lately established outside Algiers, would furnish a volume in itself; but an incident connected with the admission of one of them, and related to us a few days ago by a missionary just returned, is so characteristic that we are tempted to relate it. The archbishop was making a visitation in the poor villages sixty miles beyond Algiers; the priest presented to him a miserable-looking little object whose parents still lived in a neighboring desert tribe, but who had cast off the child because of its sickliness and their poverty. Could his lordship possibly get him taken in as an orphan? The thing was not easy; for every spot was full, and the fact of the parents being still alive militated against the claim of the little, forlorn creature. But the archbishop’s heart was touched. He said he would arrange it somehow; let the boy be sent on to Ben-Aknoun at once. This, however, was easier said than done; who would take charge of him on such a long journey? His grace’s carriage (a private conveyance dignified by that name) was at the door. “Put him in; I will take him,” he said, looking kindly at the small face with the great dark eyes that were staring wistfully up at him. But the priest and every one present exclaimed at the idea of this. The Arabs are proverbial for the amount of _light infantry_ which they carry about with them in their hair and their rags; and the fact of their presence in myriads on the person of this little believer was evident to the naked eye. The archbishop, however, nothing daunted, ordered him to be placed in the carriage; then, finding no one would obey him, he caught up the little fellow in his arms, embraced him tenderly amidst the horrified protestations of the priest and others, carried him to the carriage, seated him comfortably, and then got in himself and away they drove. A large crowd had assembled to see the great marabout depart, and stood looking on the extraordinary scene in amazement. A few days later several of them came to see the priest, and ask to be instructed in the religion which works such miracles in the hearts of men, and to offer their children to be brought up Christians.

This Orphanage of S. Charles is the most precious institution which Catholic zeal has so far established in Algiers. It comprises a school for boys, and one for girls conducted by nuns. The description of the life there sounds like some beautiful old Bible legend. It is a life of constant privation, toil, and suffering, both for the fathers and for the sisters; but the results as regards the children are so abundant and consoling that the missionaries are sometimes moved to exclaim, “Verily, we have had our reward!”

The full-grown Arab is perhaps as wretched a specimen of unregenerate human nature as the world can furnish. Every vice seems natural to him, except gluttony, which he only acquires with the spurious civilization imported by his conquerors. He is relentless and vindictive; false, avaricious, cruel, and utterly devoid of any idea of morality; yet the children of these men and women are like virgin soil on which no evil seed has ever fallen. Their docility is marvellous, their capacity for gratitude indescribably touching, and their religious sense deep, lively, and affective. They accept the teaching of the missionaries and the nuns as if piety were an inherited instinct in them; and the truths of our holy faith act upon their minds with the power of seen realities.

One of the fathers told us, as an instance of this, that the children were allowed to play in the fruit garden once when the trees were in full bearing; and not a single fig, orange, or any other fruit being touched, some visitor asked the children in surprise if they never pulled any when their superiors were not looking; but they answered in evident astonishment: “Oh! no; God would see us, and he would be angry!” We quite agreed with the narrator that such a general example of obedience and self-denial from such a principle might be vainly sought for in our most carefully-taught schools in Europe and--would it be a calumny to add?--America. The children also show a spirit of sacrifice that is very striking, the girls especially. If they are ill and some nauseous medicine is presented to them, the little things seize the cup with avidity, and with a word, such as “For thee, dear Jesus!” drain it off at once. They realize so clearly that every correction imposed on them is for their good that it is nothing rare to see them go to the presiding father or sister and ask to be punished when they have committed some little misdemeanor unobserved. One little mite of six felt very sulky towards a companion, and, after a short and vain struggle to overcome herself, she went to the nun and begged to be whipped, “because she could not make the devil go away.” Their vivid Oriental imaginations paint all the terrible and beautiful truths of the faith in colors that have the living glow of visible pictures. They have the tenderest devotion to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and nothing pleases them more than to be allowed to spend their hour of recreation in prayer before the tabernacle. Their sense of gratitude for the blessing of the faith makes them long with an indescribable yearning to share it with their people. All their prayers and little sacrifices are offered up with this intention. Those among them who were old enough to remember the wretchedness they were rescued from, speak of it continually with the most touching gratitude to God and their instructors. One of their greatest pleasures is to count over the good things they have received from God. A sister overheard two of them one day summing them up as follows: “He gives us bread and the sunshine and a house; he has preserved us from dying in the night-time; he prevents the sea overflowing and drowning us; he has given us monseigneur and our mammas [the nuns]; he came on earth to teach us to be obedient; he brought us the Gospel; he has given us the Blessed Virgin to be our mamma, and then our angels, and then the Holy Father; he forgives us our sins; he has given us sacraments for our soul and body; he stays always with us in the chapel; he is keeping our place in heaven; he looks at us when we are naughty, and that makes us sorry, and then he forgives us.” And so they go on composing canticles out of their innocent hearts that must make sweet music in His ears who so loved the little ones.

The deaths of some of these little barbarians are as lovely as any we read of in the lives of the saints. One of them, who was baptized by the name of Amelia, has left a memory that will long be cherished in Ben-Aknoun. She was dying of a lingering, terrible disease; but her sufferings never once provoked a murmur. She was as gay as a little bird and as gentle as a lamb; her only longing was to see God. “And what will you do besides in heaven?” asked one of her companions. “I will walk about with the angels,” she replied, “and be on the watch to meet our mammas when they come to the beautiful gates.” In her sleep she used to pray still; many a time the nuns found her muttering her rosary with clasped hands while sleeping the sound sleep of a tired child. She fought against death as long as she could, insisting on getting up and going to the chapel, where sometimes she would lie exhausted with pain and weakness on the step of the altar, breathing her prayers softly until she dropped asleep. Her only fear was lest she should not make her First Communion before she died; but her extreme youth (she was not quite eight years old) was compensated for by her ardent piety. They gave her our Blessed Lord after giving her Extreme Unction. The expression of her face was seraphic in its joy and peace. All her little companions were kneeling round her bed, their eyes fixed in admiration on the beaming countenance of the dying child. One of them, called Anna, who was her chosen friend, an orphan from a remote desert tribe like herself, drew near to say good-by. The two children clasped each other in silence; but when they parted, the tears were streaming down Amelia’s cheeks. “Why did you make her cry, my child?” whispered the nun to Anna reproachfully. “I did not do it on purpose,” was the reply. “I only said, ‘O Amelia! you are too happy; why can’t you take me with you?’ and then we both cried.” The happy little sufferer lingered on in great pain for another day and night, constantly kissing her crucifix, thanking those around her for their kindness and patience.

Towards the evening of the second day the pains grew rapidly worse, and she entreated to be carried to the chapel, that she might look once more upon the tabernacle. The nun took her in her arms, and laid her on the step of the altar, when her sufferings instantly ceased, and she sank into a sleep which they thought was the last one. She was carried back and laid on her bed, but soon opened her eyes with a look of ecstatic joy, and cried out, gazing upwards, “See! how beautifully it shines. And the music--do you hear? Oh! it is the _Gloria in Excelsis_.” No one heard anything; only _her_ ears were opened to the heavenly harmonies that were sounding through the half-open doors of Paradise. She continued listening with the same rapt expression of delight, and then, clasping her little hands together, she cried, “Alleluia! alleluia!” and fell back and spoke no more. She had passed the golden portals; the glories of heaven were visible to her now.

What wonder if the apostolic souls who reap such harvests as these count their labors light, and rejoice in the midst of their poverty and self-imposed martyrdom!

But there are homelier and less pathetic joys in the Orphanage every now and then than these blessed deaths. When the boys and girls have learnt all they need learn, and have come to the age when they must leave the fathers and the nuns, they are perfectly free to return to their native tribes; and it is a convincing argument in favor of the strength of their newly-acquired principles and affections that they almost invariably refuse to do so. The proportion of those who go back to the old life is one in every hundred. The next thing to be considered is what to do with those who refuse to go back. The plan of marrying the orphans amongst each other suggested itself as the most practical method of securing lasting results from their Christian education. The chief difficulty in the execution of this plan was the reluctance of the Arab girls to marry men of their own race; they had learned the privileges which women owe to Christianity, and they had no mind to forego their dignity and equality, and sink back into the degraded position of an Arab’s wife. “We will not marry to be beaten,” they argued. “Find us Frenchmen, and we will marry them and be good wives.” No doubt they would, but the Frenchmen unfortunately could not be induced to take this view of the case; and it required all the influence of their superiors to make the girls understand that Christianity, in raising woman from the condition of a slave to that of man’s equal, compels him to respect and cherish her.

The way in which the courtship and marriage proceed between the sons and daughters of the great marabout (as the archbishop is called) is curious in its picturesque simplicity.

A band of fifteen couples were lately married from the Orphanage of Ben-Aknoun. The fathers informed the archbishop they had fifteen excellent boys who were about to leave, and whom they wished to find wives for and settle in the nearest Christian village. The archbishop asked the superior of the girls’ school if she could supply fifteen maidens who would go and share the humble homes of their brother orphans.

The superior replied that she had precisely the number required--girls who must leave the shelter of the convent in a few months, and whom she was most anxious to see provided for. The grapes were ripe, and the vintage, which was close at hand, would furnish an opportunity for a meeting between the parties. So one morning, in the cool, sweet dawn, they set out to the vineyard, the maidens conducted by a sister, the youths by one of the priests; the latter took one side and culled the grapes, while at the other side the maidens gathered up the branches and bound them into bundles. As they went they sang hymns and canticles to lighten their labor; and when the day’s task was done, they left the vineyard in two distinct bands, as they had come, and returned to their separate convents.

“Well,” said Mgr. de la Vigerie to the presiding father next day, “have the young men chosen each his maiden, and is the choice approved?”

“Alas! monseigneur, they did not even look at each other,” replied the disconsolate matchmaker. “They never raised their eyes from their work. Sister C---- and I watched them like lynxes.”

“You have brought up the children too well, my good father,” cried the archbishop in despair. “What is to be done with them now?”

“Have a little patience, my lord, and it will come in good time,” replied the father encouragingly.

Next day the two bands of maidens and youths sallied forth again to the vineyard, and so every day for a week.

Then the father came in triumph to the archbishop to announce the successful issue of the scheme. One by one the youths had plucked up courage and peeped through the tendrils of the vine, and, thanks to some magnetic sympathy, two dark eyes had been simultaneously raised to meet theirs, and they smiled at each other. A little further on the green leaves were fluttered by a whisper asking the fair one’s name; she told it, and another whisper told her his. So the flower blossomed in the thirty young hearts, and the priest and the sister who watched the gentle growth looked on delighted.

But what wily diplomatists they are, these holy missionaries! How they know the human heart, and how cunningly they can play upon it! Not a word did they say; but, feigning complete blindness to the pretty little comedy, marshalled the laborers home as if nothing had occurred to change the still current of their young lives. A month went by, and then, when the time came for the youths to leave the Orphanage, the father inquired, with seeming innocence, if they thought of marriage by and by.

The question was evaded at first shyly; then by degrees the confession came out--they had each determined to marry one of the maidens of the vineyard. The father threw up his hands in amazement, shook his head, and expressed grave doubts as to the possibility of their obtaining such a prize. These maidens were pearls worthy to be set in fine gold; they had been reared like delicate plants in the shadow of the sanctuary; their hearts were pure as lilies, guileless as the flowers of the field; they were strong in faith and adorned with all the virtues. Were poor Arab youths worthy of such wives? But, brave with the boldness of true love, the suitors answered in one voice: “We will be worthy; we will work for them and serve them faithfully; we will love them and be fathers and mothers to them! Give us the maidens of the vineyard!”

The missionary heaved a sigh, looked mightily perplexed, but promised to speak to the archbishop and see what could be done. After several solemn interviews, in which the young men were severely catechised and warned, and made to pledge themselves to strive with all their might to make the maidens happy, to treat them reverently, and serve them humbly, the archbishop undertook to intercede for them. The fair ones, being of the race of Eve, were a trifle coy at first; but soon the truth was elicited, and each confessed that, since she needs must marry some one, Ben-Aïssa, or Hassan, or Scheriff, would be less distasteful than another. So the great affair was settled, and soon came the day of the weddings. The archbishop himself was to perform the ceremony.

The fathers and sisters were afoot before sunrise, you may be sure; for what an event was this! Fifteen Christian marriages celebrated between the children of this fallen race of idolaters! And now see! the two processions are approaching the church, the bridegrooms draped in the native white burnose, with the scarlet turban on their heads; the brides clad in spotless white, a soft white veil crowned with white flowers covering them from head to foot. Slowly, with the simple majesty inherent in their race, they advance to the altar and kneel side by side before the archbishop, who stands awaiting them, robed in his gala vestments. He looks down upon the thirty young souls whom his love has brought here to the foot of the altar--the altar of the true God; thirty souls whom he has had the unspeakable joy and happiness of rescuing from misery in this life and--may he not hope?--in the next. He must speak a few words to them. He tries; but the father’s heart is too full. The tears start to his eyes and course down those careworn cheeks; he goes from one to the other, and silently presses his hands on the head of each. The marriage rite begins; the blessing of the God of Abraham is called down upon this new seed that has sprung up in the parched land of the patriarch, once so fertile in saints; the music plays, and songs of rejoicing resound on every side as the fifteen brides issue from the church with their bridegrooms.

And now do you care to follow them to their new homes, and to see where their after-life is cast? The earthly providence which has so tenderly fostered them thus far follows them still into the wide world where they have embarked.

The archbishop’s plan from the start was to found Christian villages in the desert, and to people them with these new Christians educated by the missionaries. The cost of founding a village, including the purchase of the land, the building of twenty-five huts, furnishing the inhabitants with European implements of labor, building a little church and a house for the fathers and one for the sisters, an enclosure for the cattle, a well to supply that first element of life and comfort--pure water in abundance--amounts to forty thousand francs (or say eight thousand dollars), and this only with the utmost economy. The Society for the Propagation of the Faith--that glorious institution, to which Christendom owes a debt that can only be paid in heaven--comes nobly to the assistance of Mgr. de la Vigerie. He supplies the rest himself out of the resources of his apostolic heart, so inexhaustible in its ingenious devices of charity; he prays and begs, and sends his missionaries all over the world begging.

One of them has lately come over to Paris on that most heroic of Christian enterprises--a begging tour--and has brought with him a little black boy from Timbuctoo, who had been bought and sold seven times before falling into the hands of these new masters for the sum of three hundred francs. He is not yet ten years old--a mild-faced little fellow, who, when you ask him in French if he likes the father, answers by a grin too significant to need further comment, as he turns his ebony face up to Père B---- and wriggles a little closer to him. Père B---- told us the child belonged to a man-eating tribe, and turned up the corner of his lip to show some particular formation of the teeth peculiar to that amiable race of _gourmands_. He says that the same charming docility which marks the young Arabs is observable in most of the savage tribes; they are far more susceptive and easily moulded and impressed than the children of the civilized races.

The capture and purchase of these unhappy little slaves all along the coast and in the northern parts of Africa is part of the mission which brings the fathers the greatest consolation. It is of course attended with immense risk, sometimes danger even to life; but the human merchandise which they thus obtain “is worth it all and ten times more,” the Père B---- declared emphatically, as he dilated on the fervor of these poor children’s faith and the intensity of their gratitude. The great and constant want for the carrying on of the mission is--need we mention it in this XIXth century, when we can scarcely save our own souls, much less our neighbors’, without it?--money. People say money is the root of all evil; but really, when one sees what precious immortal goods it can buy, one is tempted to declare it the root of all good. The archbishop has recently sent one of his missionaries, the Père C----, to beg in America, and we are heartily glad to hear it. A French priest, speaking about begging for good works the other day, said to the writer: “I wish I could go to America and make the round of the States with my hat in my hand. They are a delightful people to beg of. Somehow they are so sympathetic to the Catholic principle embodied in begging for our Lord that they take all the sting out of it for one; but, oh! what a bitter cud it is to chew in Europe.” We hope the good father’s experience did not represent the general one on the latter point, but is well founded as to the generous spontaneity of our American fellow-Catholics towards those who have “held out the hat” to them in the name of our blessed Lord. Sweet bond of charity! how it welds the nations together, casting its silver nets and drawing all hearts into its meshes! It matters not whether the fisher come from a near country united to us by ties of blood or clanship, or from some distant clime where the very face of man is scarce that of a brother whom we recognize; he comes in the name of our common Lord, and asks us to help in the saving of souls that cost as dear to ransom as ours. He may labor sometimes all the night, and take nothing; but the dawn comes, when he meets Jesus in the persons of those generous souls who love him and have his interests at heart, and are always ready to befriend him; and then the net is cast into deep waters, and the draught is plentiful. Can we fancy a sweeter reward to stimulate our zeal in helping the divine Mendicant who holds out his hand to us for an alms than the scene which at this moment many multitudes of these faithful souls may contemplate in imagination as they have helped to create it.

A gathering of small, low houses--huts, if you like--set in smiling patches of garden round a central building whose spire, pointing like a silent finger to the skies, tells us at once its character and destination. The time is towards sundown; the bell breaks the stillness of the desert air, and with its silvery tongue calls the villagers to prayer. The entire population, old and young, leave their work and rise obedient to the summons; the children quit their play and troop on together, while the elders follow with grave steps. The priest is kneeling before the altar, where the lamp of the sanctuary, like a throb of the Sacred Heart within the tabernacle, sheds its solemn radiance in the twilight. The father begins the evening prayer; pardon is asked for the sins and forgettings of the day, thanks are offered up for its helps and mercies, blessings are invoked on the family assembled, then on the benefactors far away. One who assisted at this idyl in the desert declares that when he heard the officiating priest call down the blessing of the Most High on “all those dear benefactors whom we do not know, but who have been kind and charitable to us”; and when the voices of the Arabs answered in unison, repeating the prayer, he felt his heart bursting with joy at the thought that he was included amongst those on whom this blessing was nightly invoked.

The Litany of Our Lady is then sung, and the assistants quietly disperse and go home. The cattle are lowing in the park. The stars, one by one, are coming out in the lovely sapphire sky. Angels are flying to many of the white huts with gifts and messages. Some are speeding afar, eastward and westward, bearing graces just granted in answer to those grateful prayers; for who can tell the power of gratitude with God, or his loving inability to resist its wishes--he who was so lavish in his thanks for the smallest act of kindness, nay, of courtesy, when he lived amongst us, and who declared that even a cup of cold water should not go without its reward?

ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE MISSION OF KENTUCKY.

FROM THE FRENCH.[184]

The Diocese of Bardstown, Kentucky, is a part of that vast extent of country known in our ancient geographies by the name of Louisiana. It is situated in the centre of the United States of North America, and is bounded on the north by the Ohio, on the west by the Mississippi, on the south by the State of Tennessee, and on the east by Virginia.

When, in 1792, it was admitted into the Union as a State, its population was about seventy thousand; but it has since then increased tenfold.

About twenty poor Catholic families from Maryland, descendants of the English colonists, came here to reside in 1785, as then good land could be procured here almost for nothing.[185]

Their number rapidly increased, and in the year 1788 Father Wheelan, an Irish Franciscan, was sent to them. As they were then at war with the natives, and as this was continued until 1795, this missionary, two of his successors, and the colonists were compelled to cross the hostile country to arrive at the mission, even on reaching which their lives were sometimes exposed to imminent dangers. Besides being at a distance from a priest, they had also to struggle against poverty, heresy, and vulgar prejudices with regard to the pretended idolatry of Catholics, etc. Finally, Father Wheelan, at the expiration of two years and a half, abandoned a post so difficult to hold, without even the satisfaction of seeing a single chapel built. It was then impossible to find another missionary to succeed him, and the faithful “were afflicted because they had no shepherd” (Zach. x. 2). Finally, Holy Orders were conferred in 1793 for the first time in this part of the world, where the Catholics had but so recently suffered under the penal laws of England. The illustrious Bishop Carroll, first bishop of Baltimore, there ordained a priest, M. Badin, from Orleans, whom he then sent to Kentucky. Besides the difficulties which his predecessor met, the inexperience of the young ecclesiastic, his slight knowledge of the English language and of the habits of the country, made his task still more difficult. One can easily conceive how painful must have been the situation of a novice thus isolated and deprived of guidance in a ministry the weight of which would have been burdensome for the angels even, say the holy fathers of the church.

It is true he started from Baltimore with another French priest who was invested with the power of vicar-general. But this priest was soon discouraged by the wandering habits of the people and their style of life. Four months had scarcely elapsed when he returned to New Orleans. M. Badin was thus in sole charge of the mission during several years, which mission, since the conclusion of peace with the savage tribes, continually increased by the influx of the Catholics who came here in large numbers from Maryland and other localities.

In addition to the fatigue of travelling, to controversy with Protestants, to his pastoral solicitude, and to the frequent scruples of conscience natural to one in a situation so critical, he had to exert himself still more to form new parishes, prepare ecclesiastical establishments at suitable distances, and finally to erect churches or chapels in the different places where the Catholic population established itself. Nevertheless, by the divine mercy he obtained from time to time profitable advice through the letters which the charity of the neighboring priest, who, though at a distance of seventy miles, found means to write him. M. Rivet, formerly professor of rhetoric in the College of Limoges, in the year 1795 came to reside as _curé_ and vicar-general at Post Vincennes, on the Wabash, in Indiana.

But the respective needs of the two missions never permitted them to cross the desert in order to visit one another or to offer mutual encouragement and consolation in the Lord. Oh! how much anguish, how many prayers and tears, arise from such isolation! And did not our divine Saviour send his disciples in couples to preach the Gospel?--_misit illos binos_ (S. Luc. x.)

Finally, two priests from the Diocese of Blois--MM. Fournier and Salmon--came successively, in the years 1797 and 1799, to the rescue of the pastor and his flock.

Divine Providence rendered useful to Kentucky and to several other portions of the Diocese of Baltimore the talents and virtues of a great number of ecclesiastics whom the French Revolution threw on the shores of America. In the same year, 1799, there arrived a fourth missionary--M. Thayer, the Presbyterian minister of Boston, who was converted through the miracles of blessed Labre. At first he ridiculed this humble servant of God and the miracles which were attributed to him, but afterwards he investigated them with all the prejudices of a sectarian. He brought to bear upon them his severest criticism, and finished by becoming a Catholic at Rome, a priest at Paris, and a missionary in his own country, where he had formerly propagated error. He found himself forced to write several English works of controversy, which are lucid and deservedly appreciated. His conversion, his writings, and his sermons excited either the interest or the curiosity of all classes of society, and he hoped to serve the cause of religion in multiplying himself, if one may speak thus. He travelled over the United States, Canada, and a great part of Europe, and died, beloved and revered, at Limerick, in Ireland.

The missionaries of Kentucky are obliged to ride on horseback nearly every day of the year, and to brave often alone the solitude of the forests, the darkness of night, and the inclemency of the seasons, to minister to the sick and to visit their congregations on the appointed days.[186]

Without this exactitude it would be difficult to assemble the families scattered so far apart. M. Salmon was without doubt an excellent ecclesiastic, though but a poor horseman. His zeal induced him, on the 9th of November, 1799, to visit a distant parish where he was instructing a Protestant who has since then embraced the faith.

Being already feeble and just convalescing from a severe illness, a fall from his horse carried him to the grave in less than thirty-six hours. The accident happened towards noon at a little distance from a residence. A servant who found him half-dead in the woods went to solicit aid, which was denied him by an impious and cruel farmer, simply because the unfortunate man was a priest. It was only towards night that a good Catholic of the neighborhood--Mr. Gwynn--was informed of the fact. It must nevertheless be admitted that this farmer’s revolting conduct is in nowise American, and can but be attributed to his individual hate for the true religion. Perhaps, also, he was ignorant of the extremity to which M. Salmon was reduced. This fatal event, the departure of M. Thayer for Ireland, and the equally sudden death of M. Fournier in February, 1803, left M. Badin for about seventeen months in sole charge of the mission, then consisting of about a thousand families scattered over a space of from seven to eight hundred square miles. The death of M. Rivet, which took place in February, 1803, deprived him of the comforting letters of this friend, who expired almost in the arms of the governor of the province, whose esteem and affection he enjoyed. At this unfortunate period the nearest priest was a M. Olivier from Nantes, an elderly gentleman, who resided at a distance of one hundred and thirty miles in an Illinois village called Prairie du Rocher. Moreover, he ministered to Kaskaskia, where the Jesuits had formerly instituted a novitiate; Cahokia, St. Louis, capital of Missouri, St. Genevieve, etc., on the banks of the Mississippi. M. Richard, a zealous and pious Sulpitian, resided at the same distance at Detroit, on Lake St. Clair, in Michigan.[187]

Finally, there were then but three priests in an extent of country larger than would be France and Spain if united, and which country constitutes to-day but one diocese, called Bardstown, formed in 1808 by the reigning Pope, as will be seen in the sequel.

It is true that the most distant parishes can be visited but seldom, and it is especially in these instances that the zeal of faith and the fervor of piety are most evident.

One finds a great many persons who undertake fatiguing trips in order to fulfil their Christian duties. They are seen at times to spend the night in church, in order to make sure of having access to the sacred tribunal, where the missionaries are to be found from early dawn.

They are obliged to say, and sometimes even to chant, Mass at noon, and occasionally several hours afterwards, in order that all those who are prepared for the tribunal of Penance may also receive Holy Communion. Neither the fast, nor the late hour, nor the fatigues of the morning exempt them from instructing the people; otherwise it would never be done, as the faithful are assembled but once a day. A sermon, or at least an impromptu exhortation, on controversy, morals, or the discipline of the church, is always in order. After divine service there are the dead to be buried, the children to be baptized, marriages to be performed, etc., and then the departure for another station, which being reached the next day, the same services are to be repeated. Often it so happens that there is not one day of rest during the entire week, especially when several sick persons who live far apart are to be visited.

While the confessor is occupied with his priestly functions the catechists instruct the children and the negroes, sing canticles, and recite the rosary, etc. To in a manner fill the vacancy caused by their absence, the priests recommended public prayer in families, catechism, and nightly examination of conscience; Mass prayers, devotions of S. Bridget, the litanies, spiritual reading on Sundays and feast-days. Pious persons add to this the rosary, and their devotion to the Blessed Virgin causes them every day to recite some special prayer in her honor.

The fear of God, respect for the priesthood, or filial piety often causes good Christians to bend the knee before their fathers and mothers, their sponsors, and their priests, to ask their blessing after prayer, in the streets of the city or on the highways. English books on controversy are being rapidly multiplied, and the majority of the country-people know how to read them, and there are some persons in every congregation who really study them in order to render themselves capable of sustaining a discussion with Protestants.

By this means, as also by their piety and honesty, they assist from time to time in gaining conversions to the faith. The number of these good works greatly increased when Providence sent to us, in 1804, a new missionary, M. Nérinckx, a Flemish priest, who pursued his apostolic labors unceasingly. He instituted three monasteries, which were of great benefit in educating poor girls, either Catholics or non-Catholics. These religious women, who are called Friends of Mary at the Foot of the Cross, remind us of the days of the primitive church. Their manner of life is exceedingly laborious; they observe perpetual silence, and are almost enveloped in their veil.[188]

A short time after M. Nérinckx arrived at the mission he was followed there by a colony of Trappists, and by two pious and learned English priests of the Order of S. Dominic. The one, Father Wilson, afterwards became provincial; and Rev. Father Tuite is at present master of novices. The Trappists organized a school for gratuitous education, but failed to find among the poor Catholics of the neighborhood sufficient means to maintain this charitable institution. Father Urbain Guillet, their superior, had conceived the idea of rendering himself useful to the savages by educating their children for them, hoping in this way to facilitate their conversion.

In pursuance of this idea he formed a new establishment near Cahokia. These good religious greatly edified the country by their austerity, their silence, and their good works; but as missions were not the objects of their order, they returned to France at the Restoration. We must now speak of the natives, and by so doing gratify the very natural curiosity of our readers. The majority of the savages believe in the existence, in the spirituality, and in the unity of God, whom they style the Great Spirit, the Master of Life, or Kissernanetou. They even appear to believe somewhat in his providence; they offer him prayers, and sometimes even sacrifices according to their fashion. Here is an example, which is authentic, as it was told the author of this work by Gen. Todd, one of the leading men of Kentucky. A native, annoyed by the extreme drought, offered his pipe, or wampum, his most valuable article, to the Great Spirit; then, seated pensively on the banks of a river, he supplicated him thus: “Kissernanetou! thou knowest how highly the Indian prizes his wampum; well, then, give us rain, and I will give thee my wampum.” And as the Indian said this, he threw his pipe in the river, fully persuaded that the Great Spirit would hear his prayer. They also believe in a future state, as with their dead they bury their guns or cross-bows to enable them to hunt in the next world; also their pipe and tobacco, meat, etc. Those who were instructed by the Jesuits, although deprived of missionaries for about fifty years, still retain some idea of the true religion, as will be seen from letters of M. Olivier, from which letters we will give a few examples; the first, being dated the 16th of May, 1806, is addressed to Father Urbain Guillet; the second, dated the 6th of August, 1806; and the third, the 15th of March, 1807, were written to M. Badin:

1. “Among the savage tribes who from the time of the Jesuits (whom they called Black Gowns) had embraced Christianity and had erected churches in which the greatest regularity existed, to-day, notwithstanding I am their pastor, I do nothing but baptize their children, although among those of Post Vincennes there are some who come to confession; which leads me to think that you might procure some of their children.

2. “Since the banishment of the Jesuit fathers religion has decreased by degrees, until now there remain but a few traces which would remind one of extinct piety. I am not forgetting the desire expressed by Father Guillet, superior of the Trappists--namely, to have in his community some of the children of these savages. The chief of the nation, who is at Kaskaskia, promised to ask his brethren to send some here.

3. “The chief of those at Kaskaskia, in selling his lands to the government of the United States, required that it should build him a church; and there is a provision of 300 piastres and 100 piastres to be paid yearly to the missionary priest for seven years. Can these missions be revived? The mercy of God is great, etc.…”

Yes, the mercy of God is great, and it may be hoped that Mgr. Dubourg and his missionaries, who for some years have been living in the vicinity of the Missouri and the Mississippi, will have all desired success, which they must undoubtedly obtain if they succeed, as did the Jesuits, in procuring the assistance of the French government.

The religious of S. Dominic succeeded tolerably well in their establishments in Kentucky and Ohio.

Father Edward Fenwick, born in Maryland, had become a member of this order, and professor at the College of Bornheim, in Flanders, where he had been educated. Upon his return to his native country he spent his inheritance in founding the Convent of S. Rose and a school which is situated in Washington County. Two zealous missionaries, Father Fenwick and his nephew, Father Young, were the first to devote themselves, two years ago, to preach the faith in the State of Ohio, north of Kentucky, and three churches have already been built there.[189]

The congregations in the interior are composed of Germans, Irish, and Americans; but on the lakes that separate the United States from Canada they are formed of French colonies. In the State and on the right bank of the Ohio is situated Gallipolis, principal seat of the county of Gallia, where in 1791 some French colonists tried to establish themselves; but they were victims of a miserable speculation, and the majority of them left the country.

MM. Barrières and Badin baptized in this place about forty children in the year 1793, and then went to Kentucky. The entire village revived at the sight of these two priests, their fellow-countrymen, at the singing of the sacred canticles, and the celebration of the Holy Mysteries. In this part of America entire liberty of conscience and religion are enjoyed. One does not fear being molested if Christian burial be refused to those who have lived a scandalous life. On the contrary, it is expected that such will be the case, as it is the rule of the church; hence the increased dread of dying without the Last Sacraments. Marriages according to the Catholic rite are legal, and divorce and polygamy are unknown among Catholics.

We march in procession around our cemeteries; we erect crosses on them; we preach in the hotels and other public places, and even in Protestant churches, for want of chapels, and all the sects come in crowds. During the Mass they behave in a respectful and attentive manner--some of them even bring us their children to baptize, and entrust the education of their daughters to our religious--and sometimes we are greatly astonished to see non-Catholics undertake to defend our belief. We also meet with great respect in social life; for the Americans are very fond of the French, whose politeness and gayety they try to emulate.

They remember with pleasure and gratitude the services they received from the Martyr-King. Finally, the government of Kentucky has incorporated or commemorated French names in its institutions; hence we have Bourbon County, of which Paris is the principal town. We also find a Versailles, a Louisville, etc. In this last place we built, with the aid of the Protestants, the beautiful church of S. Louis, King of France.

Having the greatest esteem for learned men, they received the French priests with generous hospitality, and our bishops are revered by all sects. M. Carroll, formerly professor of theology among the Jesuits, bishop and finally archbishop of Baltimore, was one of the most distinguished men in America, and he was universally beloved and respected. He was consecrated in England the 15th of August, 1790. Two years afterwards he convoked a synod in Baltimore, where he was successful in assembling twenty-five priests. His modesty and his piety were as much admired as his learning. Finally, by his urbanity and his inexhaustible charity, he won all hearts, even those of the Protestant clergy.

His edifying death, mild and patient in the greatest sufferings, took place the 3d of December, 1815--the day on which the church celebrates the Feast of S. Francis Xavier, the glory of the Jesuits.

His death caused universal grief in a country where his memory has never ceased to be venerated. It is incredible how he could have been equal to all the tasks he had to accomplish, besides all the mental labor that fell to his share. He afterwards obtained from the Holy See a coadjutor, M. Neale, like himself an American and an ex-Jesuit. His Diocese embraced all the United States; and he was, moreover, administrator of the diocese of New Orleans. Our Holy Father, the Pope, has since then been entreated to create four new bishoprics--namely, Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Bardstown.[190]

M. Flaget, a Sulpitian, arrived in America with MM. David and Badin in the year 1792, and was appointed to this last-named bishopric. His humility was alarmed. He thought he neither possessed the talent nor the other qualifications necessary to fill so high a position; and for two years he persisted in his refusal, but he was finally obliged to submit to the express mandate of the Pope, and undertook the task, for which he was evidently destined by divine Providence. He is doubtless the poorest prelate of the Christian world, but he is none the less zealous and disinterested.

“Blessed is the rich man that is found without blemish; and that hath not gone after gold, nor put his trust in money, nor in treasures. Who is he, and we will praise him? for he hath done wonderful things in his life” (Ecclesiasticus xxxi. 8, 9).[191]

In a limited number of years he founded so many institutions, undertook so many voyages, underwent so much fatigue, both of mind and body, and succeeded so well in all his projects for extending the kingdom of Jesus Christ, that we must attribute his success and the diffusion of religion to the special blessing of God which accompanied him unceasingly. M. David, superior of the seminary, consecrated bishop-coadjutor the 15th of August, 1819, co-operated with him in his good works: in the founding of the seminary, which has already produced eight or ten priests; in the founding of several convents for the Sisters of S. Vincent de Paul; in the building of the cathedral of Bardstown, etc.[192]

It is in this little village, situated in the centre of the country, that the episcopal seat has been fixed. The smallest seed becomes a large tree, said our Saviour in the Gospel. This diocese embraces six large States--Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois.[193]

In all this country, where the population, the sciences and the arts, agriculture and commerce, have in the last twenty years progressed wonderfully, fifty years ago could be seen dense forests and limitless prairies, inhabited only by wild beasts or scattered Indian tribes. But there are to-day in this diocese twenty-five priests, seven convents, two seminaries or colleges, thirty-five churches or chapels,[194] and about forty thousand Catholics out of a population of two million inhabitants of all denominations.

In all these States priests and churches are found except in Tennessee, which, owing to its great distance and other drawbacks, has been visited but four times by the oldest missionary in Kentucky. He gathered together a little flock at Knoxville, the capital. With regard to this place may these words of the prophet be fulfilled: “I will whistle for them and gather them together; I have redeemed them; and I will multiply them as they were multiplied before. And I will sow them among peoples, and from afar they shall remember me.” The bishop has been trying to establish a free school for the poor Catholics who have not made their First Communion. Half of their time is employed in cultivating the ground to defray their expenses, and the other half is devoted to reading, writing, and instructions in Christian doctrine. With fifty such schools we could renovate the entire diocese, and gather into the fold a great many souls which otherwise would be deprived of the means of salvation. Thus it is evident that what has been done is nothing in comparison with what remains to be done. Our institutions, besides the incidental and the daily expenses of the sanctuary, the voyage, etc., cost more than 300,000 francs; and the bishop, who receives but 600 francs of ecclesiastical revenue, owes more than 25,000 for his cathedral, which is not yet finished, much less decorated. Unforeseen events precluded the possibility of the subscribers making their payments; and if to-day they were forced to do so according to the rigor of the law, it would be of material injury to religion, and would produce the most baneful effect on the minds and the hearts of both Catholics and Protestants, who are also subscribers. The church in Kentucky owns some land, to be sure; but to clear this land, and then to cultivate it, laborers are lacking, and consequently this uncultivated property produces no revenue. The majority of the students, both at the seminary and the monastery, pay no board. The missionaries receive no assistance from the state; they are entirely dependent on their parishioners, who often do not even defray their travelling expenses, and perquisites are unheard of.

The spirit of religion obliges us to make a great many sacrifices and to endure innumerable privations to avoid being considered avaricious, and frequently it is necessary to make presents. Sometimes they ask us for prayer-books or books of controversy, sometimes for catechisms, rosaries, etc., etc. Moreover, when the necessary expenses for the support of two or three hundred persons[195] are calculated and contrasted with our limited resources, that they suffice seems incredible; and the mystery thereof can only be solved by referring it to that infinite Providence which feeds the birds of the air and gives to the lilies of the valley a glory more dazzling than that of Solomon.

This paternal Providence, after having accomplished such wonders, will not abandon us in our present distress. After making use of his ministers as means of operation, he will also inspire religious souls with the desire to co-operate in these good works, and crown his gifts in crowning the merits of their charity.

The writer of this notice was a witness to the greater number of events he relates--“Quod vidimus et audivimus, hoc annuntiamus vobis” (1 Joan. i.) After working twenty-five years in this mission, he returned to France to take a little rest and to solicit aid from his countrymen, according to the instructions of his bishop. Although weakened by a serious illness which he had undergone the preceding fall, and which nearly exhausted his means, he proposed, together with M. Chabrat, a missionary from the same country, to recross the ocean and undertake a journey of nearly four hundred miles to reach Kentucky, where his services are still required.

If some ecclesiastics felt themselves called to accompany him to America, they will doubtless be persuaded from the perusal of this truthful narrative that they will also have to travel the way of the cross, which we know to be the way to heaven. It will also be expedient that they procure all the books according to the ritual of Rome; theological and Biblical works in French, English, and Latin; chalices, ciboriums, crucifixes, vestments and church ornaments, altar pictures--in fact, everything relating to divine service. Surely they will be assisted through the piety of their friends and acquaintances. How many persons in France possess ecclesiastical or theological works which are not printed in America, as also sacred ornaments which are of no use to them; whereas these articles could be employed in so useful and so holy a manner in these new missions, which are in need of everything and possess nothing! We hope through the charity of pious and wealthy souls that they will generously offer to the service of God this small portion of the gifts they have received from him in abundance. Faith teaches us that he will not allow himself to be outdone in generosity, and what they sacrifice to his glory will be returned a hundred-fold. As for us, our gratitude will cause us to recommend our benefactors to the prayers of the missionaries, of the religious orders, and of the laity who are thus benefited; and we promise to celebrate a solemn Mass of thanksgiving, to which we will invite all good Christians, to whom we will suggest a general Communion to be offered to God for the same intention.

S. T. BADIN, _American Missionary_.

PARIS, February 7, 1821, Seminary of S. Nicholas, Rue S. Victor.

_Extract of a letter from Bishop Flaget to Father Badin._

ST. ETIENNE, February 19, 1820.

BELOVED COLABORER: Probably this letter, written from a place with which you are familiar, and to which you are doubtless attached, will be handed you by Father Chabrat. I earnestly desired to be in Kentucky at the time of your departure; that which I have often said to you I repeat to-day--I have always felt strongly inclined to love you; let us love one another as brothers.

I will give you none of the diocesan details; Father Chabrat knows them as well as I do, and he will be greatly pleased to answer your numerous questions. The departure of this young man, that of Father Nérinckx, and yours cause a great void in my diocese, and leave a burden which would certainly overpower me if God, who has sustained me so far, did not continue to shower his favors upon me. I still feel all the vigor of youth to buckle on my armor. I am to take charge of Father Nérinckx’s _religieuses_, who to-day form quite a little congregation. My coadjutor will give his attention to the senior seminary and to the college, which I am to open to-morrow.

MM. Dérigaud and Coomes direct the junior seminary and the parish of St. Thomas, and their success astonishes every one. M. Abell is causing the “Barrens” to prosper. Thus, my dear friend, will the diocese be managed during your absence, while you, I hope, will make collections for our poor parishes, which are in great want. I am going to re-employ your brother, who is as pious and studious as ever, at the senior seminary in Bardstown. I earnestly desire to see him a priest, and I am sure that he is sufficiently informed either to direct the children in the boys’ school or to take charge of Father Nérinckx’ _religieuses_. Bishop Dubourg is endeavoring to have a bishop assigned to New Orleans, another to Detroit, and a third to Cincinnati. If he succeeds, I will have less extent of country to traverse, and as many opportunities as I now have of making priests.

Thus the prospects of my diocese are daily becoming more promising. Hasten to return; for God has not bestowed upon you so perfect a knowledge of the language and habits of this country to no purpose.

Accept, I beg of you, sentiments of the most sincere friendship.

BENOÎT-JOSEPH, _Bishop of Bardstown_.

BLESSED NICHOLAS VON DER FLÜE.

Of the many beautiful views from the Rigi, none seemed so determined to imprint itself on our memories during our stay at Kaltbad as that looking up the Valley of Sarnen. At whatever hour we wandered to the Känzli, early or late, in bright weather or in dull, it was all the same. Somehow the sun was always lighting up the valley; either resting placidly on its velvety pastures, shining broadly over its small lake, and making it glitter like a brilliant dewdrop amidst the encircling verdure, or, at the very least, darting shy gleams across its waters from behind the clouds which lowered on all else around. The lake of Zug was much nearer to us, lying right beneath one angle of the Rigi; but it had not the like powers of fascination. Moreover, we noticed that exactly in the same degree that Sarnen attracted the sun Zug seemed to repel it. At all events, the lasting remembrance of Zug is dark, bleak, and unfriendly; that of Sarnen, on the contrary, peaceful and sunny. It seemed, too, as though it were tenderly watched over by all its neighbors. Mt. Pilatus guards the entrance to it from Lucerne, hills enclose the valley on three sides, while above and beyond, as seen from Kaltbad, rise those giants of the Oberland which give such sublimity to these scenes, and enhance their beauty by the constant variety of their aspect.

Undoubtedly the associations connected with Sarnen had something to do with our love for it. In the village of Sachslen, on the borders of its lake, Blessed Nicholas von der Flüe was born and lived, and there his remains are now preserved.

And here, behind this promontory of the Bürgenstock, just opposite the Känzli, lies Stanz, the capital of Nidwalden--as this division of Unterwalden is now called--whither Blessed Nicholas hurried, and, by his influence with the Assembly, succeeded in saving his country from civil war.

A visit to Sachslen held a special place in the programme sketched out for us by Herr H----. There were some days, too, still to spare before the feast at Einsiedeln on the 14th; so we determined to lose no further time in making our pilgrimage to “Bruder Klaus,” as my Weggis guide and all the people hereabouts affectionately call him.

It was easy to trace the route when standing at the Känzli, and to perceive that, by crossing over to Buochs, we might drive thence to Sachslen. Dismissing, therefore, all fears of the railway descent from our minds, we started by the eleven o’clock train from Kaltbad, which it cost us many a pang to leave, with its dear little church, its lovely views, and its bright, invigorating air. Crossing then in the steamer from Vitznau to Buochs, we speedily engaged carriages to take us to Sachslen, and to bring us back from thence on the following day.

Our road led through Stanz, the home of Arnold von Winkelried, where we lingered long, although determined not to visit the Rathhaus until our return from the sanctuary of its hero. But we had two statues of Arnold to admire--one, in fact, a handsome white marble group commemorating his noble feat at Sempach, and erected by national subscription--to catch a view of Winkelried’s house in a distant meadow; to see in the church statues of “Bruder Klaus” and Konrad Scheuber--who also led a solitary life of holiness in the Engelberg valley close by, and whose highest honor it was to call himself the “Daughter’s Son” of the great hermit--to read the tablet in the mortuary chapel in memory of the four hundred and fourteen priests, women, and children who had fallen victims to the French soldiery in 1798; and to hear tales of the desolation their unbridled vengeance caused all this country. Pretty Stanz! now looking so happy, smiling, and prosperous that it is difficult to realize it ever could have been laid in ashes some seventy years ago. No district in Switzerland is more fruitful at present; cultivated like a garden, dotted over with fine timber, and making a beautiful picture backed by the Engelberg line of mountains stretching away behind.

An avenue of stately walnut-trees leads to the little port of Stanzstadt, and on the way we passed the chapel of Winkelried, where an annual fête is held, and close to which the bodies of eighteen women were found, after the fight in 1798, lying beside those of their fathers, husbands, and brothers--so completely had it then become a war _à outrance_, in defence of hearths and homes.

From Stanzstadt the road turned abruptly westward, at first along the edge of the small lake of Alpnach, the ruins of Rossberg Castle perceptible on the opposite shore--the first Austrian stronghold taken by the Rütli confederates on the memorable New Year’s morning of 1308.

Thence the hills grew lower and the landscape more pastoral than Alpine, until we reached Sarnen, above which formerly rose the castle of Landenberg, the famous imperial vogt who put out the eyes of old Anderbalben, of the Melchthal, in punishment for his son’s misdemeanors when the latter evaded his pursuit. This barbarous act was the immediate cause of the Rütli uprising; but, like all the others, the castle was taken by surprise, and Landenberg’s life was spared. The terrace where it stood is still called the Landenberg, and there the cantonal assembly has annually met since 1646. Of this spot it is that Wordsworth speaks in his desultory stanzas:

“Ne’er shall ye disgrace Your noble birthright, ye that occupy Your council-seats beneath the open sky On Sarnen’s mount; there judge of fit and right, In simple democratic majesty; Soft breezes fanning your rough brows, the might And purity of nature spread before your sight.”

The panorama thence is said to be magnificent, and it was easy to conceive it all-inspiring to a patriotic orator; but the evening had closed in before we crossed the Sarnen bridge, and it was hopeless to attempt the ascent thither.

Whilst Mrs. C---- was inquiring about rooms we hastened to a church near where a bell had been tolling as we entered the town. “Only a chapel,” answered an old woman; “for the Blessed Sacrament is not kept there.” But the “chapel” contained the cheering sight of troops of children saying their night prayers aloud, headed by some of their elders. The inn is a modest, clean establishment, but in any case it would have been dear to us, all the rooms being full of pictures of “Bruder Klaus” and of every incident in his life. Herr H---- had said that “no house in Obwalden is without his picture,” and this quick fulfilment of our expectations enchanted us. Instantly we stormed the _Kellnerinns_ with questions; but, alas! they were Bernese maidens, and, whether from prejudice or stolid ignorance, they only gave us the old stereotyped answer that “they were ‘Reformed,’ from the other side of the Bruning pass, and knew nothing, nor ever inquired about such matters.”

Accustomed as we had been of late to the large tourist hotels, everything seemed preternaturally quiet, when suddenly, late that evening, a deep voice sounded in the distance, advancing steadily onwards. We had scarcely time to reflect on this singular intrusion on the peaceful village when it became evident that it was that mediæval institution, “the watchman going his rounds,” which none of us ever before had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with; and as he came along the streets he distinctly sang:

“The clock has struck ten; Put out fire and light, Pray God and his Mother To save and protect us!”

And constantly during the night the same appealing voice returned, merely changing the hour as time ran on.

Next morning the sun again befriended us, and Mass was “at the convent hard by,” said our hostess--“the convent of Benedictines, who teach all our girls.” And she said truly; for not only did we find their chapel crowded by the villagers, men, women, and children, while the nuns’ choir was hidden behind the altar, but High Mass was being sung at that early hour of half-past seven, with exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, ending by Benediction. Mr. C---- and George visited the Rathhaus and its portraits; but we were in feverish haste to get on to Sachslen, “two miles off,” said a peasant woman we accosted on the road, and who also said she was on her way thither to pray at the shrine of “Bruder Klaus.” Immediately after breakfast, therefore, taking leave of our comely hostess and of this capital of Obwalden, still so primitively good, although in the close vicinity of the “great world,” and feeling an increased aversion to the Bernese maidens, whose spirit is unmoved by things supernatural, we drove along the flat borders of the Sarnen lake, caught sight of the Rigi and its Känzli, and in less than half an hour found ourselves at Sachslen.

This village is very small, but at once tells its own tale; for the church stands, according to the fashion of “holy places,” in a large open space surrounded by good-sized houses, that serve as inns and resting-places for the crowds of pilgrims who flock here at stated periods. Now all was quiet and the church nearly empty; the Masses of the day--unfortunately for us--were long since over. After paying our visit to the Blessed Sacrament we wandered through the edifice, admiring its size and beauty, but unable to discover any sign of the shrine whose fame had brought us hither. At length George succeeded in finding the sacristan, a wrinkled, toothless octogenarian, who, as far as looks went, seemed quite ancient enough to have been himself a contemporary of “Bruder Klaus.” His German, too, was so intensely local, and consequently, to us, obscure, that we had the utmost difficulty in understanding him. But he pointed to the altar in the centre with an inscription in golden letters on its black marble frontal. And certainly it was worth looking at; for a more remarkable specimen of phonetic spelling is seldom to be found, exactly following the local dialect, even in its total disregard of grammar. On the other hand, this earnest simplicity in such strange contrast to the refined material that perpetuates it is deeply touching and in perfect keeping with everything connected with Blessed Nicholas and this pious people. It ran thus:

“Allhier Buwet die gebein des Seeligen Bruder Claus von Flüe--dahero gesetzt da Man die Kirche gebüwet anno 1679.”[196]

As soon as the aged sacristan felt satisfied that we had read the lines, without another word he drew back the picture over the altar as he might a curtain, and disclosed “Bruder Klaus” himself confronting us! Never shall I forget the thrilling sensation of beholding the hermit’s skeleton in kneeling posture right above the tabernacle and facing the congregation, clothed in his coarse habit, his hands clasped in prayer, the cavity of his eyes filled by two large emeralds, his nose by one enormous long, yellow topaz, while in the centre of the ribs, near his heart, hung a large jewelled cross, and round his neck a number of military orders. It was startling! We had expected from the word “gesetzt” to find him reposing in a shrine, and should have preferred, it must be confessed, to have seen more refinement and delicacy shown in the use of those precious stones as ornamentation. But were they not the precious stones of simple, firm faith and true love of God? This peasant population never had any pretension to “high art or learning.” Blessed Nicholas himself had naught but the refinement of that exalted piety which in itself transcends even the highest flights of human culture, and is, after all, the “one thing needful.” With such thoughts to guide us we could only admire and respect the desire, albeit crudely expressed, to show reverence to one whose own simple nature despised those “earthly treasures.” His countrymen, however, had that deep “art and learning” which taught them to appreciate Blessed Nicholas’ devotion to the Blessed Sacrament; for they could think of no resting-place more dear to him than that close to the dwelling of his Lord. Tender piety, too, prompted the offerings; but no votive tablets recorded their stories, as in the little church at Kaltbad, and we longed in vain to know their histories. The orders alone, we discovered, had been won in different countries by his descendants, and have been offered up by them, as well as various swords and trophies by other Unterwaldeners, in thanksgiving for the prayers and protection of the saintly hermit. A striking example of the enduring value of a noble, self-denying, God-fearing character it is thus to see the aid of this simple peasant still sought and the influence of his memory so powerful on the minds and better natures even of this material age. It was impossible not to pray that he may now more than ever watch over his beloved fellow-countrymen, and obtain for them that steadfastness in their faith and principles which they so sorely need during the terrible struggle they are now passing through. There is little else belonging to Blessed Nicholas to be seen--for was he not a hermit, and the poorest of saints?--but in a case near the wall the old clerk displayed his rosary and another habit, which we liked to fancy might have been made from the piece of stuff presented to him by the town of Freyburg after his successful intervention at the diet of Stanz.

Our thoughts now turned to his hermitage at Ranft, but only to meet with severe disappointment. It was too far for “ladies to walk,” said every one, and no horses could be had without previous orders, of which no one had once thought. Had we only slept here, instead of stopping at Sarnen, all would have been easy, and we should, moreover, have been able to have heard Mass at the shrine. The “Engel” of Sachslen was larger than, though scarcely so inviting as, the “Golden Eagle” of Sarnen, yet he would at least have watched over our spiritual interests; and “when one undertakes a pilgrimage,” exclaimed George, “ladies should despise comforts.”

“It was Herr H----’s plan,” retorted Caroline, determined that we should not be blamed, “and _we_ should not be ungrateful; for remember that he had also to think of us Protestants! All we can now do is to warn other pilgrims, and advise them to come on here straight.”

It was provoking beyond measure to be thus deprived by mismanagement of this point in our visit. But Mr. C---- and George were determined not to give it up; they would go on foot, and report all to us, if only we would wait patiently for a few hours. Where was the use of further grumbling? Like good children, we cried out, “What can’t be cured must be endured,” and, summoning all the piety we could command to our aid, we offered up the disappointment in the spirit of true pilgrims in honor of “Bruder Klaus,” and bade our friends “God speed” and depart.

Anna and the two young ladies, soon discovering pretty points of view, settled themselves to sketch, while Mrs. C---- and I took a ramble through the village. Though without any pretension to an Alpine character, none is more genuinely Swiss than Sachslen. Leaving the square, we wandered among the detached houses, scattered here and there in the most capricious manner on the slope of a hill that rises gently behind, and which, dotted with timber throughout its fresh pastures, forms a most beautiful background to the picture. The wood-work, delicately, nay elaborately, carved, the windows glazed in many instances with bull’s-eye glass, the low rooms with heavy cross-beams, are all many centuries old, perhaps from the very days of Blessed Nicholas; but beyond all doubt the “Holy Cross,” “Engel,” and other hostelries, of which the place is chiefly composed, owe their origin to his memory. Photographs of the church and the hermitage hung in the window of the “library” of the village, which was opened for us, after some delay, by an active, tidy matron. “These are quiet days and few purchasers,” she said in an apologetic tone. “But the ladies would find it very different on feast days; on the 21st of March above all. Then ten and twelve thousand people often come from all quarters; every house far and near is full, stalls are erected in the square, and the church is crowded from morning till night. This is the _Litany_ chanted during the processions,” she added, handing us a small book, which also contained “Prayers by Brother Klaus,” collected from old writings by a priest. Nothing could be more beautiful or simple than the latter; but the _Litany_ in particular was a pre-eminently striking composition, every sentence showing that remarkable union of patriotism and piety which runs through the whole being of every Swiss Catholic. It begins by invoking the hermit, simply as “Blessed Brother Klaus,” to “Pray for us,” and, going on through every phase of his life, implores his intercession in a more emphatic manner wherever his love of country or of justice had been most conspicuous. And here it must be remembered that Blessed Nicholas has as yet only been beatified. Hence those who style him “saint” transgress the proper limits, which are never forgotten by the Swiss themselves. For this reason it is that in no prayer is he ever addressed except as “Blessed Nicholas,” and in popular parlance ranks no higher than their “dear Bruder Klaus.” But that he may some day be canonized is the fond hope of every Swiss Catholic, and one, it is said, which can be justified by many miracles.

Mrs. C---- and I carried off the _Litany_, etc., and, sitting down on a bench near the church, drew out other books we had with us, determined to refresh our memories regarding this great servant of our Lord.

Of these, two small documents, written during his lifetime, are the most interesting. One is a _Memoir_ by John von Waldheim, a gentleman from Halle in Germany, giving an account of his visit to Brother Nicholas in February, 1474, and found in the Wolfenbüttel Library; the other a similar report of his pilgrimage to the Hermit of Ranft, addressed to the clergy and magistrates of the town of Nuremberg, by Albert von Bonstetten, canon of Einsiedeln, whom the historian, J. von Müller, calls “the most learned Swiss of his age,” and found in the archives of the town of Nuremberg in 1861, and wherein he states that, “as so many fables had been circulated about the hermit, he felt convinced they would be glad to know what he had himself seen.” Other contemporaries also allude to their visits; but these two, though short, bear such internal evidence of truth in the quaint freshness of their style and language, place us so completely face to face with all concerned, give such a picture of Blessed Nicholas’ humility and unsophisticated nature, and such an insight into the habits of thought of that period, that no others equal them, and we can only regret that space does not permit of more than merely a passing quotation.

All authorities agree that Blessed Nicholas was born in this then obscure hamlet on March 21, 1417. Zschokke, however, alone mentions that his family name was Löwenbrugger--a fact ignored by others, so completely had “Von der Flüe,” or “of the Rocks,” become his own, even during his lifetime. Yet all his biographers begin by explaining that this cognomen “came from his living at the rocks of Ranft.” Bonstetten also naïvely asks “how any inhabitant of this region can avoid coming into the world except under some one rock or another.” His parents were very poor, and Nicholas labored hard, in the fields especially, from his tenderest years. Grown to manhood, he married young, had ten children, and became distinguished above his fellows, in his public and private capacity, as “a model son, husband, father, and citizen.” He even served as soldier, like others, in the Thurgau war, where he was equally noted for deeds of valor and for compassion towards the sick and wounded. So high was his reputation amongst his neighbors that they several times elected him Landamman and resorted to him as arbitrator in their disputes. “The virtues he displayed to all around him,” writes Bonstetten, “were quite marvellous. For a long time he continued to lead this honorable existence, considerate, affectionate, true to every one, importunate to none.” At length a yearning for greater perfection became stronger than all else, and at fifty years of age he determined to seek for closer union with his Lord. Several of his children were already married and settled in the neighborhood. To those that remained and to his wife he handed over the house that he had built and the fields he had cultivated from early youth upwards, and, taking leave of his family and of all that he held most dear, he left his home for ever. Von Waldheim states that he at first intended merely to wander as a pilgrim from one holy place to another, but that, “on reaching Basel, he had a revelation, which made him choose a hermit’s life in preference, and in consequence of which he turned back to Unterwalden and to his own house. He did not, however, allow himself to be seen by wife, children, or any one, but, passing the night in his stables, he started again at dawn, penetrated for about a quarter of a mile into the forest behind Sachslen, gathered some branches of trees, roofed them with leaves, and there took up his abode.” At all events, it was in this spot, known as “the solitude of Ranft,” at the opening of the Melchthal, that he passed the remaining twenty years of his saintly life.

But although _he_ had withdrawn from the world, that world soon followed him. Before long the fame of his sanctity spread abroad; above all, rumors were circulated that he never tasted earthly food, and that his life was sustained solely by the Blessed Eucharist, which some authorities say he received once a month, others on every Friday. This celestial favor, however, was at first the cause of great suffering to Blessed Nicholas. Calumnies were heaped upon him, insults offered. Still, he remained impassive, taking no heed of men. Some would not doubt him. “Why should they suppose that a man who had so long lived amongst them, whose honor had been so well tried and recognized, and who had abandoned the world merely to lead a hard life in the desert, would now try to deceive them?” But others declared that he only wanted to impose on the vulgar, and that he had food brought to him secretly. “What did the landamman and elders do,” says Bonstetten, “in order to prevent their being accused of playing the part of dupes? They selected trusty men, made them take an oath to speak the truth, and placed them as guards round the hermitage, to watch whether food was brought to Nicholas from any quarter, or whether he procured any for himself.” For a whole month this severe surveillance was maintained; but in the end it only proved in a most convincing manner that the hermit neither ate nor drank anything except that nourishment with which our Lord himself provided him. Two Protestant writers, J. von Müller and Bullinger, give details of this inquiry, of which they raise no doubt; and some years after it took place, during the lifetime of Blessed Nicholas, the following entry was made in the public archives of Sachslen:

“Be it known to all Christians, that in the year 1417 was born at Sachslen, Nicholas von der Flüe; that, brought up in the same parish, he quitted father, mother, brother, wife, and children to come to live in the solitude called Ranft; that there he has been sustained by the aid of God, without taking any food, for the last eighteen years, enjoying all his faculties at this moment of our writing, and leading a most holy life. This we have ourselves seen, and this we here affirm in all truth. Let us, then, pray the Lord to give him eternal life whenever he shall deign to call him from this world.”

As a natural consequence of this investigation, a strong reaction at once occurred. The villagers built him a chapel with a cell adjoining, and soon the Bishop of Constance came to consecrate it.

But the bishop was also determined to test the fact of his total abstinence, and ordered him to eat in his presence. Various are the versions concerning this event, the majority asserting that Blessed Nicholas was seized with convulsions the instant he swallowed the first mouthful. But J. von Waldheim, who seems to have experienced no difficulty in asking direct questions, gives us the hermit’s own words on the subject, brimful of truthfulness and humility. After stating that he had been entertaining Nicholas by an account of his own pilgrimages to holy places, and amongst others to the sanctuary of Blessed Mary Magdalen, in whose honor the Ranft chapel was dedicated, and having brought tears into the eyes of the venerable hermit by the beautiful legends regarding her which he told him, Waldheim proceeds:

“I said: ‘Dear Brother Nicholas! in my own country, as well as here, I have heard it maintained that you have neither eaten nor drunk anything for many years past. What may I believe?’ ‘God knows it!’ he answered, and then continued: ‘Certain folk asserted that the life I lead proceeds not from God, but from the evil spirit. In consequence my Lord the Bishop of Constance blessed three pieces of bread and a drop of wine, and then presented them to me. If I could eat or drink, he thought I should be justified; if not, there could no longer be any doubt that I was under the influence of the devil. Then my Lord the Bishop of Constance asked me what thing I considered the most estimable and meritorious in Christianity. ‘Holy obedience,’ I answered. Then he replied: ‘If obedience be the most estimable and meritorious thing, then I command you, in the name of that holy virtue, to eat these three pieces of bread and to drink this wine.’ I besought my lord to dispense me from this, because this act would grieve me to excess. I implored him several times, but he continued inflexible, and I was obliged to obey, to eat and to drink.’ I then asked Brother Nicholas,” continued Waldheim: ‘And since that time you have neither eaten nor drunk any thing?’ But I could extract no other answer from him save the three words, ‘God knows it.’”

Numberless were the reports concerning his mysterious ways. He often went to Einsiedeln, yet it was said that no one ever met him on the road!

“How does he get there?” asks Waldheim. “God alone knows.” His appearance, too, was said to be unearthly.

Waldheim had heard, too, that his body was emaciated and devoid of natural warmth, his hands icy, and his aspect like that of a corpse. He lays particular stress, therefore, on the fact that Nicholas possessed a natural bodily heat, like any other man, “in his hands especially, which I and my valet Kunz touched several times. His complexion was neither yellow nor pale, but that of one in excellent health; his humor pleasant, his conversation, acts, and gestures those of an affable, communicative, sociable, gay being looking at every thing from the bright side. His hair is brown, his features regular, his skin good, his face thin, his figure straight and slight, his German agreeable to listen to.”

A few years later Père Bonstetten heightens this picture by a minuteness that rivals the _signalements_ of old-fashioned passports. He describes Brother Nicholas as being “of fine stature, extremely thin, and of a brown complexion, covered with freckles; his dark hair tinged with gray, and, though not abundant, falling in disorder on his shoulders; his beard in like manner, and about an inch long; his eyes not remarkable, except that the white is in due proportion; his teeth white and regular; and his nose in harmony with the rest of his face.”

And as we read this clear description, Mrs. C---- and I could not help regretting that posterity had not been satisfied with such a recollection, without having endeavored by emeralds and precious stones to fill up the voids which nature had since created; but when the motives had been so pure and loving, it was not for us to find fault with the manner of their reverence, nor do more than admire its earnestness and simplicity.

There seems to have been a certain difficulty in obtaining admittance to the hermit; for even Père Bonstetten had to be introduced by the landamman, and Von Waldheim took with him the Curé of Kerns. Brother Nicholas, it must be remembered, though an anchorite, was still not ordained; hence a priest was to him always a welcome visitor. His family, too, seem at all times to have had free access to him. Both writers commenced their visits by hearing Mass in his little chapel, where Brother Nicholas knelt behind a grating; but after their introduction he let them into his adjoining cell. Here he impressed them deeply by his humility, politeness, and gentleness, and both remark his sweet-toned voice and his kindliness in shaking hands with every one, “not forgetting a single person.” Père Bonstetten, more than Waldheim, seems to have retained his self-possession; for he says: “I kept my eyes wide open, looking right and left around the room, attentively considering everything. The cell was not half warm. It had two small windows, but no sleeping place, unless a raised portion at one end may be used for that purpose.” Nor could he see a table, nor furniture of any kind, nor sign even of a mattress on which this servant of God could ever repose. But he dwells with emphasis on his simplicity and truthfulness, saying that he answered his many questions, “not in the fashion of a hypocrite, but simply as became an unlettered man.”

And like these visitors came others from every quarter to see and consult him--magistrates to ask the advice of one who, in the words of the _Litany_, had been like that “just judge whose decisions were altogether dictated by conscience and justice,” and that “wise statesman who administered his offices solely for the honor of God and the good of his fellow-men”; soldiers to see the “brave warrior who took up arms for God and fatherland, and was a model of virtue to the army”; those in affliction to beg the prayers of that “most perfect follower of Jesus, who, by meditation on the life and sufferings of our Lord, had been so like unto him”; sinners to implore that “pious hermit, who left the world from desire of greater perfection,” to teach them how to subdue their passions. For all and each he had some word of comfort and exhortation. One of these pilgrims was so captivated by his heavenly admonitions that he resolved to remain near Blessed Nicholas and lead the same life. He built himself a chapel and cell close by, and soon became remarkable for his sanctity; but his antecedents are veiled in mystery, and he has descended to posterity simply as “Brother Ulrich, once a Bavarian gentleman.” Blessed Nicholas, however, evidently held him in high regard; for, after praising him warmly, he urged both Waldheim and Père Bonstetten to visit him before leaving Ranft. The naïve Waldheim takes no pains to conceal that he was prejudiced against poor Ulrich by reason of the mystery surrounding him; although “he is educated,” he says,“whereas Brother Nicholas is a simple layman who does not know how to read.” The learned monk of Einsiedeln, on the contrary, is at once prepossessed in his favor by the tincture of culture which he quickly detects. He notes that Ulrich “talks more and shows less dislike for the society of men than Brother Nicholas. No doubt,” he adds, “because he is more instructed. He is somewhat of a Latin scholar. At the same time, his books are in German. He showed them to me. I think that I perceived the _Gospels_ and the _Lives of the Fathers_ translated into German”--a fact which we may further note as a remarkable proof that such translations of the Gospels into the vernacular, mentioned thus incidentally by Père Bonstetten, were common before the days of printing, in the very midst of the so-called “dark ages.”

Amongst the many traits for which Blessed Nicholas was distinguished, Père Bonstetten records that conformity to the will of God and love of peace were pre-eminent. “He preaches submission and peace--that peace which he never ceases to recommend to the confederates.” And a time was coming when all his power and influence would be needed to preserve it. Some years after these two accounts were written, and while Blessed Nicholas and Brother Ulrich were praying and fasting in their “solitude at Ranft,” great deeds were being done in other parts of Switzerland. The battles of Grandson and Morat were fought and won, Charles the Bold driven back into Burgundy, and the rich spoils of his army became the property of the Swiss. But what union and heroism had gained victory and prosperity well-nigh destroyed. Soleure and Freyburg, in virtue of their hard fighting, claimed admission into the confederacy, which claim the older states disdainfully rejected; while the enormous Burgundian booty likewise became a fruitful source of discord. Numerous diets were held, without avail, for the settlement of these questions, each only increasing the trouble. At length a diet assembled at Stanz purposely in order to come to a final decision; but the disputes reached such a pitch that the deputies were about to separate, although the return to their homes would have been the signal for civil war. Blessed Nicholas, though so near, knew nothing of these proceedings until one morning, when one of his oldest and most esteemed friends unexpectedly arrived at the hermitage. It was the curé of Stanz; a worthy priest and a true patriot, who, in despair at the state of affairs, and mindful of Nicholas’ patriotism and love of peace, came to implore his help. Without an instant’s delay the hermit took up his staff, walked across the paths he knew so well, and marched straight into the hall at Stanz where the deputies were assembled. Zschokke, the Protestant writer, thus describes the scene:

“All with one accord rose from their seats as they beheld in their midst this old man of emaciated aspect, yet full of youthful vigor, and deeply venerated by every one. He spoke to them with the dignity of a messenger from heaven, and in the name of that God who had given so many victories to them and to their fathers, he preached peace and concord. ‘You have become strong,’ he said, ‘through the might of united arms. Will you now separate them for the sake of miserable booty? Never let surrounding countries hear of this! Ye towns! do not grieve the older confederates by insisting on the rights of citizens. Rural cantons! remember that Soleure and Freyburg have fought hard beside you, and receive them into fellowship. Confederates! take care, on the other hand, not to enlarge your boundaries unduly! Avoid all transactions with foreigners! Beware of divisions! Far be it from you ever to prefer money to the fatherland.’ This and much more did Nicholas von der Flüe say, and all hearts were so deeply touched, so stirred, by the words of the mighty hermit, that in one single hour every disputed point was settled. Soleure and Freyburg were that day admitted into the confederacy; old treaties and compacts were renewed; and at the suggestion of the pious Nicholas it was decided that in future all conquered territory should be distributed amongst the cantons, but booty divided amongst individuals! This done,” continues Zschokke, “the hermit returned to his wilderness, each deputy to his canton. Joy abounded everywhere. From all the church-towers of the land festive peals announced the glad tidings, from the furthest Alps even unto the Jura.”

The cantons vied with each other in the effort to express their gratitude to Blessed Nicholas. But in vain; he would take nothing from them except a few ornaments for his small chapel. Freyburg alone was favored by his acceptance of a piece of stuff to repair his worn-out habit, which was then in shreds; and this it was which we liked to think identical with the relic shown to us by the old sacristan in the church at Sachslen. Bern, in a spirit widely different from that of its degenerate posterity, presented him with a chalice, which elicited from him a letter full of patriotism and tender Christian feeling: “Be careful,” he writes in answer, “to maintain peace and concord amongst you; for you know how acceptable this is to Him from whom all good proceeds. He who leads a godly life always preserves peace; nay, more, God is that sovereign peace in whom all can repose. Protect the widows and orphans, as you have hitherto done. If you prosper in this world, return thanks to God, and pray that he may grant you a continuance of the same happiness in the next. Repress public vice and be just to all. Deeply imprint in your hearts the remembrance of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. It will console and strengthen you in the hour of adversity.” Then, as if in prophetic strain to the proud town, he adds: “Many people in our day, tempted by the devil, are troubled with doubts on faith. But why have any doubts? The faith is the same to-day that it ever has been.”

What wonder, after all this, that, in spite of himself, Blessed Nicholas became the arbiter of Switzerland during the few remaining years of his life? Every dispute was referred to him, and, as one writer adds, “In that solitude, where he thought only of serving God, by the simple fact of his sanctity he became of all his compatriots the most pleasing to God and the most useful to his neighbor.” At length the holy hermit lay down on the bare ground, which had so long been his couch, and, full of years and honor, he “fell asleep in the Lord” on the 21st of March, 1487--on the very day that he had fulfilled seventy years of his most spotless and saintly life.

We had just reached this point, when, looking up, we beheld Mr. C---- and George advancing and exclaiming: “Such a pity you did not come--such a pity!” Breathlessly they told us that the distance had proved trifling; they found horses, too, on the way, and everything had been deeply interesting. The road had passed near “Bruder Klaus’” fields, crossed the rushing stream mentioned by Von Waldheim; and not only had they visited the chapel and cell of Blessed Nicholas, but also that of Brother Ulrich, exactly as described by the two mediæval pilgrims. The stone used by Blessed Nicholas as his pillow is there preserved; both places, kept in excellent repair and attended by a priest who resides on the spot, are much frequented and full of votive offerings of various kinds. At once it became a question of our starting thither, even at that advanced hour. Had Anna and I been alone, we should have upset all previous arrangements for this purpose; but charity and forbearance are the virtues most needed and most frequently brought into play when travelling with a large party. Smothering our annoyance, therefore, a second time, as best we could, and making a mental resolve to return some future day and see with our own eyes what our friends so vividly described, we adjourned to the Engel, and did full justice to the meal which its pleasant-faced hostess had prepared for us. In another hour we were on the road back to Stanz, but this time across the hills. Kerns, now speaking to our minds of Von Waldheim and Père Bonstetten, was first passed, succeeded before long by St. Jacob and its plain, the scene of the terrible battle with the French in 1798; and in two and a half hours the comfortable cottages of Nidwalden had gradually developed into, and terminated in, the pretty houses of its capital, Stanz. Here we now halted, in order to repair our omission of yesterday by a visit to the Rathhaus. It was opened for us after some delay by a bluff Nidwaldener, whose German was as unintelligible as that of the Sachslen clerk. But, in like manner, he supplied the defect by pointing to two curious and very ancient paintings which hung in the entrance lobby, one representing Blessed Nicholas taking leave of his wife and family before he went to Ranft, the other his appearance at the diet here. The deputies in the painting have all risen, whilst the emaciated hermit is addressing them boldly and earnestly. As we proceeded into the hall close by, it required no stretch of imagination to fancy that the scene had but just occurred in that spot, so exactly is the room of the same shape, the chairs and table of the same pattern, and all placed in the same position as in the old picture. Though not the same building, one may well believe that the present is only a reproduction of the former town-hall, simple and unpretending as it is, and yet invested with such deep interest. Three sides of the hall are hung with portraits of the landammans since 1521, and the fourth is decorated by various banners won on different patriotic occasions. Of these, we notice one that was taken at the battle of Kappel, where Zwingle met his death; another sent to the Unterwaldeners by Pope Julius II.; and a third recently presented by Zschokke, a native of these parts, representing William Tell shooting the apple off his son’s head--thus giving the sanction of this grave and graphic historian to the story we all so much love. Long did we linger in the hall, full of the day’s impressions; but the light was waning, and it was necessary to depart. Ere we reached Buochs the sun had set; it was dark when the steamer came up to the quay; and night had closed when we arrived at Brunnen and entered the brilliantly-lighted hall of the Walstätter Hof.

THE ASSUMPTION.

Crown her with flowers! She is the queen of flowers: Roses for royalty and mignonette For sweet humility, and lilies wet With morning dew for holy purity. Crown her with stars! She is the queen of stars: They sparkle round her maiden path in showers And stretch their beams of light in golden bars, Making a pavement for her majesty. Crown her with prayers! She is the queen of prayer: With eager hands she gathers every one, Wreathing them into garlands for her Son, Holding them close with fond, maternal care: Sweet flower--first planet in the realms above! Crown her with love! She is the queen of love.

THE SCIENTIFIC GOBLIN.

By one of those freaks of fortune rare even in fairyland, the small people known as the Odomites had, in order to escape being devoured by a strolling giant named Googloom, made him their king. This ogre was of so wonderful an ugliness that babes died at the sight of him, and men and maids had gone into convulsions of merriment; but the majority of the Odomites, blessed with a wholesome fear, dared no more than laugh in their sleeves at bare memory of his face, avoiding as much as they could to see him. However, to make sure that all his people were as sober as himself, King Googloom issued an edict defining laughter as treason, under any pretext to be punished with death by slow torture. In cases of young and pretty maids this sentence was varied by the fact that the giant himself ate them up. Yet, spite of the terrors of his decree, hundreds of his subjects perished for want of self-control; and one man, whose fate became renowned as that of a voluntary martyr to free expression, died laughing involuntarily, notwithstanding his tortures, the giant Googloom being a witness of his execution.

When the realm of Odom was thus rid of all rebellion in the shape of quips, jokes, pranks, tricks, antics, capers, smiles, laughs, caricatures, chuckles, grimaces, Googloom yawned and rolled his eyes in a manner fearful to see, and, leaving his throne, made a tour through his dominions. Not a soul dared so much as smile in obeisance to him. Though he made his ugliest faces, to such a degree that the passing ravens were scared, not a single Odomite lifted up his head to grin for a moment. Over all the land reigned the shadow of funlessness. Googloom had become a dreadful chimera, a nightmare. Hardly knowing it, his people grew lean and pined away.

Googloom himself began to be weary of the prevailing dulness, even while he boasted that the land was never so sober and its population so orderly. “When will the old times return,” asked his sages of themselves, “when the land laughed and grew fat?” Googloom eyed with contempt the bones of the children that were served up at his banquets; and one day, seeing that the leanness of his people had extended to their crops, and yet unwilling to alter his decrees, mockingly proclaimed that anybody who could make him laugh at his own expense, or make anybody else laugh on the same terms, should have the privilege of laughing whenever he pleased.

There was at this time living in one of the mountains of Odom a famous goblin named Gigag. His exceeding knowledge and invention, assisted by good-nature, had made him famous in the country round about; and notwithstanding the prejudices of some of the Od people, he was permitted to benefit them in various ways. For instance, he made them a stove which gave them both heat and light; an instrument that produced exquisite melodies whether you could play it or not; an accordeon that invented tunes of its own accord, for the help of composers; a portable bridge to be flung over chasms at pleasure; a drink that gave men’s eyes the power of microscopes, and another that inspired them with the capacity of telescopes; a fertilizer that brought up crops in seven days with care; a flying-machine to save all who laughed; and a pill to cure headache, heartache, rheumatism, dropsy, palsy, dyspepsia, epilepsy, consumption--everything short of death itself--and to cause lost hair, eyes, teeth, legs, and arms to grow again. There was also rumor that the goblin Gigag had tunnelled the whole kingdom through, and that goblin steeds and people could now travel at will an underground thoroughfare. But, for all these things, the Odomites were no better than before. Their taste in music was bad; they were blind as bats to their interests; they tumbled over precipices; they neglected their crops, and were too stupid to fly, if not too dull to laugh; and headaches, heartaches, and palsies were much the same as ever, because they disliked to take a pill that was not sugar-coated. In the end the scientific Gigag was thought to be a goblin of genius--one of those fine spirits who are always doing magnificent things to no purpose. Had he relied upon the effect of his mechanical or chemical exploits to make his way in the world, the well-meaning goblin would certainly have made a mistake. What, then, was the secret of that extraordinary power which the goblin Gigag exercised over the minds of those who came in contact with him? It was his expression.

All the variety of which the goblin countenance is susceptible seemed to be concentrated in that of Gigag. But its peculiarity was this: that his eyes grew piercing and dazzling at will, while his teeth enlarged, his mouth curved, and his nose elongated and turned at pleasure. It may well be supposed that no Odomite could resist a smile or survive the scorn of a countenance so effective; and we can only ascribe it to Gigag’s known forbearance that the so-called anticachination laws of Googloom were not a thousand times violated. But patience has its bounds. The national dulness which made Googloom yawn and sneer made Gigag almost swear. The reigning condition must be put an end to, or science itself would be powerless at length to amuse or to cure. Accordingly, he sped through his underground road, and came up at court by a secret path. Wearing a long, conical hat and a fanciful jacket, with doublet and hose, and elongating his features while he stretched himself to his full height, he stepped into the presence of the king, knocking down by the way a few insolent attendants who had excited his gaze. Bristling the few hairs of his upper lip, which resembled the mustache of Grimalkin, and bowing with the most obsequious of smiles, the goblin Gigag stood before the giant Googloom.

Never had that ogre seen a figure at once so lean and long, and a face so bright and cunning. He would have ordered it at once to his darkest dungeons, were it not for an unaccountable fascination which forced him to listen to Gigag while he proposed not only to make Googloom laugh at his own expense, but to make everybody else laugh at him on the same terms, and to solve the problem of perpetual motion by making the land of Odom merry ever afterwards. “I presume,” said he, “you have heard the story of the pig’s fiddle”; and he proceeded to tell a tale which for wit and fun would have made a thousand unicorns die laughing. But on the giant it had either no effect at all or had only raised his spirits to the point of being serious. Gigag clearly saw that he had failed by trusting to the merits of his story instead of using his great weapon of expression. “This is no ordinary case,” said the goblin to himself. “The problem is to make an immense creature laugh who has nothing of the sort in him. Perhaps the best thing to do is to torture him till he laughs in despair.” Spite of the giant’s disposition to put his visitor at once to the torture, he agreed that the accomplished goblin should call next day, and make him laugh, or else die by slow boiling. This the goblin heard with a mixture of scorn and amusement, curling his nose and showing his teeth in an aristocratic manner.

As the cunning Gigag left the king’s chamber to go to his quarters in a corner of the great palace, he took good care to scatter about two scientifically-prepared powders, one of which dissolved in the air, producing sleep, and the other by a similar change entered the nostrils, producing throughout the body tickling sensations and a disposition to low chuckling. When Gigag again came before Googloom, it was seen that none of the royal guards were fit for duty, and that throughout the palace and its grounds the disposition among courtiers, retainers, servants, pages, to laugh in their sleeves at the smallest incitement, was unmistakable. Even the kitchen cats had caught the infection, and mewed dispersedly.

“Now, O great Googloom!” said Gigag when all the court had assembled, “let me in three acts essay to complete that transformation by which thy people’s despair shall be turned to joy, and thy laughing face shall behold its own merriment.” At this moment the giant shook like one who is tickled all over, but cannot laugh, experiencing the greatest tortures without knowing what to make of them. To divert him the goblin related his favorite story of the merry owl, with such catcalls, crowing, mincing, and mewing, and withal such unearthly jest, that a thousand dogs would have died if they did not laugh. What wonder, then, that long before the witty Gigag had concluded a favorite page was so wrought upon by chuckling that, bursting his buttons, at length he laughed right out, which had such an effect upon all assembled that they chuckled, and then roared. “Ho, guards!” cried Googloom; but Gigag easily drew his attention to the second part of the programme--for the goblin had actually brought the giant to the point of complacency. “I propose now,” he said, “to show you the most ridiculous countenance that was ever seen, except one.” Hereupon he diminished and heightened his figure at intervals, while he curved his nose by degrees, lengthened his teeth as he pleased, and put upon his mouth such an expression of maddening humor that his spectators gasped with laughing, to the vast confusion of the helpless giant, who vowed with a feeble smile that the gifted Gigag was certainly the most ingenious man he ever knew.

“Nothing will serve you, I perceive, O beautiful Googloom! except the light of science; and now I will show you the face of the most ridiculous man that ever was born.” Accordingly, by means of an instrument which he had invented, Gigag reflected upon a large canvas the features of Googloom! Unwittingly the giant smiled, for he had never seen so preposterous a face before; and the more he smiled, the more ridiculous it grew, till at last, after the giant himself had given way to laughter, it was so horribly funny that the whole court shrieked and shrieked again, and Googloom, losing all control, roared with such a volume and power of merriment that he toppled off his throne, and was crushed under its ruins. The people, seeing the faces of the courtiers and of each other, caught an infectious laughter, which prevailed throughout all Odom, and did not by any means cease when the goblin Gigag was called to the throne, and the reign of science began.

THE HAPPY ISLANDS.

“Tell me, brother, dearest brother, Why it is thou aye dost weep? Why thus, ever listless, sittest Looking forth across the deep?

“Thy impatient steed is wond’ring Why his master doth not come, On his perch thy hawk is sleeping, E’en thy hound’s deep voice is dumb.

“Yesternight there came a minstrel With a glee-maid young and fair, If mayhap their merry voices Would beguile thy weary care.”

“Hawk may sleep, and hound may slumber, My impatient steed must wait, Nor care I to hear the minstrel Who is resting at the gate.

“E’en the keen breeze of the mountains Would not cool my fevered brow, E’en the shrill note of the trumpet Would not serve to rouse me now.

“Dost remember, that our father Told us how his wond’ring eyes Once beheld the Happy Islands Far off on the ocean rise?

“Those fair Islands where no mortal, As ’tis said, has ever been, Though at evening in the westward They at sunset oft are seen.

“Those blest Islands that so often Were our aged minstrel’s theme, That surpass the fairest fancies Of a poet’s wildest dream.

“Where the Holy Grail lies hidden Far from mortal quest or claim, And the Tree of Life stands, guarded By the Seraph’s sword of flame:

“Where the Blessed Ones are dwelling Till the dawning of the day When this world and all upon it, Like a dream, will pass away.

“And our sire sailed towards those Islands, Till their shore he drew so near That the strains of heavenly singing Fell upon his raptured ear.

“And as that immortal music O’er his ravished senses stole, An intense and eager longing Took possession of his soul.

“When, lo! as entranced he listened, Suddenly the mists of night, Gath’ring round the Happy Islands, Hid them from his anxious sight.

“Then all through that weary midnight Stayed he waiting for the dawn, But when day broke, lo! the Islands With the mists of night had gone.

“From that day thou know’st he languished, And could take nor food nor rest, For he aye was thinking, thinking On those Islands of the Blest.

“When he died, dost thou remember We heard music from the sea, That enchained us with the weirdness Of its mystic melody?

“Scarce three days ago at sunset I was sitting, thinking here, When I saw those Happy Islands In the west there, bright and clear.

“Words would fail to tell their beauty, They were wrapt in golden haze, And they glowed with such a radiance That on them I scarce could gaze.

“And since that resplendent vision On my raptured senses fell, It has haunted and enthralled me With the magic of its spell.

“I must go and seek those Islands That far to the westward lie. I hear distant voices calling, I must find those isles or die.”

At the early dawn next morning Young Sir Brian sailed away, Mournfully his brother watchèd On the shore the livelong day.

Long kept guard the weary watchers, ’Mid the tempest and the rain, But ah! nevermore Sir Brian To his home came back again.

It is said by some he perished In the wild and stormy wave, Where the sea-birds wailed the requiem O’er his mist-enshrouded grave.

If perchance he reached those Islands, Be ye sure that he stayed there; For what earthly joy or beauty With those Islands can compare?

Where the sun is ever shining And the blossom doth not fade, Where from quest of mortal hidden The most Holy Grail is laid.

Where with flaming swords the Seraphs Stand around the Tree of Life, Where the Blessed Ones are dwelling Who have conquered in the strife.

NOTE.--This poem is founded on an ancient Irish legend, to the effect that the Happy Islands, as they are called--that is, the temporal resting-place of the blessed, where yet stands the Tree of Life guarded by the cherubim--are situated in the ocean somewhere to the far westward of Ireland.

It is said they are sometimes to be seen at sunset from the coast o’ Galway.

Many have sought to find them, and some even have come near them, but just as they were approaching, either the night fell or a storm arose and drove them from the enchanted shores.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

LES DROITS DE DIEU ET LES IDEES MODERNES. Par l’Abbé François Chesnel, Vicaire-Général de Quimper. Poitiers et Paris: Henri Oudin. 1875.

Every age has its special errors and its special manifestations of the truth precisely opposite to those errors. The special errors of the present age may be well summed up under one formula, which we find on p. 335 of the Abbé Chesnel’s work bearing the title placed at the head of this notice: “The pretended incompetence of God and his representatives in the order of human things, whether scientific or social.” The system which springs from this fundamental notion has received the name of Liberalism. In contradiction to it, the authority of God and the church over those matters which are included in the order of human things, is the truth which in our day has been the special object of inculcation, definition, explanation, and defence on the part of the Catholic Church and her most enlightened advocates. A great number of the very finest productions of our contemporary Catholic writers in books, pamphlets, and periodicals, treat of themes and topics connected with this branch of the great controversy between Catholic truth and universal error. The volume just published by the Abbé Chesnel is particularly remarkable among these for simplicity, lucidity, and moderation in its statements, and for its adaptation to the understanding of the great mass of intelligent and educated readers, who are unable to profit by any treatises presupposing a great amount of knowledge and thought on abstruse matters. The form of dialogue helps the author and the reader very much in respect to the facility and simplicity of the work of giving and receiving elementary instruction on the subjects contained within the volume. The other topics besides the particular one we are about to mention are handled very much in the same manner by M. Chesnel as by other sound and able writers, and require no special remark. Thank God! our instructed American Catholics are not inclined to bury themselves in what the author happily styles “the fog of liberalism,” in so far as this confuses the view of the rights of the church and the Holy See in respect to the usurpations of the civil power and the rebellions of private judgment. We have turned with a more particular interest to that part of the volume which treats of the nature, origin, acquisition, and loss of sovereign rights by the possessors of political power in the state. This is one of the most difficult topics in the department of ethics, and one seldom handled, in our opinion, so well as by our author. To a certain extent sound Catholic writers agree, and the principles maintained are proved with ease to the satisfaction of right-minded students. That political power is from God, that human rights are from God, that an authority certainly legitimate cannot be resisted within its lawful domain without sin, are so many first principles universally accepted and easily proved. But when the sources and criteria of legitimacy are in question, there is far less agreement even among those who reject liberalism, and much less facility of laying down and proving propositions in a satisfactory manner. The ingenious and learned Dr. Laing, in his little book entitled _Whence do Kings Derive the Right to Rule?_ in our opinion sustains most extravagant theories regarding the divine right of monarchs. On the other hand, we are not entirely satisfied with the reasonings of the very able and brilliant Dublin Reviewer on the principles of legitimacy. In fact, we have not seen the subject handled in a perfectly thorough and satisfactory manner by any author writing in the English language. M. Chesnel is not exhaustive, but, so far as his scope in writing permits him to develop his subject, he seems to us remarkably clear and judicious. The beginning of sovereignty he traces to the parental expanding into the patriarchal authority. Acquisition of lawful sovereignty he refers to inheritance, election, and just conquest. The rehabilitation of a sovereignty unjustly acquired he refers to the accession of the right of a nation to the possession of the goods which have become dependent on the peaceable maintenance of a _de facto_ sovereignty, sanctioned by a common consent. The possessor who has been unjustly despoiled of his sovereignty _de jure_ by one who has become sovereign _de facto_ evidently loses his right as soon as it is transferred lawfully to this spoliator or his heirs in the manner indicated. The author, as we think unnecessarily, resorts to the supposition that he is supposed to cede it, because he cannot reasonably maintain it. He adds, however, that if he does not cede it he nevertheless loses it, which seems to us to make his cession or non-cession wholly irrelevant and without effect. It is lost by the prevalence of a higher right on the part of the nation. Nevertheless, we think that until a permanent and stable union of the welfare of the nation with the right of the new dynasty is effected, the former sovereign right may in certain cases remain in abeyance, and therefore revive again in the future. This appears to us to be exemplified in the case of the rights of Don Carlos to the throne of Spain, and of the Comte de Chambord to the throne of France. Strictly, in themselves, their rights have been in abeyance, and remain imperfect, until the national welfare, sustained by a sound and powerful part of the body politic, demands their restitution and actually effects the same. In such cases there is always more or less doubt about the real sense of the better and sounder part of the nation, and about the best settlement of conflicting claims for the common good. And hence it is that the best men may differ, and conscientiously espouse opposite sides, when a nation is in an unsettled and divided state respecting its sovereignty.

In respect to the relation of the state to the church, the author has some very just and sagacious remarks on the peculiar condition of things in our own republic, quite in accordance with the views which have been expressed by our soundest American Catholic writers. We conclude our criticism by quoting a few passages:

“The religious system existing in the United States does not resemble, either in its origin or in its applications, that which the liberal sect imposes on the Catholic peoples of Europe. The American population, the progeny of colonists driven from England by persecution, never possessed religious unity. When Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Catholics, who had all fought in common for independence, assembled in Congress and formed their constitution, they recognized the variety of worships as an antecedent fact, and endeavored to accommodate themselves to it in the best way they could. No false political theory disturbed the good sense of these legislators. Governed by a necessity manifestly invincible, and which still continues, they secured to each worship a complete liberty; proclaimed that which is a just consequence from this principle: that the state should have only a very restricted agency--that is, no more than what is necessary for reconciling the liberty of each one with that of all others. In fact, when separated from the true church, the state is reduced to pure naturalism, and in this condition the action of the state, separated from the church, ought to be reduced to the minimum” (p. 179).

MEMOIRS OF GENERAL WILLIAM T. SHERMAN. By Himself. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1875.

This book marks an epoch in the literary history of the war. Ten years of reconstruction and of political spoil-gathering, of slow and still incomplete recuperation at the South, and of reluctant, painful subsidence to the moderate profits and the quiet of peace at the North, had dulled the excitement attending the events of the war, had corrected many prejudices, had taken off many of the prominent actors of both sides of the contest, and had added to the literary public many men and women who were children when Sherman “marched to the sea.” And now comes one of the great conquerors of the Rebellion, and tells almost every word that an honorable man would dare to tell of all that he knows about the soldiers and the generals, the fighting and the plotting, of the war, and with infinite frankness--not stopping with facts, and dates, and figures, but detailing his remembrance of conversations, frankly offering his opinion of motives and his judgment of character, as well adverse as favorable--as readily giving names of those deserving blame as of those worthy of praise. No wonder, therefore, that these _Memoirs_ have set the whole country to thinking about the war, and all the newspapers to discussing it. We have already had scores of explanations and defences of those attacked, or of friends in their behalf, and we are promised the Memoirs, Recollections, and Narratives of many of the more prominent generals; so that we shall shortly be supplied with testimony as to all the events of the late war, given by the actors themselves or by eye-witnesses.

The first six chapters are occupied with General Sherman’s life from the beginning of the Mexican war till the outbreak of the civil war. They are intensely interesting. Many of those who afterwards became leaders of great armies are introduced to the reader as simple captains or lieutenants in the old army. Little incidents illustrative of their characters are continually related, and the writer’s own impressions, with his unflinching candor, continually offered, every page glowing with good-humor and sparkling with entertaining anecdotes. The domestic archives of more than one household of Lancaster, Ohio, must have been well ransacked to get the letters written home by the young artillery lieutenant, in order to secure such exactness in date, and place, and conversation. One learns from these chapters about all that was done in California during the Mexican war, and who did it; graphic descriptions of many of the natural wonders of that country, and a very interesting account of the early gold excitement. Gen. Sherman was on the staff of Col. Mason, commanding United States forces in California, when gold was found in Sutter’s mill-race; was present when Sutter’s messenger showed it to Col. Mason and asked for a patent to the land; went to Sutter’s place, and saw the first miners at work there; wrote (August 17, 1848) the official despatch of Col. Mason to the Adjutant-General which gave the world the first authentic information that gold could be had in California for the digging.

After peace was concluded with Mexico, the author of the _Memoirs_ returned to the States; but soon resigned his commission, went back to California, and opened a banking office in San Francisco--a branch of a well-known house in St. Louis. His statement of the events of the year 1856 in San Francisco is most interesting, throwing much light on the history of the famous Vigilance Committee. He was Militia General at the time, and, in conjunction with the Governor, treated with the leaders of the Committee, whom he undertakes to convict of falsehood, positively asserting that, had Gen. Wool given him the arms, he was prepared to fight the Vigilantes with militia, and would have suppressed them. Hard times induced him shortly after to wind up his banking business and return to the States, and in the autumn of 1860, after trying and giving up various undertakings, he had organized and was president of a flourishing military school, under the patronage of the State of Louisiana. When that State seceded, Sherman at once resigned and went North, and when war broke out was commissioned colonel in the regular army, rising gradually in rank till finally half the army and country was subject to his command.

Now begins his story of the war. To the most timid civilian there is an intense fascination in that war--a deep interest in every true narrative of it. Gen. Sherman takes us through some of its most exciting scenes, and so frankly and so familiarly that you feel as if you were some invited stranger, sharing his mess, discussing his plans, participating in his hopes and fears, and rejoicing with him in his nearly uniform success. His first battle was Bull Run, in which he commanded a brigade. Shortly after this he was transferred to the West, where he remained until in the winter of 1864-5, when, having fought and conquered his way from Chattanooga to Atlanta, then through Georgia and South Carolina, he found himself in North Carolina, in command of a large army, and upon the communications of Richmond. The General’s narrative of these four years is intensely interesting. Every description of battle or march is intelligible and vivid, every statement of plans is clear. The battle of Shiloh is wonderfully well described; so are the battles which were fought around Atlanta. The same may be said of the storming of Fort McAllister--one of the most gallant deeds of the war. Thousands of ex-soldiers will fight their battles over again with this book--will lose themselves in the great mass of the army--will struggle once more against that sickening sensation which their sense of honor overcame as the first bullet whistled by, the first pale, senseless form was borne to the rear on the bloody stretcher--will tingle again in every nerve at the first sight of the Southerners--will feel the sudden thrill of the fearful excitement of the rush, or of the stubborn defence, or the ecstasy of victory. Many a one will once more feel the terrible fatigue of the march, the pangs of hunger and thirst, the weariness of sleepless nights on picket, the tedious, painful weeks spent in hospital. And every soldier will once more feel sad as he reads of the places and scenes of the death of his comrades, and will repeat for the thousandth time that it was always the best men who were killed.

The charges of cruelty and barbarity made during and after the war against Gen. Sherman are indignantly denied. The depopulation of the town of Atlanta is justified in so far as the General clearly shows the purity of his motives and can cite the approval of both the civil and military authorities; yet the ugly fact remains that it was done not for the instant safety of his army or the immediate injury of the enemy’s, but thousands of women and children were driven among strangers and their homes abandoned to the chances of a civil war to secure a temporary convenience. As to the unauthorized foraging of the troops generally, the General condemned and often reproved and condemned it; though his correspondence shows a secret satisfaction at the devastation committed in South Carolina, except where it might result in permanent injury to private property. His defence against Secretary Stanton’s charges of usurping civil powers in treating with Gen. Jos. Johnston is simply complete. Gen. Sherman here had the honor to be the first after the war to suffer abuse and persecution because a kind heart and chivalrous sympathy with a gallant and beaten foe roused the hatred and fear of a class of politicians as malicious and vindictive as they were ambitious.

The last chapter, “Military Lessons of the War,” is extremely interesting, especially to military men. It contains some very important conclusions; for example, that infantry must hereafter fight in skirmishing order; that cavalry can no longer be used against organized infantry; that every night’s camp in an enemy’s vicinity should be covered by light works; and that good troops with the rifle can beat off from trenches double their numbers. All this and nearly all the other opinions advanced in this chapter had become truisms to even the common soldier in our war, and the late Franco-German war has made them such for the whole world. But Gen. Sherman’s modesty has hindered him from showing that his own persistent adherence to this new science not only gained him Atlanta, but left him an intact and veteran army with which to crush through the heart of the South; and that Gen. Grant’s neglect of it, and his adopting the “hammering-away” method instead, not only did not conquer Lee and take Richmond, but positively buried the old gallant Army of the Potomac between the Rapidan and the Appomattox.

It is a great injustice to the Army of the Cumberland and its General to say so glibly that at Chickamauga “Bragg had completely driven Rosecrans’ army into Chattanooga”; it is notorious that at the battle itself the key of the position was never given up, and that the whole army offered battle defiantly at Rossville before retiring to Chattanooga. Such a mistake as this throws discredit upon Gen. Sherman’s statements of other events of which he was not an eye-witness. It is also much to be regretted that in matters wholly private he should not have reserved the names of persons whose conduct was reprehensible. Thus it adds nothing to the interest of his narrative to give the _name_ of the officer of the ship whose incorrect reckoning so inconvenienced the passengers on the author’s first voyage to California; or to give the _name_ of the lawyer who swindled him out of the proceeds of a note given him to collect; wife and children and friends should not be made to share public disgrace for private acts of which they themselves are entirely guiltless.

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS: A Mystery Play. By Albany James Christie, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. 1875. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

We wish we could say that the contents of this small volume are worth its elegant exterior.

A POLITICO-HISTORICAL ESSAY ON THE POPES, as the Protectors of Popular Liberty. By Rev. Henry A. Brann, D.D. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1875.

In spite of the confident assurance which every loyal Catholic has that the rule of Rome, both temporal and spiritual, is not, never has been, nor ever will be, a despotism, it cannot be denied that but few are well acquainted with the facts of history which prove that the Papal power has been the only interpreter, defender, and protector of their rights which the people ever had, and that all the liberties nations now enjoy are the result of the preaching and defence of the doctrines which lie at the basis of all civilization by the popes, bishops, and priests of the Catholic Church.

Just new the old howl against Rome is being renewed--the howl of the wolves against the shepherd; and the sheep now and again think it necessary to apologize to the wolves for the care their ever-watchful guardian keeps over them, and also try to make them understand that it is both convenient and necessary that he should keep a dog and carry a crook. It is little wonder that the wolves bark and snarl in reply to the apologies, and see no force in our argument for either the dog or crook. But the sheep of the true fold, and also the “other sheep” who are not yet of it, need, rather, plain, straightforward instruction, which, by the grace of God, they will receive to their profit. Such is the essay before us, which we heartily welcome as most opportune, and, although far from being exhaustive of the subject, is both pertinent and forcible. We commend it as an excellent pamphlet to be freely distributed both among Catholics and honest-minded American non-Catholics.

THE STORY OF S. STANISLAUS KOSTKA. Edited by Father Coleridge, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. 1875. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This is the thirteenth volume of the admirable Quarterly Series edited by the Jesuit fathers in London. The “Story” is a brief one, but full of interest. We confess that S. Stanislaus has always seemed to us more charming than even S. Aloysius. Both “angelic youths” are among the greatest glories of the Catholic Church and the Society of Jesus.

Father Coleridge tells us that the present work was at first intended to be a simple translation from the Italian of Father Boero, but that he has taken the pains to prepare an original narrative instead. All who know his style will be grateful for the exchange. He has also confined himself to a narration of facts, without digressing into “religious and moral reflections.” We think this, too, makes the volume more attractive, particularly to the young.

BIOGRAPHICAL READINGS. By Agnes M. Stewart. London: Burns & Oates. 1875. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

It is somewhat aggravating to those familiar with the larger biographical dictionaries to take up a compilation like this. One is reminded of the poet who sent his MSS. to a learned editor to prepare them for publication, and, after hearing the judgment passed by the critic, insisted that he had thrown out the best pieces and retained the only trash in the collection. The reader must try to put himself in the place of the compiler who undertakes the invidious task of determining who to speak of and what to say in a book of the kind. Almost inevitably, each reader has to regret the absence of some subjects by him deemed important. But, at least, the work will serve as an introduction to more exhaustive ones, and Catholics have an assurance in the editor that the stale assertions against cherished names, lay or cleric, which have heretofore disfigured most non-Catholic biographical sketches, will not be found here.

THE YOUNG LADIES’ ILLUSTRATED READER. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren St. 1875.

This is the last volume of the Young Catholic’s Illustrated Series of Readers. We have read it with considerable care, and are of the opinion that it is the best book of the kind in the English language. The selections, which embrace a wide range of subjects, all bearing more or less directly upon the mission and work of woman, have been made with discernment and taste. The most important lessons are here taught in the most agreeable style and in the pleasantest manner. It is a treatise on the duties of Christian women without any of the dulness of the moral essay.

We admire especially the biographical sketches of the foundresses of religious orders which are scattered here and there through the book. Whatever the vocation of a young girl may be, she will be all the truer and nobler woman for having been taught to reverence and love the religious life.

The perusal of the several Readers of the Young Catholic’s Series has shown us, in a light in which we have never seen it before, the great educational value of such books. We are not surprised at the favorable manner in which these Readers have been received, nor shall we be astonished to hear of their superseding all others in our Catholic Schools.

* * * * *

ANNOUNCEMENT.--In the October number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD we shall begin a new serial story, entitled _Sir Thomas More: A Historical Romance_.

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.

From P. O’Shea, New York: Notes on the Rubrics of the Roman Ritual. By the Rev. James O’Kane. 12mo, pp. xiv., 471.

--Lives of the Saints, with a Practical Instruction on the Life of each Saint. By Rev. F. X. Weninger, D.D., S.J. Part III. 8vo, pp. 144.

--Recollections of the Last Four Popes and of Rome in their Times. By His Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. 12mo, pp. 487.

From APPLETON & CO., New York: John Dorrien. By Julia Kavanagh. 12mo, pp. 500.

From the OFFICERS: Proceedings of the General Theological Library for the year ending April 26, 1875. 8vo, pp. 49.

From K. TOMPKINS, New York: “Righteousness”: The Divinely-Appointed Rule of Life. By Philalethes. Paper, 12mo, pp. 75.

From J. S. WHITE & CO., Marshall, Mich.: Mass in C. with Accompaniment for Piano or Organ. By Rev. H. T. Driessen.

From GEORGE WILLIG & CO., Baltimore: Peters’ Celebrated Mass in D. Composed by W. C. Peters. Pp. 32.

From D’Augutin Cote et Cie., Quebec: Annuaire de l’Université Laval pour l’Année Académique 1875-6. 8vo, pp. 97, xxviii.

From The Christian Brothers’ College, Memphis: Address to the Graduates, June 25, 1875. By Hon. Jacob Thompson. 12mo, pp. 8.

FOOTNOTES

[1] For particulars see _Bulletin of the Catholic Union_, Jan., 1875, which contains an admirably-prepared statement of the whole case.

[2] Italy! Italy!… Oh! that thou wert less fair or more powerful!

[3] “A slavish Italy! thou inn of grief!”--_Cary’s Dante._

[4] _Conf. of S. Aug._, b. x. ch. vi.

[5] A Sister’s Story.

[6] “Love that denial takes from none beloved.”--_Cary’s Dante, Inferno_,