CHAPTER XIII.

THE SEARCH NEARLY OVER.

It was one of those exquisitely lovely mornings that we sometimes see in early spring. The night had been frosty, and had hurried to meet the dawn, leaving her moonlight mantle behind her, frozen to silver, on every field or hill-side. The sky was of a heavenly blue--liquid turquoise, swept with feathery dashes of pink, that set off the glistening landscape like a velvet curtain spread for the purpose. The sun was shining through a pearly mist that hung, a silver gauze veil, in the air and made everything look dreamy and vision-like. The meadows were silvered with frost; so were the hedges--every twig and thorn finished like a jewel. The trees stood up like immense bouquets of filigree against the pink and blue curtain. No wonder Franceline, who had been awake and watching the sunrise from her window, stole a march on Angélique, and hastened out to enjoy the beauty of the morning. It was impossible it could hurt her; it was too lovely to be unkind. But besides this outward incentive, there was another one that impelled her to the daring escapade. She felt an irresistible longing to go to church this morning--one of those longings that she called presentiments, and seldom rejected without having reason to regret it. It was not that she was uneasy, or alarmed, or unhappy about anything. Nothing had occurred to awake the dormant fires that were still smouldering--though she thought them dead--and impel her to seek for strength in a threatened renewal of the combat. Sir Simon’s disappearance the morning after the dinner-party, some few days ago, had not surprised her; that was his way, and this time she had been prepared for it. It was true that ever since then her father had been more preoccupied, more inseparable from his work. It was a perfect mania with him for the last three or four days. He scarcely let the pen out of his hand from morning till night. He seemed, moreover, to have got to a point where he could no longer use her as an amanuensis, but must write himself. Franceline was distressed at the change; it deprived her of the pleasure of helping him and of their daily walk together, which had of late become the principal enjoyment of her life. But he could not be persuaded to go beyond the garden gate, and then only for ten minutes to take a breath of air. He was in a hurry to get back to his study, as if the minutes were so much gold wasted. Franceline was obliged to accept this sudden alteration in his habits, with the assurance that it would not be for long; that the great work was drawing to a close; and that, when it was finished, he would be free to walk with her as much as she liked, and in more beautiful places than Dullerton. This last she did not believe. No place could ever be so beautiful as this familiar one, because none would ever be hallowed by the same sweet early memories, or sanctified by the same sufferings and regrets. There was a spirit brooding over these quiet sylvan slopes that could never dwell, for her, elsewhere. She looked around her at the leafless woods that lay white and silent in the near distance, and at the river winding slowly towards them like an azure arm encircling the silver fields, and she sighed at the thought of ever leaving them. The sigh escaped from her lips in a little column of sapphire smoke; for the air was as clear as crystal, but it was cold too, and the bell was already ringing; so she drew her shawl closer and hurried on. What was that fly doing before the presbytery door? Who could have business with Father Henwick at such an unearthly hour as seven A.M.? When people live in a small place where everybody’s life is a routine as well known as their own to everybody else, the smallest trifle out of the usual way is magnified into an event. Franceline was not very curious by nature; she passed the mysterious fly with a momentary glance of interest, and then dismissed it from her thoughts. The little white-washed church was never full on week-days, its congregation being mostly of the class who can only afford the luxury of going to church on Sundays. A few kindly glances greeted her as she walked up to her place near the sanctuary. Since her health had become delicate, it was a rare occurrence to see her there during the week, so her presence was looked on as of good omen. She answered the welcoming eyes with a sweet, grateful smile, and then knelt down and soon forgot them.

We talk of magnetic atmospheres where instinct warns us of a presence without any indication from our senses. I don’t know whether Franceline believed in such influences; but her attitude of rapt devotion as she knelt before the altar, seemingly unconscious of anything earthly near her, her soul drawn upwards through her eyes and fixed on the Unseen, did not suggest that there was any human presence within reach which had power to move her. When Father Henwick had left the altar, she rose and went to the sacristy door to ask if she could see him. She wanted to speak to him about a poor woman in the village. It was not the clerk, but Father Henwick himself, who came to answer her message. He did not welcome his young penitent in his usual gracious, affectionate manner, but asked sharply “who gave her leave to be out at that hour?”

“The morning was so sunny I thought it would do me no harm to come,” replied the culprit, with a sudden sense of having done something very wicked.

“You had no business to think about it at all; you should not have come without your father’s permission. Go home as fast as you can.”

Franceline was turning away, when he called her back.

“Come this way; you can go out through the house.” Then he added in a mollified tone: “You foolish child! I hope you are warmly clad? Keep your chest well covered, and hold your muff up to your mouth. Be off, now, as quick as you can, and let me have no more of these tricks!”

He shook hands with her, half-smiling, half-frowning, and, opening the sacristy door that led into the presbytery, hurried her away. Franceline was too much discomfited by the abrupt dismissal to conjecture why she was hustled out through the house instead of being allowed to go back through the church, the natural way, and quite as short. She could not understand why Father Henwick should have shown such annoyance and surprise at the sight of her. This was not the first time she had played the trick on them at home of coming out to church on a sunny morning, and it had never done her any harm. She was turning the riddle in her mind, as she passed through the little sitting-room into the entry, when she saw the front door standing wide open, and a gentleman outside speaking to the fly-man. The moment he perceived Franceline he raised his hat and remained uncovered while he spoke.

“Good-morning, mademoiselle! How is M. de la Bourbonais?”

“Thank you, my father is quite well.”

She and Clide looked at each other as they exchanged this commonplace greeting; but they did not shake hands. Neither could probably have explained what the feeling was that held them back. Franceline went on her way, and Clide de Winton entered the presbytery, each bearing away the sound of the other’s voice and the sweetness of that rapid glance with a terrible sense of joy.

Franceline’s heart beat high within her as she walked on. What right had it to do so? How dared it? Poor, fluttering heart! No bitter upbraidings of indignant conscience, no taunts of womanly pride, could make it stop. The more she tried to silence it, the louder it cried. She was close by The Lilies, and it was crying out and throbbing wildly still. She could not go in and face her father in this state; she must gain a few minutes to collect and calm herself. The snow-drops grew in great profusion on a bank in the park at the back of the cottage. Raymond was fond of wild flowers; she would go and gather him some: this would account for her delay. She laid her muff on the grass. It was wet with the hoar-frost melting in the sun; but Franceline did not see this. She stooped down and began to pluck the snow-drops. It was a congenial task in her present frame of mind. Snow-drops had always been favorites with her. In her childish days of innocent pantheism she used to fancy that flowers had spirits, or some instinct that enabled them to enjoy and to suffer, to be glad in the sunshine and unhappy in the cold and the rain. She fancied that perfume was their language, and that they conversed in it as birds do in songs and chirpings. She used to be sorry for the flowers that had no perfume, and called them “the dumb ones,” connecting their fate in some vague, pitying way with that of two deaf and dumb little children in the village. But the snow-drops she pitied most of all. They came in the winter-time, when everything was cold and dreary and there were no kindred flowers to keep them company; no roses; no bees and butterflies to make music for them; no nightingales to sing them to sleep in the scented summer nights; no liquid, starry skies and sweet, warm dews to kiss them as they slept; their pale, ascetic little slumbers were attuned to none of these fragrant melodies, and Franceline loved them all the more for their loveless, lonely life. But she was not pitying them now, as, one by one, she plucked the drooping bells and the bright green leaves under the silver hedge; she was envying them and listening to them. Every flower and blade of grass has a message for us, if we could but hear it; the woods and fields are all tablets on which the primitive scriptures of creative love are written for us. “Your life is to be like ours,” the snow-drops were whispering to Franceline. “We dwell alone in cold and silence--so must you; we have no sister flowers to make life joyous, no roses to gladden us with their perfume and their beauty--neither shall you; roses are emblems of love, and love is not for you. You must be content with us. We are the emblems of purity and hope; take us to your heart. We are the heralds of the spring; we bring the promise, but we do not wait for its fulfilment. You are happier than we; you will not have the summer here, but you know that it will come hereafter, and that the flowers and fruits will be only the more beautiful for the waiting being prolonged. Look upwards, sister snow-drop, and take courage.” Franceline listened to the mystic voice, and, as she did so, large tears fell from her eyes on the white bells of the messengers, as pure as the crystal dew that stood in frozen tears upon their leaves.

M. de la Bourbonais had not heard her go out; and when she came in and handed him her bouquet, fresh-gathered, he took for granted she had gone out for the purpose, and did not chide her for the slight imprudence. Angélique was not so lenient; she was full of wrath against the truant, and threatened to go at once and inform on her, which Franceline remarked she might have done an hour ago, if she had any such intention; and then, with a kiss and two arms thrown around the old woman’s mahogany neck, it was all made right between them.

Franceline did not venture out again that day. She was afraid of meeting Clide. She strove hard to forget the morning’s incident, to stifle the emotions it had given rise to, and to turn away her thoughts from even conjecturing the possible cause of Mr. de Winton’s presence at Dullerton and at Father Henwick’s. But strive as she might, the thoughts would return, and her mind would dwell on them. She was horrified to see the effect that Clide’s presence had had on her; to find how potent his memory was with her still, how it had stirred the slumbering depths and broken up the stagnant surface-calm of her heart, filling it once more with wild hopes and ardent longings that she had fondly imagined crushed and buried for ever. Was her hard-earned self-conquest a sham after all? She could not help fearing it when she saw how persistently the idea kept returning again and again to her, banish it as she would: “Had he come to tell Father Henwick that he was free?” Then she wondered, if it were so, what Father Henwick would do; whether he would come and see her immediately, or let things take their course through Sir Simon and her father. Then again she would discard this notion as impossible, and see all sorts of evidence in the circumstances of the morning’s episode to prove that it could not be. Why should Father Henwick have tried so hard to prevent their meeting, if the one obstacle to it were removed? and why should Clide have been so restrained and distant when she came upon him suddenly? If only she could ask this one question and have it answered, Franceline thought she could go back again to her state of stagnation, and trample down her rebellious heart into submission once more.

She slept very little that night, and the next morning she determined that she would go out at any risk. Sitting still all day in this state of mind was unbearable; so about eleven o’clock, when the sun was high and the frost melted, she put on her bonnet and said she was going for a walk to see Miss Merrywig. As the day was fine and she had not taken cold yesterday, Angélique made no difficulty. Franceline started off to the wood, and was soon crushing the snow-drops and the budding lemon-colored primroses as she threaded her way along the foot-paths.

For some mysterious reason which no one could fathom, but which the oldest inhabitant of the place remembered always to have existed, you were kept an hour waiting at Miss Merrywig’s before the door was opened. You rang three times, waited an age between each ring, and then Keziah, the antediluvian factotum of the establishment, came limping along the passage, and, after another never-ending interval of unbarring and unbolting, you were let in. It was not Keziah who opened the door for Franceline this morning; it was Miss Merrywig herself, shawled and bonneted, ready to go out.

“O my dear child! _is_ it you? I am _so_ delighted to see you! Do come in! No, no, I am _not_ going out. That is to say, I _am_ going out. It’s the luckiest thing that you did not come two minutes later, or you would not have found me. I _am_ so glad! No, no, you are not putting me about the least bit in the world. Come and sit down, and I’ll explain all about it. I _cannot_ imagine what is keeping Keziah, and she knows I am waiting to be off, and that the negus will be getting cold, though it was boiling mad, and I _have_ only this moment put it into the flask. But what can be keeping her? It didn’t so much matter; in fact, it didn’t matter at all, only I _have_ promised little Jemmy Torrens--you know Mary Torrens’ boy on the green?--well, I _promised_ him I would make the negus for him myself and _take_ it to him myself. He won’t take anything except from me, poor little fellow! You see he’s known me since I was a baby--I mean since _he_ was--and that’s why, I suppose; and Keziah knows it, and why she dallies so long I _cannot_ conceive! She knows I can’t leave the house unprotected and go off before she comes in--there are so many tramps about, you see, my dear. It _is_ provoking of Keziah!”

“Let me take the negus to Jemmy,” said Franceline, when there was a break in the stream and she was able to edge in a word. “I will explain why you could not go.”

“Oh! that’s _just_ like you to be _so_ kind, my dear; but I _promised_, you see, and I really _must_ go myself. What can Keziah be about?”

“Then go, and I will wait and keep the house until either of you comes back,” suggested Franceline.

“Oh! that _is_ a bright idea. That is as witty as it is kind. Well, then, I will just run off. I shall find you here when I return. I won’t be twenty minutes away, and you can amuse yourself looking over _Robinson Crusoe_ till I come back; here it is!” And the old lady rooted out a book from under a pile of all sorts of odds and ends on the table, and handed it to Franceline. “Sit down, now, and read that; there’s nothing I enjoyed like that book when I was your age, and, indeed, I make a point of reading it at least once every year regularly.”

With this she took up her wine-flask, well wrapped in flannel to protect her from the scalding-hot contents, and bustled away.

“If any one rings, am I to let them in?” inquired Franceline, running into the hall after her.

“Oh! no, certainly not, unless it happens to be Mr. Langrove; you would not mind opening the door to _him_, would you?”

“Not the least; but how shall I know it is he?”

“You will be sure to hear the footsteps first and the click of the gate outside, and then run out and peep through _this_,” pointing to the narrow latticed window in the entry; “but you must be quick, or else they will be close to the door and see you.”

Franceline promised to keep a sharp lookout for the warning steps, closed the door on Miss Merrywig, and went back to _Robinson Crusoe_; but she was not in a mood to enjoy Friday’s philosophy, so she sat down and began to look about her in the queer little apartment. It was much more like a lumber-room than a sitting-room; the large round table in the middle was littered with every description of rubbish--the letters of two generations of Miss Merrywig’s correspondents, old pamphlets, odds and ends of ribbon and lace, little boxes, bags of stale biscuits that were kept for the pet dogs of her friends when they came to visit her, quantities of china cats and worsted monkeys, samplers made for her by great-grandnieces, newspapers of the year one, tracts and books of hymns, all huddled pell-mell together. Fifty years’ smoke and lamp-light had painted the ceiling all over in dense black clouds, and the cobwebs of innumerable defunct spiders festooned the cornices. The carpet had half a century ago been bright with poppies and bluebells and ferns; but these vanities, like the memory of the unrighteous man, had been blotted out, and had left no trace behind them. Franceline was considering how singular it was that anything so bright and simple and happy as Miss Merrywig should be the presiding genius of this abode of incongruous rubbish, and wishing she could make a clean sweep of it all, and tidy the place a little, when her attention was roused by a sound of footsteps. She ran out at once to look through the lattice; but she had waited too long. There was only time to shrink behind the door when the visitors had come up and the bell was sounding through the cottage. There were two persons, if not more; she knew this by the footsteps. Presently some one spoke; it was Mr. Charlton. He was continuing, in a low voice, a conversation already begun. Then another voice answered, speaking in a still lower key; but every word was distinctly audible through the open casement, which was so covered by an outer iron bar and the straggling stem of a japonica that no one from the outside would see that it was open, unless they looked very close. The words Franceline overheard had nothing in them to make her turn pale; but the voice was Clide de Winton’s. What fatality was this that brought them so near again, and yet kept them apart, and condemned her to hide and listen to him like an eavesdropper? There was a pause after the first ring. Mr. Charlton knew the ways of the house; he said something laughingly, and rang again. Then they reverted to the conversation that had been interrupted. Good God! did Franceline’s ears deceive her, or what were these words she heard coupled with her father’s name? She put her hand to her lips with a sudden movement to stifle the cry that leaped up from her heart of hearts. She heard Clide giving an emphatic denial: “I don’t believe it. I tell you it is some mistake--one of those unaccountable mistakes that we can’t explain or understand, but which we _know_ must be mistakes.”

She could not catch what Mr. Charlton said; but he was evidently dissenting from Clide, and muttered something about “being convicted on his own showing,” which the other answered with an impatient exclamation the drift of which Franceline could not seize; neither could she make sense out of the short comments that followed. They referred to some facts or circumstances that were clear to the speakers, but only bewildered her more and more.

“It strikes me the old lady does not mean to let us in at all this time,” said Mr. Charlton; and he gave another violent pull to the bell.

“There can’t be any one in the house,” said Clide, after a pause that exhausted the patience of both. “We may as well come away. I will call later. I must see her before.…”

The rest of the sentence was lost, as the two speakers walked down the gravel-walk, conversing in the same low tones.

Franceline did not move even when the sound of their steps had long died away. She seemed turned to stone, and did not stir from the spot until Keziah came back. She gave her a message for Miss Merrywig, left the cottage, and went home.

She found her father just as she had left him--busy at his desk, with books and papers strewn on the table beside him. She saw this through the window, but did not go in to him. She could not go at once and speak to him as if nothing had happened in the interval. She went to her room, and remained there until dinner-time, and then came down, half-dreading to see some alteration in him corresponding with what had taken place in her own mind. But he was gentle and serene as usual. No mental disturbance was visible on his features; at least, she did not see it. Looking at him, nevertheless, with perceptions quickened by what she had heard since they parted, it struck her that his eyes were sunk and dim, as if from overwork and want of sleep combined; but there was no cloud of shame or humiliation on his brow. Never had that dear head seemed so venerable, never had such a halo of nobleness and goodness encircled it, in his daughter’s eyes, as at this moment.

She did not tease him to come out to walk with her, but asked him to read aloud to her for an hour while she worked. It was a long time--more than a week--since they had had any reading aloud. Raymond complied with the request, but soon returned to his work.

Franceline expected that Father Henwick would call, and kept nervously looking out of the window from time to time; but the day wore on, and the evening, and he did not come. She did not know whether to be glad or sorry. She was in that frame of feeling when the gentlest touch of sympathy would have stung her like the bite of a snake. It was not sympathy she wanted, but a voice to join with her in passionate contempt for the liars who had dared to slander her father, and in indignant denunciation of the lie. She wanted to fling it in the teeth of those who had uttered it. If Father Henwick would help her to do this, let him come; if not, let him leave her alone. Let no one come near her with words of pity; pity for her now meant contempt for her father. She would resent it as a lioness might resent the food that was thrown to her in place of the cubs she had been robbed of. No love--no, not the best and noblest she had ever dreamed of--would compensate her for the absence of reverence and respect for her father.

But Clide did not suspect him. She had heard him indignantly spurn the idea. “He no more stole it than you did,” he had said. Stolen what? Would no one come to tell her what it all meant? Would not Clide come? Was he still at Dullerton? Was there any fear--or hope?--of her meeting him again if she went out? She might have gone with impunity. Clide was far enough away, on a very different errand from that which had brought him yesterday across her path.

* * * * *

On coming back to the Court from his abortive attempt to see Miss Merrywig, Clide found Stanton in great excitement with a telegram that had arrived for his master that instant. It was from Sir Simon, summoning him back by the first train that started. Some important news awaited him. He did not wait to see Miss Merrywig, but took the next train to London, and arrived there in the early afternoon. The news that awaited him was startling enough to justify Sir Simon’s peremptory summons. One of the detectives, whose sagacity and coolness fitted him for delicate missions of the kind, had been despatched to gather information in the principal lunatic asylums of England and Scotland. He had come that morning to tell Sir Simon Harness that he thought he had found Mrs. de Winton in one of them. Sir Simon went straight to the place, and, after an interview with the superintendent, telegraphed for Clide, as we have seen.

It was an old-fashioned Elizabethan manor-house in the suburbs of London, situated in the midst of grounds almost large enough to be called a park. There was nothing in the outward aspect of the place to suggest its real character. Everything was bright and peaceful and well ordered as in the abode of a wealthy private family. The gardens were beautifully kept; the shrubbery was trim and neat; summer-houses with pretty climbing plants rose in shady places, inviting the inmates of the fine old mansion to sit out of doors and enjoy the sunshine unmolested; for there was sunshine in this early spring-time, and here in this sheltered spot some bits of red and gold and blue were peeping through the tips of closed flower-cups. Nothing externally hinted at the discord and disorder that reigned in so many human lives within the walls. The sight of the place was soothing to Clide. He had so often pictured to himself another sort of dwelling for his unhappy Isabel that it was a great relief to him to see this well-ordered, calm abode, and to think of her being a resident there. A lady-like matron received him, and conversed with him kindly and sensibly while they were waiting for the doctor to come in. The latter accosted him with the same reassuring frankness of manner.

“I hope,” he said, “that your informant has not exaggerated matters, as that class of people are so apt to do, and that you are _expecting_ to see the right person. All I dare say to you is that you may hope; the points of coincidence are striking enough to warrant hope, but by no means such as to establish a certainty.”

“I am too much taken by surprise to have arrived at any conclusion,” replied Clide; “and I have been too often disappointed to do so in a hurry. Until I see and speak to the patient I can say nothing.”

“You can see her at once. As to speaking to her, that is not so easy. The sun is clouding over. That is unlucky at this moment.”

His visitor looked surprised.

“Oh! I forgot that I had not explained to you the nature of the delusion which this lady is suffering from,” continued the medical man. “It is one of the most poetic fancies that madness ever engendered in a human brain. She is enamored of the sun, and fancies herself beloved of him; she believes him to be a benign deity whose love she has been privileged to win, and which she passionately responds to. But there is more suffering than joy in this belief. She fancies that when the sun shines he is pleased with her, and that when he ceases to shine he is angry; the sunbeams are his smiles and the warmth his kisses. At such times she will deck herself out with flowers and gay colors, and sit and sing to her lover by the hour, pretending to turn away her face and hide from him, and going through all the pretty coyness of love. Then suddenly, when the sun draws behind a cloud, she will burst into tears, fling aside her wreath, and give way to every expression of grief and despair. It is at such moments, when they are prolonged, that the crisis is liable to become dangerous. She flings herself on the ground, and cries out to her lover to forgive her and look on her kindly again, or she will die. Very often she cries herself to sleep in this way. I fear you have come at an unfortunate moment, for the sun seems quite clouded; however, he may come out again, and then you will get a glimpse of the patient at her best.”

He rose and led the way upstairs along a softly-carpeted corridor with doors opening on either side. Pointing to one, he motioned Clide to advance. One of the panels was perforated so as to admit of the keeper’s seeing what went on inside when it was necessary to watch the patient, without irritating her by seeming to do so or remaining in the room. At first the occupant was standing up at the window, her hands clasped, while she conversed with herself or some invisible companion in low tones of entreaty. Then, uttering a feeble cry, she turned mournfully away, laid aside the flowers that decked her long black hair, and, taking a large black cloak, drew it over her dress, and sat down in a dark corner of the room, with her face to the wall, crying to herself like a child. Clide watched her go through all this with growing emotion. He had not yet been able to catch a glimpse of her face, but the small, light figure, the wayward movements, the streaming black hair, all reminded him strikingly of Isabel. The voice was too inarticulate, so far, for him to pronounce on its resemblance with any certainty; but the low, plaintive tones fell on his ear like the broken bars of an unforgotten melody. He strained every nerve to see the features. But, stay! She is moving. She has drawn away her hands from her face, and has turned it towards him. The movement did not, however, dispel his doubts; it increased them. It was almost impossible to discover any trace of beauty in that worn, haggard face, with its sharp features, its eyes faded and sunk, and from which the tears streamed in torrents, as if they were melting away in brine. The skin was shrivelled like an old woman’s--one, at least, double the age that Isabel would be now. Was it possible that this wreck could be the bright, beautiful girl of ten years ago?

“Are _you_ my wife?” was Clide’s mental exclamation, as he looked at the sad spectacle, and then, with a shudder, turned away.

“I see you are unable to arrive at any conclusion,” said the doctor when they were out of ear-shot in an adjoining room.

“I will say nothing till I have spoken to her,” replied the young man evasively. “When can I do this?”

“I cannot possibly fix a time. She is not in a mood to be approached now; any violent shock in her present state might have a fatal result. It would, in all probability, quench for ever the feeble spark of light that still remains, and might bring on a crisis which no skill could alleviate. On the other hand, if we could apply the test at the right moment, the effect might be unexpectedly beneficial. I say unexpectedly, because, for my own part, I have not the slightest hope of any such result.”

“Has her memory quite gone, or does she recall any passages of her past life accurately?”

“Not accurately, I fancy; she seems to have some very vivid impressions of the past, but whether they be clear or not I cannot say. The balance of the mind is, I believe, too deeply shaken for clearness, even on isolated points, to survive in any of the faculties. She talks frequently of going over a great waterfall with her nurse, and describes scenery in a way that rather gave me a hope once. I spoke to her guardian, however, and he said she had never been near a waterfall in her life; that it was some picture which had apparently dwelt in her imagination.”

“He might have his own reasons for deceiving you in that respect,” observed Clide. “His name, you say, is Par…?

“Percival--Mr. Percival.”

“Humph! When people change their names, they sometimes find it convenient to retain the initial,” remarked Clide.

He went home and desired Stanton to look out for a lodging as near as possible to the asylum. A tolerably habitable one was found without delay, and he and his valet installed themselves there at once. The very next day he received a letter from Sir Simon Harness, informing him that Lady Rebecca seemed this time in earnest about betaking herself to a better world, and had desired him, Sir Simon, to be sent for immediately. The French _dame de compagnie_ who wrote to him said they hardly expected her to get through the week.

* * * * *

M. de la Bourbonais had never been a social man since he lived at Dullerton. He said he did not care for society, and in one sense this was true. He did not care for it unless it was composed of sympathetic individuals; otherwise he preferred being without it. He did not want to meet and talk with his fellow-creatures simply because they were his fellow-creatures; there must be some common bond of interest or sympathy between them and him, or else he did not want to see them. When, in the early days at The Lilies, Sir Simon used to remonstrate with him on being so “sauvage,” and wonder how he could bear the dulness, Raymond would reply that no dulness oppressed him like uncongenial company. He had no sympathies in common with the people about the neighborhood, and so he would have no pleasure in associating with them. There was truth in this; but Sir Simon knew that the count’s susceptible pride had influenced him also. He did not want rich people to see his poverty, if they were not refined and intelligent enough to respect it and value what went along with it. He had studiously avoided cultivating any intimacies beyond the few we know, and had so persistently kept aloof from the big houses round about that they had accepted his determination not to go beyond mere acquaintanceship, and never stopped to speak when they met him out walking, but bowed and passed on. But of late Raymond began to feel quite differently about all this. He longed to see these distant acquaintances as if they had been so many near friends; to meet their glance of kindly, if not cordial, recognition; to receive the homage of their passing salutation. It was the dread of seeing these hitherto valueless greetings refused that prevented him stirring beyond his own gate. He marvelled himself at the void that the absence of them was making in his life. He did not dream they had filled such a space in it; that the reflection of his own self-respect in the respect of others had been such a strength and such a need to him. Up to this time Franceline had more than satisfied all his need of society at home, with the pleasant periodical addition of Sir Simon’s presence, while his work had amply supplied his intellectual wants; but suddenly he was made aware of a new need--something undefined, but that he hungered for with a downright physical hunger.

Franceline’s spirit and heart were too closely bound up in her father’s not to feel the counter-pang of this mental hunger. She could not help watching him, though she strove not to do it, and, above all, not to let him see that she was watching him. She might as well have tried not to draw her breath or to stop the pulsations of her heart. Her eyes would fasten on him when he was not looking, and she could not but see that the expression of his face was changed. A hard, resolved look had come over it; his eyebrows were always protruded now, and his lips drawn tight together under the gray fringe of his mustache. She knew every turn of his features, and saw that what had once been a passing freak under some sudden thought or puzzling speculation in his work had now become a settled habit. She longed to speak; to invite him to speak. It would have been so much easier for both; it would lighten the burden to them so much if they could bear it together, instead of toiling under it apart. But Raymond was silent. It never crossed his mind for a moment that Franceline knew his secret. If he _had_ known it, would he have spoken? Sometimes the poor child felt the silence was unbearable; that at any cost she must break it and know the truth of the story which had reached her in so monstrous a form. But the idea that her father knew possibly nothing of it kept her back. But supposing he was silent only to spare her? Perhaps he was debating in his own mind what the effect of the revelation would be on her; wondering if she, too, would join with his accusers, or, even if she did not do this, whether she might not be ashamed of a father who was branded as a thief. When these thoughts coursed through her mind, Franceline felt an almost irresistible impulse to rush and fling her arms around his neck and tell him how she venerated him, and how she scorned with all her might and main the envious, malignant fools who dared to so misjudge him. But she never yielded to the impulse; the inward conflict of lodgings and shrinkings and passionate, tender cries of her heart to his made no outward sign. Raymond sat writing away at his desk, and Franceline sat by the fire or at the window reading and working, day after day. The idea occurred to her more than once that she would write to Sir Simon; but she never did. She did not dare open her heart to Father Henwick. How could she bring herself to tell him that her father was accused of theft? It was most probable--she hoped certain--that the abominable suspicion had not travelled to his ears; and if so, she could not speak of it. This was not her secret; it was no breach of confidence towards her spiritual father to be silent, and the selfish longing to pour out her filial anger and outraged love into a sympathizing ear should not hurry her into a betrayal of what was, even in its falsity, humiliating to Raymond. It was hard to refrain from speech when speech would have been a solace; but Franceline knew that the sacrifice of the cup of cold water has its reward, just as the bestowal has. Peace comes to us on surer and swifter wing when we go straight to God for it, without putting the sympathy of creatures between us and his touch.

Mr. Langrove had never been a frequent visitor at The Lilies; but Franceline never remembered him to have been so long absent as now, and she could not but see a striking coincidence in the fact. She knew he had been one of the party at Dullerton that night; and if, as she felt certain, that had been the occasion of the extraordinary mistake she had heard of, the vicar, of course, knew all about it. He believed her father had committed a theft, and was keeping aloof from him. Did everybody at Dullerton know this? Mr. Langrove was not a man to spread evil reports in any shape. Franceline knew him well enough to be sure of that; but her father’s reputation was evidently at the mercy of less charitable tongues. She did not know that the six witnesses had promised Sir Simon to keep silence for his sake; but if she had known it, it would not have much reassured her. A secret that is known to six people can scarcely be considered safe. The six may mean to guard it, and may only speak of it among themselves and in whispers; but it is astonishing how far a whisper will travel sometimes, especially when it is malignant. A vague impression had in some inexplicable way got abroad that the count had done something which threw him under a cloud. The gentlemen of the neighborhood were very discreet about it, and had said nothing positively to be taken hold of, but it had leaked out that there was a screw loose in that direction. Young Charlton had laughed at the notion of his friend Anwyll thinking of Mlle. de la Bourbonais _now_; and the emphasis and smile which accompanied the assurance expressed pretty clearly that there was something amiss which had not been amiss a little while ago.

Franceline had gone out for her usual mid-day walk in the park. It was the most secluded spot where she could take it, as well as warm and sheltered. She was walking near the pond; the milk-white swans were sailing towards her in the sunlight, expecting the bits of bread she had taken a fancy to bring them every day at this hour, when she saw Mr. Langrove emerge from behind a large rockery and step out into the avenue. She trembled as if the familiar form of her old friend had been a wild animal creeping out of the jungle to pounce upon her. What would he do? Would he pass her by, or stop and just say a few cold words of politeness? The vicar did not keep her long in suspense.

“Well! here, you are enjoying the sunshine, I see. And how are you?” he said, extending his hand in the mild, affectionate way that Franceline was accustomed to, but had never thought so sweet before. “Is the cough quite gone?”

“Not quite; but I am better, thank you. Angélique says I am, and she knows more about it than I do,” replied the invalid playfully. “How is everybody at the vicarage?”

“So-so. Arabella has one of her bad colds, and Godiva is suffering from a toothache. It’s the spring weather, no doubt; we will all be brisker by and by. Are you going my way?”

“Any way; I only came for a walk.”

They walked on together.

“And how is M. de la Bourbonais?” said the vicar presently. “I’ve not met him for a long time; we used to come across each other pretty often on the road to Dullerton. He’s not poorly, I hope?”

“No, only busy--so dreadfully busy! He hardly lets the pen out of his hand now; but he promises me there will soon be an end of it, and that the book will soon be finished.”

“Bravo! And you have been such a capital little secretary to him!” said Mr. Langrove. “The next thing will be that we shall have you writing a book on your own account.”

Franceline laughed merrily at this conceit; her fears were, if not banished by his cordial manner, sufficiently allayed to rid her of her momentary awkwardness. They were soon chatting away about village gossip as if nothing were amiss with either.

“Angélique brought home news from the market a few days ago that Mr. Tobes was going to marry Miss Bulpit; is it true?” inquired the young girl.

“Far too good to be true!” said the vicar, shaking his head. “The report has been spread so often that this time I very nearly believed in it. However, I saw Miss Bulpit, and she dispelled the illusion at once, and, I fear, for ever.”

“But would it have been such a good thing if they got married?”

“It would be a very desirable event in some ways,” said Mr. Langrove, with a peculiar smile; “it would give her something to do and some one to look after her.”

“And it would have been a good thing for Mr. Tobes, too, would it not? He is so poor!”

“That’s just why she won’t have him, poor fellow! When he proposed--she told me the story herself, and I find she is telling it right and left, so there is no breach of confidence in repeating it--when he proposed, Miss Bulpit asked him point-blank how much money he had; ‘because,’ she said, ‘I have only just enough for one!’”

“Oh! but that was a shame. She has plenty for two; and, besides, it was unfeeling. Don’t you think it was?” inquired Franceline, looking up at the vicar. But he evidently did not share either her indignation against Miss Bulpit or her pity for the discarded lover. He was laughing quietly, as if he enjoyed the joke.

They reached the gate going out on the high-road while thus pleasantly chatting.

“Now I suppose we must say good-by,” said Mr. Langrove. “This is my way; I am going to pay a sick visit down in the valley.”

They shook hands, and Franceline turned back.

“Mind you give my compliments to the count!” said the vicar, calling after her. “Tell him I don’t dare go near him, as he is so busy; but if he likes me to drop in of an evening, let him send me word by you, and I’ll be delighted. By-by.”

He nodded to her and closed the gate behind him.

“He did not dare because he is so busy!” repeated Franceline as she walked on. “How did he know papa was busy? It was I who told him so a few minutes ago. That was an excuse.”

She gave the message, nevertheless, on coming home, scarcely daring to look at her father while she did so.

“May I tell him to come in one of these evenings, petit père?”

“No; I cannot be disturbed at present,” was the peremptory answer, and Franceline’s heart sank again.

She told him the gossip about Miss Bulpit and Mr. Tobes, thinking it would amuse him; he used to listen complacently to the little bits of gossip she brought in about their neighbors. Raymond had the charming faculty, common to great men and learned men, of being easily and innocently amused; but he seemed to have lost it of late. He listened to Franceline’s chatter to-day with an absent air, as if he hardly took it in; and before she had done, he made some irrelevant remark that proved he had not been attending to what she was saying. Then he had got into a way of repeating himself--of saying the same thing two or three times over at an interval of an hour or so, sometimes even less. Franceline attributed these things to the concentration of his thoughts on his work, and to his being so entirely absorbed in it as not to pay attention to anything that did not directly concern it. She was too inexperienced to see therein symptoms of a more alarming nature.

M. de la Bourbonais had all his life complained of being a bad sleeper; but Angélique, who suffered from the same infirmity, always declared that he only imagined he did not sleep; that she was tossing on her pillow, listening to him snoring, when he said he had been wide awake. The count, on his side, was sceptical about Angélique’s “white nights,” and privately confided to Franceline that he knew for a fact she was fast asleep often when she fancied in the morning she had been awake. Some people are very touchy at being doubted when they say they have not “closed an eye all night.” Angélique resented a doubt on her “white nights” bitterly, and Franceline, who from childhood had been the confidant of both parties, found an early exercise for tact and discretion in keeping the peace between them. The discrepancies in the two accounts of their respective vigils often gave rise to little tiffs between herself and Angélique, who would insist upon knowing what M. le Comte had said about _her_ night; so that Franceline was compelled to aggravate her whether she would or not. She “knew her place” better than to have words with M. le Comte, but she had it out with Franceline. “Monsieur says he didn’t get to sleep till past two o’clock this morning, does he? Humph! I only wish I had slept half as well, I know. Pauvre, cher homme! He drops off the minute his head is on the pillow, and then dreams that he’s wide awake. That’s how it is. Why, this morning I was up and lighted my candle at ten minutes to two, and he was sleeping as sound as a wooden shoe! I heard him.” Franceline would soothe her by saying she quite believed her; but as she said the same thing to M. le Comte, and as Angélique generally overheard her saying so, this seeming credulity only aggravated her the more. Laterly Raymond had taken up a small celestial globe to his room, for the purpose, he said, of utilizing his long vigils by studying the face of the heavens during the clear, starry nights; and he would give the result of his nocturnal contemplations to Franceline at breakfast next morning--Angélique being either in the room pouring out the hot milk for her master’s coffee, or in the kitchen with the door ajar, so that she had the benefit of the conversation. The pantomimes that were performed at these times were a severe trial to Franceline’s gravity: Angélique would stand behind Raymond’s chair, holding up her hands aghast or stuffing her apron into her mouth, so as not to explode in disrespectful laughter. Sometimes she would shake her flaps at him with an air of despondency too deep for words, and then walk out of the room.

“I heard M. le Comte telling mam’selle that he saw the Three Kings (the popular name for Orion’s belt in French) shining so bright this morning at three o’clock. I believe you; he saw them in his sleep! I was up and walking about my room at that hour, and it so happened that I opened my door to let in the air _just_ as the clock in the _salon_ was striking three!”

As ill-luck would have it, Raymond overheard this confidential comment which Angélique was making to Franceline under the porch, not seeing that the sitting-room window was open.

“My good Angélique,” said the count, putting his head out of the window, “you must have opened the door two seconds too late; it was striking five, most likely, and you only heard the last three strokes. I suspect you were sound asleep at the hour I was looking at the Three Kings.”

“La! as if I were an infant not to know when I wake and when I sleep!” said Angélique with a shrug. “It was M. le Comte that was asleep and dreaming that he saw the Three Kings.”

“Nay, but I lighted my candle; it was pitch-dark when I got up to set the globe,” argued M. de la Bourbonais.

“When M. le Comte _dreamt_ that he got up and lighted his candle,” corrected the incorrigible sceptic. Raymond laughed and gave it up. But it was true, notwithstanding Angélique’s obstinate incredulity, that he did pass many white nights now, and the wakefulness was insensibly and imperceptibly telling on his health. It was a curious fact, too, that the more the want of sleep was injuring him, the less he was conscious of suffering from it. He had been passionately fond of astronomy in his youth, and he had resumed the long-neglected study with something of youthful zest, enjoying the observation of the starry constellations in the bright midnight silence with a sense of repose and communion with those brilliant, far-off worlds that surprised and delighted himself. Perhaps the feeling that he was now cut off from possible communion with his fellow-men threw him more on nature for companionship, urging him to seek on her glorious brow for the smiles that human faces denied him, and to accept her loving fellowship in lieu of the sympathy that his brothers refused him.

But rich and inexhaustible as the treasures of the great mother are, they are at best but a compensation; nothing but human love and human intercourse can satisfy the cravings of a human heart. Raymond was beginning to realize this. His forced isolation was becoming poignantly oppressive to him. He longed to see Sir Simon, to hear his voice, to feel the warm clasp of his hand; he longed, above all, to get back his old feeling of gratitude to him. Raymond little suspected what a moral benefactor his light-hearted, worldly-minded friend had been to him all those years when he was perpetually offering services that were so seldom accepted. Sir Simon was all the time feeding his heart with the milk of human kindness, making a bond between the proud, poor brother and the rest of the rich and happy brotherhood who were strangers to him. Raymond loved them all for the sake of this one. Nothing nourishes our hearts like gratitude. It widens our space for love, and enlarges our capacity for kindness; it creates a want in us to send the same happy thrills through other hearts that are stirring our own. We overflow with love to all in thankfulness for the love of one. This is often our only way of giving thanks, and the good it does us is sometimes a more abiding gain than the service that has called it forth. It was all this that Raymond missed in Sir Simon. In losing his loving sense of gratefulness he seemed to have lost some vital warmth in his own life. Now that the source which had fed this gratitude was dried up, all that was tender and kind and good in him seemed to be running dry or turning to bitterness. The estrangement of one had estranged him from all; he was at war with all humanity. Would any sacrifice of pride be too great to win back the old sweet life, with its trust, and ready sympathy, and indulgent kindness? Why should he not write to Sir Simon? He had asked himself this many times, and had written many letters in imagination, and some even in reality; but Angélique had found them torn up in the waste-paper basket next morning, and had been surprised to see the fresh sheets of note-paper, which she recognized as her master’s, wasted in that manner and thrown away. He knew what he was doing, probably; it was not for her to lecture him on such matters, but she could not help setting down the unnatural extravagance as a part of the general something that was amiss with her master.

One morning, however, after one of those white nights that gave rise to so much discussion in the family, Raymond came down with his mind made up to write a letter and send it. He could stand it no longer; he must go to his friend and lay bare his heart to him, so that they might come together again. If Sir Simon’s silence was an offence, Raymond’s was not free from blame. He sat down and wrote. It was a long letter--several sheets closely filled. When it was finished, and Raymond was folding it and putting it into the envelope, he remembered that he did not know where the baronet was. If he sent it to the Court, the servants would recognize the handwriting and think it odd his addressing a letter there in their master’s absence. He thought of forwarding it to Sir Simon’s bankers; but then, again, how did matters stand at present between him and them? He might have gone abroad and not left them his address, and the letter might remain there indefinitely. While Raymond was debating what he should do he closed up and stamped the blank envelope, making it ready to be addressed; then he laid it on the top of his writing desk, and wrote a few lines to the bankers, requesting them to forward Sir Simon’s address, if they had it or could inform him how a letter would reach him.

He seemed relieved when this was done, and, for the first time for nearly a month, called Franceline to come and write for him. She did so for a couple of hours, and noticed with thankfulness that her father was in very good, almost in high, spirits, laughing and talking a great deal, as if elated by some inward purpose. Her glad surprise was increased when he said abruptly:

“Now, my little one, run and put on thy bonnet, and we will go for a walk in the park together.”

The day was cold, and there was a sharp wind blowing; but the sun was very bright, and the park looked green and fresh and beautiful as they entered it, she leaning on him with a fond little movement from time to time and an exclamation of pleasure. He smiled on her very tenderly, and chatted about all sorts of things as in the old days of a month ago before the strange cloud had drawn a curtain between their lives. He talked with great animation of his work, and the excitement it would be to them both when it was published.

“We shall go to Paris for the publication, and then I will show thee the wonderful sights of the great city: the Louvre, and the Museum of Cluny, and many antiquities that will interest thee mightily; and we will go to some fine _modiste_ and get thee a smart French bonnet, and thou wilt be quite a little _élégante_!”

“Oh! how nice it will be, petit père,” cried Franceline, squeezing his arm in childish glee; “and many learned men will be coming to see you, will they not, and writing articles in praise of your great work?”

“Ha! Praise! I know not if it will all be praise,” said the author, with a dubious smile. “Some will not approve of my views on certain historical pets. I have torn the masks off many _soi-disant_ heroes, and replaced others in the position that bigotry or ignorance has hitherto denied them. I wonder what Simon will say to it all?”

Raymond smiled complacently as he said this. It was the first time he had mentioned the baronet. Franceline felt as if a load were lifted off her, and that all the mists were clearing away.

“He is sure to be delighted with it!” she exclaimed. “He always is, even when he quarrels with you, petit père. I think he quarrels for the pleasure of it; and then he is so proud of you!”

They walked as far as the house, and then Raymond said it was time to turn back; it was too cold for Franceline to stay out more than half an hour.

An event had taken place at The Lilies in their absence. The postman had been there and had brought a letter. Raymond started when Angélique met him at the door with this announcement, adding that she had left it on the chimney-piece.

He went straight in and opened it. It was from Sir Simon. After explaining in two lines how Clide de Winton had arrived in time to save him at the last hour, the writer turned at once to Raymond’s troubles. Nothing could be gentler than the way he approached the delicate subject. “Why should we be estranged from one another, Raymond? Do you suppose I suspect you? And what if I did? I defy even that to part us. The friendship that can change was never genuine; ours can know no change. I have tried in every possible way to account satisfactorily for your strange, your suicidal behavior on that night, and I have not succeeded. I can only conclude that you were beside yourself with anxiety, and over-excited, and incapable of measuring the effect of your refusal and your conduct altogether. But admitting, for argument’s sake, that you did take it; what then? There is such a thing as momentary insanity from despair, as the delirium of a sick and fevered heart. At such moments the noblest men have been driven to commit acts that would be criminal if they were not mad. It would ill become _me_ to cast a stone at _you_--I, who have been no better than a swindler these twenty years past! Raymond, there can be no true friendship without full confidence. We may give our confidence sometimes without our love following; but when we give our love, our confidence must of necessity follow. When we have once given the key of our heart to a friend, we have given him the right to enter into it at all times, to read its secrets, to open every door, even that, and above that, behind which the skeleton stands concealed. You and I gave each other this right when we were boys, Raymond; we have used it loyally one towards the other ever since, and I have done nothing to forfeit the privilege now. All things are arranged by an overruling Providence, and God is wise as he is merciful; yet I cannot forbear asking how it is that I should have been saved from myself, and that you should not have been delivered from temptation--you, whose life has been one long triumph of virtue over adversity! It will be all made square one day; meantime, I bless God that the weaker brother has been mercifully dealt with and permitted to rescue the nobler and the worthier one. The moment I hear from you I will come to Dullerton, and you and Franceline must come away with me to the south. I will explain when we meet why this letter has been so long delayed.” Then came a postscript quite at the bottom of the page: “Send that wretched bauble to me in a box, addressed to my bankers. Rest assured of one thing: you shall be cleared before men as you already are before a higher and a more merciful tribunal.”

Many changes passed over Raymond’s countenance as he read this letter; but when his eye fell on the postscript, the smile that had hovered between sadness, tenderness, and scorn subsided into one of almost saturnine bitterness, and a light gathered in his eyes that was not goodly to see. But the feelings which these signs betrayed found no other outward vent. M. de la Bourbonais quietly and deliberately tore up the letter into very small pieces, and then, instead of throwing them into the waste-paper basket, he dropped them into the grate. The fire was low; he took the poker and stirred it to make a blaze, and then watched the flame catching the bits one by one and consuming them.

“It is fortunate I did not send mine!” was his mental congratulation as he turned to his desk, intending to feed the dying flame with two more offerings. But where were they? Raymond pushed about his papers, but could not find either of the letters. Angélique was called. Had she seen them?

“Oh! yes; I gave them both to the postman,” she explained, with a nod of her flaps that implied mystery.

“How both? There was only one to go. The other had no address on it,” said Raymond.

“I saw it, M. le Comte.” Another mysterious nod.

“And yet you gave it to the postman?”

“Yes. I am a discreet woman, as M. le Comte knows, and he might have trusted me to keep a quiet tongue in my head; but monsieur knows his own affairs best,” added Angélique in an aggrieved tone.

“My good Angélique, explain yourself a little more lucidly,” said M. de la Bourbonais with slight impatience. “What could induce you to give the postman a letter that had neither name nor address on it?”

“Bless me! I thought M. le Comte did not wish me to know who he was writing to!”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Raymond, too annoyed to notice the absurdity of the reply. “But how could the postman take it when he saw it was a blank envelope?”

“I did not let him see it; I slipped the two with my own hands into the bag,” said Angélique.

M. de la Bourbonais moved his spectacles, and shrugged his shoulders in a way that was expressive of anything but gratitude for this zeal. He hesitated a moment or two, debating what he should do. The only way to ensure getting back his letter immediately was to go off himself to the post-office, and claim it before it was taken out to be stamped with the postmark, when it would be opened in order to be returned to the writer. There might be no harm in its being opened; the postmaster was not a French scholar that Raymond knew of, but he might have a friend at hand who was, and who would be glad to gratify his curiosity, as well as exhibit his learning, by reading the count’s letter.

Raymond set off at once, so as to prevent this. It was the first time for some weeks that he had shown himself in or near the town; and if his mind had not been so full of his errand, he would have been painfully conscious and shy at finding himself abroad in open daylight in his old haunts and within the observation of many eyes that knew him. But he did not give this a thought; he was calculating the chances for and against his arriving at the post-office before the postman had come back from his rounds and handed in the out-going letters to be marked, and his imagination was running on to the wildest conclusions in the event of his being too late. He walked as if for a wager; not running, but as near to it as possible. The pace and his intense look of preoccupation attracted many glances that he would have escaped had he walked on quietly at his ordinary pace. He was not a minute too soon, however, just coming up as the postman appeared with his replenished bag. M. de la Bourbonais hastened to describe the shape and color of his blank envelope, and to explain how it had come to be where it was, and was most emphatic in protesting that he did not mean the letter to go, and that he was prepared to take any steps to prevent its going. There was no need to be so earnest, about it. The postmaster assured him at once that the letter would be forthcoming in a moment, and that his word would be quite enough to identify it and ensure its being returned to him. It seemed an age to Raymond while the letters were being turned out and sorted, but at last the man held up the blank envelope, with its queen’s head in the corner, and exclaimed jubilantly: “Here it is!”

The count seized it with avidity, and hurried away, leaving the postmaster half-amused, half-mystified, at his excited volubility and warm expressions of thanks. There was no necessity to rush home at the same pace that he had rushed out, but Raymond felt like a machine wound up to a pitch of velocity that must be kept up until the wheel stopped of its own accord. His hat was drawn over his eyes, and his head bent like a person walking on mechanically, neither seeing nor hearing what might be going on around him. He was soon beyond the streets and shop-windows, and back amidst the fields and hedges. There was a clatter of horses coming down the road. M. de la Bourbonais saw two gentlemen on horseback approaching. He recognized them, even in the distance, at a glance: Sir Ponsonby Anwyll and Mr. Charlton. Raymond’s heart leaped up to his throat. What would they do? Stop and speak, or cut him dead? A few seconds would decide. They were close on him now, but showed no sign of reining in to speak. Ponsonby Anwyll raised his hat in a formal salutation; Mr. Charlton looked straight before him and rode on. All the blood in his body seemed to rush at the instant to Raymond’s face. He put his hand to his forehead and stood to steady himself; then he walked home, never looking to the right or the left until he reached The Lilies.

Angélique called out from the kitchen window to know if he had made it right about the letter; but he took no heed of her, only walked in and went straight up to his room. She heard him close the door. There certainly was something queer come to him of late. What did he want, going to shut himself in his bedroom this time of day, and then passing her without answering?

Franceline was in the study, busy arranging some primroses and wild violets that she had been gathering under the hedge while her father was out. A noise as of a body falling heavily to the ground in the room overhead made her drop the flowers and fly up the stairs. Angélique had hastened from the kitchen to ask what was the matter; but a loud shriek rang through the house in answer to her question.

“Angélique, come! O my God! Father! father!”

Raymond was lying prostrate on the floor, insensible, while Franceline lifted his head in her arms, and kissed him and called to him. “Oh! What has happened to him? Father! father! speak to me. O my God! is he dead?” she cried, raising her pale, agonized face to the old servant with a despairing appeal.

“No! no! Calm thyself! He has but fainted; he is not dead,” said Angélique, feeling her master’s pulse and heart. “See, put thy hand here and feel! If he were dead, it would not beat.”

Franceline laid her finger on the pulse. She felt the feeble beat; it was scarcely perceptible, but she could feel it.

“We must lift him on to the bed,” said Angélique, and she grasped the slight form of her master with those long, brown arms of hers, and laid it gently on the bed, Franceline assisting as she might.

“Now, my petite, thou wilt be brave,” said the faithful creature, forgetting herself in her anxiety to spare and support Franceline. “Thou wilt stay here and do what is necessary whilst I run and fetch the doctor.”

She poured some eau-de-cologne into a basin of water, and desired her to keep bathing her father’s forehead and chafing his hands until she returned. This, after loosing his cravat and letting in as much air as possible, was all her experience suggested.

Franceline sat down and did as she was told; but the perfect stillness, the deathlike immobility of the face and the form, terrified her. She suspended the bathing to breathe on it, as if her warm breath might bring back consciousness and prove more potent than the cold water. But Raymond remained insensible to all. The silence began to oppress Franceline like a ghastly presence; the cooing of her doves outside sounded like a dirge. Could this be death? His pulse beat so faintly she hardly knew whether it was his or the pulse of her own trembling fingers that she felt. A chill of horror came over her; the first vague dread was gradually shaping itself in her mind to the most horrible of certainties. If he should never awake, never speak again, never open those closed eyes on her with the old tender glance of love that had been as familiar and unfailing as the sunlight to her! Oh! what a fearful awakening came with this first realization of that awful possibility. What vain shadows, what trivial empty things, were those that she had until now called sorrows! What a joy it would be to take them all back again, and bear them, increased tenfold in bitterness, to the end of her life, if this great, this real sorrow might be averted! Franceline dropped on her knees beside the bed, and, clasping her hands, sent up one of those cries that we all of us find in our utmost need, when there is only God who can help us: “O Father! thy will be done. But if it be possible, … if it be possible, … let this cup pass from me!”

There were steps on the stairs. It was Angélique come back. She had only been ten minutes away--the longest ten minutes that ever a trembling heart watched through--but Franceline knew she could not have been to the doctor’s and back so quickly. “I met M. le Vicaire just at the end of the lane, and he is gone for the doctor; he was riding, so he will be there in no time.”

Then she made Franceline go and fetch hot water from the kitchen, and busied her in many little ways, under pretence of being useful, until Dr. Blink’s carriage was heard approaching. The medical man was not alone; Mr. Langrove and Father Henwick accompanied him.

Angélique drew the young girl out of her father’s room, and sent her to stay with Father Henwick, while the doctor, assisted by Mr. Langrove and herself, attended to M. de la Bourbonais.

“Oh! what is it? Did the doctor tell you?” she whispered, her dark eyes preternaturally dilated in their tearless glance, as she raised it to Father Henwick’s face.

“He could say nothing until he had seen him. Tell me, my dear child, did your father ever have anything of this sort happen him before?” inquired Father Henwick, as unconcernedly as he could.

“Never, never that I heard of, unless it may have been when I was too little to remember,” said Franceline; and then added nervously, “Why?”

“Thank God! It is safe, then, not to be so serious,” was the priest’s hearty exclamation. “Please God, you will see him all right again soon; he has been overdoing of late, working too hard, and not taking air or exercise enough. The blade has been wearing out the sheath--that’s what it is; but Blink will pull him through with God’s help.”

“Father,” said Franceline, laying both hands on his arm with an unconscious movement that was very expressive, “do you know it seems to me as if I were only waking up, only beginning to live now. Everything has been unreal like a dream until this. Is it a punishment for being so ungrateful, so rebellious, so blind to the blessings that I had?”

“If it were, my child, punishment with God is only another name for mercy,” said Father Henwick. “Our best blessings come to us mostly in the shape of crosses. Perhaps you were not thankful enough for the great blessing of your father’s love, for his health and his delight in you; perhaps you let your heart long too much for other things; and if so, God has been mindful of his foolish little one, and has sent this touch of fear to teach her to value more the mercies that were vouchsafed to her, and not to pine for those that were denied. We seldom see things in their true proportions until the shadow of death falls on them.”

“The shadow of death!” echoed Franceline, her white lips growing still whiter. “Oh! if it be but the shadow, my life will be too short for thanksgiving, were I to live to the end of the world.”

“Ha! here they come,” said Father Henwick, opening the study-door as he heard the doctor’s steps, followed by Mr. Langrove’s, on the stair.

Franceline went forward to meet them; she did not speak, but Dr. Blink held out his hand in answer to her questioning face, and said cheerfully: “The count is much better; he has recovered consciousness, and is doing very nicely, very nicely indeed for the present. Come! there is nothing to be frightened at, my dear young lady.”

Franceline could not utter a word, not even to murmur “Thank God!” But the dead weight that had been pressing on her heart was lifted, she gasped for breath, and then the blessed relief of tears came.

“My poor little thing! My poor Franceline!” said the vicar, leading her gently to a chair, and smoothing the dark gold hair with paternal kindness.

“Let her cry; it will do her good,” said Dr. Blink kindly; and then he turned to speak in a low voice to Father Henwick and Mr. Langrove.

He had concluded, from the incoherent account which Mr. Langrove had gathered from Angélique, that he should come prepared for a case of apoplexy, and had brought all that was necessary to afford immediate relief. He had recourse to bleeding in the first instance, and it had proved effective. M. de la Bourbonais was, as he said, doing very well for the present. Consciousness had returned, and he was calm and free from suffering. Franceline was too inexperienced to understand where the real danger of the attack lay. She fancied that, since her father had regained consciousness, there could be nothing much worse than a bad fainting fit, brought on by fatigue of mind and body, and, now that the Rubicon was past, he would soon be well, and she would take extra care of him, so as to prevent a relapse. Her passionate burst of tears soon calmed down, and she rose up to thank her visitors with that queenly self-command that formed so striking a part of her character.

“I am very grateful to you for coming so quickly; it was very good of you,” she said, extending her hand to Dr. Blink: “May I go to him now?”

“No, no, not just yet,” he replied promptly. “I would rather he were left perfectly quiet for a few hours. We will look in on him later; not that it is necessary, but we shall be in the neighborhood, and may as well turn in for a moment.” He wished them good-afternoon, and was gone.

“And how did you happen to come in just at the right moment?” said Franceline, turning to Father Henwick. “It did not occur to me before how strange it was. Was it some good angel that told you to come to me, I wonder?”

“The very thing! You have hit it to a nicety!” said Mr. Langrove. “It was an angel that did it.”

“Yes,” said Father Henwick, falling into the vicar’s playful vein, “and the odd thing was that he came riding up to my house on a fat Cumberland pony! Now, we all know S. Michael has been seen on a white charger, but this is the first time, to my knowledge, that an angel was ever seen mounted on a Cumberland pony.”

“Dear Mr. Langrove, how good of you!” said Franceline, with moistened eyes, and she pressed his hand.

“Had you not better come out with me now for a short walk?” said the vicar. “I sha’n’t be more than half an hour, and it will do you good. Come and have early tea at the vicarage, and we will walk home with you before Blink comes back. What do you say?”

“Oh! I think I had better not go out, I feel so shaken and tired; and then papa might ask for me, you know. I shall not go near him unless he does, after what Dr. Blink said.”

“Well, perhaps it is as well for you to keep quiet. Good-by, dear. I will look in on you this evening.”

“And so will I, my child,” said Father Henwick, laying his broad hand on her head; and the two gentlemen left the cottage together.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE FRIENDS OF EDUCATION.

To pass from the discussion of arguments to the question of motives is a most common yet most unjustifiable manœuvre of popular debate. This is usually done when the field of calm and logical reasoning has become tolerably clear. The flank movement is attempted as a final struggle against defeat otherwise inevitable. If the motive thus impugned be really indefensible; if it be, at the same time, glaring or manifest, a positive advantage is sometimes gained by a vigorous diversion from the real object of contention. But if such a motive has to be alleged--or, still worse, invented--the demonstration against it, however violent, is but a reluctant and ungracious acknowledgment of defeat and a flight from the real point at issue. The most recent instance of this sort is taking place before the American public, and has been afforded by those who endeavor to represent Catholics as opposed to free and liberal education, thereby attainting the motives of the position which Catholics have been forced to assume with regard to what are falsely called “common” schools.

This attitude of our opponents, however, we regard not without complacency. Our object is not war, but peace and good-will among citizens. We hail the present violent misrepresentation as a sign that the enemy is close to the “last ditch,” and that the discussion approaches its conclusion. When this final effort to distort the Catholic object and to asperse the Catholic character has exhausted itself and been held up to the inspection of the American people, we shall have seen the end of the “school question.” We insist upon an improvement in our educational system which is necessary to perfect its character and to satisfy the requirements of the times. The present system does not meet the wishes of a very large portion of the community, is unfair to others besides Catholics, and is out of harmony with the spirit of free institutions. A system is wanted which shall at least be equal to that of monarchical countries, fair to all citizens alike, and which will relieve Catholics from the double burden of educating their own children, besides paying for a system of education of which they cannot conscientiously avail themselves.

The correctness of the Catholic position is so manifest, and is so rapidly gaining the recognition of all thoughtful classes, that those who are unwilling to allow Catholics equal rights as citizens are forced, in order to hide the truth, not only to maintain that the present system is absolutely perfect and incapable of any improvement, but to accuse Catholics of harboring ideas of which they are not only innocent, but which it would be wholly impossible for them to entertain--such as that they are afraid of the light; that they attack the present system because they are inimical to all education; and that their object is, if possible, to do away with it altogether. Accusations similar to these are daily repeated, garnished with rhetoric, and sent forth to alarm our fellow-citizens and to encourage them to turn a deaf ear to whatever Catholics may say. The weak point of this movement against us is that the people will notice that it does not deal at all with the validity of Catholic claims, and that it shirks the only question at issue. They will be led to suspect that it is emphatically a “dodge”; and the mere suspicion of this will awaken curiosity as to what Catholics really have to say--a curiosity fatal to the success of the flank attack.

In the language of those who advance the charge with which we propose to deal, education means either primary instruction in the elements of knowledge, or else higher academic culture, such as is to be furnished by colleges and universities. If, therefore, Catholics are hostile to education, in this sense of the word, they must be opposed either to the general spread of such information as is aimed at in elementary and normal schools, or to the existence and growth of the higher institutions of science and art.

We are perfectly aware that there is another meaning given to the word education, to which reference is made, simply in order to avoid obscurity.

Philosophers of the class to which Mr. Huxley belongs understand by education a certain specific course of moral and intellectual training, the aim of which is to ensure its pupils against ever being affected by “theological tendencies.” Such impressions are to be made upon childhood, and matured in more advanced stages, as will rid men of that natural but awkward habit of reasoning from cause to effect; which will free them from all hope of any life but the present, and any fear of future responsibility, in order that they may be impelled to devote themselves solely to the analysis and classification of material phenomena, since this is the only purpose of man’s existence--such a course of spiritual defloration as was practised upon the tender and noble genius of the late John Stuart Mill, the results of which, as manifested by the revelation of his biography, afford, in the words of an ingenuous, critic, “a most unpleasant spectacle.” A process of this kind is not education; it is a heartrending and lamentable destruction of that which is noblest and most essential in man, and as a definition has not yet obtained a place in the English language.

If any of our readers would care to know our own ultimate definition of education, we should describe it as the complete and harmonious development of all the powers of man in reference to his true end. But for present purposes it is sufficient to adopt the ordinary sense of the word, as meaning the diffusion of knowledge by scholastic exercises in academies and colleges.

If it appears singular to enlightened Protestants to hear a demand for circumscription and discouragement of Catholics, and, if possible, the suppression of religious education, from that faction whose motto is “Liberty and Light,” we trust that it will seem none the less paradoxical to hear the charge of favoring ignorance urged with most vehemence against us by those whose boast, up to within a few years, has been “a ministry without education, and a way to heaven without grammar.”

The first demand does not in the least surprise us, coming, as it does, from a crude and undigested assumption of the principles of European radicalism. We have seen its consistency illustrated by madmen chasing, robbing, and killing one another to the cry of “liberty, equality, fraternity.” We understand what it is to be assaulted by this party, which knows not how to act except in the way of destruction, which is never at rest except in the midst of agitation, and never at peace, so to speak, except when at war.

Nor is it strange to see an attempt against Catholics made outside the field of theological controversy, inasmuch as the result of controversy for the past two centuries has tended rather to the disintegration of Protestantism than to the conversion of Catholics to the new faith. Nor is it surprising to find this assault directed against the equal rights of Catholics in education; for here some earnest but short-sighted men imagine that there is not simply ground to be gained, but that the present system is a stronghold not to be given up. It is a stronghold, truly, but rather of infidelity than of Protestantism.

But educated Protestants and heathen will marvel with us that the attack has been made on the theory that Protestantism is the born friend, and Catholicity the natural enemy of education, knowing as well as we the fatal evidence of history.

The contempt for education which, until more recent times, has always existed, to a certain extent, among the orthodox Protestants, was founded upon their erroneous doctrines of the total depravity of human nature, the consequent invalidity of human reason, and the principle of private illumination.

When Luther said, “The god Moloch, to whom the Jews immolated their children, is to-day represented by the universities” (_Wider den Missbrauch der Messe_), it was not simply on the ground of the universities being centres of association for boisterous and disorderly youth, or fortresses of the ancient faith, but because of that “pagan and impious science” which was taught in them.

In his furious onslaught against them Luther was sustained by his well-known hatred of anything which tended to assert the prerogatives of human nature or the dignity of reason. No man was ever more intemperate in denunciation than this so-called “liberator of humanity and emancipator of human reason.” “True believers strangle reason,” said he; and he never alluded to it except in terms of most outrageous abuse. The last sermon of his at Wittenberg[253] is monumental in this respect; and his well-known reply to the Anabaptists is one of the most startling examples of his intensely idiomatic style.[254]

The feelings of the master were fully communicated to the disciples. The results were fearful. The free schools which existed in every city were overturned by the very men whom they had educated; the _gymnasia_ were in many places wholly destroyed, in others so reduced as never to recover their former position.

At Wittenberg itself the two preachers, Spohr and Gabriel Didymus, announced from the pulpit that the study of science was not simply useless but noxious, and that it was best to do away with the colleges and schools. The upshot was to change the academy of that city into a bakery. Similar measures were carried into effect throughout the entire duchy of Anspach. The history of the Reformation by Dr. Döllinger gives a long list of the numerous scholars, rectors of high schools and colleges, who were driven into exile, and also details a minute account of many of the institutions which were destroyed.

The statements of Erasmus, as to the disastrous results of the Reformation on studies, are constant and numberless. They may be formulated in a sentence of one of his letters to Pirkheimer (1538): “_Ubicumque regnat Lutheranismus, ibi litterarum est interitus_”--“Wherever Lutheranism reigns, there is the destruction of letters.”

The testimony of Sturm, Schickfuss, Bucer, and others is no less forcible. Luther and Melancthon in later days seem to have been appalled by their own work, and George Major thus sums up the melancholy condition of things in his own day: “Thanks to the wickedness of men and the contempt which we ourselves have shown for studies, the schools have more than ever need of patrons and protectors to save them from ruin, and to prevent us from falling into a state of barbarism worse than that of Turks and Muscovites.”

The interesting works of the Benedictines of St. Maur of the XVIIIth century, the Bollandists, and the collections of a few other Catholic scholars have preserved nearly all the material that is left from which to construct the history of the middle ages, so thorough was the work of destruction done on libraries by the Calvinists and Huguenots. The Bodleian library is but a fragment--a few torn leaves of the literature which was weeded out of England by the enlightened zeal of the much-married father of Anglicanism.

“What mad work this Dr. Coxe did in Oxon, while he sat chancellor, by being the chief man that worked a reformation there, I have elsewhere told you,” says Anthony Wood “To return at length to the royal delegates, some of whom yet remained in Oxford, doing such things as did not at all become those who professed to be learned and Christian men. For the principal ornaments, and at the same time supports, of the university--that is, the libraries, filled with innumerable works, both native and foreign--they permitted or directed to be despoiled.… Works of scholastic theology were sold off among those exercising the lowest description of arts; and those which contained circles or diagrams it was thought good to mutilate or burn, as containing certain proof of the magical nature of their contents.”

What was left undone by the royal delegates was thoroughly attended to by the Puritans, who never did their work by halves, and whose views with regard to the Bible and literature bore a close resemblance to those of the early Mohammedans in their comparative estimate of the Koran and secular writings.

For a full account of the effect of the revolution of the XVIth century on learning, people who may suspect Catholic writers of exaggeration can compare their statements with those of the learned Protestant Huber, in his exhaustive history of the universities. Even “honest Latimer,” who certainly was not a zealot for profane learning, lifted up his voice in complaint: “It would pity a man’s heart to hear that that I hear of the state of Cambridge; what it is in Oxford I cannot tell.” How it was at Oxford we have already seen. Throughout the length and breadth of the land the monastic schools, which were asylums both of mercy and learning, were destroyed; the mere list of their names, as given by the Protestant historian Cobbett, occupies one hundred and forty-five pages of his work. The present condition of the lower classes in England, which is due to their being thus deprived of means of education and assistance in distress, is the Nemesis of the Reformation. In listening to the demand that the government shall dispossess the present landlords as it despoiled the churchmen of old, we hear arguments of fearful power as to the extent of eminent domain. When it is asked why the crown and people shall not exercise for the common good the prerogative which was conceded and exercised formerly for the benefit of the crown alone, the present holders of property acquired by sacrilege may well take alarm at the progress of revolutionary ideas. And the question as to how far the people were forcibly deprived of the benefits of a trust vested for them in the church, may be decided “without constitutional authority and through blood.” God avert such a calamity from England! May the prayers of Catholic martyrs, of More and Fisher, intercede in her behalf, and save her from the consequences of that act, to prevent which, these, her truest sons, did not hesitate to offer up their lives! However, with these facts in view, it is scarcely wise for English Protestantism to assume the position of a necessary and perpetual friend of popular education. It is best to wait until the ink has become dry which has scored from the statute book of that realm the law making it felony to teach the alphabet to Catholics.

It would be gratifying to us to contrast with the conduct of the authors of Protestantism that of the great educators of Europe who laid the foundations of our civilization. A fierce and violent revolution has turned that civilization aside, and introduced into it principles of anarchy and death. A shallow and ungrateful era has failed to perceive and to acknowledge its debts. It is only in the pages of scholars such as Montalembert, the Protestants Maitland and Huber, and the author of that recent modest but most charming book entitled _Christian Schools and Scholars_, that we begin to notice a thoughtful inquiry into the history of our intellectual development. The masters slumber in forgetfulness and oblivion. We know not the builders of the great structures of the middle ages; and people generally know almost as little of its great intellectual and social system. The history of the human race for a thousand years of most intense activity is summed up in a few unmeaning words.

Time and space fail for such a comparison. But the fact that the first Protestants found themselves educated, the fact that they found schools to denounce and to destroy, in the XVIth century, is sufficient to justify us with regard to history prior to that date.

It would also be a pleasure to describe the progress of those magnificent bodies of Catholic educators which rose, under divine inspiration, as a check to the wave of revolution, and whose successes first stimulated the action of Protestants by the wholesome influence of fear. But this also is beyond our compass. We are ready to discuss the charge that Catholics are opposed to education, independently of all reference to Protestantism, by the test of positive facts, and to stand or fall by the Catholic record in modern times.

It is not necessary to cross the ocean or to visit countries where the munificence of ages has endowed the universities of Catholic lands; as, for instance, the seven great universities of the Papal States--Ferrara, Bologna, Urbino, Macerata, Camerino, Perugia, and Rome, each containing thousands of students. Nor is it necessary to remind the reader that the great Protestant universities, and notably those of England, are, to use the expression of a distinguished Anglican prelate, “a legacy of Catholicism.” The charge that Catholics are opposed to university education is simply laughable, considering that the university is essentially a Catholic idea, and has never, even in Europe, been successfully counterfeited.

It is not necessary, although it may be instructive, to refer to the free schools of the city of Rome, which, according to the testimony of a Protestant traveller, thirty years ago surpassed even those of Berlin in efficiency and relative number. They were, before the recent seizure by the Piedmontese government, the most numerous in proportion to the population and the most varied in character of any city in the world. They presented to their scholars the choice of day or night with regard to time, and prepared them for every profession, art, and trade. This matchless variety was doubtless the result of centuries of growth; but it was also the spontaneous outcome of zeal for education, and laid not a penny of taxation upon the people. So high was the standard of gratuitous education that private schools, at the beginning of the reign of our Holy Father Pius IX., had to struggle hard in order to retain the patronage of the wealthy classes. At that time there were in Rome 27 institutions and 387 schools for free education. Of these last, 180 were for little children of both sexes. Of the remainder, 94 were devoted to males and 113 to females. The total number of pupils in elementary schools amounted to 14,157, of which number 3,790 were of the infant class. Of those more advanced, 5,544 were males and 4,823 females. In elementary schools, _purely gratuitous_, 7,579 received education--viz., 3,952 boys and 3,627 girls.

There appears, however, in Cardinal Morichini’s report, a feature which has never yet been introduced into the American system--to wit, in _schools paying a small pension_ there were 1,592 boys and 1,196 girls; making a total in such schools of 2,788. This last item may furnish a hint to those who are anxious to secure the attendance of poor children in our own schools; although it is scarcely practicable where common education has to be provided by taxation alone. Of these 387 schools to which we have referred, 26 belonged to religious communities of men, and 23 to religious communities of women. The rest belonged to, or were conducted by, seculars. Besides these, 2,213 children of both sexes received free instruction in special conservatories.

In addition to this system of free primary education, there was the vast system of colleges and academies connected with the university, the advantages of which were at the command of the most limited and humble means.

It would be interesting to ask some of the high-school graduates in this country the simple historical question, “Who, in modern times; have done most for free education?” General Grant has doubtlessly contributed liberally towards it; so, it is to be presumed, has Mr. Blaine; so have many other distinguished lecturers on the subject of education. But if the question is rightly answered, the date will have to be assigned much earlier, and St. Joseph Calasanctius, Venerable de la Salle, Catherine McAuley, and a hundred thousand other “Papists” will have to take precedence of our illustrious fellow-citizens. The spectacle of one Christian Brother, or Ursuline Nun, or Sister of Mercy whose life is devoted to the instruction of the poor, with no recompense but the sweet privilege of being worn out in the service of fellow-men for the sake of Jesus Christ--such a spectacle as was afforded by the gifted Gerald Griffin, or by Mother Seton in our own country, and is daily shown among us by thousands of calm, intelligent men and amiable women, in the various religious orders--this is a testimony to education which none but Catholics can produce. And yet these men and women, these bright martyrs of charity, are they whom it is thought good to attack by every means within the reach of calumny.

Let it be understood that we do not overlook the efforts made by noble men and women in the ranks of Protestantism. Though few, and insignificant in intensity of zeal when compared with the daily and common sacrifices made by Catholics, nevertheless it must be borne in mind that these isolated attempts have been ineffectual, save only in so far as they have produced imperfect copies of the great works of Catholicity. Protestantism, as such, has never prompted or organized any great attempt at general free primary education. Indeed, it might be safely challenged to produce any instance of the kind. And if the American people to-day were to be seized with remorse for its injustice towards Catholics, and to propose immediately to do away with all public schools, we should object most strongly on the ground that no adequate means would then exist for the education of Protestant children. The problem of general education has never been faced by Protestantism. The system of godless education is an extremely modern and thoroughly pagan idea. If it has found favor among the leaders of Protestantism, this has been because they have accepted it as a solution of the educational problem; not having given the matter sufficient attention to observe the ruinous effect which it is producing on themselves.

From similar thoughtlessness comes their maintenance of the present system. It is a comparatively cheap solution, as far as individuals are concerned. It calls for no sacrifices. It is supposed to be sufficiently Protestant as long as the Bible is read in the schools. But if the present movement of the infidel party succeeds, and the “common” schools are reduced to purely irreligious institutions, the matter will soon force itself upon Protestant attention. We are convinced that they will perceive that Catholics have given the subject much more consideration than they supposed, and have been right throughout. Many of them will regret having misunderstood our views, and will be prepared to endorse the proposition that such schools are subversive of Christianity and demoralizing in their tendency. They will then endeavor to repair the evils which may still result from their ill-judged neglect of Catholic remonstrance. They will demand to be put upon at least an equal footing with infidels, probably with as much vehemence as Catholics have demanded an equal footing for all citizens alike. If they find themselves hopelessly debarred from this by the radical changes in the constitution which some of their number are even now proposing, they will impeach these amendments. This failing, they will find themselves in the position in which Catholics now are. Then, for the first time in history, will Protestantism have a fair chance to show how much it cares for education.

But, as already intimated, it is not necessary to cross the seas to discover testimony in rebuttal of the gratuitous slander which is urged against Catholics. Nor is there need to summon from the tomb the teachers of those who founded the so-called Reformation, nor to institute an historic comparison between the labors of Catholics and Protestants. Still less need is there to attempt to penetrate the future as to what Catholics may do for education when they are relieved of one-half of their present twofold burden.

We live in the XIXth century and in America; and in this, very age and country Catholics are doing more for education than is actually done by any other denomination, and, in proportion to their numbers and means, more than is done by all other denominations put together, which outnumber Catholics by at least four to one--Catholics, forsooth, who are impudently charged with being opposed to primary schools and collegiate training!

This assertion will doubtless sound strangely in the ears of those who have allowed themselves to remain in ignorance of the facts which we shall presently adduce. But, in view of them, it will be acknowledged that our statement is the most modest that can be made, and that, if disposed to be boastful, we could increase it many fold without fear of exaggeration. Catholics in this country have, it is true, no great university such as those produced by the efforts and endowments of generations. Besides the lack of time necessary for such a development, two other causes have thus far prevented its origin. The first is the poverty of Catholics here--not simply their lack of means--but the fact that the extent of the country and the comparatively small number of very wealthy families require that educational institutions of the higher class should be plentifully distributed. Secondly, Catholic resources have actually been applied to satisfy this condition of things. We feel quite sanguine that, before the close of the century, in spite of all disadvantages, a Catholic university of the very highest character will be established here; but, without it, there exist at present, in every city of importance throughout the Union, colleges which, for scholarship, will fairly compete with the chartered universities of this country, and which, in certain localities and in special departments, will surpass their older and more pretentious rivals. Although these colleges do not approach the ideal of a university--_i.e._, a great city of learning, which can no more be built in a day than a great commercial metropolis--nevertheless there is no reason to be ashamed of our colleges. Scarcely one of them can be found which does not contain the children of non-Catholics, sent thither by the preference of parents and guardians. Our great academies for young ladies are recognized as possessing advantages which are without a parallel; and, as a class, the convent schools for girls are without even a rival, and contain a very large proportion of Protestant children.

Nor are Catholics lacking in efforts to provide primary education for Catholic children, although their efforts in this direction are sadly out of proportion to their necessities. In higher intellectual culture the wealthy are naturally interested. They must provide suitable education for their children. To do this in every place is a most severe tax upon them. Nevertheless, it has been their duty to accomplish this, and, at the same time, to subscribe liberally toward the education of the children of their poorer brethren.

The poorer classes, also, with less natural impulse to make sacrifices for education, exposed to the temptation of hundreds of proselytizing institutions, forced to pay also for the lavish expenditure of the public schools, have had to bear the burden of procuring the necessary instruction for their children without exposing them to sectarianism and the scorn of their religion too often openly manifested in the “common” schools. How far they have done their duty will presently be shown. Honorable men shall judge whether they have or have not valued education. But if it be suddenly discovered that they have valued it, let it be acknowledged also that they have acted as Catholics and from the deepest religious motives.

The general statistics of the Catholic Church in America are very imperfect. Nevertheless, from the _Catholic Directory_ of 1875 a few figures may be gleaned which will abundantly sustain the statements here advanced. It is to be regretted that the statistics as given in the _Directory_ are not more complete, those of some dioceses being quite minute and exact, those of others very imperfect.

With regard to colleges and academies for higher education, there are, under Catholic direction, in the United States, at least 540, with an attendance of not less than 48,000 pupils. In dioceses of which both the numbers of institutions and their attendance have been given there are 270 institutions, with an attendance of 24,000. A mathematical computation gives for the attendance in the others the amount which we have allowed as a safe estimate--viz., a total attendance of no less than 48,000 souls. How does this appear to those who have listened hitherto to the revilers of Catholics? Are we right in repelling their charge, or are they right, who have nothing but their angry feelings with which to sustain it?

If Catholics are wanting in zeal for education, the spirit of obstruction is not apparent in their higher institutions. But, as we have said, the mass of our people are poor. What provision have they made for themselves, besides paying for the education of others?

The Catholic parochial schools are principally designed to supply the need of Catholic education for the masses. It would be wrong, however, to consider them as merely primary schools. Many of the parochial schools are really high schools, and have a course of studies equal to the best normal schools. Nevertheless, under the head of parish schools are not included any of those already mentioned as colleges or academies. In the Archdiocese of Cincinnati there are 140 parish schools, in which are educated about 35,000 children free of cost to the State. In the Archdiocese of New York there are 93 parish schools, with not less than 37,600 children. In the Diocese of Cleveland there are 100 parish schools and 16,000 children. In some places the attendance of the Catholic schools is fully equal to that of the public schools. So that in these districts Catholics not only pay for the education of their own children, but half the expenses of the public schools, and--supposing both systems to be conducted with equal economy--enough to pay for the education of all the other children as well as their own, _free of cost_ to Protestants, Jews, and infidels. And yet Catholics are charged with being hostile to education!

In the United States we have statistics of 1,400 parochial schools, the given attendance at which amounts to 320,000 pupils. The entire number of parish schools foots up 1,700, and the total figure of attendance may be set down at 400,000 scholars. Add to this the number of 48,000 who are being educated in colleges and academies, and farther increase the sum by the probable number of children in asylums, reformatories, and industrial schools, and there will appear something very like half a million of scholars who are receiving their education at the expense of Catholics.

Taking into account Catholic numbers, Catholic means, and the time in which Catholics have made these provisions for education, we can safely challenge, not only every denomination singly, but all of them put together, to show any corresponding interest in the matter of education, whether elementary or scientific. This challenge is made, not in the spirit of pride (though certainly without shame), but in the name of truth and of generous rivalry to outstrip all others in the service of humanity and our country. Let it stand as the fittest reply to the disingenuous charge that Catholics are opposed to education.

The candid reader to whom these facts are new will use his own language in characterizing the “flank movement” against Catholics, and will be disposed to credit us with honesty and consistency in our open criticism of the present hastily-adopted system of education. But we are persuaded that he will also be led, if not to make, at least to concur in, farther reflections on the facts which are here adduced. If Catholics are actually providing instruction for so vast a number of the people of the United States, is not this a very considerable saving to the public? We think it is. The average cost of education in New York City is $13 60 per child; in the State of New York, $11; in the United States and Territories, $9 26. The saving represented by such a number in our schools amounts, at the rate of New York City, to $6,800,000; at the rate of the State of New York, to $5,500,000, and at the lowest rate, to $4,630,000 per annum. In addition to this direct saving, we must be credited with the amount of our taxes for the public schools. When Catholics stand before the American people, and state the reasons why they do not consider the present educational system that prevails here to be either wise or just, they are not beggars in any sense. They ask for no favor. They demand an equitable system of disbursing the funds raised for education, so that no class of citizens shall be deprived of that for which they are forced to contribute. They would arrange it so that none could justly complain. As Catholics, we must have religion and morality (which, whatever others may think, are to us inseparable) taught in the schools to which we send our children. No time or place will ever alter our convictions on this point. What we demand for ourselves we gladly concede to others. We are ready to consult with them on a common and just basis of agreement. Nothing is wanting for a harmonious settlement except fairness on the part of our opponents. There is no flaw in our position, no evil design in our heart, nor have we the slightest disposition to drive a close bargain. Let the word be spoken. Let any of the Protestant denominations make a step forward, intimate a desire for settlement on the basis of equal justice to all, and Catholics are with them. But while we thus maintain our demand as strictly just, whether it be received or rejected, we are not debtors but creditors of the state. We not only ask our fellow-citizens, Will you stand by and see us taxed for a system of education of which we cannot conscientiously avail ourselves? but we further ask, Can you, as honest men, disregard what Catholics are doing for education? Do you want them not only to educate their own children, thereby saving you this cost, but to educate yours also?

What kind of a soul has the man or the nation who would deliberately resist such an appeal? The time will come when people will ask--as, indeed, many do ask at present--“Why is not a louder outcry made for the Catholics in the school question?” And the answer is that we feel a certainty, which nothing can shake, that the American people are intelligent enough to understand Catholics after a time; and when they do understand them, they will be fair enough to do them justice.

In the meantime let the Catholic laborer pay not only for the education of his own children at the parish school, and save this expense to his rich neighbor; let him also pay for the same neighbor’s children, not merely in primary schools, but in high schools, where ladies and gentlemen (whom poverty does not drive to labor at the age when the poor man’s children have to be apprenticed) may learn French and German and music, and to declaim on the glorious principles of American liberty and of the Constitution, under which all men are (supposed to be) free and equal. We love to hear their young voices and hearty eloquence. Let these institutions be costly in structure and furnished with every improvement. Let the teachers have high salaries. Let gushing editors issue forth, to manifest to the astonished world the wisdom and deep thought which they have acquired at the expense of their humbler and self-sacrificing neighbor. But let honest and thoughtful men ponder on the meaning of American equality, and judge who are the true friends of education. The wages of the laborers will be spent, if the shallowness and crude imperfection of the present system are learned, and the spirit of equal rights among citizens peacefully preserved; though the credit will belong to those who have kept their calmness of mind and made the greatest sacrifices.

The candid reader to whom we have alluded will readily admit that Catholics are true friends of education, and are doing most for it proportionately to their means; that, instead of suspicion and abuse, they deserve respect, honor, and acknowledgment of their services.

We think, however, that our fellow-citizens will go much farther, and will, in time, endorse our statement when we affirm that Catholics at present, and as a body, are the only true friends of popular education. By this is not meant simply to say that they have not been backward in obtaining, by their intelligence and integrity, the highest positions in the country; that they count as representatives such men as Chief-Justice Taney, Charles O’Conor, a Barry at the head of the navy, a Sheridan and a Rosecrans in the army, and others of the highest national and local reputation; or that, when the Roman purple fell upon the shoulders of the Archbishop of New York, it suffered no loss of dignity in touching a true and patriotic American, well fitted to wear it in any court or academy of Europe. But we do mean that, outside of the Catholic Church and those who sympathize with our views on this subject, there is no body whose representatives are not biassed in their plan for common education by prejudice or hostility toward some other body.

With what utter disregard for the rights of conscience the infidel and atheistic faction coolly avows its purpose to enforce a secular and irreligious education upon all the people--a system known to be no less antagonistic to the spirit of our democratic institutions than hostile to the religious convictions of Catholics as well as Protestants! What loud outcries and stormy denunciations echo from certain popular pulpits when this faction demands the expulsion of the Bible from the public schools! Is any person cool in the midst of this confusion? Is there any class of citizens which looks to the common good and adheres to the principle of equal regard for religious rights and education free for all? There are such persons. There is such a class. Those are they who never shrink from avowing their principles, and whose principles are always right, in spite of temporary unpopularity--the representatives of the Catholic Church of America.

When the excitement of the hour has died away, and the schemes of politicians to gain power by fastening upon the country a system fatal to liberty, and radical in its assault upon the spirit of our government, have met their just fate, then we shall receive the honor due to those who have defended the country from the danger of adopting partisan measures aimed against a certain class of citizens.

We hope to live to see the day when there will not be a child in the whole land capable of instruction who shall not receive a thorough education, fitting him to be a patriotic citizen of our country, and, at the same time, in nowise interfering with his religious duties. The present system signally fails to accomplish this. Those who so strenuously uphold its organization and attempt to make it compulsory upon all are hostile to the genius of our institutions and fanatical in their zeal. That they are not lovers of education is evident from their own ignorance of facts. That they are in earnest when they charge Catholics with hostility to education we can scarcely believe; for we hear from the same lips hints and warnings against Catholic success in education. We hear also that the Catholic Church is growing, and, unless something is done to stop her, she will convert all the Protestants in the country; and, still at other times, that she is an effete and worn-out thing which cannot live through the century in a free republic. At one time Catholics are derided as idiots; at another represented as deep and insidious conspirators. There is scarcely anything which is not affirmed or denied of them, according as it suits the mood of their revilers. If our people were cooler and more dispassionate, we should find all those calumnies answering one another. As it is, we are constrained to pay them more or less attention, though the nature of the testimony against us scarcely allows us to take up more than one point at a time.

If Catholics or Methodists or Episcopalians or Baptists can give a better and a cheaper education, we see no reason why the state should interfere with those who choose to avail themselves of it. Let the state set up any standard it may choose, or make it obligatory; Catholics will cheerfully come up to it, no matter how high it may be, provided equal rights are allowed to all. The government has a right to demand that its voters shall possess knowledge. It has no right to say how or where they shall acquire knowledge. The government is bound by public policy to promote education. This is to be done by stimulating in this department the same activity which has made Americans famous in other branches of social economy, by encouraging spontaneous action, and not by an ill-judged system of “protection” of one kind of education against another, or by creating a state monopoly. Bespeaking candor and due respect on the part of those who may differ from us, we take our stand on what we conceive to be the true American ground, and are willing to abide by the consequences--fair play, universal culture, obligatory knowledge, non-interference of the state in religion, and free trade in education.

SUGGESTED BY A CASCADE AT LAKE GEORGE.

Not idly could I watch this torrent fall Hour after hour; not vainly day by day Visit the spot to meditate and pray. The charm that holds me in its giant thrall Has too much of the infinite to pall. For though, like time, the waters pass away, They fling a freshness, a baptismal spray, Which breathes of the Eternal Fount of all. And so, my God, does thy revealed word, In living dogma or on sacred page, Flow to us ever new; though read and heard Immutably the same from age to age. And thither Nature sends us to assuage The higher longings by her voices stirred.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._

FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.

V.

Time glides rapidly by, leaving no footprints on the dreary road over which it has passed, as the wild billows, rolling back into the fathomless depths whence the tempest has called them forth, leave no traces behind them. And so passes life--fleeting rapidly, noiselessly away; while man, weary with striving, tortured by cares and unceasing anxieties, is born, suffers, weeps, and in a day has withered, and, like a fragile flower of the field, perishes from the earth.

Wolsey, fallen from the summit of prosperity, continued to experience a succession of reverses. Unceasingly exposed to the malice of his enemies, he struggled in vain against their constantly-increasing influence; and if they failed in bringing about his death, they succeeded, at least, in poisoning every moment of his existence. Thus, at the time even when Henry VIII. had sent him a valuable ring as a token of amity, they forced the king to despoil the wretched man of the valuable possessions which they pretended to wish restored to him. He received one day from his master a new assurance of his royal solicitude; the next, his resources failing, he was obliged, for want of money, to dismiss his old servants and remain alone in his exile.

Cromwell, with an incredible adroitness, had succeeded by degrees in disengaging himself from the obligations he owed the cardinal, and in making the downfall and misfortunes of his master serve to advance his own interests. He had made numerous friends among the throng of courtiers surrounding the king, in obtaining from the unhappy Wolsey his recognition of the distribution which the king had made of his effects, by adding the sanction of his own seal. After repeated refusals on the part of the cardinal, he was at last successful in convincing him of the urgent necessity for making this concession, in order to try, he said with apparent sincerity, to lessen the animosity and remove the prejudices they entertained against him. But, in reality, the intention of Cromwell had been, by that manœuvre, to strip him of his entire possessions; for the courtiers, being well aware their titles were not valid under the law, were every moment afraid they might be called on to surrender the gifts they had received, and consequently desired nothing so much as to have the cardinal confirm them in their unjust possessions.

It was by means of this monstrous ingratitude that Cromwell purchased the favor of the court, began to elevate himself near the king in receiving new dignities and honors, and at length found himself saved from the fate he had so greatly apprehended at the moment of his benefactor’s downfall. Of what consequence was Wolsey to him now? Banished from his archbishopric of York, he was but a broken footstool which Cromwell no longer cared to remember. He scarcely deigned to employ his new friends in having Wolsey (reduced to the condition of an invalid) removed from the miserable abode at Asher to the better situated castle of Richmond; and later, when the heads of the council, always apprehensive and uneasy because of his existence, obtained his peremptory exile, he considered this departure as completely liberating him from every obligation to his old benefactor.

Events were thus following each other in rapid succession, when, toward the middle of the day, the door of the king’s cabinet opened, and Sir Thomas More, in the grand costume of lord chancellor, entered as had been his custom.

The king turned slightly around on his chair, and fixed upon him a searching glance, as if he sought to read the inmost soul of More.

The countenance of the chancellor was tranquil, respectful, and assured, such as it had always been. In vain Henry sought to discover the indications of fear, the impetuous desires and ambitions which he was accustomed to excite or contradict in the agitated heart of Wolsey, and by which, in his turn master of his favorite, of his future, and of his great talents, he made him pay so dearly for the honors at intervals heaped upon him.

Nothing of all this could he discover! More seated himself when invited by the king, and entered upon the discussion of a multitude of affairs to which he had been devoting himself with unremitting attention day and night.

“Sire,” he would urge, “this measure will be most useful to your kingdom; sire, justice, it seems to me, requires you to give such a decision in that case.”

Never were any other considerations brought to bear nor other demands made; nothing for himself, nothing for his family, but all for the good of the state, the interests of the people; silence upon all subjects his conscience did not oblige him to reveal, though the king perceived only too clearly the inmost depths of the pure and elevated soul of his chancellor.

By dazzling this man of rare virtues with a fortune to which a simple gentleman could never aspire, Henry had hoped to allure him to his own party and induce him to sustain the divorce bill. Thus, by a monstrous contradiction, in corrupting him by avarice and ambition, he would have destroyed the very virtues on which he wished to lean. He perceived with indignation that all his artifices had been unsuccessful in influencing a will accustomed to yield only to convictions of duty, and he feared his ability to move him by any of the indirect and abstract arguments which he felt and acknowledged to himself were weak and insufficient. Revolving all these reflections in his mind, the king eagerly opened the conversation with More, but in a quiet tone and with an air of assumed indifference.

“Well! Sir Thomas,” he said, “have you reflected on what I asked you? Do you not find now that my marriage with my brother’s wife was in opposition to all laws human and divine, and that I cannot do otherwise than have it pronounced null and void, after being thus advised by so many learned men, and ecclesiastics also?”

“Sire,” replied More, “I have done what your majesty requested me; but it occurs to my mind that, in an affair of so much importance, it will not be sufficient to ask simply the advice of those immediately around you; for it might be feared that, influenced by the affection they bear for you, they would not decide as impartially as your majesty would desire. Perhaps, also, some of them might be afraid of offending you. I have, therefore, concluded that it would be better for your majesty to consult advisers who are entirely removed from all such suspicions. That is why I have endeavored to collect together in this manuscript I have here the various passages of Holy Scripture bearing on this subject. I have added also the opinions of S. Augustine and several other fathers of the church, with whose eminent learning and high authority among the faithful your majesty is familiar.”

“Ah!” said the king, with a slightly-marked movement of impatience, “that was right. Leave it there; I will read it.”

Sir Thomas deposited the manuscript on the king’s table.

“My lord chancellor,” he continued, “the House of Commons has taken some steps toward discharging my debts. What do they think of this in the city?”

“Sire,” replied More, “I must tell you candidly they complain openly and loudly. They say if the ministers had not taken care to introduce into the house members who had received their positions from themselves, the bill would never have passed; for it is altogether unjust and iniquitous for Parliament to dispose in this manner of private property. They say still farther that it has been inserted in the preamble of the bill that the prosperity of the kingdom under the king’s paternal administration had induced them to testify their gratitude by discharging his debts. If this pretext is sincere, it reflects the greatest honor on Cardinal Wolsey; and if, on the contrary, it is false, it covers his successors with shame.”

“What!” exclaimed the king, “do they dare express themselves in this manner?”

“Yes,” replied Sir Thomas; “and I will frankly say to the king that it would have been far better to have imposed a new tax supported equally by all than thus to despoil individuals of their patrimony.”

“They are never contented!” exclaimed the king impatiently. “I have sacrificed Wolsey to their hatred, whom there is no person in the kingdom now able to replace. This Dr. Gardiner torments me with questions which are far from satisfactory to his dull comprehension. Everything goes wrong, unless I take the trouble of managing it myself; while with the cardinal the slightest suggestion was sufficient. I constantly feel inclined to recall him! Then we will see what they will say! But no!” he continued, with an expression of gloomy sullenness, “they gave me no rest until I had banished him from his archbishopric of York. It was, they said, the sole means of preventing Parliament from pronouncing his condemnation. By this time he is doubtless already reconciled; he is so vain a creature that the three or four words I have said in his favor to my nobles of the north will have been worth more to him than the homage and adulation of a court, without which he cannot exist. He is pious now, they say, occupying himself only with good works and in doing penance for his many sins of the past. In fact, he is entirely reconciled! He has already forgotten all that I have done for him! I shall devote myself, then, to those who now serve me!”

“I doubt very much if your majesty has been correctly informed with regard to the latter fact,” replied More. “Indeed, I know that the order compelling him to be entirely removed from your majesty’s presence is the one that caused him the deepest grief.”

“Ah! More,” interrupted the king very suddenly, as if to take him by surprise, “you are opposed to my divorce. I have known it perfectly well for a long time; and these extracts from the fathers of the church to which you refer me are simply the expression of your own opinions, which you wish to convey to me in this indirect manner.”

“Sire,” replied More, slightly embarrassed, “I had hoped your majesty would not force me to give my opinion on a subject of such grave importance, and one, as I have already explained, on which I possess neither the authority nor the ability to decide.”

“Ah! well, Sir Thomas,” replied the king in a confident manner, wishing to discover what effect his words would produce on More, “being entirely convinced of the justice of my cause, and that nothing can prevent me from availing myself of it, I am determined, if the pope refuses what I have a right to demand, to withdraw from the tyrannical yoke of his authority. I will appoint a patriarch in my kingdom, and the bishops shall no longer submit to his jurisdiction.”

“A schism!” exclaimed More, “a schism! Dismember the church of Jesus Christ for a woman!”

And he paused, appalled at what Henry had said and astonished at his own energetic denunciation.

The king felt, as by a violent shock, all the force of that exclamation, and, dropping his head on his breast, he remained stupefied, like one who had just been aroused from a painful and terrible dream.

Just at that moment the cabinet door was thrown violently open, and Lady Anne Boleyn entered precipitately. She was drowned in tears, and carried in her arms a hunting spaniel that belonged to the king.

She threw it into the centre of the apartment, evidently in a frightful rage.

“Here,” she cried, looking at the king--“here is your wretched dog, that has tried to strangle my favorite bird! You never do anything but try to annoy me, make me miserable, and cause me all kinds of intolerable vexations. I have told you already that I did not want that horrid animal in my chamber.”

In the meantime the dog, which she had thrown on the floor, set up a lamentable howl.

The king felt deeply humiliated by this ridiculous scene, and especially on account of the angry familiarity exhibited by Anne Boleyn in presence of Sir Thomas More; for she either forgot herself in her extreme excitement and indignation, or she believed her empire so securely established that she did not hesitate to give these proofs of it. She continued her complaints and reproaches with increasing haughtiness, until she was interrupted by Dr. Stephen Gardiner, who came to bring some newly-arrived despatches to the king.

Henry arose immediately, and, motioning Sir Thomas to open the door, without saying a word, he took Anne Boleyn by the hand, and, leading her from the room, ordered her to retire to her own apartment.

He then returned, and, seating himself near the chancellor, concealed, as far as he was able, his excitement and mortification.

Sir Thomas, still more excited, could not avoid, as they went over the despatches, indignantly reflecting on the manner in which Anne Boleyn had treated the king, on his deplorable infatuation, and the terrible consequences to which that infatuation must inevitably lead.

The king, divining the nature of his reflections, experienced a degree of humiliation that made him inexpressibly miserable.

“What say these despatches?” he asked, endeavoring to assume composure. “What does More think of me?” he said to himself--“he so grave, so pious, so dignified! He despises me!… That silly girl!”

“They give an account of the emperor’s reception of the Earl of Wiltshire,” answered More. “I will read it aloud, if your majesty wishes.”

“No, no,” said the king, whom the name of Wiltshire confused still more; “give them to me. I am perfectly familiar with the cipher.” He did not intend that More should yet be apprised of the base intrigues he had ordered to be practised at Rome to assist the father of his mistress in obtaining the divorce.

Having taken the letters, he found the emperor had treated his ambassador with the utmost contempt, remarking to Wiltshire that he was an interested party, since he was father of the queen’s rival, and he would have to inform Henry VIII. that the emperor was not a merchant to sell the honor of his aunt for three hundred thousand crowns, even if he proposed to abandon her cause, but, on the contrary, he should defend it to the last extremity; and after saying this, the emperor had deliberately turned his back on the ambassador and forbidden him to be again admitted to his presence.

Henry grew red and white alternately.

“I am, then, the laughing-stock of Europe,” he murmured through his firmly-set teeth.

Numerous other explanations followed, in which the Earl of Wiltshire gave an exact and circumstantial account of the offer he had made to the Holy Father of the treatise composed by Cromwell on the subject of the divorce, saying that he had brought the author with him, who was prepared to sustain the opinions advanced against all opposition. He ended by informing the king that, in spite of his utmost efforts, he had not been able to prevent the pope from according the emperor a brief forbidding Henry to celebrate another marriage before the queen’s case had been entirely decided, and enjoining him to treat her in the meantime as his legitimate wife.

Wiltshire sent with his letter an especial copy of that document, adding that he feared the information the Holy Father had received of the violence exercised by the English universities toward those doctors who had voted against the divorce, together with the money and promises distributed among those of France, especially the University of Paris, to obtain favorable decisions, had not contributed toward influencing him.

The king read and re-read several times all these statements, and was entirely overwhelmed with indignation and disappointment.

“And why,” he angrily exclaimed, dashing the earl’s letter as far as possible from him--“why have these flatterers surrounding me always assured me I would succeed in my undertaking? Why could they not foresee that it would be impossible? and why have I not found a sincere friend who might have admonished me? More!” he cried after a moment’s silence--“More, I am most miserable! What could be more unjust? I am devoted to Lady Anne Boleyn as my future wife; and now they wish to make me renounce her. The emperor’s intrigues prevail, and against all laws, human and divine, they condemn me to eternal celibacy!”

“Ah!” replied Sir Thomas in a firm but sadly respectful manner, “yes, it is indeed distressing to see your majesty thus voluntarily destroy your own peace, that of your kingdom, the happiness of your subjects, the regard for your own honor, so many benefits, in fact, and all for the foolish love of a girl who possesses neither worth nor reputation.”

“More,” exclaimed the king, “do not speak of her in this manner! She is young and thoughtless, but in her heart she is devoted to me.”

“That is,” replied More, “she is entirely devoted to the crown; she loves dearly the honors of royalty, and her pride is doubly flattered.”

“More,” said the king, “I forgive you for speaking thus to me; your severe morals, your austere virtues, have not permitted you to experience the torments of love, and that is why,” he added gloomily, “you cannot comprehend its irresistible impulses and true sentiments.”

“Nothing that is known to one man is unknown to another,” replied More. “Love, in itself, is a sublime sentiment that comes from God; but, alas! men drag it in the dust, like all else they touch, and too often mistake the appearance for the reality. To love anyone, O my king!” continued More, “is it not to prefer them in all things above yourself, to consider yourself as nothing, and be willing to sacrifice without regret all that you would wish to possess?”

“Yes,” said Henry VIII.; “and that is the way I love Anne--more than my life, more than the entire world!”

“No, no, sire!” exclaimed More, “don’t tell me that. No, don’t say you love her; say you love the pleasure she affords you, the attractions she possesses, which have charmed your senses--in a word, acknowledge that you love yourself in her, and consider well that the day when nature deprives her of her gifts and graces your memory will no longer represent her to you but as an insipid image, worthy only of a scornful oblivion! Ah! if you loved her truly, you would act in a different manner. You would never have considered aught but her happiness and her interests; you would blush for her, and you would not be able to endure the thought of the shame with which you have not hesitated to cover her yourself in the eyes of all your court!”

“Perhaps,” … replied Henry in a low and altered voice. “But she--she loves me; I cannot doubt that.”

“She loves the King of England!” replied More excitedly, “but not Henry; she loves the mighty prince who ignominiously bends his neck beneath the yoke which she pleases to impose on him. But poor and destitute, her glance would never have fallen upon you. Proud of her beauty, vain of her charms, she holds you like a conquered vassal whom she governs by a gesture or a word. She loves riches, honors and the pleasures with which you surround her. She is dazzled by the _éclat_ of the high rank you occupy, and, to attain it, she fears not to purchase it at the price of your soul and all that you possess. What matters to her the care of your honor or the love of your subjects? Has she ever said to you: ‘Henry, I love you, but your duty separates you from me; be great, be virtuous’? Has she said: ‘Catherine, your wife, is my sovereign, and I recognize no other’? Do you not hear the voice of your people saying to your children: ‘You shall reign over us’? But what am I saying? No, of course she has not spoken thus; because she seeks to elevate herself, she thinks of her own aggrandizement--to see at her feet men whom she would never otherwise be able to command.”

“What shall I do, then, what shall I do?” cried Henry dolorously.

“Marry Anne Boleyn,” replied Thomas More coolly; “you should do it, since you have broken off her marriage with the Earl of Northumberland. If not, send her away from court.”

“I will do it! … No, I will not do it!” he exclaimed, almost in the same breath. “I shall never be able to do it.”

“That is to say, you never intend to do it,” replied More. “We can always accomplish what we resolve.”

“No, no,” replied Henry; “we cannot always do what we wish. Everything conspires against me. Tired of willing, I can make nothing bend to my will! Of what use is my royal power? To be happy is a thing impossible!”

“Yes, of all things in this life most impossible,” answered More; “and he who aspires to attain it finds his miseries redoubled at the very moment he thinks they will terminate. The possession of unlawful pleasures is poisoned by the remorse that follows in their train; and, frightened by their insecurity and short duration, we are prevented from enjoying them in quietness and peace.”

“Then,” cried Henry VIII., stamping his foot violently on the floor, “we had better be dead.”

“Yes,” replied Thomas More, “and to-morrow perhaps we may be!”

“To-morrow!” repeated the king, as if struck with terror. “No, no, More, not to-morrow. … I would not be willing now to appear in the presence of God.”

“Then,” replied More, “how can you expect to live peaceably in a condition in which you are afraid to die? In a few hours, or at least in a few years (that is as certain as the light of day which shines this moment), your life and mine will have to end, leaving nothing more than regrets for the past and fears for the future.”

“You say truly, More,” replied the king; “but life appears so long to us, the future so far removed! Is it necessary, then, that we be always thinking of it and sacrificing our pleasures?… Later--well, we will change. Will we not have more time then to think of it?”

“Ah!” replied More sadly, “there remains very little time to him who is always putting off until to-morrow.”

As he heard the last words, the king’s face grew instantly crimson. He kept More with him, entertaining him with his trials and vexations, and the night was far advanced before he permitted him to retire.

* * * * *

During four entire days the king remained shut up in his apartment, and Anne Boleyn vainly attempted to gain admittance.

Meanwhile, a rumor of her downfall spread rapidly through the palace. The courtiers who were accustomed to attend her _levées_ in greater numbers and much more scrupulously than those of Queen Catherine, suddenly discontinued, and on the last occasion scarcely one of them made his appearance. They also took great care to preserve a frigid reserve and doubtful politeness, which excited to the last degree her alarm and that of her ambitious family.

The latter were every moment in dread of the blow that seemed ready to fall upon them. In this state of gloomy disquiet every circumstance was anxiously noted and served to excite their apprehensions. They continually discussed among themselves the arrival of the despatches from Rome, the nature of which they suspected from the very long time Sir Thomas More had remained with the king. Then they refreshed their memories with reflections on the inflexible severity of the lord chancellor, his old attachment for Queen Catherine--an attachment which the elevation of More had never interrupted, as they had hoped would be the case. Finally, the sincerity of his nature and the estimation in which he was held by the king made them, with great reason, apprehend the influence of his counsel. Already they found themselves abandoned by almost all of those upon whose support they had relied. Suffolk, leagued with them heretofore, in order to secure the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey, now regarded them in their disgrace as of little consequence to one so closely related as himself to his majesty by the princess, his wife. The Duke of Norfolk, justly proud of his birth, his wealth, and his reputation, could not believe the power with which the influence of his niece had clothed him in the council by any means bound him to engage in or compromise himself in her cause. In the meantime they realized that they would inevitably be compelled to succumb or make a last and desperate effort, and they resolved with one accord to address themselves to Cromwell, whose shrewdness and cunning, joined to the motives of self-interest that could be brought to bear on him, seemed to offer them a last resort.

Cromwell immediately understood all the benefit he would be likely to derive from the situation whether he succeeded or failed in the cause of Anne Boleyn, and determined, according to his own expression, to “make or unmake.” He wrote to the king, demanding an audience. “He fully realized,” he wrote, with his characteristic adroitness, “his entire incapacity for giving advice, but neither his devoted affection nor his sense of duty would permit him to remain silent when he knew the anxiety his sovereign was suffering. It might be deemed presumptuous in him to say it, but he believed all the difficulties embarrassing the king arose from the timidity of his advisers, who were misled by exterior appearances or deceived by the opinions of the vulgar.”

The king immediately granted him an audience, although his usual custom was to remain entirely secluded and alone while laboring under these violent transports of passion. He hoped that Cromwell might be able to present his opinions with such ability as would at least be sufficient to divert him from the wretchedness he experienced.

Cromwell appeared before him with eyes cast down and affecting an air of sadness and constraint.

“Sire,” he said, as he approached the king, “yesterday, even yesterday, I was happy--yes, happy in the thought of being permitted to present myself before your majesty; because it seemed to me I might be able to offer some consolation for the anxieties you experience by reminding you that nothing should induce you to pause in your efforts to advance the interests of the kingdom and the state. But to-day, in appearing before you, I know not what to say. This morning Lady Boleyn, being informed that I was to have the happiness of seeing your majesty, sent for me and charged me with the commission of asking your majesty’s permission for her to withdraw from court.”

“What!” exclaimed Henry, rising hastily to his feet, “she wishes to leave me?--she, my only happiness, my only joy? Never!”

“I have found her,” continued Cromwell, seeming not to remark the painful uneasiness he had aroused in the king’s mind--“I have found her plunged in a state of indescribable grief. She was almost deprived of consciousness; her beautiful eyes were weighed down with tears, her long hair hanging neglected around her shoulders; and her pale, transparent cheek made her resemble a delicate white rose bowed on its slender stem before the violence of the tempest. ‘Go, my dear Cromwell,’ she said to me with a tremulous voice, but sweet as the soft expiring notes of an æolian lyre--‘go, say to my king, to my lord, I ask his permission to retire this day to my father’s country-seat. I know that I am surrounded by enemies, but, while favored by his protection, I have not feared their malice. But now I feel, and cannot doubt it, I shall become their victim, since they have succeeded in prejudicing my sovereign against me to such an extent that he refuses to hear my defence.’”

“What can she be afraid of here?” cried the king. “Who would dare offend her in my palace?”

“Who will be able to defend her if your majesty abandons her?” replied Cromwell in a haughty tone, feigning to forget the humble demeanor he had assumed, and mentally applauding the success of his stratagem. “Has she not given up all for you? Every day she has wounded by her refusals the greatest lords of the realm, who have earnestly sued for her heart and hand; but she has constantly refused to listen to them because of the love she bears for you--always preferring the uncertain hope of one day becoming yours to all the brilliant advantages of the wealthiest suitors she has been urged to accept. But to-day, when her honor is attacked, when you banish her from your presence, she feels she will not have the courage to endure near you such wretchedness, and she asks to be permitted to withdraw from court at once and for ever!”

“For ever?” repeated the king. “Cromwell, has she said that? Have you heard her right? No, Cromwell, you are mistaken! I know her better than you.” And he turned on Cromwell a keen, scrutinizing glance.

But nothing could daunt this audacious man.

“She said all I have told you,” replied the hypocrite, with the coolest assurance, raising his head haughtily. “Would I dare to repeat what I have not heard? And your majesty can imagine that my devotion has alone induced me to become the bearer of so painful a message; for I could not believe, your majesty had ceased to love her.”

“Never!” cried the king. “Never have I for one moment ceased to adore her! But listen, dear Cromwell, and be convinced of how wretched I am! Yesterday I received from Rome the most distressing intelligence. I had written the pope a letter, signed by a great number of lords of my court and bishops of the kingdom, in which they expressed the fears they entertained of one day seeing the flames of civil war break out in this country if I should die without male heirs, as there would be grounds for contesting the right of my daughter Mary to the throne on the score of her legitimacy. But nothing can move him.”

* * * * *

Here the king rose, furiously indignant. “He has answered this petition,” he cried, walking with hurried strides up and down the floor; “and how?… By my faith, I can scarcely repeat it.… That he pardons the terms they have used in their letter, attributing them to the affection they bear for me; that he is under still greater obligations to me than they have mentioned; that it is not his fault if the affair of the divorce remains undecided; that he has sent legates to England; that the queen has refused to recognize them, and appealed from all they have done; that he has tried vainly in every possible way to terminate the affair amicably; and, furthermore, ‘You will, perhaps, be ready to say,’ he writes, ‘that, being under so many obligations to the king as I am, I should waive all other considerations and accord him absolutely everything he asks.’ Although that would be sovereignly unjust, yet he can conclude nothing else from their letter; that they reflect not on the queen having represented to him, that all Christendom is scandalized because they would attempt to annul a marriage contracted so many years ago, at the request of two great kings and under a dispensation from the pope--a marriage confirmed by the birth of several children! And what else? Let me see:… That if I rely on the opinion of several doctors and universities, he refers, on his part, to the law of God upon the sanctity and unity of marriage, and the highest authorities taken from the Hebrew and Latin writers; that the decisions of the universities which I bring forward are supported by no proofs; he cannot decide finally upon that, and, if he should precipitate his judgment, they would no longer be able to avert the evils with which it is said England is threatened; that he desires as much as they that I may have male heirs, but he is not God to give them to me; he has no greater wish than to please me as far as lies in his power, without at the same time violating all the laws of justice and equity; and, finally, he conjures them to cease demanding of him things that are opposed to his conscience, in order that he may be spared the pain of refusing! Mark that well, Cromwell--the pain of refusing! Thus, you see, after having tried everything, spent everything, and used every possible means, what remains now for me to hope?”

“All that you wish,” replied Cromwell; “everything without exception! Why permit yourself to be governed by those who ought to be your slaves? Among all the clergy who surround you, and whom you are able to reduce, if you choose, to mendicity, can you not find a priest who will marry you? If I were King of England, I would very soon convince them that the happiness of _their_ lives depended entirely upon _mine_! Threaten to withdraw from the authority of Rome, and you will very soon see them yielding, on their knees, to all your demands.”

“Cromwell,” said Henry VIII., “I admire your spirit and the boldness of the measures you advocate. From this moment I open to you the door of my council. Remember the kindness and the signal favor with which I have honored you. However, your inexperienced zeal carries you too far; you forget that the day I would determine really to separate myself from the Church of Rome, I would become schismatic, and the people would refuse to obey me. Moreover I am a Catholic, and I wish to die one.”

“What of that?” replied Cromwell. “Am I not also a Catholic? Because your majesty frightens the pope, will he cease to exist? Declare to him that from this day you no longer recognize his authority; that you forbid the clergy paying their tithes to, or receiving from him their nominations. You will see, then, if the next day your present marriage is not annulled and the one you wish to contract approved and ratified.”

“Do you really believe it?” said the king.

“I am sure of it,” replied Cromwell.

“No,” said the king. “It is a thing utterly impossible; the bishops would refuse to accede to any such requirements, and they would be right. They know too well that it is essential for the church to have a head in order to maintain her unity, and without it nothing would follow but confusion and disorder.”

“Well! who can prevent your majesty from becoming yourself that head?” exclaimed Cromwell. “Is England not actually a monster now with two heads, one of them wanting a thing, and the other not? Follow the example given you by those German princes who are freeing themselves from the yoke which has humbled them for so many years before the throne of a pontiff who is a stranger alike to their affections and their interests! Then everything anomalous will rectify itself, and your subjects cease to believe that any other than yourself is entitled to their homage or submission.”

“You are right, little Cromwell!” cried Henry VIII., this seductive and perfidious discourse flattering at the same time his guilty passion and the ambition that divided his soul. “But how would you proceed about executing this marvellous project, of which a thought had already crossed my own mind?--for, as I have just told you, the clergy will refuse to obey me, and I shall then have no means of compelling them.”

“Your consideration and kindness make you forget,” replied Cromwell adroitly, afraid of wounding the king’s pride, “the statutes of præmunire offer you means both sure and easy. Is it not by those laws they have tried Wolsey before the Parliament? In condemning him they have condemned themselves, and have made themselves amenable to the same penalties. You have them all in your power. Threaten to punish them in their turn, if they refuse to take the oath acknowledging you as head of the church; and do it fearlessly if they dare attempt to resist you.”

“Well, little Cromwell,” said Henry VIII., slapping him familiarly on the shoulder, “I observe with great satisfaction your coolness and the variety of resources you have at command. You see everything at a glance and fear nothing. I have made all these objections only to hear how you would meet them. Here, take these Roman documents, read them for yourself, and you will be better able to appreciate their contents; while I go and beg Anne to forget the wrongs I so cruelly reproach myself with having inflicted on her.”

Saying this, Henry VIII. went out, and Cromwell followed him with his eyes as he walked through the long gallery.

An ironical smile hovered over his thin and bloodless lips as he watched him. “Go, go,” he murmured to himself, “throw yourself at the feet of your silly mistress, and ask her pardon for wishing her to be queen of England. They are grand, very grand, these kings, and yet they find themselves very often held in the hollow of the hand of some low and crafty flatterer! ‘Despicable creature!’ they will say. Yes, I am despicable in the eyes of many; and yet they prepare, by my advice, to overthrow the pillars of the church, in order to enrich me with its consecrated spoils.”

He laughed a diabolical laugh; then suddenly his face grew dark, and a fierce, malignant gleam shot from his eyes. “Go,” he continued--“go, prince as false as you are wicked. I, at least, am your equal in cunning and duplicity. You were not created for good, and the odious voice of More will call you in vain to the path of virtue. My tongue--ay, mine--is to you far sweeter! It carries a poison that you will suck with eager lips. The son of the poor fuller will make you his partner in crime. He will recline with you on your velvet throne, and perfidious cruelty will unite us heart and soul!… Go, seek that fool whom you adore and who will weary you very soon, and the vile, ambitious father who has begotten her. But, for me! … destroy your kingdom, profane the sanctuary, light the funeral pyre, and compel all those to mount it who shall oppose the laws Cromwell will dictate to you! Two ferocious beasts to-day share the throne of England! You will surfeit me with gold, and I will make you drunk with blood! You shall proclaim aloud what I shall have whispered in your ear! Ha! who of the two will be really king--Henry VIII. or Cromwell? Why, Cromwell, without doubt; because he was born in the mire. He has learned how to fly while the other was being fledged beneath the shadow of the crown! You have been reared within these walls of gold,” continued Cromwell, surveying the magnificent adornings of the royal chamber; “these exquisite perfumes, escaping from fountains and flowers, have always surround you. You have never known, like me, abandonment and want, suffered from cold and hunger in a thatched cottage, and imbibed the hatred, fostered in those abodes of wretchedness, against the rich; but I have cherished that rage in my inmost soul! There it burns like a consuming fire! I will have a palace. I will have power and be feared. Servile courtiers shall fawn at my feet, adulation shall surround me. I would grasp the entire world, and yet the cry of my soul would be, More, still more!”

Saying this, Cromwell threw himself into the king’s arm-chair, and, pushing contemptuously from him the papers he had taken to read, abandoned himself entirely to the furious thirst of avarice and ambition that devoured him.

* * * * *

The curfew had already sounded many hours, and profound silence reigned over the city. Not a sound was heard throughout the dark and winding streets, save the boisterous shouts of some midnight revellers returning from a party of pleasure, or the dreary and monotonous song of a besotted inebriate as he staggered toward his home.

In the mansion of the French ambassador, however, no one had retired; and young De Vaux, impatiently waiting the return of M. du Bellay, paced with measured tread up and down the large hall where for many hours supper had been served.

Weary with listening for the sound of footsteps, and hearing only the mournful sighing of the night-wind, he at length seated himself before the fire in a great tapestried arm-chair whose back, rising high above his head, turned over in the form of a canopy, and gave him the appearance of a saint reposing in the depths of his shrine. For a long time he watched the sparks as they flew upward from the fire, then, taking a book from his pocket, he opened it at random; but before reaching the bottom of the first page his eyes closed, the book fell from his hands, and he sank into a profound sleep, from which he was aroused only by the noise made by the ambassador’s servants on the arrival of their master.

M. de Vaux, being suddenly aroused from sleep, arose hastily to his feet on seeing the ambassador enter.

“I have waited for you with the greatest impatience,” he exclaimed with a suppressed yawn.

“Say, rather, you have been sleeping soundly in your chair,” replied M. du Bellay, smiling. “Here!” he continued, turning toward the valets who followed him, “take my cloak and hat, and then leave us; you can remove the table in the morning.”

Obedient to their master’s orders, they lighted several more lamps and retired, not without regret, however, at losing the opportunity of catching, during the repast, a word that might have satisfied their curiosity as to the cause of M. du Bellay having remained at the king’s palace until so late an hour.

“Well, monsieur! what has been done at last?” eagerly inquired young De Vaux as soon as they had left.

“In truth, I cannot yet comprehend it myself,” replied Du Bellay. “In spite of all my efforts, it has been impossible to clearly unravel the knot of intrigue. This morning, as you know, nothing was talked of but the downfall of Anne Boleyn. I was delighted; her overthrow would have dispensed us from all obligations. Now the king is a greater fool about her than ever, and, unless God himself strikes a blow to sever them, I believe nothing will cure him of his infatuation. As I entered, his first word was to demand why I had been so long in presenting myself. ‘Sire,’ I replied, ‘I have come with the utmost haste, I assure you, and am here ready to execute any orders it may please you to give!’”

“‘Listen,’ he then said to me. ‘I have several things to tell you; but the first of all is to warn you of my determination to arrest Cardinal Wolsey. I am aware that you have manifested a great deal of interest in him; … that you have even gone to see him when he was sick; … but that is of no consequence. I am far from believing that you are in any manner concerned in the treason he has meditated against me. Therefore I have wished to advise you, that you may feel no apprehension on that account.’ I was struck with astonishment. ‘What! sire,’ I at last answered, ‘the cardinal betray you? Why, he is virtually banished from England, where he occupies himself, they say, only in doing works of charity and mercy.’ ‘I know what I say to you,’ replied the king; ‘his own servants accuse him of conspiring against the state. But I shall myself examine into the depths of this accusation. In the meantime he shall be removed to the Tower, and I will send Sir Walsh with instructions to join the Earl of Northumberland, in order to arrest Wolsey at Cawood Castle, where he is now established.’”

“Is it possible?” cried De Vaux, interrupting M. du Bellay. “That unfortunate cardinal! Who could have brought down this new storm on his head? M. du Bellay, do you believe him capable of committing this crime, even if it were in his power?”

“I do not believe a word of it,” replied M. du Bellay, “and I know not who has excited this new storm of persecution. I have tried every possible means to ascertain from the king, but he constantly evaded my questions by answering in a vague and obscure manner. I have been informed in the palace that he had seen no person during the day, except Cromwell, Lady Boleyn, and the Duke of Suffolk. Might this not be the result of a plot concocted between them? This is only a conjecture, and we may never get at the bottom of the affair. But let us pass on to matters of more importance. The mistress is in high favor again. The king is determined to marry her, and has proclaimed in a threatening manner that he will separate himself from the communion of Rome, and no more permit the supremacy of the Sovereign Pontiff to be recognized in his kingdom. He demands that the King of France shall do the same, and rely on his authority in following his example.”

“What!” cried De Vaux, astounded by this intelligence. “And how have you answered him, my lord?”

“I said all that I felt authorized or could say,” replied Du Bellay; “but what means shall we use to persuade a man so far transported and subjugated by his passions that he seems to be a fool--no longer capable of reasoning, of comprehending either his duty, the laws, or the future? I have held up to him the disruption of his kingdom, the horrors that give birth to a war of religion, the blood that it would cause him to spill.”

“‘I shall spill as much of it as may be necessary,’ he replied, ‘to make them yield. They will have their choice. Already the representatives of the clergy have been ordered to assemble. Well! they shall decide among themselves which is preferable--death, exile, or obedience to my will.’

“Whilst saying this,” continued M. du Bellay, with a gloomy expression,… “he played with a bunch of roses, carelessly plucking off the leaves with his fingers.”

“But what has been able to bring the king, in so short a time, to such an extremity?” asked De Vaux, whose eyes, full of astonishment and anxiety, interrogated those of M. du Bellay.

“His base passions, without doubt; and, still more, the vile flattery coming from some one of those he has taken into favor,” replied Du Bellay impatiently.… “I tried in vain to discover who the arch-hypocrite could be, but the king was never for a moment thrown off his guard; he constantly repeated: ‘_I_ have resolved on this; _I_ will do that!’ … I shall find out, however, hereafter,” continued Du Bellay; “but at present I am in ignorance.”

“Has he said anything to you about the grand master?” asked De Vaux.

“No; but it seems he has been very much exercised on account of the cordial reception Chancellor Duprat gave Campeggio when he passed through France. ‘That man has behaved very badly toward me,’ he said sharply. ‘I was so lenient as to let him leave my kingdom unmolested, after having hesitated a long time whether I should not punish him severely for his conduct; and, behold, one of your ministers receives and treats him with the utmost magnificence!’

“I assured him no consequence should be attached to that circumstance, and pretended that Chancellor Duprat was so fond of good cheer and grand display he had doubtless been too happy to have an opportunity of parading his wealth and luxury before the eyes of a stranger.

“He then renewed the attack against Wolsey. ‘If that be the case,’ he exclaimed, ‘this must be a malady common to all these chancellors; for my lord cardinal was also preparing to give a royal reception in the capital of his realm of York; but, unfortunately,’ he added with an ironical sneer, ‘I happen to be his master, and we have somewhat interfered with his plans.’ He then attacked the pope, then our king; and finally, while the hour of midnight was striking, exhausted with anger and excitement, to my great relief, he permitted me to retire. Now,” added M. du Bellay, “we will have to spend the rest of the night in writing, and to-morrow the courier must be despatched.”

TO BE CONTINUED

PRUSSIA AND THE CHURCH.

II.

In February, 1848, Louis Philippe was driven from his throne by the people of Paris, and the Republic was proclaimed. This revolution rapidly spread over the whole of Europe. The shock was most violent in Germany, where everything was in readiness for a general outburst. Most of the governments were compelled to yield to the popular will and to make important concessions. New cabinets were formed in Würtemberg, Darmstadt, Nassau, and Hesse. Lewis of Bavaria was forced to abdicate. Hanover and Saxony held out until Berlin and Vienna were invaded by the revolutionary party, when they too succumbed. On the 13th of March the Vienna mob overthrew the Austrian ministry, and Metternich fled to England. Italy and Hungary revolted. Berlin was held all summer by an ignorant revolutionary faction. In September fierce and bloody riots broke out in Frankfort.

Popular meetings, secret societies, revolutionary clubs, violent declamations, and inflammatory appeals through the press kept all Germany in a state of agitation. Occasional outbreaks among the peasantry, followed by pillage and incendiarism, increased the general confusion.

It was during this time of wild excitement that the elections for the Imperial Parliament were held. To this assembly many avowed atheists, pantheists, communists, and Jacobins were chosen--men who fully agreed with Hecker when he declared that “there were six plagues in Germany--the princes, the nobles, the bureaucrats, the capitalists, the parsons, and the soldiers.” The parties in the Parliament took their names from their positions in the assembly hall, and were called the extreme left, the left, the left centre, the right centre, the right, and the extreme right. The first three were composed of red republicans, Jacobins, and liberals. To the right centre belonged the constitutional liberals; and on the right and right centre sat the Catholic members, the predecessors of the party of the _Centrum_ of the present day. The extreme right was occupied by functionaries and bureaucrats, chiefly from Prussia. The Parliament of Frankfort, in the _Grundrechte_, or _Fundamental Rights_, which it proclaimed, decreed universal, suffrage, abolished all the political rights of the aristocracy, the hereditary chambers in all the states of Germany, set aside the existing family entails, and, though nominally it retained the imperial power, degraded the emperor to a republican president by giving him merely a suspensive veto.

While this Parliament was sitting the Catholic bishops of Germany assembled in council at Würzburg, and, at the conclusion of their deliberations, drew up a Memorial as firm in tone as it was clear and precise in expression, in which they set forth the claims of the church.

“To bring about,” they said, “a separation from the state--that is to say, from public order, which necessarily reposes on a moral and religious foundation--is not according to the will of the church. If the state will perforce separate from the church, so will the church, without approving, tolerate what it cannot avoid; and when not compelled by the duty of self-preservation, she will not break the bonds of union made fast by mutual understanding.

“The church, entrusted with the solemn and holy mission, ‘As my Father hath sent me, so send I ye,’ requires for the accomplishment of this mission, whatever the form of government of the state may be, the fullest freedom and independence. Her holy popes, prelates, and confessors have in all ages willingly and courageously given up their life and blood for the preservation of this inalienable freedom.”

In virtue of these principles the bishops, in this Memorial, claimed the right of directing, without any interference on the part of the state, theological seminaries, and of founding schools, colleges, and all kinds of educational establishments; of exerting canonical control, unfettered by state meddling, over the conduct of their clergy, as well as that of introducing into their dioceses religious orders, congregations, and pious confraternities, for which they demanded the same rights which the new political constitution had granted to secular associations. Finally, they asserted their right to free and untrammelled communication with the Holy See; and, as included in this, that of receiving and publishing all papal bulls, briefs, and other documents without the Royal Placet, which they declared to be repugnant to the honor and dignity of the ministers of religion.

The Frankfort Parliament decreed the total separation of church and state, and was therefore compelled to guarantee the freedom of all religions. This separation was sanctioned by the Catholic members of the Assembly, who looked upon it as less dangerous to the cause of religion and morality than ecclesiastical Josephism. In the present conflict between the church and the German Empire the Catholic party has again demanded, and in vain, the separation of church and state. In rejecting their urgent request, Dr. Falk declared that the leading minds in England and America are already beginning to regret that their governments have so little control over the ecclesiastical organizations within their limits.

Whilst the representatives of the German people at Frankfort were abolishing the privileges of the nobles, decreeing the separation of church and state, and forgetting the standing armies, the governments were quietly gathering their forces. Marshal Radetzky put down the Italian rebellion, Prince Windischgrätz quelled the democracy of Vienna, and General Wrangel took possession of Berlin, without a battle. Russia, at the request of Austria, sent an army into Hungary to destroy the rebellion in that country, and the disturbances in Bavaria and in the Palatinate were suppressed by Prussian troops under the present Emperor of Germany. The representatives of the larger states withdrew from the Frankfort Parliament, which dwindled, and finally, amidst universal contempt and neglect, came to an end at Stuttgart, June 18, 1849.

But the liberties of the church were not lost. In Prussia, as we have seen, a better state of things had begun with the imprisonment of the heroic Archbishop of Cologne in 1837. In the face of the menacing attitude of the German democrats and republicans, Frederick William IV. confirmed the liberties of the Catholic Church by the letters-patent of 1847.

The constitutions of December 5, 1848, and January 31, 1850, were drawn up in the lurid light of the revolution, which had beaten fiercest upon the house of Hohenzollern. The king had capitulated to the insurgents, withdrawn his soldiers from the capital, and abandoned Berlin, and with it the whole state, for nine months to the tender mercies of the mob. He was forced to witness the most revolting spectacles. The dead bodies of the rioters were borne in procession under the windows of his palace, while the rabble shouted to him: “Fritz, off with your hat.”

It is not surprising, in view of this experience, that we should find in the constitution of 1850 (articles 15 to 18 inclusive) a very satisfactory recognition of the rights of the church. Why these paragraphs granting the church freedom to regulate and administer its own affairs; to keep possession of its own revenues, endowments, and establishments, whether devoted to worship, education, or beneficence; and freely to communicate with the Pope, were inserted in the constitution, we know from Prince Bismarck himself. In his speech in the Prussian Upper House, March 10, 1873, he affirmed that “they were introduced at a time when the state needed, or thought it needed, help, and believed that it would find this help by leaning on the Catholic Church. It was probably led to this belief by the fact that in the National Assembly of 1848 all the electoral districts with a preponderant Catholic population returned--I will not say royalist representatives, but certainly men who were the friends of order, which was not the case in the Protestant districts.”

The provisions of the constitution of 1850 with regard to the church were honorably and faithfully carried out down to the beginning of the present conflict. Never since the Reformation had the church in Prussia been so free, never had she made such rapid progress, whether in completing her internal organization or in extending her influence. The Prussian liberals and atheists, who had fully persuaded themselves that without the wealth and aid of the state the Catholic religion would have no force, were amazed. The influence of the priests over the people grew in proportion as they were educated more thoroughly in the spirit and discipline of the church under the immediate supervision of the bishops, unfettered by state interference; the number of convents, both of men and women, rapidly increased; associations of all kinds, scientific, benevolent, and religious, spread over the land; religious journals and reviews were founded in which Catholic interests were ably advocated and defended; and all the forces of the church were unified and guided by the harmonious action of a most enlightened and zealous episcopate.

This was the more astonishing as the Evangelical Church, whose liberties had also been guaranteed by the constitution of 1850, had shown itself unable to profit by the greater freedom of action which it had received. In fact, the Evangelical Church was lifeless, and it needed only this test to prove its want of vitality. It was a state creation, and in an age when the world had ceased to recognize the divine right of kings to create religions. It was only in 1817 that the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches of Prussia, together with the very name of Protestant, were abolished by royal edict, and a new Prussian establishment, under the title of “evangelical,” was imposed by the civil power upon a Protestant population of nearly eight millions, whose religious and moral sense was so dead that they seemed to regard with stolid indifference this interference of government with all that freemen deem most sacred in life. Acts of parliament may make “establishments,” but they cannot inspire religious faith and life; and it was therefore not surprising that, when the mummy of evangelicalism was put out into the open air of freedom by the constitution of 1850, it should have been revealed to all that the thing was dead.

Nevertheless, the Prussian government continued to act toward the Catholic Church with great justice, and even friendliness, and the war against Catholic Austria in 1866 wrought no change in its ecclesiastical policy. Even the opening of the Vatican Council caused no alarm in Prussia; on the contrary, King William, as it was generally believed at least, was most civil to the Holy Father; and Prince Bismarck himself at that time saw no reason for apprehension, though he had been the head of the ministry already eight years. To what, then, are we to attribute Prussia’s sudden change of attitude toward the church? Who began the present conflict, and what was its provocation?

This is a question which has been much discussed in the Prussian House of Deputies and elsewhere. Prince Bismarck has openly asserted in the House of Deputies within the past year that the provocation was the definition of papal infallibility by the Vatican Council on the 18th of June, 1870, and subsequently the hostile attitude of the party of the _Centrum_ toward the German Empire.

Herr von Kirchmann, a member of the German Parliament and of the Prussian House of Deputies, a national liberal, and not a Catholic, but in the main a sympathizer with the spirit of the Falk legislation, has recently discussed this whole subject with great ability, and--as far as it is possible for one who believes in the Hegelian doctrine that “the state is the present god”--also with fairness.[255]

To Prince Bismarck’s first assertion, that the definition of papal infallibility was the unpardonable offence, which has been so strongly emphasized by Mr. Gladstone and re-echoed with parrot-like fidelity by the anti-Catholic press of Europe and America, Herr von Kirchmann makes the following reply:

“It is difficult to understand how so experienced a statesman as Prince Bismarck can ascribe to this decree of the council such great importance for the states of Europe, and particularly for Prussia and Germany. To a theorizer sitting behind his books such a decree, it may be allowed, might appear to be something portentous, since, taken from a purely theoretical stand-point and according to the letter, the infallibility of the Pope in all questions of religion and morals gives him unlimited control over all human action; and many a Catholic, when called upon to receive this infallibility as part of his faith, may have found that he was unable to follow so far; but a statesman ought to know how to distinguish, especially where there is question of the Catholic Church, between the literal import of dogmas and their use in practical life. In the Catholic Church as a whole, this infallibility, as is well known, has existed from the earliest times; its organ hitherto has been the Ecumenical Council in union with the Pope; but already before 1870 it was disputed whether the Pope might not alone act as the organ of infallibility. In 1870 the question was decided in favor of the Pope; but we must consider that the ecumenical councils have, as history shows, nearly always framed their decrees in accordance with the views of the court of Rome; and this, of itself, proves that the change made in 1870 is rather one of form than of essence. Especially false is it to maintain that by this decree a complete revolution in the constitution of the church has been made. To the theorizer we might grant the abstract possibility that something of this kind might some day or other happen; but such _possibilities_ of the abuse of a right are found in all the relations of public life, in the state and its representatives as well as in the church. Even in constitutions the most carefully drawn up such possibilities are found in all directions. What a statesman has to consider is not mere possibilities, but the question whether the possessor of such right is not compelled, from the very nature of things, to make of it only the most moderate and prudent use. So long, therefore, as the Pope does not alter the constitution of the church, that constitution remains, precisely in its ancient form, such as it has been recognized and tolerated by the state for centuries: and wherever the relations between particular states and the court of Rome have been arranged by concordats, these too remain unchanged, unless the states themselves find it convenient to depart from them. We see, in fact, that this infallibility of the Pope has in no country of Europe or America altered one jot or tittle in the constitution of the Catholic Church; and where in particular countries such changes have taken place, they have not been made by the ecclesiastical government, but by the state and in its interest. In Germany even, and in Prussia itself, the Pope has, since 1870, made no change in the church constitution, as determined by the Canon Law; and when, in some of his encyclicals and other utterances, he has taken up a hostile attitude towards the German Empire and the Prussian state, he has done this only in defence against the aggressive legislation of the civil government. He has never hesitated to express his disapprobation of the new church laws, but he has in no instance touched the constitution of the Catholic Church or the rights of the bishops.”[256]

It seems almost needless to remark that there is no necessary connection between the doctrine of Papal infallibility and that of the essential organization of the church; that the jurisdiction of the Pope was as great, and universally recognized as such by Catholics, before the Vatican Council as since; and consequently that it is not even possible that the definition of 1870 should make any change in his authoritative relation to, or power over, the church. His jurisdiction is wider than his infallibility, and independent of it; and the duty of obedience to his commands existed before the dogma was defined precisely as it exists now; and therefore it is clearly manifest that the Vatican decree cannot give even a plausible pretext for such legislation as the Falk Laws.

“Not less singular,” continues Herr von Kirchmann, “does it sound to hear the party of the _Centrum_ in the Reichstag and Prussian Landtag denounced as the occasion of the new regulations between church and state. The members of this party notoriously represent the views and wishes of the majority of their constituents, and just as faithfully as the members of the parties who side with the government. The reproach that they receive their instructions from Rome is not borne out by the facts; and if there were an understanding with Rome of the kind which their adversaries affirm, this could only be the result of a similar understanding on the part of their constituents. Nothing could more strikingly prove that the Catholic party faithfully represent the great majority in their electoral districts than the repeated re-election of the same representatives or of men of similar views. To this we must add that the _Centrum_, though strong in numbers, is yet in a decided minority both in the Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag, and has always been defeated in its opposition to the recent ecclesiastical legislation. If in other matters, by uniting with opposition parties, it has caused the government inconvenience, we have no right to ascribe this to feelings of hostility; for on such occasions its orators have given substantial political reasons for their opposition, and instances enough might be enumerated in which, precisely through the aid of the _Centrum_, many illiberal and dangerous projects of law have fallen through; and for this the party deserves the thanks of the country.

“The present action of the state against the Catholic Church would be unjustifiable, if better grounds could not be adduced in its favor. For the attentive observer, however, valid reasons are not wanting. They are to be found, to put the whole matter in a single word, in the great power to which the Catholic Church in Prussia had attained by the aid of the constitution and the favor of the government--a power which, if its growth had been longer tolerated, would have become, not indeed dangerous to the existence of the state, but a hindrance to the right fulfilment of the ends of its existence.”[257]

Neither the Vatican Council, then, nor the Catholics of Prussia have done anything to provoke the present persecution. To find fault with the German bishops for accepting the dogma of infallibility, after having strongly opposed its definition by the council, would be as unreasonable as to blame a member of Congress for admitting the binding force of a law the passage of which he had done everything in his power to prevent. Their duty, beyond all question, was to act as they have acted. This was not the offence: the unpardonable crime was that the church, as soon as she was unloosed from the fetters of bureaucracy, had grown too powerful. We doubt whether any more forcible argument in proof of the indestructible vitality of the church can be found than that which may be deduced from the universal consent of her enemies, of whatever shade of belief or unbelief, that the only way in which she can be successfully opposed is to array against her the strongest of human powers--that of the state. A complete revolution of thought upon this subject has taken place within the last half-century. Up to that time it was confidently held by Protestants as well as infidels that, to undermine and finally destroy the church, it would be simply necessary to withdraw from her the support of the state; that to her freedom would necessarily prove fatal. The experiment, as it was thought, had not been satisfactorily tried. Ireland, indeed, had held her faith for three hundred years, in spite of all that fiendish cruelty could invent to destroy it; but persecution has always been the life of the faith. In the United States the church had been free since the war of independence, but of us little was known; and, besides, down to, say, 1830 even the most thoughtful and far-sighted among us had serious doubts as to the future of the church in this country.

But with the emancipation of the Catholics in Great Britain, the new constitution of the kingdom of Belgium, and the completer organization of the church in the United States, the test as to the action of freedom upon the progress of Catholic faith began to be applied over a wide and varied field and under not unfavorable circumstances. What the result has been we may learn from our enemies. Mr. Gladstone expostulates for Great Britain, and reaches a hand of sympathy to M. Emile de Laveleye in Belgium. Dr. Falk, Dr. Friedberg, and even the moderate Herr von Kirchmann, defend the tyrannical _May Laws_ as necessary to stop the growth of the church in Germany; and at home the most silent of Presidents and the most garrulous of bishops, forgetting that the cause of temperance has prior claims upon their attention, have raised the cry of alarm to warn their fellow-citizens of the dangerous progress of popery in this great and free country. Time was when “the Free Church in the Free State” was thought to be the proper word of command; but now it is “the Fettered Church in the Enslaved State,” since no state that meddles with the consciences of its subjects can be free.

If there is anything for which we feel more especially thankful, it is that henceforth the cause of the church and the cause of freedom are inseparably united. We have heard to satiety that the Catholic Church is the greatest conservative force in the world, the most powerful element of order in society, the noblest school of respect in which mankind have ever been taught. Praised be God that now, as in the early days, he is making it impossible that Catholics should not be on the side of liberty, as the church has always been; so that all men may see that, if we love order the more, we love not liberty the less!

“I will sing to my God as long at I shall be,” wrote an inspired king; “put not your trust in princes.” No, nor in governments, nor in states, but in God who is the Lord, and in the poor whom Jesus loved. From God out of the people came the church; through God back to the people is she going. We know there are still many Catholics who trust in kings and believe in salvation through them; but God will make them wiser. The Spirit that sits at the roaring Loom of Time will weave for them other garments. The irresistible charm of the church, humanly speaking, lies in the fact that she comes closer to the hearts of the people than any other power that has ever been brought to bear upon mankind.

Having shown that the oppressive ecclesiastical legislation of Germany was not provoked by the church, and that its only excuse is the increasing power of the church, Herr von Kirchmann reduces all farther discussion of this subject to the two following heads: 1st. How far ought the state to go in setting bounds to this power of the Catholic Church? and 2d. What means ought it to employ?

In view of the dangers with which every open breach of the peace between church and state is fraught for the people, it would have been advisable, he thinks, from political motives, to have tried to settle the difficulty by a mutual understanding between the two powers; nor would it, in his opinion, be derogatory to the sovereignty of the state to treat the church as an equal, since she embraces in her fold all the Catholics of the world, who have their directing head in the Pope, whose sovereign ecclesiastical power cannot, therefore, as a matter of fact, be called in question.

That Prussia did not make any effort to see what could be effected by this policy of conciliation may, in the opinion of Herr von Kirchmann, find some justification in the fact that the government did not expect, and could not in 1871 foresee, the determined opposition of the Catholics to the May Laws of 1873. At any rate, as he thinks, the high and majestatic right of the state is supreme, and it alone must determine, in the ultimate instance, how far and how long it will acknowledge any claim of the church. Thus even this statesman, who is of the more moderate school of Prussian politicians, holds that the church has no rights which the state is bound to respect; that political interests are paramount, and conscience, in the modern as in the ancient pagan state, has no claim upon the recognition of the government. English and American Protestants, where their own interests are concerned, would be as little inclined to accept this doctrine as Catholics; in fact, this country was born of a protest against the assumption of state supremacy over conscience; and yet so blinding and misleading is prejudice that the Falk Laws receive their heart-felt sympathy.

Though Herr von Kirchmann accepts without reservation the principles which underlie the recent Prussian anti-Catholic legislation, and thinks the May Laws have been drawn up with great wisdom and consummate knowledge of the precise points at which the state should oppose the growing power of the church, he yet freely admits that there are grave doubts whether the present policy of Prussia on this subject can be successfully carried out. That Prince Bismarck and Dr. Falk had but a very imperfect knowledge of the difficulties which lay in their path, the numerous supplementary bills which have been repeatedly introduced in order to give effect to the May Laws plainly show. Where there is question of principle and of conscience Prince Bismarck is not at home. He believes in force; like the first Napoleon, holds that Providence is always on the side of the biggest cannons; sneers about going to Canossa, as Napoleon mockingly asked the pope whether his excommunication would make the arms fall from the hands of his veterans. He knows the workings of courts, and is a master in the devious ways of diplomacy. He can estimate with great precision the resources of a country; he has a keen eye for the weak points of an adversary. His tactics, like Napoleon’s, are to bring to bear upon each given point of attack a force greater than the enemy’s. He has, in his public life, never known what it is to respect right or principle. With the army at his back he has trampled upon the Prussian constitution with the same daring recklessness with which he now violates the most sacred rights of conscience. Nothing, in his eyes, is holy but success, and he has been consecrated by it, so that the Bismarck-cultus has spread far beyond the fatherland to England and the United States. Carlyle has at last found a living hero, the very impersonation of the brute force which to him is ideal and admirable; and at eighty he offers incense and homage to the idol. We freely give Prince Bismarck credit for his remarkable gifts--indomitable will, reckless courage, practical knowledge of men, considered as intelligent automata whose movements are directed by a kind of bureaucratic and military mechanism; and this is the kind of men with whom, for the most part, he has had to deal. For your thorough Prussian, though the wildest of speculators and the boldest of theorizers, is the tamest of animals. No poor Russian soldier ever crouched more submissively beneath the knout than do the Prussian pantheists and culturists beneath the lash of a master. Like Voltaire, they probably prefer the rule of one fine Lion to that of a hundred rats of their own sort. Prince Bismarck knew his men, and we give him credit for his sagacity. Not every eye could have pierced the mist, and froth, and sound, and fury of German professordom, and beheld the craven heart that was beneath.

Only men who believe in God and the soul are dangerous rebels. Why should he who has no faith make a martyr of himself? Why, since there is nothing but law, blind and merciless force, throw yourself beneath the wheels of the state Juggernaut to be crushed? The religion of culture is the religion of indulgence, and no godlike rebel against tyranny and brute force ever sprang from such worship. So long as Prince Bismarck had to deal with men who were nourished on “philosophy’s sweet milk,” and who worshipped at the altar of culture, who had science but not faith, opinions but not convictions, amongst whom, consequently, organic union was impossible, his policy of making Germany “by blood and iron” was successful enough. But, like all great conquerors, he longed for more kingdoms to subdue, and finding right around him a large and powerful body of German citizens who did not accept the “new faith” that the state--in other words, Prince Bismarck--is “the present god,” just as a kind of diversion between victories, he turned to give a lesson to the _Pfaffen_ and clerical _Dummköpfe_, who burnt no incense in honor of his divinity. In taking this step it is almost needless to say that Prince Bismarck sought to pass over a chasm which science itself does not profess to have bridged--that, namely, which lies between the worlds of matter and of spirit. Of the new conflict upon which he was entering he could have only vague and inaccurate notions. Nothing is so misleading as contempt--a feeling in which the wise never indulge, but which easily becomes habitual with men spoiled by success. To the man who had organized the armies and guided the policy which had triumphed at Sadowa and Sedan what opposition could be made by a few poor priests and beggar-monks? Would the arms fall from the hands of the proudest soldiers of Europe because the _Pfaffen_ were displeased? Or why should not the model culture-state of the world make war upon ignorance and superstition?

Of the real nature and strength of the forces which would be marshalled in this great battle of souls a man of blood and iron could form no just estimate. “To those who believe,” said Christ, “all things are possible”; but what meaning have these words for Prince Bismarck? The soul, firm in its faith, appealing from tyrant kings and states to God, is invincible. Lifting itself to the Infinite, it draws thence a divine power. Like liberty, it is brightest in dungeons, in fetters freest, and conquers with its martyrdom. Needle-guns cannot reach it, and above the deadly roar of cannon it rises godlike and supreme.

“For though the giant Ages heave the hill And break the shore, and evermore Make and break and work their will; Though world on world in myriad myriads roll Round us, each with different powers And other farms of life than ours, What know we greater than the soul? On God and godlike men we build our trust.”

Men who have unwrapt themselves of the garb and vesture of thought and sentiment with which the world had dressed them out, who have been born again into the higher life, who have been clothed in the charity and meekness of Christ, who for his dear sake have put all things beneath their feet, who love not the world, who venerate more the rags of the beggar than the purple of Cæsar, who fear as they love God alone, for whom life is no blessing and death infinite gain, form the invincible army of Christ foredoomed to conquer. “This is the victory which overcometh the world--our Faith.”

Who has ever forgotten those lines of Tacitus, inserted as an altogether trifling circumstance in the reign of Nero?--“So for the quieting of this rumor [of his having set fire to Rome] Nero judicially charged with the crime, and punished with most studied severities, that class, hated for their general wickedness, whom the vulgar call _Christians_. The originator of that name was one _Christ_, who in the reign of Tiberius suffered death by sentence of the procurator, Pontius Pilate. The baneful superstition, thereby repressed for the time, again broke out, not only over Judea, the native soil of the mischief, but in the City also, where from every side all atrocious and abominable things collect and flourish.”[258]

“Tacitus,” says Carlyle, referring to this passage, “was the wisest, most penetrating man of his generation; and to such depth, and no deeper, has he seen into this transaction, the most important that has occurred or can occur in the annals of mankind.”

We doubt whether Prince Bismarck to-day has any truer knowledge of the real worth and power of the living Catholic faith on which he is making war than had Tacitus eighteen hundred years ago, when writing of the rude German barbarians who were hovering on the confines of the Roman Empire, and who were to have a history in the world only through the action of that “baneful superstition” which he considered as one of the most abominable products of the frightful corruptions of his age.

That the Prussian government was altogether unprepared for the determined though passive opposition to the May Laws which the Catholics have made, Herr von Kirchmann freely confesses. It was not expected that there would be such perfect union between the clergy and the people; on the contrary, it was generally supposed that, with the aid of the Draconian penalties threatened for the violation of the Falk Laws, the resistance of the priests themselves would be easily overcome. These men love their own comfort too much, said the culturists, to be willing to go to prison and live on beans and water for the sake of technicalities; and so they chuckled over their pipes and lager-beer at the thought of their easy victory over the _Pfaffen_. They were mistaken, and Herr von Kirchmann admits that the courage of the bishops and priests has not been broken but strengthened by their sufferings for the faith.

“So long as we were permitted to hope,” he says, “that we should have only the priests to deal with, there was less reason for doubt as to the policy of executing the laws in all their rigor; but the situation was wholly altered when it became manifest that the congregations held the same views as the bishops and priests.… It is easy to see that all violent, even though legal, proceedings of the government against these convictions of the Catholic people can only weaken those proper, and in the last instance alone effective, measures through which the May Laws can successfully put bounds to the growing power of the church. These measures--viz., a better education of the people and a higher culture of the priests--can, from the nature of things, exert their influence only by degrees. Not till the next generation can we hope to gather the fruit of this seed; and not then, indeed, if the reckless execution of the May Laws calls forth an opposition in the Catholic populations which will shake confidence in the just intentions of the government, and beget in the congregations feelings of hatred for everything connected with this legislation. Such feelings will unavoidably be communicated to the children, and the teacher will in consequence be deprived of that authority without which his instructions must lack the persuasive force that is inherent in truth. In such a state of warfare even the higher culture of the clergy must be useless. Those who stand on the side of the government will, precisely on that account, fail to win the confidence of their people; and the stronger the aged pastors emphasize the Canon Law of the church, the more energetically they extend the realms of faith even to the hierarchical constitution of the church, the more readily and faithfully will their congregations follow them.

“It cannot be dissembled that the government, through the rigorous execution of the May Laws, is raging against its own flesh and blood, and is thereby robbing itself of the only means by which it can have any hope of finally coming forth victorious from the present conflict. It may be objected that the resistance which is now so widespread cannot be much longer maintained, and that all that is needed to crush it and bring about peace with the church is to increase the pressure of the law. Assertions of this kind are made with great confidence by the liberals of both Houses of the Landtag whenever the government presents a new bill; and the liberal newspapers, which never grow tired of this theme, declare that the result is certain and even near at hand.

“Now, even though we should attach no importance to the contrary assertions of the Catholic party, it is yet evident, from the declarations of the government itself, that it is not all confident of reaching this result with the aid of the means which it has hitherto employed or of those in preparation, but that it is making ready for a prolonged resistance of the clergy, who are upheld and supported by the great generosity of the Catholic people. The ovations which the priests receive from their congregations when they come forth from prison are not falling off, but are increasing; and this is equally true of the pecuniary aid given to them. It is possible that much of this may have been gotten up by the priests themselves as demonstration; but the displeasure of the still powerful government officials which the participants incur, and the greatness of the money-offerings, are evidence of earnest convictions.

“Nothing, however, so strongly witnesses to the existence of a perfect understanding between the congregations and the priests as the fact that, though the law of May, 1874, gave to those congregations whose pastors had been removed or had not been legally appointed by the bishops the right to elect a pastor, yet not even one congregation has up to the present moment made any use of this privilege. When we consider that the number of parishes where there is no pastor must be at least a hundred; that in itself such right of choice corresponds with the wishes of the congregations; farther, that the law requires for the validity of the election merely a majority of the members who put in an appearance; that a proposition made to the _Landrath_ by ten parishioners justifies him in ordering an election; and that, on the part of the influential officials and their organs, nothing has been left undone to induce the congregations to demand elections, not easily could a more convincing proof of the perfect agreement of the people with their priests be found than the fact that to this day in only two or three congregations has it been possible to hunt up ten men who were willing to make such a proposal, and that not even in a single congregation has an election of this kind taken place.”[259]

This is indeed admirable; and it may, we think, be fairly doubted whether, in the whole history of the church, so large a Catholic population has ever, under similar trials, shown greater strength or constancy. Of the peculiar nature of these trials we shall speak hereafter; the present article we will bring to a close with a few remarks upon what we conceive to have been one of the most important agencies in bringing about the perfect unanimity and harmony of action between priests and people to which the Catholics of Prussia must in great measure ascribe their immovable firmness in the presence of a most terrible foe. We refer to those Catholic associations in which cardinals, bishops, priests, and people have been brought into immediate contact, uniting their wisdom and strength for the attainment of definite ends.

Such unions have nowhere been more numerous or more thoroughly organized than in Germany, though their formation is of recent date. It was during the revolution of 1848, of which we have already spoken, that the German Catholics were roused to a more comprehensive knowledge of the situation, and resolved to combine for the defence of their rights and the protection of their religion. Popular unions under the name and patronage of Pius IX. (Pius-Vereine) were formed throughout the fatherland, with the primary object of bringing together once a week large numbers of Catholic men of every condition in life. At these weekly meetings the questions of the day, in so far as they touched upon Catholic interests, were freely discussed, and thus an intelligent and enlightened Catholic public opinion was created throughout the length and breadth of the land. In refuting calumnies against the church the speakers never failed to demand the fullest liberty for all Catholic institutions.

On the occasion of beginning the restoration and completion of the Cathedral of Cologne, the most religious of churches, the proposition that an annual General Assembly of all the unions should be held was made and received with boundless enthusiasm. The first General Assembly took place at Mayence in October, 1848; and thither came delegates from Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, and all the other states of Germany, whose confidence and earnestness were increased by the presence of the Catholic members of the Parliament of Frankfort. For the first time since Luther’s apostasy the Catholics of Germany breathed the air of liberty. The bishops assembled at Würzburg, gave their solemn approbation to the great work, and Pius IX. sent his apostolic benediction. Since that time General Assemblies have been held at Breslau, May, 1849; Ratisbon, October, 1849; Linz, 1850; Mayence, 1851; Münster, 1852; Vienna, 1853; Linz, 1856; Salzburg, 1857; Cologne, 1858; Freyburg, 1859; Prague, 1860; Munich, 1861; Aix-la-Chapelle, 1862; Frankfort, 1863, and in other cities, down to the recent persecutions.

These assemblies represented a complete system of organization, in which no Catholic interest was forgotten. Every village and hamlet in the land was there, if not immediately, through some central union. We have had the honor of being present at more than one of these assemblies, and the impressions which we then received are abiding. Side by side with cardinals, bishops, princes, noblemen, and the most learned of professors sat mechanics, carpenters, shoemakers, and blacksmiths--not as in the act of worship, in which the presence of the Most High God dwarfs our universal human littlenesses to the dead-level of an equal insignificance, but in active thought and co-operation for the furtherance of definite religious and social ends. The brotherhood of the race was there, an accomplished fact, and one felt the breathing as of a divine Spirit compared with whose irresistible force great statesmen and mighty armies are weak as the puppets of a child’s show.

We have not the space to describe more minutely the ends, aims, and workings of the numberless Catholic associations of Germany; but we must express our deep conviction that no study could be more replete with lessons of practical wisdom for the Catholics of the United States. Organization is precisely what we most lack. Our priests are laborious, our people are devoted, but we have not even an organized Catholic public opinion--nay, no organ to serve as its channel, and make itself heard of the whole country. Many seem to think that the very question of the necessity of Catholic education is still an open one for us; and this is not surprising, since we have no system of Catholic education. Catholic schools, indeed, in considerable number, there are, but there is no organization. The great need of the church in this country is the organization of priests and people for the promotion of Catholic interests. Through this we will learn to know one another; our views will be enlarged, our sympathies deepened, and the truth will dawn upon us that, if we wish to be true to the great mission which God has given us, the time has come when American Catholics must take up works which do not specially concern any one diocese more than another, but whose significance will be as wide as the nation’s life.

A STORY WITH TWO VERSIONS.

Yes, sir, this is Brentwood. And you are of the race, you say, though not of the name. Clarkson, sir? Surely, surely. I remember well. Miss Jane Brent--the first Miss Brent I can recall--married a Clarkson. So you are her grandson, sir? Then you are right welcome to me and mine. Come in, come in. Or, if you will do me the honor, sit here in the porch, sir, and my Kate will bring you of her best, and right glad will we be to wait again on one with the Brent blood in him.

None of the name left? Ah! Mr. Clarkson, have you never heard, then? But you must have heard of James Brent. Surely, surely. He lives still, God pity him! What’s that? You want to hear the story out? Well, sir, no man living can tell you better than I, unless it be Mr. James’ self. Settle yourself comfortably, Mr. Clarkson, and I’ll tell you all.

Yes, this is Brentwood. ’Twas your great-great-grandsire founded it, two hundred years back, he and his brother--James and William. They began the work which was to grow and grow into foundries and factories, and the bank that was to ruin all. But I’m telling the end afore the beginning. The next two brothers built the church you see there, sir, down the road; and the next two after them added the tower and founded the almshouses; and then came the fourth James and William Brent, and one of them was an idiot, and the other was and is the last of the name.

I was twenty years older than Mr. James, and, before ever he came into business, had served with his father. I watched him grow up, and I loved him well. But from the first I knew he was different from the rest of his race. He was his mother all over again--a true Mortimer, come of nobles, not of townsfolk; all fire and sweetness and great plans for people’s good and happiness, but with little of the far-sighted Brent prudence. He was just as tender of Mr. William as if he had had all the wits of himself, and used to spend part of every day with him, and amuse him part of many a night when the poor gentleman could not sleep.

Their father died just when they came of age. They were twins, the last Brent Brothers, sir; and ’twas a great fortune and responsibility to fall full and with no restraint into such young hands. Mr. James seemed like one heart-broken for nigh a year after, and carried on everything just as his father had done, till we all wondered at it; then he saw Miss Rose Maurice, and loved her--as well indeed he might--and after that things changed. She was as simple in all her ways as she was beautiful, and would have thought my cottage good enough, so long as he was in it with her. But he!--well, sir, I know he has kissed the very ground she trod on, and he didn’t think a queen’s palace too fine for her. As soon as ever he saw her he loved her and set his soul to win her; and the very next day he began a new home in Brentwood. Where is it? Alack! alack! sir. Wait till ye _must_ hear. Let’s think, for a bit, of only the glad days now.

You could not call it extravagance exactly. It set the whole town alive. So far as he could, he would have none but Brentwood folk to work upon the place where his bride was to dwell. And he said it was time that so old a family should have a home that would last as long as they. Ah! me, as long as they!

Of course there was a city architect and a grand landscape gardener; but, oh! the thoughtfulness of him whom we were proud to call our master. There, in the very flush of his youth and love and hope, he took care of the widows and the little children; contrived to make work for them; was here and there and everywhere; and there was not a beggar nor an idler in Brentwood--not one. The house rose stately and tall; he had chosen a fair spot for it, where great trees grew and brooks were running, all ready to his hand; and that city man--why, sir, ’twas marvellous how he seemed to understand just how to make use of it all, and to prune a little here and add a little there, with vines and arbors and glades and a wilderness, till you didn’t know what God had done and what he had given his creatures wit to do. And in the sunniest corner of the house--Brent Hall, as they called it--Mr. James chose rooms for Mr. William, who was pleased as a child with it all, and used to sit day by day and watch the work go on.

All the time, too, the Brent iron-foundries were being added to and renovated, till there was none like them round about; and the town streets were made like city streets, and the town itself set into such order as never before; and when all was ready--’twas the work of but three years, sir--when the house was hung with pictures and decked with the best; in the spring, when the grass and the trees were green, and the flowers were blooming fair, then he brought her home. And when I saw her--well, sir, first I thought of the angels; but next (if I may say it; and I wot it is not wrong)--next I thought of our Blessed Lady. There was a great painting in the Hall oratory--by some Spanish painter, they said. Murillo? Yes, sir, that is the name. It looked like Mrs. James Brent, sir. Not an angel, but a woman that could suffer and weep and struggle sore; and, pure and stainless, would still remember she was of us poor humans, and so pity and pray for us.

We had been used to have Mr. Brent come into our houses, and to see him in the poorest cottages and the almshouses, with smiles and cheery words and money; but Mrs. James gave more than that, for she gave herself. I’ve seen those soft hands bind wounds I shrank from; and that delicate creature--I’ve seen her kneeling by beds of dying sinners, while her face grew white at what she saw and heard, and yet she praying over ’em, and, what’s more, _loving_ ’em, till she made the way for the priest to come. And she laid out dead whom few of us would have touched for hire, and she listened to the stories of the sad and tiresome, and her smile was sunshine, and the very sight of her passing by lifted up our minds to God. Her husband thwarted her in nothing. What was there to thwart her in? He loved her, and she should do what she would in this work which was her heart’s joy.

Then we had been used to see Mr. James in church regular, weekday Mass and Sunday Mass; but Mrs. James was there any time, early mornings and noons and nights. I fancy she loved it better than the stately Hall. After she came, her husband added the great south transept window from Germany, and the organ that people came miles to hear; and he said it was her gift, not his. The window picture is a great Crucifixion and Our Lady standing by. You’ll understand better, Mr. Clarkson, ere I finish, what it says to Brentwood folk now.

The first year there was a daughter only; but the next there came a son. After that, for six long years there were no more children, but then another son saw the light. What rejoicings, what bonfires, what clanging of bells, there was! But ere night the clanging changed to tolling and the shouts to tears; for the child died. And when Mrs. James came among us again, very white and changed and feeble, we all knew that with Mr. James and Mr. William, we were seeing the last Brent Brothers, whatever our grandchildren might see.

However, _she_ was spared, and Mr. James took heart of such grace as that, and said it would be Brent and Son, which sounded quite as well when one was used to it. And to make himself used to it--or to stifle the disappointment, as I really think--he began the Brent Bank. There had been a Brent Bank here for years past, and to it all Brentwood and half the country round trusted their earnings. Only a few really rich people had much to do with it, but men in moderate circumstances, young doctors and lawyers with growing families, widows, orphans, seamstresses, the factory people, laborers, thought there was no bank like that. Mr. James’ kind spirit showed itself there as elsewhere, and nobody felt himself too insignificant to come there, if only with a penny.

Often and often I sit here and wonder, Mr. Clarkson, why it all was--why God ever let it be--the shame and the sorrow and the suffering that came. I know Mr. James was lavish, but, if he spent much on himself, he spent much on others too; and he made God’s house as beautiful as his own. For a time it looked as if God’s blessing was on him; for he prospered year by year, and, except for his child’s dying and his wife’s frail health, his cup of joy seemed running over.

By and by came a year--you may just remember it, sir--a year of very hard times for the whole country. Banks broke, and old houses went by the board, and men were thrown out of work, and there was a cry of distress through all the land. But Brentwood folk hadn’t a thought of fear. Still, in that year, from the very first of it, something troubled me. Master was moody now and then; went up to the city oftener; had letters which he did not show to me, who had seen all his business correspondence and his father’s for thirty years and more. Sometimes he missed Mass, and presently I noted with a pang that he did not receive the Blessed Sacrament regular as he used. And Mrs. James was pale, and her eyes, that once were as bright and clear as sunshine, grew heavy and dark, and she looked more and more like the picture in her oratory; but it made one very sad somehow to see the likeness.

The hard times began at midsummer. The Lent after there was a mission of Dominican friars here. I was special busy that week, and kept at work till after midnight. One evening, about eight, Mr. James came hurriedly into the office and asked for the letters. He turned them over, looked blank, then said the half-past eleven mail would surely bring the one he wanted, and he should wait till then and go for it himself. For five minutes or so he tried to cast up some accounts; then, too nervous-like to be quiet longer, he said: “I’ll go and hear the sermon, Serle. It will serve to fill up the time.” And off he went.

The clock struck the hour and the half-hour, and the hour and the half-hour, and I heard the half-past eleven mail come in, and, soon after, Mr. James’ step again, but slow now, like one in deep thought. In he came, and I caught a glimpse of his face, pale and stern, with the lips hard set. He shut himself into his private room, and I heard him pacing up and down; then there came a pause, and he strode out again. He seemed very odd to me, but he tried to laugh, as he put down two slips for telegrams on my desk. “Which would you send?” said he.

One was, “Go on. I consent to all your terms.” The other was, “Stop. I will have nothing more to do with it, no matter what happens.”

Something told me in my heart that, though he was trying to pass this off in his old way like a joke, my master--my dear master--was in a great strait. I looked up and answered what he had not said at all to get an answer, with words which rose to my lips in spite of myself. Says I: “Send what Mrs. James would want you to send, sir.” And then his ruddy, kind face bleached gray like ashes, and he gave a groan, and the next minute he was gone.

Though my work was done for that night, I would not leave the bank; for I thought he might come back. And back he did come, a full hour after, steady and grave and not like my master. For, Mr. Clarkson, the bright boy-look I had loved so, which, with the boy-nature too, had never seemed to leave him, was all gone out of his face, and I knew surely I never should see it there again. He wrote something quickly, then handed it to me, bidding me send telegrams to the bank trustees as there ordered. The slip which bore my direction bore also the words, with just a pencil-line erasure through them, “Go on. I consent to all your terms.” So, for good or for ill, whichever it might be, the other was the one he must have sent.

These telegrams notified the trustees of a most important meeting to which they were summoned, and at that meeting I had, as usual, to be present. Perhaps his colleagues saw no change in him; but I, who had served him long, saw much. O Mr. Clarkson, Mr. Clarkson! whatever you may be--and you are young still--_be honest_. For, sir, there’s one thing of many terrible to bear, and it’s got to be borne here or hereafter by them as err from uprightness; and that thing is shame. I’d seen him kneel at the altar that morning, and she beside him, bless her! That’s where he got strength to endure the penance he had brought upon himself; else I don’t know how he ever could have borne it or have done it.

They sat there about him where they had often sat before, those fifteen country gentlemen, some of whom had been his father’s and his uncle’s friends, and some his own schoolmates and companions. And he stood up, and first he looked them calm and fearless full in their faces, and then his voice faltered and stopped, and then they all felt that it was indeed something beyond ordinary that was coming.

Don’t ask me to tell my master’s shame as he told it, without a gloss or an excuse, plain and bald and to the point. I knew and they knew that there was excuse for his loving and lavish nature, but he made none for himself.

Well, there’s no hiding what all the world knows now. He had let himself be led away into speculation and--God pity and forgive him!--into fraud, till only ruin or added and greater sin stared him in the face; then, brought face to face with that alternative, he had chosen--just ruin, sir.

There was dead silence for a space, till Sir Jasper Meredith, the oldest man there, and the justest business man I ever met, said gravely: “Do you realize, Mr. Brent, that this implies ruin to others than to you?”

He was not thinking of himself, though this trouble would straiten him sorely; he was thinking, and so was my master, and so was I, of poor men, and lone women, and children and babies, made penniless at a blow; of the works stopped; of hunger and sickness and cold. Mr. James bowed his head; he could not speak.

Then I had to bring out the books, and we went carefully over them page by page. It was like the Day of Judgment itself to turn over those accounts, and to read letters that had to be read, and to find out, step by step, and in the very presence of the man we had honored and trusted, that he had really fallen from his high place. He quivered under it, body and soul, but answered steadily every question Sir Jasper put to him; spoke in such a way that I was sure he as well as I thought of the last great day, and was answering to One mightier than man. And presently, when they had reached the root of it--well, Mr. Clarkson, it was sin and it was shame, and I dare not call it less before God; yet it was sin which many another man does unblushingly, and had he persisted in it--had he only the night previous sent that message, “Go on”--it was possible and probable that he could have saved himself. Yet, if I could have had my choice then or now, I would rather have seen him stand there, disgraced and ruined by his own act and will, than have had him live for another day a hypocrite.

But Sir Jasper said never a word of praise or blame till the whole investigation was ended; listened silently while Mr. James told his plan to sell all he owned in Brentwood, pay what debts he could, and then begin life over again abroad, and work hard and steadily to retrieve his fortunes, that he might pay all and stand with a clear conscience before he died. Then Sir Jasper rose and came to him, put his two hands on Mr. James’ shoulders, and looked him straight in the eyes. “James Brent,” he said, “I knew your father before you, and your father’s father, but I never honored them more, and I never honored you more, than on this day when you confess to having disgraced your name and theirs, but have had the honesty and manliness to confess it. Disgrace is disgrace; but confession is the beginning of amendment.”

That was all. There was no offer of money help; all Sir Jasper could offer would have been but a drop in the ocean of such utter ruin. There was no advice to spare himself before he spared his neighbor; Sir Jasper was too just for that. But after those words I saw my master’s eyes grow moist and bright, and a gleam of hope come into his face. My poor master! my poor master! Thank God we cannot see the whole of suffering at the beginning!

The intention was not to let the news get abroad that night. Mr. James went home to tell his wife and children--how terrible that seemed to me!--and I sat busy in the office. It was the spring of the year. Fifteen years ago the coming month he had brought his bride home in the sunshine and the flowers. This afternoon darkened into clouds, and rain came and the east wind. I lighted the lamps early and went to my work again. Presently I heard a sound such as I never heard before--a low growl, or roar, or shout, that wasn’t thunder or wind or rain. It grew louder; it was like the tramp of many feet, hurrying fast, and in the direction of the bank. Then cries--a name, short, distinct, repeated again and again: “Brent! Brent! James Brent!”

I went to the window. There they were, half Brentwood and more, clamoring for the sight of the man they trusted above all men. I flung the window up and they saw me.

“Halloo, there, Joseph Serle!” cried the leader, a choleric Scot who had not been many years among us. “Where’s our master?”

“Not here,” says I, with a sinking at my heart.

“He knows,” piped a woman’s shrill voice; “make him tell us true.”

And then the Scot cries again: “Halloo, Joseph Serle, there! Speak us true, mon, or ye’ll hang for’t. Is our money safe?”

What could I say? Face after face I saw by the glare of torches--faces of neighbors and friends and kin--and not one but was a loser, and few that were not well-nigh ruined. And while I hesitated how to speak again that woman spoke: “Where’s James Brent? Has he run, the coward?”

That was too much. “He’s home,” cried I, “where you and all decent folk should be.”

“Home! home!” They caught the word and shouted it. “We’ll go home too. We’ll find James Brent.” And the tide turned towards the Hall.

I flew down the back-stairs to the stable, mounted the fleetest horse, and galloped him bareback to Brent Hall; but, fast as I rode, the east wind bore an angry shout behind me, and, if I turned my head, I saw torches flaring, and the ground seemed to tremble with the hurrying tramp of feet.

I don’t know how they bore it or how I told ’em. I know I found them together, him and her, and she was as if she had not shed a tear, and her eyes were glowing like stars, bright, and tender, and sad, and glad all at once. I had hardly time to tell the news, when the sound I had dreaded for ’em broke upon us like the rush and the roar of an awful storm. On they came, trampling over the garden-beds, waving their torchlights, calling one name hoarse and constant--“Brent! Brent! James Brent!”

“My love,” he said, bending down to her, “stay while I go to them.”

And then she looked at him with a look that was more heavenly than any smile, and said only: “James, my place is by your side, and I will keep it.”

He put his hand quick over his eyes like one in great awe, smiled with a smile more sad than tears, then opened the hall door and stood out before the crowd--there where many a man and woman of them had seen him bring his young bride home. And the sudden silence which fell upon them his own voice broke. “My friends,” he said, “what would you have of me?”

Straight and keen as a barbed arrow, not from one voice, but from many, the question rose, “Is our money safe?” And after that some one called: “We’ll trust your word, master, ’gainst all odds.”

I had thought that scene in the bank was like the Judgment Day; but what was this? He tried to speak, but his lips clave together. Then I saw her draw a little nearer--not to touch him or to speak to him; she did not even look at him, neither at the people, but out into the darkness, and up and far away; and her very body, it seemed to me, was praying.

“Is our money safe?” It was like a yell now, and James Brent made answer: “My friends, I am a ruined man.”

“Is our money safe?” Little children’s voices joined in the cry. My God, let Brentwood never hear the like again!

My master held out his hands like any beggar; then he fell down upon his knees. “I confess to you and to God,” he said, “there is not one penny left.”

Mr. Clarkson, I am Brentwood born and bred. I love my master, but I love my place and people too. We are a simple folk and a loving folk. It is an awful thing to shake the trust of such. They had deemed their honor and their property for ever safe with this one man, and in an hour and at a word their trust was broken, their scanty all was gone, their earthly hopes were shattered. Mr. Clarkson, sir, it drove them wild.

That day had set on Brent Hall fair and stately; the morrow dawned on blackened ruins. The grounds lay waste; the fountains were dry; pictures which nobles had envied had fed the flames; fabrics which would have graced a queen stopped the babbling of the brooks; and in front of Brent Bank hung effigies of the last Brent Brothers, with a halter about the neck of each.

He had planned--my master, my poor master!--to retrieve all. Why could it not be? God knows best, but it is a mystery which I cannot fathom. That night’s horror and exposure brought him to the very gates of death; and when he rose up at last, it was as a mere wreck of himself, never to work again. His wife’s dowry went to the people whom he had ruined and who had ruined him. They lived until her death, as he lives still, on charity.

And that is all? No, Mr. Clarkson, not quite all. He was brave enough, since he could not win back his honor otherwise, to stay among us and gain a place again in the hearts he had wounded sore. Sometimes I think he teaches us a better lesson, old, and alone, and poor, than if he had come to build his fallen home once more. I think, sir, we have learned to pity and forgive as we never should have done otherwise, since we have seen him suffering like any one of us; as low down as any one of us.

JAMES BRENT’S VERSION.

He has told you the story, then, my boy, has he? And you are the last of us, and you have my name--James Brent Clarkson. The last? Then I will tell you more than he could tell you. Do not shrink or fancy it will pain me. I would like to let you know all, my boy--not for my sake; but you say you are only half a Catholic, and I would have you learn something of the deep reality of the true faith.

The night I waited for the half-past eleven train I had been stopped on my way to the bank by a crowd at the church door, and I heard one man say to another: “They’re dark times, neighbor--as dark as our land’s seen these hundred years.” And his mate answered him: “Maybe so, Collins; maybe so. But Brentwood don’t feel ’em much. I believe, and so does most folks, that if all other houses fell, and e’en the Bank of England broke, Brent Brothers would stand. It’s been honest and true for four generations back, and so ’twull be to the end on’t.” Then the crowd parted, the men went into the church, and I passed down the street.

“Honest and true for four generations back, and so ’twull be to the end on’t.” The words haunted me. At last, in desperation, to rid myself of the thought, I went to church also. Going in by a side door, I found myself in a corner by a confessional, quite sheltered from view, but with the pulpit in plain sight. There, raised high above the heads of the people, the preacher stood, a man of middle age, who looked as if he had been at some time of his life in and of the world; his face that of one who has found it almost a death-struggle to subdue self to the obedience and the folly of the cross. He seemed meant for a ruler among his fellows. I wondered idly what he was doing there in the preacher’s frock, speaking to the crowd.

He was telling, simply and plainly, of our Lord’s agony in the garden. But simple and plain as were his words, there was something in the face and voice which drew one into sympathetic union with this man, who spoke as if he were literally beholding the load of our sin lying upon the Lord’s heart till his sweat of blood started. And when he had painted the scene to us, he paused as hearing the awful cry echo through the stillness that reigned in the crowded church, then bent forward as if his eyes would scan our very hearts, and spoke once more.

I cannot tell you what he said, but before he ended I knew this: my sin cost our Lord’s agony; added sin of mine would be added anguish of his. The choice lay before me. When I showed Serle those two despatches, the one “Stop,” the other “Go on,” I held there what would be my ruin for time or for eternity.

There is a world unseen, and mighty; its powers were round me that night like an army. Hitherto I had been deceiving myself with the plea of necessity of others’ interests to be considered, of my honor to be sustained. That night another motive rose before me, but it was of an honor put to dishonor--the Lord of glory bowed down to the earth by shame.

The letter must be answered before morning, so pressing was my need. I decided to go to the telegraph office, and by the time I reached it my mind must be made up. But, in the street, I came face to face with the preacher I had heard that night. The moon was near the full. We two looked straight at each other, passed, then turned as by one impulse, and faced again. They who fight a fight to its end, and conquer, but only with wounds whose scars they must bear to their graves, sometimes gain a great power of reading the souls of those who are fighting a like contest, and know not yet if it will end in victory or defeat. Some fight like mine I felt sure that priest had fought. “What would you have, my brother?” he asked.

“Answers to two questions, father,” I replied. “If a man has done wrong to others, and can only repair it by added wrong, shall he disgrace his own good name for ever by avowal, or shall he sin? And if his fall involves the suffering of his innocent wife and children, may he not save himself from shame for their sake? It is a matter which may not wait now for confession even. Answer as best you may, for the love of God.”

I fancied that the stern face before me softened and grew pale, and in the momentary stillness I understood that the Dominican was praying. Then he answered, few words and firm, as one who _knew_:

“To choose disgrace is to choose the path our divine Lord chose. To involve our dearest in suffering is to know his anguish whose blessed Mother stood beneath his cross.”

Then, after one more slight, intense silence, “My brother,” he said earnestly, “I do not know your life, but I know my own. To drink the Lord’s cup of shame to its dregs--_with him_--is a blessed thing to do, if he gives a sinner grace to do it.”

Tell me a thousand times that you have no faith yourself; that to love God passionately is a dream, a delusion, unworthy of our manly nature; that to choose shame is folly, to choose suffering is a mad mistake--what shame could atone for my sins or give back to the poor the means of which my folly had robbed them? What can your words count with those who have once tasted the bitter sweetness of the Lord’s own chalice? Suddenly, standing there, I knew what it means to love God more than houses or lands, wife or children; to have him more real to the soul than they to the heart; to be willing and glad to forsake all for him; to know I had one more chance left to do his will, not Satan’s; and to make my choice. Having brought his agony on him, there was nothing more I _could_ do but bear it with him.

My boy, though you came on my invitation, you chose the twilight in which to come to me, that I might hide my shame at meeting you. Such shame _died dead_ in two awful nights and days: First, confession before the priest of God; then to colleagues and friends; then to my wife and to my son--oh! that stings yet; then to an angry throng, whose trust I had betrayed, whose hopes I had blasted, whose love and reverence I had turned to hate and scorn. I have seen my home in ruins, my effigy hung up and hooted at in the public square, my name become a byword, my race blotted out. I am an old man now, and still they tell my story in Brentwood; each child learns it; strangers hear of it. Yet, if the power were mine to alter these twenty years of humiliation, I would not lose one hour of suffering or shame.

You ask me why? Thirty-five years ago I stood here, the centre and the favorite of this town, and I set myself to work my own will, to gain glory for me and mine. My wife, my name, my home, were my idols. It seemed an innocent ambition, but it was not for God, and it led me into evil work. You told me that since you came of age you have been but once to confession. It is by the light of that sacrament that what seems to you the mystery of my life is read. For a Catholic--whether striving after perfection, or struggling up from sin to lasting penitence--has for pattern the life of Jesus, the doing all in union with him, after his example. What is the sacrament of penance but the bearing of shame, though in the presence of a compassionate priest, with him who, when he could have rescued us at the price of one drop of his most precious blood, chose to die in ignominy, bearing before the world the entire world’s disgrace? My boy, if in any way, by the love of our common name, I can influence you, _go back to confession_. It is the very sacrament for men who would be upright, and loyal, and strong, and true; or who, having fallen, would humbly and bravely bear for Christ’s sake the disclosure and the penalty.

My penance--given by God, mark you--was heavy, men think. Was it heavier than my sin? They do not know everything. All my life I had been helped, guarded, upheld; and for such to fall is a deadlier sin than for others. The infinite love of God bore with me and saved me. And as, day by day, like the unremitted lashes of a scourge, suffering fell to my portion, I tell you that a strange, an awful sweetness mingled with the anguish. I knew it was the hand of God that smote me, and that he smote here to spare hereafter.

Oh! do not look at me. Stop! Turn your face away! I thought all such shame was dead, but there are moments when it overwhelms me with its sting. Did I say or dare to think that _God loves me_? Wait, wait, till I can remember what it means!

Yes, I know now. Through all that night, while the torches glared, and wrathful faces looked curses at me, and lips shouted them, ever through all I saw, as it were, One sinless but reputed with the wicked; stripped of his garments as I of my pride; made a spectacle to angels and to men; mocked, reviled, scourged, crucified; and through the wild tumult I heard a voice say, as of old to the repentant thief on the cross: “This day thou shalt be with me.” And through all my heart was answering to his most Sacred Heart, “I, indeed, justly; for I receive the due reward of my deeds: but this man hath done no evil.” How could I wish to be spared a single pang or lose one hour of shame with him? What part could any Christian take but to suffer with him, having made him suffer? And when one has said “with him,” one has explained all. But, somehow, people do not always seem to understand.

* * * * *

Understand? Ah! no. It is a story, not of two versions, but of many. Some called James Brent a fool, and some a madman, and some said he should have saved his honor and his name at all hazards; and some, that he had no right to entail such suffering on his household. But there is one light by which such stories should be read, that is truer than these. When time is gone, and wealth is dust, and earthly honor vanishes like smoke, then, by the standard of the cross of Christ, wealth, and pomp, and pleasure, and business shall be duly tried. Shun humiliation here as we will, there shall be after this the judgment, when the Prince of Glory, who pronounces final sentence, will be he who, while on earth, chose for his portion a life of suffering and a death of shame.

ANTI-CATHOLIC MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES.

Like commercial panics, periodical outbursts of irreligious fanaticism seem to have become regular incidents in the history of the United States--occurrences to be looked for with as much certainty as if they were the natural outgrowth of our civilization and the peculiarly-constituted condition of American society. Though springing from widely different causes, these intermittent spasms have a marked resemblance in their deleterious effects on our individual welfare and national reputation. Both are demoralizing and degrading in their tendencies, and each, in its degree, finally results in the temporary gain of a few to the lasting injury and debasement of the multitude. In other respects they differ materially. Great mercantile reverses and isolated acts of peculation, unfortunately, are not limited to one community or to the growth of any particular system of polity, but are as common and as frequent in despotic Asia and monarchical Europe as in republican America. Popular ebullitions of bigotry, on the contrary, are, or, more correctly, ought to be, confined to those countries where ignorance and intolerance usurp the place of enlightened philanthropy and wise government. They are foreign to the spirit of American institutions, hostile to the best interests of society, and a curse to those who tolerate or encourage them. The brightest glory of the fathers of the republic springs, not so much from the fact that they separated the colonies from the mother country and founded a new nation--for that is nothing strange or unheard-of in the world’s history--but that they made its three millions of inhabitants free as well as independent: free not only from unjust taxation and arbitrary laws, but for ever free to worship their Creator according to the dictates of their conscience, unawed by petty authority and unaffected by the shifting counsels of subsequent legislators.

From this point of view the Revolution appears as one of the grandest moral events in the records of human progress; and when we reflect on the numerous pains, penalties, and restrictions prescribed by the charters and by-laws of the colonies from whence our Union has sprung, it challenges our most profound admiration and gratitude. This complete religious equality, guaranteed by our fundamental law, has ever been the boast of every true American citizen, at home and abroad. From the halls of Congress to the far Western stump-meeting we hear it again and again enunciated; it is repeated by a thousand eloquent tongues on each recurring anniversary of our independence, and is daily and weekly trumpeted throughout the length and breadth of the land by the myriad-winged Mercuries of the press. This freedom of worship, freedom of conscience, and legal equality, as declared and confirmed by our forefathers, has become, in fact, not only the written but also the common law of the land--the birthright of every native-born American, the acquired, but no less sacred, privilege of every citizen by adoption. Whoever now attempts to disturb or question it, by word or act, disgraces his country in the eyes of all mankind, and defiles the memory of our greatest and truest heroes and statesmen.

So powerful, indeed, were the example and teachings of those wise men who laid broad and deep the foundations of our happy country that, during the first half-century of our national existence, scarcely a voice was raised in opposition or protest against the principle of religious liberty as emphatically expressed in the first amendment to the Constitution. A whole generation had to pass away ere fanaticism dared to raise its crest, until the solemn guarantees of our federal compact were assailed by incendiary mobs and scouted by so-called courts of justice. The first flagrant instance of this fell spirit of bigotry happened in Massachusetts, and naturally was directed against an institution of Catholic learning.

In 1820 four Ursuline nuns arrived in Boston and established there a house of their order. Six years later they removed to the neighboring village of Charlestown, where they purchased a piece of ground, and, calling it Mt. St. Benedict, erected a suitable building and reduced the hitherto barren hill-side to a state of beautiful cultivation. In 1834 the community had increased to ten, all ladies of thorough education and refinement. From the very beginning their success as teachers was acknowledged and applauded, and their average attendance of pupils was computed at from fifty to sixty. Of these, at least four-fifths were Protestants, the daughters of the best American families, not only of New England, but of the Middle and Southern States. Though it was well known that the nuns had ever been most scrupulously careful not to meddle with the religious opinions of their scholars, and that not one conversion to the church could be ascribed to their influence, the fact that a school conducted by Catholic religious should have acquired so brilliant a reputation, and that its patrons were principally Protestants of high social and political standing, was considered sufficient in the eyes of the Puritan fanatics to condemn it.

Its destruction was therefore resolved on, and an incident, unimportant in itself, occurred in the summer of 1834 which was eagerly seized upon by the clerical adventurers who then, as now, disgraced so many sectarian pulpits. It appears that an inmate of the convent, a Miss Harrison, had, from excessive application to music, become partially demented, and during one of her moments of hallucination left the house and sought refuge with some friends. Her brother, a Protestant, having heard of her flight, accompanied by Bishop Fenwick, brought her back to the nunnery, to her own great satisfaction and the delight of the sisterhood. This trifling domestic affair was eagerly taken up by the leaders of the anti-Catholic faction and magnified into monstrous proportions. The nuns, it was said, had not only driven an American lady to madness, but had immured her in a dungeon, and, upon her attempting to escape, had, with the connivance of the bishop and priests, actually tortured her to death. Falsehoods even more diabolical were invented and circulated throughout Boston. The following Sunday the Methodist and Congregational churches rang again with denunciations against Popery and nunneries, while one self-styled divine, a Dr. Beecher, the father of a numerous progeny of male and female evangelists, some of whom have since become famous in more senses than one, preached no less than three sermons in as many different churches on the abominations of Rome. All the bigotry of Boston and the adjacent towns was aroused to the highest pitch of frenzy, and threats against the convent were heard on every side.

To pacify the public mind the selectmen of Charlestown, on the following day, the memorable 11th of August, appointed a committee to examine into the truth of the charges. They waited on the nuns, and were received by Miss Harrison, who was alleged to have been foully murdered. Under her personal guidance they searched every part of the convent and its appurtenances, till, becoming thoroughly satisfied with the falsity of the reports, they retired to draw up a statement to that effect for publication in the newspapers. This was what the rabble dreaded, and, as soon as the intention of the committee became known, the leaders resolved to forestall public sentiment by acting at once.

Accordingly, about nine o’clock in the evening, a mob began to collect in the neighborhood of Mt. St. Benedict. Bonfires were lit and exciting harangues were made, but still there were many persons reluctant to believe that the rioters were in earnest. They would not admit that any great number of Americans could be found base and brutal enough to attack a house filled with defenceless and delicate women and children. They were mistaken, however; they had yet to learn to what lengths fanaticism can be carried when once the evil passions of corrupt human nature are aroused. Towards midnight a general alarm was rung, calling out the engine companies of Boston, not to quell any fire or disturbance, but, as was proved by their conduct, to reinforce the rioters, if necessary. The first demonstration was made by firing shot and stones against the windows and doors of the main building, to ascertain if there were any defenders inside; but, upon becoming satisfied that there were none, the cowardly mob burst open the gates and doors, and rushed wildly through the passages and rooms, swearing vengeance against the nuns.

Trusting to the protection of the authorities, the gentle sisters were taken by surprise. The shots of their assailants, however, awakened them to a sense of danger. Hastening from their beds, they rushed to the dormitories, aroused the sleeping children, and had barely time to avoid the fury of the mob by escaping through a back entrance in their night-clothes. Everything portable, including money and jewelry belonging to the pupils, was laid hold of by the intruders, the furniture and valuable musical instruments were hacked in pieces, and then the convent was given to the flames amid the frantic cheers of assembled thousands. “Not content with all this,” says the report of Mr. Loring’s committee, “they burst open the tomb of the establishment, rifled it of the sacred vessels there deposited, wrested the plates from the coffins, and exposed to view the mouldering remains of their tenants. Nor is it the least humiliating feature, in this scene of cowardly and audacious violation of all that man ought to hold sacred, that it was perpetrated in the presence of men vested with authority and of multitudes of our fellow-citizens, while not one arm was lifted in the defence of helpless women and children, or in vindication of the violated laws of God and man. The spirit of violence, sacrilege, and plunder reigned triumphant.”

The morning of the 12th of August saw what for years had been the quiet retreat of Christian learning and feminine holiness a mass of blackened ruins; but the character of Massachusetts had received even a darker stain, a foul blot not yet wiped from her escutcheon. It was felt by the most respectable portion of the citizens that some step should be taken to vindicate the reputation of the State, and to place the odium of the outrage on those who alone were guilty. Accordingly, a committee of thirty-eight leading Protestant gentlemen, with Charles G. Loring as chairman, was appointed to investigate and report on the origin and results of the disgraceful proceeding. It met in Faneuil Hall from day to day, examined a great number of witnesses, and made the most minute inquiries from all sources. Its final report was long, eloquent, and convincing. After the most thorough examination, it was found, those Protestant gentlemen said, that all the wild and malicious assertions put forth in the sectarian pulpits and repeated in the newspapers, regarding the Ursulines, were without a shadow of truth or probability; they eulogized in the most glowing language the conduct of the nuns, their qualifications as teachers, their Christian piety and meekness, and their careful regard for the morals as well as for the religious scruples of their pupils. They also attributed the wanton attack upon the nunnery to the fell spirit of bigotry evoked by the false reports of the New England press and the unmitigated slanders of the anti-Catholic preachers, and called upon the legislative authorities to indemnify, in the most ample manner, the victims of mob law and official connivance.

But the most significant fact brought to light by this committee was that the fanatics, in their attack on Mt. St. Benedict, were not a mere heterogeneous crowd of ignorant men acting upon momentary impulse, but a regular band of lawless miscreants directed and aided by persons of influence and standing in society. “There is no doubt,” says the report, “that a conspiracy had been formed, extending into many of the neighboring towns; but the committee are of opinion that it embraced very few of respectable character in society, though some such may, perhaps, be actually guilty of an offence no less heinous, morally considered, in having excited the feelings which led to the design, or countenanced and instigated those engaged in its execution.” Here we find laid down, on the most unquestionable authority, the origin and birth-place of all subsequent Native American movements against Catholicity.

But the sequel to the destruction of the Charlestown convent was even more shameful than the crime itself. Thirteen men had been arrested, eight of whom were charged with arson. The first tried was the ringleader, an ex-convict, named Buzzell. The scenes which were enacted on that occasion are without a parallel in the annals of our jurisprudence. The mother-superior, several of the sisters, and Bishop Fenwick, necessary witnesses for the prosecution, were received in court with half-suppressed jibes and sneers, subjected to every species of insult by the lawyers for the defence, and were frowned upon even by the judge who presided. Though the evidence against the prisoner was conclusive, the jury, without shame or hesitation, acquitted him, and he walked out of court amid the wildest cheers of the bystanders. Similar demonstrations of popular sympathy attended the trials of the other rioters, who were all, with the exception of a young boy, permitted to escape the penalty of their gross crimes.

Even the State legislature, though urged to do so by many of the leading public men of the commonwealth, refused to vote anything like an adequate sum to indemnify the nuns and pupils for their losses, amounting to over a hundred thousand dollars. The pitiful sum of ten thousand dollars was offered, and of course rejected; and to this day the ruins of the convent stand as an eloquent monument of Protestant perfidy and puritanical meanness and injustice.

The impunity thus legally and officially guaranteed to mobs and sacrilegious plunderers soon bore fruit in other acts of lawlessness in various parts of Massachusetts. A Catholic graveyard in Lowell was shortly after entered and desecrated by an armed rabble, and a house in Wareham, in which Mass was being celebrated, was set upon by a gang of ruffians known as the “Convent Boys.” A couple of years later the Montgomery Guards, a regular militia company, composed principally of Catholic freeholders of Boston, were openly insulted by their comrades on parade, and actually stoned through the streets by a mob of over three thousand persons.

As there were no more convents to be plundered and burned in the stronghold of Puritanism, the war on those glories of religion was kept up in a different manner, but with no less rancor and audacity. Taking advantage of the excitement created by such men as Lyman Beecher and Buzzell, a mercenary publisher issued a book entitled _Six Months in a Convent_, which was put together by some contemptible preacher in the name of an illiterate girl named Reed, who, the better to mislead the public, assumed the title of “Sister Mary Agnes.” “We earnestly hope and believe,” said the preface to this embodiment of falsehood, “that this little work, if universally diffused, will do more, by its unaffected simplicity, in deterring Protestant parents from educating their daughters in Catholic nunneries than could the most labored and learned discourses on the dangers of Popery.” Though the book was replete with stupid fabrications and silly blunders, so grossly had the popular taste been perverted that fifty thousand copies were sold within a year after its publication. The demand was still increasing, when another contribution to Protestant literature appeared, before the broad, disgusting, and obscene fabrications of which the mendacity of “Sister Mary Agnes” paled its ineffectual fires. This latter candidate for popular favor, though it bore the name, destined for an immortality of infamy, of Maria Monk--a notoriously dissolute woman--was actually compiled by a few needy and unscrupulous adventurers, reverend and irreverend, who found a distinguished Methodist publishing house, not quite so needy, though still more unscrupulous, to publish the work for them, though very shame compelled even them to withhold their names from the publication. And it was only owing to a legal suit arising from this infamous transaction many years after that the fact was revealed that the publishers of this vilest of assaults on one of the holiest institutions of the Catholic Church was the firm of Harper Brothers. True to their character, they saw that the times were favorable for an assault on Catholicity, even so vile as this one; and true to their nature again, they refused to their wretched accomplice her adequate share in the wages of sin. Though bearing on its face all the evidences of diabolical malice and falsehood, condemned by the better portion of the press and by all reputable Protestants, the work had an unparalleled sale for some time. The demand might have continued to go on increasing indefinitely, but, in an evil hour for the speculators, its authors, under the impression that the prurient taste of the public was not sufficiently satiated with imaginary horrors, issued a continuation under the title of _Additional Awful Disclosures_. This composition proved an efficient antidote to the malignant poison of the first. Its impurity and falsehoods were so palpable that its originators were glad to slink into obscurity and their patrons into silence, followed by the contempt of all honest men.

Just ten years after the Charlestown outrage the spirit of Protestant persecution began to revive. Premonitory symptoms of political proscription appeared in 1842, in the constitutional conventions of Rhode Island and Louisiana, and in the local legislatures of other States; but it was not till the early part of 1844 that it became evident that secret measures were being taken to arouse the dormant feeling of antipathy to the rights of Catholics, so rife in the hearts of the ignorant Protestant masses. New York, at first, was the principal seat of the disorder. Most of the newspapers of that period teemed with eulogistic reviews of books written against the faith; cheap periodicals, such as the Rev. Mr. Sparry’s _American Anti-Papist_, were thrust into the hands of all who would read them by the agents of the Bible and proselytizing societies; and a cohort of what were called anti-papal lecturers, of which a reverend individual named Cheever was the leader, was employed to attack the Catholic Church with every conceivable weapon that the arsenal of Protestantism afforded.

The popular mind being thus prepared for a change, the various elements of political and social life opposed to Catholicity were crystallized into the “American Republican” party, better known as the Native Americans. On the 19th of March, 1844, the new faction nominated James Harper for mayor of the city of New York, and about the same time William Rockwell was named for a similar office in Brooklyn. The platform upon which these gentlemen stood was simple but comprehensive: the retention of the Protestant Bible and Protestant books in the public schools; the exclusion of Catholics of all nationalities from office; and the amendment of the naturalization laws so as to extend the probationary term of citizenship to twenty-one years. The canvass in New York was conducted with some regard to decency; but in the sister city, the Nativists threw off all respect for law, their processions invaded the districts inhabited mainly by adopted citizens, assailed all who did not sympathize with them, and riot and bloodshed were the consequence. In Brooklyn the Nativist candidate was defeated, but Harper was elected triumphantly by about twenty-four thousand votes. The ballots that placed such a man at the head of the municipality of the American metropolis were deposited by both Whigs and Democrats, though each party had a candidate in the field. The former contributed upwards of fourteen thousand, or three-fourths of their strength; their opponents somewhat less than ten thousand.

But the action of the city politicians was quickly repudiated and condemned throughout the State. On the 13th of April the Whigs assembled in Albany and passed a series of resolutions denouncing in unequivocal terms the tenets of the Native Americans; and in two days after, at the same place, and in, if possible, a more forcible manner, the Democracy entered their protest against the heresies and evil tendencies of the persecuting faction. Still, the “American Republicans” showed such signs of popular strength in various municipal elections that year that the lower classes of politicians, of all shades of opinion, who dared not openly support them, were suspected of secretly courting their friendship. The nomination of Frelinghuysen with Henry Clay at the Whig presidential convention of May 1, 1844, was well understood at the time to be a bid for Nativist support, and eventually defeated the distinguished Kentucky orator.

It is difficult to imagine how far the madness of the hour might have carried ambitious political leaders and timid conventions, had not the scenes of sacrilege and murder which soon after disgraced the city of Philadelphia, and stained its streets with innocent blood, sent a thrill of horror throughout the entire country.

Philadelphia had followed, if not anticipated, the example of New York in sowing broadcast the seeds of civil strife. Early in the year secret Nativist societies were formed; sensational preachers like Tyng, in and out of place, harangued congregations and meetings; cheap newspapers were started for the sole purpose of vilifying Catholics and working upon the baser passions of the sectarian population of the country. The motives of those engineers of discord were the same as those of their New York brethren, and their method of attack equally treacherous and cowardly. One of the principal charges against their Catholic fellow-citizens was that they were hostile to free schools and education generally. To this unjust aspersion Bishop Kenrick, on the 12th of March, publicly replied in a short but lucid letter, in which he said:

“Catholics have not asked that the Bible be excluded from the public schools. They have merely desired for their children the liberty of using the Catholic version, in case the reading of the Bible be prescribed by the controllers or directors of the schools. They only desire to enjoy the benefit of the constitution of the State of Pennsylvania, which guarantees the rights of conscience and precludes any preference of sectarian modes of worship. They ask that the school laws be faithfully executed, and that the religious predilections of the parents be respected.… They desire that the public schools be preserved from all sectarian influence, and that education be conducted in a way that may enable all citizens equally to share its benefits, without any violence being offered to their conscientious convictions.”

So deliberate and emphatic a denial had no effect on the wretched men who tyrannized over the second city in the Union, except that it was resolved to substitute brute force for reason, and to precipitate a collision with their comparatively weak victims. Accordingly, on the 5th of May, a Nativist meeting was held in Kensington. The design of the managers of the meeting was evidently to provoke an attack; for, finding the place first selected for the gathering unmolested, they deliberately moved to the market-house, in the actual presence of several adopted citizens. This trick and the insulting speeches that followed had the desired effect. A riot took place, several shots were fired on both sides, and four or five persons were more or less seriously wounded. The Nativists retreated, and made an unsuccessful attempt to burn a nunnery.

The most exaggerated reports of this affair were immediately circulated through Philadelphia. The next day the Nativists, fully armed, assembled and passed a series of resolutions of the most violent character. Preceded by an American flag, which bore an inscription as malicious as it was untrue, they attacked the Hibernian Hose Company, destroyed the apparatus, and broke the fire-bell in pieces. Twenty-nine dwellings were burned to the ground, their hapless occupants, mostly women and children, fleeing in all directions amid the insults and shots of their savage assailants. The citizens were now thoroughly aroused, the military, under Gen. Cadwalader, was called out, and Bishop Kenrick addressed a public admonition to his flock to preserve peace, and, notwithstanding the provocation, to exercise forbearance. But the demon of fanaticism, once let loose, could not be easily laid. Rioting continued throughout the day and far into the night. Early on Wednesday morning S. Michael’s Church, the female seminary attached to it, and a number of private houses in the neighborhood were ruthlessly plundered and destroyed. “During the burning of the church,” said one of the Philadelphia papers, “the mob continued to shout; and when the cross at the peak of the roof fell, they gave three cheers and a drum and fife played the ‘Boyne Water.’”

The burning of S. Augustine’s Church took place on the evening of the same day. This building, one of the finest in the city, was peculiarly endeared to the Catholic inhabitants as having been one of their oldest churches in Philadelphia. Many of the contributors to its building fund were men of historic fame, such as Washington, Montgomery, Barry, Meade, Carey, and Girard. It had adjoining it extensive school-houses and a commodious parsonage, and the clock in its tower was the one which had struck the first tones of new-born American liberty. But the sacred character of the building itself, and the patriotic memories which surrounded it, could not save it from the torch of the Philadelphia mob.

“The clock struck ten,” wrote an eye-witness, “while the fire was raging with the greatest fury. At twenty minutes past ten the cross which surmounted the steeple, and which remained unhurt, fell with a loud crash, amid the plaudits of a large portion of the spectators.” A very valuable library and several splendid paintings shared the fate of the church.

But bad as was the conduct of the rioters, that of the authorities was even worse. The militia, when ordered out, did not muster for several hours after the time appointed, and when they did arrive they were only passive, if not gratified, spectators of the lawless scenes before them. When S. Michael’s was threatened, the pastor, Rev. Mr. Donohue, placed it under the charge of Capt. Fairlamb, giving him the keys; yet the mob was allowed to wreak its vengeance on it undisturbed. The basement of S. Augustine’s was occupied by some armed men who had resolved to defend it at all hazards; but on the assurance of Mayor Scott and the sheriff that they had troops and police enough to protect it, it was agreed, in the interests of peace, to evacuate it. This had scarcely been done when the militia and civic guard fell back before a thousand or more armed ruffians and left the church to its fate. For nearly sixty hours the rioters were left in undisputed possession of the city; everything the Catholics held sacred was violated; men were dragged out of their homes, half-hanged and brutally maltreated, when not murdered outright; the houses of adopted citizens were everywhere plundered, an immense amount of property was destroyed, and over two hundred families left desolate and homeless, without the slightest attempt being made to enforce the law. How many fell victims to Nativist hate and rage on this occasion has never been known, but the killed and wounded were counted by scores.

An attempt to outrival Philadelphia in atrocity was made in New York a few days after, but the precautionary steps of the authorities, the firm attitude assumed by the late Archbishop Hughes, and the resolute stand taken by the Catholic population, headed by Eugene Casserly--who was at that time editor of the _Freeman’s Journal_--together with some young Irish-American Catholic gentlemen, so impressed the leaders of the Nativists that all attempts of an incendiary nature, and all public efforts to sympathize with the Philadelphia mob, were abandoned. Nativism staggered under the blow given it by its adherents in Philadelphia, and soon sank into utter insignificance as a political power.

Another decade, however, passed, and we find it again rejuvenated. This time it assumed the name of the Know-nothing party, and extended its ramifications through every State in the Union. Its declaration of principles contained sixteen clauses, as laid down by its organs, of which the following were regarded as the most vital: 1st. The repeal of all naturalization laws. 2d. None but native Americans for office. 3d. A Protestant common-school system. 4th. Perpetual war on “Romanism.” 5th. Opposition to the formation of military companies composed of “foreigners.” 6th. Stringent laws against immigration. 7th. Ample protection to Protestant interests. Though partly directed, apparently, against all persons of foreign birth, this new secret society was actually only opposed to Catholics; for many of the prominent members in its lodges were Irish Orangemen and Welsh, Scotch, and English unnaturalized adventurers who professed no form of belief.

Like their predecessors of 1844, the Know-nothings employed a host of mendacious ministers and subsidized a number of obscure newspapers to circulate their slanders against Catholics, native as well as adopted citizens; but they also added a new feature to the crusade against morality and civil rights. This was street-preaching--a device for creating riots and bloodshed, for provoking quarrels and setting neighbor against neighbor, worthy the fiend of darkness himself. Wretched creatures, drawn from the very dregs of society, were hired to travel from town to town, to post themselves at conspicuous street-corners, if possible before Catholic churches, and to pour forth, in ribald and blasphemous language, the most unheard-of slanders against the church. As those outcasts generally attracted a crowd of idle persons, and were usually sustained by the presence of the members of the local lodge, the merest interruption of their foul diatribes was the signal for a riot, ending not unfrequently in loss of life or limb.

The first outrage that marked the career of the Know-nothings of 1854 was the attack on the Convent of Mercy, Providence, R. L., in April of that year. Instigated by the newspaper attacks of a notorious criminal, who then figured as a Nativist leader, the rowdy elements of that usually quiet city surrounded the convent, pelted the doors and windows with stones, to the great alarm of the ladies and pupils within, and would doubtless have proceeded to extremities were it not that the Catholics, fearing a repetition of the Charlestown affair, rallied for its protection and repeatedly drove them off. In June Brooklyn was the scene of some street-preaching riots, but in the following August St. Louis, founded by Catholics and up to that time enjoying an enviable reputation for refinement and love of order, acquired a pre-eminence in the Southwest for ferocious bigotry. For two days, August 7 and 8, riot reigned supreme in that city; ten persons were shot down in the streets, many more were seriously wounded, and a number of the houses of Catholics were wrecked.

On the 3d of September of the same year the American Protestant Association of New York, an auxiliary of the Know-nothings, composed of Orangemen, went to Newark, N. J., to join with similar lodges of New Jersey in some celebration. In marching through the streets of that city they happened to pass the German Catholic church, and, being in a sportive mood, they did not hesitate to attack it. A _mêlée_ occurred, during which one man, a Catholic, was killed and several were seriously injured. The evidence taken by the coroner’s jury showed that the admirers of King William were well armed, generally intoxicated, and that the assault and partial destruction of the church were altogether wanton and unprovoked. Early in the same month news was received of a succession of riots in New Orleans, the victims, as usual, being Catholics.

But the spirit of terrorism was not confined to one section or particular State. The virus of bigotry had inoculated the whole body politic. In October people of all shades of religious opinion were astounded to hear from Maine that the Rev. John Bapst, S. J., a clergyman of exemplary piety and mildness, had actually been dragged forcibly from the house of a friend by a drunken Ellsworth mob, ridden on a rail, stripped naked, tarred and feathered, and left for dead. His money and watch were likewise stolen by the miscreants. Father Bapst’s crime was that, when a resident of Ellsworth some time previously, he had entered into a controversy about public schools.

Yet, in the face of all these lawless proceedings, the Know-nothing party increased with amazing rapidity. “Without presses, without electioneering,” said the New York _Times_, “with no prestige or power, it has completely overthrown and swamped the two old historic parties of the country.” This was certainly true of New England, and notably so of Massachusetts, where, in the autumn of 1854, the Know-nothings elected their candidate for governor and nearly every member of the legislature. In the State of New York Ullman, the standard-bearer of the new army of persecution, received over 122,000 votes, and, though defeated in the city, it was more than suspected that the Democrat who was chosen as mayor had been a member of the organization. In many other States and cities the power of the sworn secret combination was felt and acknowledged.

Its influence and unseen grasp on the passions and prejudices of the lower classes of Protestants were plainly perceptible in the halls of Congress and in the executive cabinet. In the Senate William H. Seward was the first and foremost to denounce the so-called American party. As early as July, 1854, in a speech on the Homestead Bill, he took occasion to remark:

“It is sufficient for me to say that, in my judgment, everything is un-American which makes a distinction, of whatever kind, in this country between the native-born American and him whose lot is directed to be cast here by an over-ruling Providence, and who renounces his allegiance to a foreign land and swears fealty to the country which adopts him.”

The example of the great statesman was followed by such men as Douglas, Cass, Keitt, Chandler, and Seymour, while Senators Dayton and Houston, Wilson, the late Vice-President, N. P. Banks, and a number of other politicians championed the cause of intolerance as has since been confessed, for their own selfish aggrandizement as much as from inherent littleness of soul.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts was completely controlled by the Know-nothings. Their governor, Gardiner, had not been well in the chair of state when he disbanded all the Irish military companies within his jurisdiction. These were the Columbian, Webster, Shields, and Sarsfield Guards of Boston, the Jackson Musketeers of Lowell, the Union Guard of Lawrence, and the Jackson Guard of Worcester. The General Court, too, not to be outdone in bigotry by the executive, passed a law for the inspection of nunneries, convents, and schools, and appointed a committee to carry out its provisions. The first--and last--domiciliary visit of this body was made to the school of the Sisters of Notre Dame in Roxbury. It is thus graphically described by the Boston _Advertiser_, an eminently Protestant authority: “The gentlemen--we presume we must call members of the legislature by this name--roamed over the whole house from attic to cellar. No chamber, no passage, no closet, no cupboard, escaped their vigilant search. No part of the house was enough protected by respect for the common courtesies of civilized life to be spared in the examination. The ladies’ dresses hanging in their wardrobes were tossed over. The party invaded the chapel, and showed their respect--as Protestants, we presume--for the One God whom all Christians worship by talking loudly with their hats on; while the ladies shrank in terror at the desecration of a spot which they believed hallowed.”

Still, the work of proscription and outrage went on in other directions. Fifteen school-teachers had been dismissed in Philadelphia because they were Catholics; the Rev. F. Nachon, of Mobile, was assaulted and nearly killed while pursuing his sacred avocations; a military company in Cincinnati, and another in Milwaukee, composed of adopted citizens, were disbanded, and on the 6th and 7th of August, 1855, the streets of Louisville ran red with the blood of adopted citizens. In this last and culminating Know-nothing outrage eleven hundred voters were driven from the polls, numbers of men, and even women, were shot down in the public thoroughfares, houses were sacked and burned, and at least five persons are known to have been literally roasted alive.

A reaction, however, had already set in. Men of moderate views and unbiassed judgments began to tire of the scenes of strife, murder, and rapine that accompanied the victories of the Know-nothings. The first to deal it a deadly blow, as a political body, was Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, in his noble canvass of that State against the combined Whig and Nativist elements in 1855; and to the late Archbishop of New York, in his utter discomfiture of State Senator Brooks, is justly due the merit of having first convinced the American people that the so-called American party was actually the most dangerous enemy of American laws and institutions, the advocate of spoliation and persecution under the guise of patriotism and reform.

The decline of Nativism, though not so rapid as its growth, was equally significant, and its history as instructive. In 1856 a national convention was called by the wreck of the party to nominate Fillmore for the presidency, after overtures had been made in vain to the Republicans and Democrats. Fillmore was so badly defeated that he retired into private life and lost whatever little fame he had acquired in national affairs as Taylor’s successor. Four years later Bell and Everett appeared on the Know-nothing ticket, but so far behind were they in the race with their presidential competitors that very few persons cared to remember the paucity of their votes. Gradually, silently, but steadily, like vermin from a sinking ship, the leaders slunk away from the already doomed faction, and, by a hypocritical display of zeal, endeavored to obtain recognition in one or other of the great parties, but generally without success. Disappointed ambition, impotent rage, and, let us hope, remorse of conscience occasionally seized upon them, and the charity of silence became to them the most desired of blessings. Perhaps if the late civil war had not occurred, to swallow in the immensity of its operations all minor interests, we might have beheld in 1864 the spectre of Nativism arising from its uneasy slumber, to be again subjected to its periodical blights and curses.

From present appearances many far-seeing persons apprehend the recurrence in this year of the wild exhibitions of anti-Catholic and anti-American fanaticism which have so often blotted and blurred the otherwise stainless pages of our short history; that the centennial year of American independence and republican liberty is to be signalized by a more concerted, better organized, and more ramified attack on the great principles of civil and religious freedom which underlie and sustain the fabric of our government. We trust, sincerely hope, that these men are mistaken. But if such is to be the case; if we Catholics are doomed once more to be subjected to the abuse of the vile, the slander of the hireling, and the violence of an armed mob, the sooner we are prepared for the contingency the better. If the scenes which have indelibly disgraced Boston and Philadelphia, Ellsworth and Louisville, are to be again rehearsed by the half-dozen sworn secret societies whose cabalistic letters disfigure the columns of so many of our newspapers, we must be prepared to meet the danger with firmness and composure. As Catholics, demanding nothing but what is justly our due under the laws, our position will ever be one of forbearance, charity, and conciliation; but as American citizens, proud of our country and zealous for the maintenance of her institutions, our place shall be beside the executors of those grand enactments which have made this republic the paragon and exemplar of all civil and natural virtues, no matter how imminent the danger or how great the sacrifice. In lands less favored Catholic rights may be violated by prince or mob with impunity, but we would be unworthy of our country and of its founders were we to shrink for a moment from the performance of our trust as the custodians of the fundamental ordinance which guarantees full and absolute religious liberty to all citizens of the republic.

LOUISE LATEAU BEFORE THE BELGIAN ROYAL ACADEMY OF MEDICINE.[260]

I.

How is the name of Louise Lateau to be mentioned without immediately calling up all the tumulta which that name has provoked? Books of science and philosophy, official reports, academic discourses, reports of visits, _feuilletons_, conferences, pamphlets, articles in journals, every kind of literary production has been placed under contribution to keep the public informed about the _stigmatisée_ of Bois d’Haine. For a year, however, these studies have betaken themselves to a region that might be called exclusively scientific, and have even received a kind of official consecration from the recent vote of the Royal Academy of Medicine.

It may be of service to the reader who cannot occupy himself with special studies to give a brief exposition of the affair of Bois d’Haine in itself, to show the different interpretations of it that have been attempted, and to indicate clearly the actual phase of the question from a scientific point of view.

As early as about the middle of 1868 vague rumors were heard of strange events which were taking place in a little village of Hainault. Every Friday a young girl showed on the different portions of her body corresponding to the wounds of our Saviour Jesus Christ red stains from which blood flowed in greater or less abundance. It was also said that on every Friday this young girl, ravished in ecstasy, remained for several hours completely unconscious of all that was passing around her. Such were the principal facts. Over and above these rumor spread the story of certain accessory incidents, some of which, though true, were distorted, while others were pure fancy. Thanks to the daily press, the young girl soon became known to the general public, and the name of Louise Lateau passed from mouth to mouth. Here and there one read among “current events” that large crowds rushed from all sides, from Belgium and from without, to assist every Friday at the scenes which were being enacted in the chamber at Bois d’Haine. Some journals profited by the occasion to deliver themselves anew of declamations against “Catholic superstitions, the stupidity of the masses, and the intriguing character of the clergy”; while even many men of good faith were of opinion that the story told of Louise Lateau might indeed be true, but ought to be attributed to some trickery or another of which either the girl or her family was culpable.

Happily for the public, a light came to clear up this chaos of versions, suppositions, and diverse and contradictory opinions. The _Revue Catholique_ of Louvain reproduced by instalments, beginning in 1869, a study by Prof. Lefebvre on these extraordinary events. Some time after, this study appeared in the form of a volume. Here is how the eminent physician expresses himself on the origin of his study:

“The story told by the first witnesses of these extraordinary events produced a lively emotion in the public mind, and soon crowds assembled every week around the humble house which was their theatre. The ecclesiastical authorities took up the facts. This was their right and duty. From the very beginning they recognized that the different elements of the question ought to pass through the crucible of science. The periodic hemorrhage and the suspension of the exercise of the senses were within the competence of physicians. I was asked to study them, the desire being expressed that the examination of these facts should be of the most thorough description, and that they should not be allowed to escape any one of the exigencies and severities of modern science.… I deemed it right, therefore, to accept the mission which was offered me. As a physician, I was only asked for what I could give--that is to say, a purely medical study of the facts.”[261]

After having examined the events of Bois d’Haine in all their phases; after having put to the proof the sincerity of the young girl in a thousand different ways and by means of a variety of tests, the eminent Louvain professor pronounced the facts of the stigmatization and ecstasy to be real and free from deception. Passing, then, to the interpretation of the events themselves, the author thus concludes:

“Studying first the question of hemorrhage, I have demonstrated that the periodic bleedings of Louise Lateau belong to no species of hemorrhage admitted in the regular range of science; that they cannot be assimilated to any of the extraordinary cases recorded in the annals of medicine; that, in fine, the laws of physiology do not afford an explanation of their genesis. Coming next to the question of ecstasy, I have carefully gone over the characters of the standard nervous affections which could offer certain traits of a resemblance, however remote, to the ecstasy of Louise Lateau, and I believe I have demonstrated that it is impossible to connect it with any of the nervous affections known to-day. I have penetrated the domain of occult sciences; those dark doctrines have furnished us with no more data for an interpretation of the events of Bois d’Haine than the free sciences which expand in the full light of day.”

I do not hesitate to say that the appearance of this book was a veritable event, and that it marked an important halting-place in the study of the question of Louise Lateau. By those who knew the calm and reflective spirit of M. Lefebvre, and the independence of his character and convictions, the fact of the real existence of the extraordinary events taking place at Bois d’Haine was no longer called in question; and if some doubt still remained, it regarded only the sense in which those events were to be interpreted. Was it, then, true that the union of stigmata and ecstasies belonged to no known malady? Was it true that they could find no place in the classification of diseases, under a new title, with physiological proofs to accompany them?

Notwithstanding the immense credit allowed to the science of M. Lefebvre, doubt still hovered around this question, and I make bold to say, in the honor of the progress of science, that such doubt was legitimate. A loyal appeal was made to the _savants_ of the country and of foreign countries, urging them to go and study the facts at Bois d’Haine and publish their opinion. Soon a study on Louise Lateau, made by a French physician,[262] came to confirm still further the medical study of M. Lefebvre. Then a German _savant_, M. Virchow, seemed to accept as true the conclusions of the Belgian doctor by that famous phrase that the events of Bois d’Haine must be considered either as a trick or as a miracle.

Meanwhile, certain persons seemed still reluctant to accept facts which a hundred different witnesses affirmed in the face of the world. Among the reluctant are to be ranked, first of all, those who are of bad faith--with whom there is no reason to trouble; others who, for philosophic motives, seemed to accuse the witnesses of those scenes of sacrificing the interest of science to that of their religious convictions. Nevertheless, M. Lefebvre’s book continued to make headway. I do not say that it did not meet with some attacks here and there, and certain objections in detail; but throughout the country no publication of any pretension to seriousness affected either to deny the facts or to give a natural explanation of them. This state of things continued up to July, 1874. At this epoch Dr. Charbonnier, a physician of Brussels, presented to the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine a work entitled _Maladies et facultés diverses des mystiques. Louise Lateau._

M. Boëns, on his part, submitted to the same learned body, in the session of October 3, 1874, a new production, entitled _Louise Lateau, ou les mystères de Bois d’Haine dévoilés_.

II.

The events of Bois d’Haine continued to occupy public attention. The scenes of the stigmatic flows of blood and of the ecstasies were presented every Friday. It was even stated that from the middle of 1871 Louise Lateau had taken no sort of nourishment. The Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, whether because it dreaded to enter upon a question which involved, beyond the scientific side, a side purely philosophic, or whether also because a fitting and favorable opportunity of taking up the question of Louise Lateau was not presented, remained mute as to the events of Bois d’Haine.

The almost simultaneous presentation of two works treating on the very subject indicated clearly that the question was ripe. Moreover, in the session of October 3, 1874, the chief medical body of the country, conformably with usage, appointed a special committee to make a report on the works read in its sessions. This committee consisted of MM. Fossion, president; Mascart and Warlomont, colleagues.

The important report of the committee was read in the session of the 13th of February by M. Warlomont. That gentleman to show how the study of M. Charbonnier’s work necessitated an examination into the affair at Bois d’Haine, said:

“Ought the committee to confine itself to examining the memorial placed before it from the simple point of view of its absolute scientific value, without occupying itself with the fact which gives occasion for the memorial? It would be easier to do so, perhaps, but an opportunity would thus be neglected of putting the Academy in possession of an actual medical observation, as complete as possible, relative to a fact of which, whether we like it or not, the discussion can no longer be eluded. It assumed, therefore the task of inquiring into the affair forthwith; resolved, however arduous might be the mission thus undertaken, to accept it without regret, to pursue it without weakness as without bias, and to set before the society such elements as its investigation--one altogether official--should have procured. This is the trust which, in its name, I this day fulfil.”[263]

MM. Charbonnier and Boëns were the first in our country who undertook to find fault with the conclusions of M. Lefebvre’s book, and to explain by scientific data the events of Bois d’Haine. M. Boëns, almost immediately after the reading of a portion of his work, withdrew it, and was able by this means to escape the report of the committee. Was this disdain for the judgment of his _confrères_ on the part of the distinguished physician of Charleroi, or was it want of confidence in the solidity of his own arguments? I know not. I state a fact and continue.

There remained, then, for the committee to examine the work of M. Charbonnier. This memoir is voluminous. The theory of the author is substantially as follows: The absence of aliment and the concentration of the faculties of the soul towards one object have been the primary and indispensable conditions of ecstasies and stigmata. As far as abstinence is concerned, it is perfectly compatible, if not with a state of health, at least with the maintenance of life. “The question of abstinence,” says the author, “is the most important, because without it nothing happens. It being well explained, there is no longer anything supernatural in any of the physiological and pathological phenomena of the mystics.”[264]

But how is this abstinence compatible with life? By the law of the substitution of functions and organs.

“The organs,” says the author, “are conjointly associated (_solidaires_) one with another, working for the common health; so that when an organ, for one cause or another, cannot adequately fulfil its functions, another immediately supplies its place.”

Supposing all this admitted, here is what the author says of stigmatization:

“Abstinence and contemplation are the causes of stigmatization: