CHAPTER IV.

“A FLOCK OF SHEEP THAT LEISURELY PASS BY.”

Several persons came in that evening from seven to nine. First appeared Mr. Coleman, a mild-looking, bald-headed man of an uncertain age. Isabel immediately absorbed him. Next followed a new-comer in Rome, on whose card was inscribed “Mr. Geo. Morton.” After having seen him once, the Signora was guilty of dubbing him Mr. Geometrical Morton. “He is ridiculous, but excellent,” she told her friends while describing him. “He never laughs, because he thinks there is nothing laughable in creation, every whim of nature, human or inanimate, being the result of a mathematical principle, and every disorder only order under an extraordinary form. Of course this is neither new nor peculiar; but he announces it as if it were new, and has a peculiar manner of clapping his measuring instruments on to everything. Not a bit of cirrus can pass over the sky nor your mind, but instantly he will tell you the philosophy of it. In fine, he strips everything to the skeleton, and cannot see that it is a bore, but calls it truth, as if the flesh and drapery were not truths also, as well as more graceful. I had a quarrel with him when he was here last—or rather, I got out of all patience, and scolded him almost rudely, and he listened and replied with the most irritating patience and politeness. I suppose he thought there was some mathematical reason for my being angry, and was studying it out with his great, solemn eyes. He’s kind and honest, I am sure, and as handsome as a picture. I pity the woman he will choose for a wife, though. If she should scold, he will bring out the barometer; if she weep, the rain-gauge; if she should be merry and affectionate, he will consult the thermometer. Ugh! he makes me feel all three-cornered.”

This gentleman made his salutations with the most perfect gravity and courtesy, and, after considering the situation a moment, seated himself by Bianca.

“Well, what conclusions have you arrived at concerning Rome?” he asked, after a few preliminary remarks.

“None,” she replied; “but I have made a good many beginnings; or I might say I have arrived at some fragmentary conclusions.”

“As what?” he persisted gently, desirous to make her talk; for she had shrunk so shyly from him that her father had come to her other side, which was _unique_. The young man had not often the opportunity to study a shy feminine specimen.

“Oh! well,” she said doubtingly, then laughed; “apropos of papa’s checked clothes, which distress me, I have discovered that the clergy are the only well-dressed men in Rome. The others do not look like gentlemen. But the long robe, whatever the color of it, and the cloak they are always arranging, are so graceful, the hat is so picturesque, and, above all, the buckles on the shoes please me.”

“Below all, you mean,” her father remarked.

The young man looked the least in the world disconcerted; for he wore every day a suit of the same objectionable check cloth. Besides, he was not prepared to take on himself the instruction of a young woman whose tall father chose to assist at the lessons, and put in his word in season and out of season.

At this moment Mr. Clive Bailey made his appearance. His bright, clever face lighted up at sight of the new-comers, whom he had been expecting with interest, having heard a great deal about them.

“I hope you intend to make Rome your home,” he said to Mr. Vane. “The Signora has suggested such a possibility.”

“You compliment me more than you do our country,” Mr. Vane replied. “I have been told that it would be unpatriotic for me to prefer any other country to America as a residence. People talk that way. At the same time I should like to stay, and I have an impression that North America, as a whole, will not be aware of my absence.”

“Oh! I don’t mean to disparage any country,” Mr. Bailey said promptly; “only the climate is so hard. Those northeast winds whistle through my button-holes. By the way, a friend of yours asked me to-day if you had arrived, and would have come up to-night to see, if he had not been engaged: John Adams. You recollect him?”

“John Adams? Of course I recollect him. But what brought him here? I never heard him speak of Italy but to abuse it.”

“Oh!” the young man said, lowering his voice a little, and glancing at the Signora, who was near them, “he was brought by the same reason that brought him before, and will keep him this winter—to wit, to woo.”

“To woo! To who?” retorted Mr. Vane.

“Not a whit of your to who!” replied the other with a laugh.

“What are you quoting Wordsworth for?” asked the Signora, overhearing the last part of their talk.

“Apropos of Mr. Adams, Signora,” Mr. Vane said, looking at her attentively.

She blushed and seemed annoyed, and, as if about to say something, finally turned away without speaking. It displeased her to have her name used in connection with that of any gentleman, and, besides, she did not mean to marry Mr. John Adams.

Here the door opened with a little breeze and three persons entered: a bright-eyed, beautiful young lady with a somewhat Jewish cast of face, who produced the impression that a bird had fluttered in, and, following her, a young girl of not more than sixteen, and an elderly woman, evidently a companion.

The Signora met the new-comer cordially.

“My dear countess, I do not know whether you are more welcome or unexpected.”

“I have but two minutes,” the young lady said in the prettiest breathless manner. “I am just on my way to dine out, and stop to ask a favor. But first let me introduce my friends.”

They were a young baroness from the Azores Islands, who had spent ten years in Egypt with her father, and was now on her way to her native country to join her husband, and her lady companion.

“She has to leave Rome the day after to-morrow,” her friend explained, “and wants an introduction to Monsignor M——. She wishes to take some things from him to a friend of hers; and you know one doesn’t often have an opportunity to send to the Azores direct. Now, dear Signora, if you would be so very kind as to introduce her to Monsignor. You know I am not acquainted with him.”

“I will take her to him to-morrow morning,” the Signora said. “But they need not go now, if you do.”

“I was going to ask your hospitality for them while the carriage takes me, for I have to call for cousin Anne. And now, will you do me the favor to make me acquainted with the friends who have come to live with you? I must apologize for my abrupt coming and going.”

She made her apologies in the most graceful and simple way, and looked at Bianca a little lingeringly in meeting her, as if struck by her face. “I meant to call on you first,” she said to the sisters, “and will come to-morrow, if you permit me.”

The Signora followed her out to the landing. “I want a glimpse of your dress,” she said. “You know I never go out after dark; and yet I do so like to see a lady dressed for the evening.”

The countess smilingly threw back the long white cloak that covered her from head to foot, and displayed a beautiful silk robe of so pale a blue as to be almost white. Pink roses fastened the rich lace in the square bosom and loose sleeves, and looped the braids of dark hair, and she wore no jewels but some large strung pearls on her neck and wrists.

“It is lovely!” the Signora exclaimed, and looked admiringly after the lady as she tripped down the stone stairs, holding her rustling robes up about her.

Going back, she found Mr. Coleman and Bianca trying to entertain the rather stupid lady companion, Isabel taking her first lesson in mathematics, and the girl baroness, a dark, plain, talkative little creature, chatting away in very good English to Mr. Vane.

“I never saw my husband but once,” she said. “We were always betrothed since we were babies, but his father, the old Baron of Santa Cruz, had him sent to school in Lisbon, and I was always in a convent. My mamma was dead, and I had no brothers nor sisters, and papa was in Egypt. He has a high office there. Then Pedro came home from Portugal, and I went to papa. Two years ago we met in Rome and were married, so that I could go to him later with my companion. Papa couldn’t leave to go to the Azores, and Pedro couldn’t come again for me.”

She told the story in a very childish, simple way, and seemed to regard her marriage as quite a business-like and proper arrangement.

“You think that you will like Fayal as well as Cairo?” Mr. Vane asked kindly, pitying this child-wife who seemed to have so little of family affection to surround her in the most important time of her life.

“I cannot think, I cannot remember it,” she said. “When I try, it is Paris or Rome that comes up, and I get confused. If I should not like it, I shall ask Pedro to take me somewhere else. He has written me that he will always do everything I wish him to do.”

Mr. Vane scarcely felt a disposition to smile at this perfect trust. He found it pathetic.

“But I would like to go to your country,” she resumed with animation. “Pedro’s sister Maria went there for a journey when she married, and she wrote me the most wonderful things. Perhaps she did not tell the truth. She may have been writing something only to make me laugh. You will not laugh if I tell you?”

Mr. Vane promised to maintain his gravity at all risks.

“Well,” she said confidentially, “Maria wrote me that the snow there is whiter than sea-foam on the rocks, and that one can walk in it and not be wet, and that carriages drive over and make a solid road of it, just as if the streets were paved with smooth, white marble, and that, at the sides, it piles up and stays in shape, like heaps of eider-down. It isn’t true, is it?”

She looked at him doubtfully and searchingly while he assured her of the correctness of the picture.

“And, more than that,” he said, “I have seen the snow so deep and solid that men would cut it in great blocks like Carrara marble, and, when they were standing in the place they had dug, you couldn’t see their heads over the top of the drifts. Did you ever see ice?”

“I saw some this morning, but it wasn’t white,” she said. “A carload of it went past the hotel. It was grayish and crumbly. The men had cut grass and weeds and piled over it to keep it from the sun.”

Mr. Vane, too, had seen this pitiful apology for the glorious crystal blocks of New England ice-cutters as he looked from his window that morning, and had indulged for the moment a feeling of scornful pride. “Fancy that mat of fresh grass and wild-flowers trembling over one of our ice-carts or snow-drifts!” he had said to Bianca. “Yes,” she had replied, but at the same moment had pointed out to him a lovely compensation for the absence of these frigid splendors in the land of the sun. Beneath their window passed two men, bearing each on his head a large basket, one flat, and covered with camellias laid singly, a pink by a white one, each flower glistening with freshness; the other deep, and heaped with pink roses and buds, among which might be seen yellow roses tied in large, nodding bunches. Yes, the snow of the tropics was a snow of flowers.

The Signora passed near enough to Isabel and her companion to catch a part of their conversation. “Since you entered this room,” the gentleman was saying, “you have doubtless, either consciously or unconsciously, gone through with a good deal of swift reasoning. Some people you have liked more, others less, and in both cases the feeling, as you would call it, has been the result of a certain calculation as exact as anything in mathematics could be. You have been pleased with one for certain manners, or looks, or for certain qualities which you believe him to possess; and there are also exact and mathematically calculable reasons why these things should please you.”

Isabel looked edified, but puzzled. “If, then,” she ventured, “there is so much more reason in us all than we are aware of, why need we correct ourselves? I should think we might be all the better satisfied with what goes on in our minds, and let them arrange their own processes without troubling ourselves.”

“No,” he said with earnest gravity. “There are good reasons and bad reasons; and by knowing why we may correct the bad reasons. For example, your tooth aches; the reason is because there is a defective spot in it. You go to the dentist, and the pain ceases. Or you do not fancy a person; the reason is because that person does not flatter you, and you are fond of flattery. You correct your inordinate love of praise, and thus appreciate the worth of one who tells you the truth, and also make it more easy for him to praise you sincerely.”

“But all this takes so much time,” she said, seeing that he waited for a response.

“It is for such uses that time was given us,” he replied.

She struggled for another objection, her mind rapidly becoming swamped in the conversation. “Then you think that we can arrange and order all our feelings, and make our hearts as regular as clocks; and if we lose a friend, by examining why he died, and why we grieve for him, we can reason ourselves into indifference.”

“No,” he said again. “We can undoubtedly subdue the violence of unreasonable grief by such examination, but there are deep and ineradicable reasons why we should grieve when we lose those dear to us.”

The girl’s eyes brightened. “Why,” she said, “it all seems to me only a difference of terms. You mean just what everybody means, only you say everything, and others haven’t time nor wit for that. It all amounts to the same thing in the end. We say, ‘Such and such a thing is natural,’ where you say it is mathematical, _voilà tout_.”

He began to say something about the natural including both good and bad, while his meaning was to exclude the bad; but the Signora took pity on his victim, and stopped his eloquence by offering him a cup of tea.

“He will take the tea,” she thought, pouring another cup, “because the beverage is agreeable to the palate and refreshing to the body, and, by consequence, enlivening to the mind, and he will see the whole subject worked out to its smallest part as he stirs in the sugar. He will put in sugar because—because—dear me! I wonder what is the good reason for putting sugar in tea! How uncomfortable it all is! I should go mad with such a man about me all the time. And yet how well-bred, and earnest, and handsome he is! If only it might happen that he would mellow with time, and learn to take subjects by their convenient handles, and not spread them out so! He makes me remember that I am a skeleton, with—pah! How glad I am I don’t know all about my bones!”

“What are you studying out, Signora?” asked Isabel at her elbow.

“I am trying not to see everything crumble at once into its elements,” she replied distressfully. “My dear, if you will make that man talk like a human being, I shall be thankful. Find out if he has a heart, or only a triangle instead; and just watch his fingers to see if there are little scales and figures marked along the insides of them. He is worth rescuing. I like him.”

The little baroness went, and more people came in. It was after _Ave Maria_, and they were obliged to light the candles, and close the windows and shutters on the street. But the great _sala_ needed not to be closed, for no one could see into it, and so the exquisite twilight was left free to enter, with only the soft light of a single hanging lamp to shame its tender radiance. This inner light, the steady, deep-hued flame of olive oil, burning in an antique bronze lamp, made the room softly visible, and, shining out into the garden, turned the yellow gold of the jasmine blossoms into red gold here and there, and made the snow-white of the orange-flowers look like a sun-lighted drift of the north.

TO BE CONTINUED.

A JOURNEY TO THE LAND OF MILLIARDS.[199]

There is much in a title. Many an insignificant if not objectionable individual is widely welcomed and sweetly smiled upon because he boasts a “handle to his name”; and that which is true as regards man is equally so of books. Many a shallow and worthless production, like the monstrosities produced in the floral world by fancy horticulturists, becomes “the rage” from its pretentious or, as the case may be, its unpronounceable name.

There is, then, much in the title of a book; and yet, had M. Victor Tissot sent into the world his _Voyage au Pays des Milliards_ under the sober superscription of “Travels in Germany,” although it might not so immediately have attracted the public eye, it must ultimately have secured the attention and interest it so justly merits, and which have necessitated the issue of nine editions in the course of a few weeks.

This interest is sustained throughout the book by the varied information it contains respecting facts connected with Prussianized Germany, which are related not only with that happy fluency of style which is the gift of most literary Frenchmen, but also with a justice of reasoning and fairness of appreciation of which one of his nation dealing with such a subject might not always be found capable.

The work professes to be simply _notes de voyage_ addressed to a friend; a series of sketches which introduce the reader in a familiar manner—“looking at everything, listening everywhere”—to this new Germany, such as she has sprung forth, sword in hand, from the brain of Herr von Bismarck.

The first part of the book relates to Southern and Central Germany.

France, before the time of her misfortunes, was wont to say with her old university professors, _Qui non vidit Coloniam non vidit Germaniam_,[200] but now the proverb is changed, and it must rather be said, “He who would see Germany must see Berlin.” In the vast Germanic body, Berlin has alike usurped the place of head and heart; she it is who conceives, meditates, contrives, commands; she who deprives and bestows, legislates and executes; and she who distributes glory. Towards her flow the life and warmth of that Germany which is now no more the land of picturesque and simple legends, sweet ballads, Gothic dreams, holy cathedrals, but the land of blood and iron. The knight Albrecht Dürer no more finds his steps arrested in the enchanted forest of poetry and art, but rides rough-shod over the high-roads of Europe, armed with a needle-gun, and with a spiked helmet on his head.

“Had we but known,” sighed France, after the war—“if we had only known!” Yes, often enough has it been repeated that her ignorance respecting her neighbors, of all that they were secretly designing and silently doing, was one chief cause of her disasters.

“Had we but known!” “Well, then,” writes M. Tissot, “for the future _let us know_! Let us be aware that the Germans ransack our country in every sense; that they study our language, manners, customs, and institutions; following us step by step, and spying us everywhere, until they know France more thoroughly than we know it ourselves. For thirty years past has their spyglass been busily scrutinizing every corner of our land.… Let us then learn to do among them what they do among us: the weak place in the breastplate of the German Colossus is not very difficult to discover.”

In going forth to repel invasion, Germany has suffered herself to be carried away by the spirit of conquest, and has returned home with a rear-guard of vices which before she knew not, and under a despotism which it had cost her the struggle of centuries to break. Having departed from the path of humanity and civilization, she has gone back to her wild forests despoiled of her studious leisure and with the tradition of her ancient domestic virtues well-nigh lost; while, a prey to all the material appetites, she forgets God, or else denies him, and no longer believes in anything except the supreme triumph of her cannon.

From fear of being attacked by the revolution, she enters into an alliance with it. In proof of this, we have but to observe with what gratified attention the socialists, not only in Germany but all over Europe, watch the moral decomposition which is going on in this atmosphere of materialism and of pride. They know very well that the day is sure to come, and is perhaps not far distant, when “they will make a descent into the arena with their knotted clubs; and that this argument will suffice to put to flight the gentlemen whose wisdom has discovered the soul to be composed of cellular tissue, and has shut up patriotism in a membrane.”

The Catholics also act with energy in the strength of their (for the most part passive) resistance to an oppressive and unjust power, whose hypocritical excuses render it as contemptible as its tyranny makes it odious in the eyes of every upright man, whether Catholic or Protestant.

“From a distance,” says M. Tissot, “it might be easy to deceive one’s self into a doubt as to the dangerous nature of so many alarming symptoms, but on the spot I know for a certainty that an attentive listener cannot fail to hear the pulsations of a nation disturbed to its very depths, and ill at ease. Is it,” he asks, “as a means of escape from impending dangers, and to prepare the minds of the people for a skilful diversion, that the parliamentary orators and the official Prussian press keep them in a continual ferment of warlike excitement, and appear to regret the milliards left behind on the banks of the Rhone and the Garonne? This is the opinion of thoughtful minds, for it is on the field of battle only that a reconciliation between the Catholics and their adversaries can be expected to take place.”

Before visiting the imperial capital, the traveller on whose work the present observations are principally based begins with the southern states, “being desirous of interrogating those ancient provinces which have sacrificed their autonomy to a gust of glory, and of asking if the mess of pottage is still savory, or whether, awakening from recent illusions, there is not some regret for the good old times.”

After visiting Ulm, with its enormously increased fortifications; Stuttgart, the sunny capital of Würtemberg; and the little university town of Heidelberg—respecting all which places M. Tissot has much to say—the impression resulting from his observations is that South Germany was duped and alarmed into submitting to Prussia. With regard to Frankfort, no longer the free city of past times, his conviction is that the real population, quite as much as that of Metz and Strassburg, detests the sight of the spiked helmets and the sound of the Prussian fifes and drums (the latter shaped like small saucepans), constantly passing through the streets.

The particulars of the Prussian occupation of this city in 1866 are still fresh in the memory of its inhabitants. “The history of those days,” M. Tissot tells us, “has never been written.” We will give in his own words the account he received from an eye-witness:

“On the 6th of July, the Senate announced to the townspeople the impending entry of the Prussians, ‘whose good discipline was a sure guarantee that no one would be exposed to inconvenience.’

“In spite, however, of this ‘good discipline,’ all the banking-houses hastened to place themselves under the protection of the foreign consuls, and hoisted American, English, French, or Swiss colors. The streets were as deserted as a cemetery.

“The Prussians did not arrive until nine in the evening, when they made a triumphal entry. At their head, with his sword drawn, rode General Vogel von Falkenstein; music played, drums beat; there was noise enough to wake the dead. Billeting tickets had been prepared for this army of invaders, who, however, preferred to select their own quarters. The troops divided into squadrons of 50, 70, 100, or 150 men, and, led by their officers, forced their way into houses of good appearance. The inmates, who had, in some cases, retired for the night, ran bewildered through their rooms. The officers, finding ordinary candles on the tables, held their pistols at the throats of the women, and ordered them to bring wax-lights. But their first care was to demand the keys of the cellar, after which they passed the night in drinking the best wines, making especial havoc among the champagne.

“Next day, General Vogel von Falkenstein, surnamed _Vogel von Raubenstein_, or the bird of prey, caused to be read and posted up in the streets a proclamation establishing the state of siege. He suppressed all the newspapers, prohibited all private _réunions_, and announced moreover a long list of requisitions.

“On the 18th of July, General von Falkenstein, who the day before had compelled the town of Frankfort to purchase from the contractor of the Prussian army many thousands of cigars, now demanded that there should be delivered to him 60,000 ‘good pairs of shoes,’ 300 ‘good saddle-horses,’ and a year’s pay for his soldiers—promising, in return, to make no other requisition upon the inhabitants.… On the 19th they brought him six millions of florins; but as, in the course of that same evening, General von Falkenstein was called to command elsewhere, the Senate received anew, on the morning of the 20th, a note expressed as follows:

“‘Messieurs the senators of the city of Frankfort are informed that their town is laid under a contribution of war for the amount of twenty-five millions of florins, payable within twenty four hours.

“‘MANTEUFFEL. “‘HEADQUARTERS, FRANKFORT, July 30, 1866.’”

“Three of the principal bankers of Frankfort were immediately delegated to present themselves before General Manteuffel, to remind him of the promises given by his predecessor, and to entreat him to withdraw this fresh imposition. All that they obtained was a delay of three times twenty-four hours.

“‘I know,’ said Manteuffel to them, ‘that I shall be compared to the Duke of Alva, but I am only here to execute the orders of my superiors.’

“‘And what shall you do if, between now and Sunday, we have not paid?’ asked a member of the deputation—‘you will not——?’

“‘I read the word on your lips,’ rejoined the General; ‘alas! yes, I shall give up the town to pillage.’

“‘In that case, why do you not at once, like Nero, set fire to the four corners of Frankfort?’

“To this sally General Manteuffel contented himself by answering: ‘Rome arose only more fair from her ashes.’[201]

“Before quitting the General, the deputation asked whether this imposition would be the last.

“‘On my part, yes; I give you my word of honor for it; but another general may come and replace me, with orders of which I know nothing.’

“The threat of the pillage and bombardment of the city spread with the rapidity of lightning; the burghers and bankers contributed together to pay the ransom.

“Five days later, General de Roeder sent for the President of the Chamber of Commerce, to whom he read the following telegram, which he had just received from M. von Bismarck:

“‘Since the measures hitherto taken have not been found sufficient to obtain their object, close, from this evening, all the telegraph and post-offices, the hotels, inns, and all public establishments; prohibit the entry into the town of any persons, and of every kind of merchandise.’

“These few facts, selected from innumerable others of a similar kind, and which are of warranted authenticity, are sufficiently edifying.”

We may add, that with memories like the foregoing we cannot wonder that Frankfort, once the free, is now the irreconcilable, city.

But we hasten on to glance at the capital, where, more plainly than anywhere else, may be seen the impress of events more recent still. Space fails us to do more than merely refer to the descriptions given of the material city, its public buildings, its homely palace, its long, monotonous lines of streets, “ruled straight by the cane of the corporal-king,” and built right and left of the pestiferous Spree; the colossal arsenal, piled with the captured arms of France, and which is to Berlin what their cathedral is to other European cities. Leaving all this, and much besides, we will briefly consider the effects of the late war and of the milliards of France upon the people of Germany.

On entering Berlin the visitor, as he leaves the railway carriage, is greeted by the sight of a large placard posted up at the four corners of the station, and bearing the appropriate warning, “_Beware of Thieves_.” This is a small indication of a momentous fact; for if, from her very beginning, Prussia has chosen Mars for her tutelar divinity, her worship of Mercury since the last war has left him but a divided throne.[202]

Like the arsenal, the _Bourse_ sums up the recent history of Prussia. The greed of gain has in fact taken entire possession of the people, and in no other European city is covetousness so ferocious or the thirst for gold so ardent as in the Prussian capital. Princes, ministers of state, and high functionaries of the crown meditate financial combinations, and launch into speculative investments, from which they intend to secure large profits; tradespeople and manufacturers invent skilful falsifications, whether in figures or in merchandise; students of the university arrange lotteries—all, great and small, rich and poor, are alike in search of prey.

In a pamhlet published by Herr Diest-Haber, under the characteristic title of _Plutocracy and Socialism_ (“Geldmacht und Socialismus”) are to be found revelations which are anything but edifying, and supported by proofs, respecting the more than questionable probity of certain ministers of high position in the state. Gustaf Freitag, also, wrote in 1872: “Great evils have resulted to us from victory. The honor and honesty of the capital have greatly suffered. Every one is possessed by a senseless passion for gain: princes, generals, men in high administrative positions, all are playing an unbridled game, preying on the confidence of small capitalists, and abusing their position to make large fortunes. The evil has spread like fire; and at the sight of this widely extended corruption it is impossible not to fear for the future.”

The army is also tainted. In 1873, an aid-de-camp of a small German prince, whose services in the war had brought him nothing, thought well to indemnify himself, and by forging his master’s signature pocketed the sum of 300,000 thalers from the coffers of the state.

But the example is set in high quarters, where in everything might is made to overrule right. Could it be expected that so many thrones confiscated, without a thought of justice; so many provinces seized, to form the lion’s share; so complete an overthrow of the most ordinary moral principles; treaties torn up like false bank-notes; a policy at the same time so crafty and audacious, could fail to find sedulous imitators in a people naturally prone to rapine?

The arrival of the five milliards upset the equilibrium of the German brain. Every form of speculation sprang from the ground like fungi after a shower; everything—breweries, grocery companies, streets, roads, canals—was parcelled out in shares. Houses were sold at the exchange, and in the course of two hours had five or six times changed their owner. In eight months, the price of tenements was doubled; fifty or sixty persons would dispute the possession of a garret. In 1872, the average number of persons inhabiting a house of three or four stories (the usual height in Berlin) was from fifty-five to sixty-five, or ten persons to a room. Masons made fortunes, worked ten hours, went in a cab from the stone-yard to the _restaurants_, and drank champagne in beer-glasses. A simple brick-and-mortar carrier earned five thalers a day; and small bankers’ clerks, at the present time out of situation and shoe-leather, paraded in white kid gloves in the first boxes of the theatre—not to speak of far worse extravagances still. Societies of share venders fiercely quarrelled with each other over the purchase of feudal castles in the neighborhood, which were to be transformed into _casinos_ on a large scale, with theatre in the open air, artificial lakes and mountains, Swiss dairies, and games for every taste. But this dream of the Thousand-and-one Nights did not last a year. The temples of pleasure are bankrupt, and “the police have seized Cupid’s quiver.” The whole of Germany—“the nation of thinkers,” as her philosophers love to call her—was dazzled by the deceitful mirage, and so fierce was the eagerness for gain that at one time it was scarcely prudent to go to the exchange without a revolver. Fights were of constant occurrence, and ardent speculators would collar each other like stable-boys.[203] Before the close of 1872, nearly eight hundred and fifty different shareholding investments had sprung up. The middle classes, the representatives of honest and laborious industry, have been the principal victims of these hollow speculations; and in a public report made by the Governor of the Bank of Prussia, January 1, 1873, it was stated that in the course of two years several millions of thalers had been extorted by unscrupulous adventurers from the credulous public.

In various ways it is evident that, if France paid dearly for her defeat, Germany is paying far more dearly for her glory, besides having so mismanaged matters that peace to her is more costly than war. Herr Schorlemer-Ast lately declared in the Reichstag that the financial burdens of the empire, from her system of complete and permanent armament, are crushing all classes. “The milliards,” he says, “that we have received are already converted into fortresses, ships-of-war, Mauser rifles, and cannon; the military budget has this year increased by nineteen millions of marks, … and into this budget we cast all our resources, all our reserves, all our savings, but never can we meet its demands; and thus the land becomes more and more impoverished.” There is another method, also, by which the “eminently moral” government of the Emperor seeks to increase its resources, and this is by lotteries. A Protestant minister observing to his majesty that these lotteries were a very bad example, the latter replied, “You are mistaken; they are instituted to punish already on earth the cupidity of my people: the great prize is never drawn.”

Fresh imposts are also created; but the time for these is scarcely the present, when, according to the testimony of Germans themselves, commerce languishes, the manufacturing interest is passing through a crisis of which it is impossible to foresee the end, and on all sides arise murmurs and complaints. And yet we hear of proposals like that of Herr Camphausen in the Reichstag, namely, to “demand more labor from the artisan and pay him less for it.” A profitable subject, truly, for communist declamation must this be; and well might Bebel, the notorious socialist of Leipzig, say, “Prussia is doing our work for us; we need but fold our arms and wait,” and his colleague, Liebknecht, declare that “M. de Bismarck has done more for the radical interest than five socialist ministers could have done. The people see with bitterness how little has been gained by sacrifices so great. The expense of living has doubled since the war, but the salaries have not increased in proportion.… In the manufacturing districts there is fearful distress.… Families of five or six persons obliged to starve on a thaler a week! See what the milliards have done for us! No wonder that month after month sees ten or fifteen thousand Germans emigrate to other lands.”

We pass over the dark portraiture of “misery and crime” in Berlin, and also the information respecting the reptile agency of the official press, the political dye-house of the empire, whose business it is to color all communications with the hue required by the prime minister. Nor have we space to dwell on the state of education in Prussia, which is far behind the rest of Germany,[204] nor the falsification of history and even geography in its educational books. We cannot, however, forbear producing the lesson with which the studies of the day begin in the primary schools.

The master holds up before his pupils the Emperor’s portrait, asking, “Who is this?”

Making a reverential bow, they answer, “His majesty the Emperor.”

“What do we owe to him?” resumes the teacher, in a grave and impressive tone.

“We owe him obedience, fidelity, and respect; we owe him all that we have and all that we possess.”

Would any child, unless a German or a Russian, find its loyalty increased after two or three weeks of this daily exercise? We doubt it.

The Catholic clergy proving a hindrance to the government in the application of its new catechism, the law on secular instruction was passed to force them out of the schools: the state, henceforth sole master, can form at the will of Cæsar, not Christians, but soldiers or slaves, which are more in accordance with its taste—all that is taught being made to converge to the one end of blind and absolute submission to secular power.

God being set aside to make way for the Emperor and his Church trampled under foot for the good pleasure of the prime minister, we or our children may see the fulfilment of the prediction written thirty or forty years ago by Heinrich Heine, in which, after announcing the reconstitution of the Germanic Empire, he says: “The Empire will hasten to its fall; and this catastrophe will be the result of a political and social revolution, brought about by German philosophers and thinkers. The Kantists have already torn up the last fibres of the past, the Fichteans will come in turn, whose fanaticism will be mastered neither by fear nor instinct. The most of all to be dreaded will be the philosophers of nature, the communists, who will place themselves in communication with the primitive forces of the earth, and evoke the traditions of the Germanic pantheism. Then will these three choirs intone a revolutionary chant at which the land will tremble, and there will be enacted in Germany a drama in comparison to which the French Revolution shall have been but an idyl.”

[199] _Voyage au Pays des Milliards._ V. Tissot. Paris: Dentu.

[200] He who has not seen Cologne, has not seen Germany.

[201] “I have this dialogue from one who was present.”—_M. Tissot._

[202] M. Tissot’s book contains some painful pages having relation to the votaries of Venus also, to which we need do no more than allude.

[203] The _Tribune_ for August 1, 1872, has the following: “Never has the liquidation been so quiet as to-day. Not a single box on the ear was given in full exchange, nor had the syndic to interfere on account of abusive language.”

[204] “Prussia is of all Germany the country which contains the largest number of persons unable to read and write,” is the testimony of Herr Karl Vogt.

A QUAINT OLD STUDIO IN ROME, A QUEER OLD PAINTER, AND A LOVELY PICTURE

The exterior does not indicate the remotest relationship with a studio. I must have misunderstood the _père’s_ directions. I wish these artists would show some consideration for errant humanity, and number their quarters. Now, that wall which begins on the street and backs in behind the rubbish-pile might pass for a parapet but for the green door with a bell-rope dangling from the upper panel, which compromises its military character at once. It might pass for a convent wall. Indeed, the little church which seems to have been pushed entire right out of the farther end might be accepted as a very respectable declaration to that effect. But a more accurate observation of the premises is fraught with diffidence in the latter conjecture. A portion of an unpretentious dwelling-house, which is incorporated with that part of the wall abutting on the Via del Colosseo, and the appearance at one of the windows of a fossilized old woman who proceeds to hang out linen, dispel effectually the monastic probability intimated above. But why indulge in speculations? The most summary, and after all most rational, way of solving my doubts is to approach the green door, pull the bell-cord, enter, and, _si monumentum quæris_, _circumspice_. Pulling the bell-rope produced an inquiring bark from a dog within. Then the door opened slowly, and just wide enough to admit a visiting card, insinuated edgeways. But, as if not liking my appearance, it closed with a short but very decisive slam. I took a short survey of my person, with the view of assuring myself that there was nothing in my dress or carriage which would excite a suspicion bearing reference to burglary. I had just come to a conclusion very flattering to my integrity, when a shrill female voice screamed from across the way, “_Tira! spingi!_”—Pull! push! I turned my immediate attention to the practical application of these laconic instructions. Nothing to pull but the bell-rope, nothing to push but the door. Another tug at the hemp, a canine response from within, the door opened as before, I pushed, entered, and the slamming process was repeated. I turned around with the view of confronting the slammer—a rope, a pulley, and a weight. He has a taste for mechanics, thought I. At the top of a few steps I saw a friendly-looking house-dog, who sniffed apologetically, and then whisked himself about, as if expressing a hearty welcome. If I had not had positive reason afterwards to arrogate to myself this compliment, I should have gone away with the conviction that the dog sniffed with satisfaction because the mingled odor of lemon, of orange, and of a hundred fragrant flowers which floated on the air was inexpressibly gratifying. I found myself in a quadrangular enclosure not unlike the cloister of a convent. The central plot was planted with orange and lemon trees, and with every kind of vegetable. It only lacked the traditional well in the centre, with the iron-bound bucket resting on the edge, and the iron rods for pulley, wrought into the form of a cross, to make it a perfect little cloister. ‘Tis true that the resemblance might be impaired by the large chicken-coop in the corner, which emitted a chorus of cackling suggestive of a prosperous barnyard. But a flourishing coop is no contemptible accessory to the effects of a religious community; and as for its encumbering the cloister, that is very easily explained. The consideration of the civil power for religious communities has disencumbered them of all their property outside the walls, and even extended itself to everything within that is worth taking care of. A marble pavement of variegated pieces, formed into mosaics of no definable pattern, extends around the garden. The walls of the house are studded with fragments of sarcophagi and frieze-work—here the hand of a child, there a lion’s head, yonder a foot—while these are interspersed with lamps of terra-cotta, such as are found in the Catacombs; and, high above all, a row of Roman vases let into the wall as far as the neck gives it the appearance of a battery of cannon. The well, which, sunk in the centre of the garden, would have completed the picture of a cloister, is over against the wall. An attempt had been made to apply a fly-wheel and a crank, with some other complicated machinery of ropes and pulleys, to the process of drawing water, but evidently didn’t approach a success, as the crank is rusty and the rope frayed with age and exposure. On the other side of the garden stands a large cistern of water literally alive with gold-fish. The house itself is built around the garden, save the portion enclosed by the wall. It is but one story high generally. It seems, however, that the builder, some time after the completion of the lower story, wanted to try the effect of another story; so, with an utter disregard of architectural designs and proportions, he raised the four walls at the fenestral apertures of which the fossil appeared. I ascertained afterwards that this addition forms the “apartments” of her antiquity. On the corner diagonally opposite arises a similar portion, which is reached by stairs on the outside—evidently the residence of the lord of the premises. A railing extends around the roof, while vines on trailers and a great fig-tree, which towers out of the garden and up to the roof, give the establishment quite an Oriental aspect. We only want a patriarch taking his evening promenade on the roof, and we have Syria in the shadow of the Colosseum. While I was contemplating all this the dog barked impatiently, ran ahead to an open door underneath a pent roof, and then trotted back, giving me to understand that he was very impatient to usher me in there. A Maltese cat appeared on the scene, walked furtively around me, inspected me from head to foot, and finally came to a halt in front of me and fixed his great, amber eyes upon me with an inquiring look, as which should say, “Are your intentions peaceful?” My addressing him by the name of “puss” seemed to satisfy him, and he trotted on with the dog.

The first object which met my gaze as I entered the door caused me to start back with a shudder; for I was not prepared for such a sight. On a table, stretched at full length, lay a human skeleton, with the head turned towards the door. It seemed to have taken that position of itself, with a view of seeing who passed in and out. The floor was littered with cartoons and bits of old lumber. In a corner stood an ancient-looking painting of a skeleton seated in a meditative attitude—one bony leg crossed on the other, the elbow planted on the knee, and the chin resting on the hand. It had not the appearance of a caricature, for the lipless mouth and fleshless jaws wore a solemn and awful expression, which the most intemperate and frivolous fancy could not associate with the ridiculous. The walls, too, were covered with cartoons of different sizes, some of which were very beautiful. One especially struck me with admiration. It represented the Eternal Father gazing out into the chaotic darkness which preceded the great act of volition, “_Fiat lux_.” The perfection of the _actus purus_ and _existentia_, which are identical in God, was powerfully expressed in the intensely active expression of the eyes and forehead. While all this occurred to me, a consciousness of the spirit of love, which mellowed and softened the sternness of that face, affected me. Passing another door, I found myself in a large room painted a Pompeian red. My first impression was that I had walked into the laboratory of an alchemist—a very justifiable impression. A long table in the middle of the room was crowded with vials of all sizes and every variety of form, containing liquids of the strangest colors. Crucibles, mortars, glass tubes, bellows, scales, and spirit-lamps were scattered over the table confusedly. A row of shelves garnished one of the walls, and upon them were arranged, in something like order, busts of different sizes and casts in plaster of arms, legs, feet, and hands. From the beams of the ceiling dangled a number of little cherubs of Berninian propensities—that is to say, they were very plump, very short, and kicked and doubled themselves up into the most impossible attitudes for little fellows of their exaggerated proportions. These, coupled with several chunks of half-wrought clay tumbled promiscuously into one corner, and a number of modelling tools, a sponge, and an elevated stool, would perhaps incline the visitor to the belief that he was in the sanctum of a sculptor. The other three walls were covered with pictures representing a variety of subjects, sacred and profane. Here a muscular, sightless Samson coped with the pillars of the temple of the Philistines, to the seemingly intense interest of a demure cardinal on the opposite wall. There Justice poised her scales in front of a sketch, which the most unpractised eye would have no difficulty in recognizing as the work of Fra Angelico, portraying the Last Judgment. The activity of the devils as they scourged the damned into the bottomless pit is striking. Farther on a “Battle of the Centaurs” afforded an interesting anatomical study. But the sweetest picture of all was a little one not over a foot square, which represented with vivid simplicity the dispute between the two hermits, St. Paul and St. Anthony. The latter holds up one hand argumentatively, and points with the other to the untouched loaf, while his earnest face seems to say: “Paul, take up the loaf and break it.” Paul looks respectful, but not overcome. He leans upon his long staff with both hands, and contemplates the loaf with a face betokening his resolution not to touch it, at least until more conclusive arguments be adduced; and, after all, it is a quiet, domestic sort of a picture. Beside this was another of about the same dimensions—one that pleased the eye not so much as the heart. It was St. Jerome in the wilderness. The crucifix is suspended high upon a thin sapling, and the great doctor kneels off at a distance, and prays with his hands joined before his breast. It is one of those prayerful pictures which recall Fra Bartolomeo, but the coloring was Timoteo Vite’s, and none else’s. In the corner of the room nearest the window I observed a ladder, made of iron bars, fastened into the wall, which terminated in a trap-door in the ceiling. At the foot of this ladder, right under the window, stood what seemed to be a sedan-chair. It was covered on all sides with oilcloth turned wrongside out. Before this chair stood an easel, on the easel a small picture, which I perceived was being touched by a brush; and I observed, furthermore, that the brush was manipulated by a hand of powerful proportions, such a hand as would have been enough of itself to build up that strange old house from the foundation-stone. Then a man’s head, adorned with gray locks and an old cap with a pair of turned-up flaps, emerged from the darkness, and I saw a pair of dark, bright, benevolent eyes smiling up at me. The face was bronzed, the beard gray and not heavy, but growing in a heavy instalment around the mouth and chin, then light on the under jaws, and developing into a bushy abundance in the direction of the ears. It was a pleasant, happy face, still possessing the ingenuous expression of the happy boy. As he worked himself out of the nook in which he was ensconced, and stood up to welcome me, giving me at the same time a grip of that powerful hand which I associated above with the construction of the house, but which then referred me to a blacksmith-shop, I had an opportunity of surveying his figure.

I should have said, rather, I saw an old dressing-gown of brown stuff which buttoned closely at the chin, was tied around him with a rope, and terminated in a pair of heavy brogans. I introduced myself by stating that the _père_ had requested me to call and see how the picture was doing. “Ah! there it is,” said the old man, and a smile of happy excitement mantled upon his face as he looked at the little picture on the easel, _La Notte del Correggio_. He gazed more intently than before, and then sank down quietly on one knee and scanned the face of the kneeling Virgin Mother, in whose face is reflected that wonderful intense light which concentrated in the face of the Child, as if desirous of seeing underneath the coloring. “The spirit of Correggio is here,” continued he in a musing strain; “no man living possessed his secret of blending colors into one another. I will not touch the face of the Child.”

“Then you believe,” said I, “that this is an original?”

“I _feel_ it,” added he warmly. “Correggio may repeat himself, but he cannot be copied, at least in two pictures, his _Giorno_ and his _Notte_. The dominating, character of Correggio’s paintings in oil, that something which proclaims him on the instant, is the coloring, penetrating and brilliant as enamelling—of such a kind that the lights assume an indefinable splendor, the shadows have a depth and transparency which no painter, and much less a copyist, ever produced, save Correggio. There”—and he arose and drew the curtain over the window, until the room was nearly dark—“you need no light to see that picture; it has its own light in the divinity which is effulgent from the face of the Infant. Tell me the copyist who effected this, and I will venerate him as Correggio’s other self.”

A word of explanation is necessary here. The _Notte_ is a picture representing the Nativity. The Child is in the arms of the kneeling Mother. “The radiant Infant, and the Mother who holds him, are lost in the splendor which has guided the distant shepherds. A maiden on one side, and a beautiful youth on the other, who serves as a contrast to an old shepherd, receive the full light, which seems to dazzle their eyes; while angels hovering above appear in a softened radiance. A little farther back Joseph is employed with his ass, and in the background are more shepherds with their flocks. Morning breaks in the horizon. An ethereal light breaks through the whole picture, and leaves only so much of the outline and substance of the forms apparent as is necessary to enable the eye to distinguish objects.” This picture is at present in the gallery of Dresden, and the foregoing is the description of it given by Kugler. The same writer adds in a note: “Smaller representations of this subject, with similar motives and treated in the same manner as the Dresden picture, exist in various places. An excellent little picture of the kind is in the Berlin museum, No. 223, and is there ascribed to the school of Correggio.” That Correggio himself reproduced smaller representations of this scene, preserving only the three prominent figures of the Infant, the Mother, and St. Joseph, is notorious. It was a favorite subject of the great master’s, as is evident in the very counterpart of the _Notte_, because of its wonderful light—St. Jerome, or _Giorno_—“Day.” Coindet, in his _Histoire de la Peinture en Italie_, speaking of the _Notte_, says that, on account of the celestial light which emanates from the divine Child, the picture “has been called ‘Night,’ just as the St. Jerome is often called ‘Day,’ by the Italians, who thus express the striking light of that picture. Is it necessary to say that that light is as harmonious as it is brilliant, and that the celebrity of those two pictures, ‘Night’ and ‘Day,’ is due above all to the perfection of the chiaroscuro?”

The picture which the old man was restoring is one of the “smaller representations” spoken of by Kugler. It required no restoration as far as the coloring was concerned. That was deep and brilliant as ever. Not the lights but the shadows needed retouching, and the old man showed himself a good artist, as well as a reverent admirer, when he said he would not touch the face of the Child. The wonderful durability of the coloring, which every one knows to be one of the grand characteristics of Correggio’s productions, is admirable in the little picture. M. Coindet says that frequent analyses of some of Correggio’s paintings, with the view of discovering the secret of this durability, have produced results more curious than useful. Upon the chalk, he says, the artist appeared to have laid a surface of prepared oil, which then received a thick mixture of colors, in which the ingredients were two-thirds of oil and one of varnish; that the colors seemed to have been very choice, and particularly purified from all kinds of salts, which, in process of time, eat and destroy the picture; and that the before-mentioned use of prepared oil must have greatly contributed to this purification by absorbing the saline particles. It is, moreover, commonly believed that Correggio adopted the method of heating his pictures either in the sun or at the fire, in order that the colors might become, as it were, _interfused_, and equalized in such a way as to produce the effect of having been poured rather than laid on. Of that lucid appearance which, though so beautiful, does not reflect objects, and of the solidity of the surface, equal to the Greek pictures, Lomazzo says that it must have been obtained by some strong varnish unknown to the Flemish painters themselves, who prepared it of equal clearness and liveliness, but not of equal strength. The history of the little picture in question is not known to any precision. It was brought to Rome from Madrid by the late Cardinal Barili, who received it as a present from a Spanish nobleman while he was nuncio to the court of Madrid. After the death of the cardinal it was exposed for sale with many other pictures, mostly of indifferent merit. The probabilities are that it would have fallen into the hands of some son of Jewry, and disappeared, perhaps for ever, into a dark and dingy lumberroom of the Ghetto. A better fate was in store for the gem. The _père_ saw it, admired it, purchased it, and rested not until he had placed it in the hands of the venerable artist in the quaint old studio, of whom no better eulogium can be pronounced than that implied by the members of the Academy of St. Luke, who, having been requested by Prince Borghese to hold a consultation on the restoration of Raphael’s “Deposition,” unanimously chose the old man to do it. He has since been entrusted with the delicate and important commission of restoring the principal pictures in the gallery of the Vatican. That he did justice to the little _Notte_ requires no proof. He possesses the necessary requisites for such a task—the skill of an artist, the love of an artist, and the humility of an artist. The picture is now in New York City, and, as an old painter once said laconically, in pronouncing his opinion on a painting, “_ex ipsa loquitur_”—it speaks of itself. But I have left the old man standing outside the parenthesis, palette in hand, and a smile irradiating his countenance which would be the instant destruction of legions of blue fits. He saw me look inquiringly at the prayerful St. Jerome, and divined my desire of knowing something, about it.

“Painted by Timoteo Vite,” said he, “and I’m to copy it for the good _père_ and send it off to America. Going to be in good company, too!” And he pointed his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the lightsome “Night.”

Then I turned towards the “Dispute of the Hermits.”

“That was an effort of mine when I was eighteen. I never thought it would go to the New World when I worked at it.”

Laying down the palette, he asked me if I wished to walk around the house. I was only too glad of the invitation. As we passed out of the door he pointed towards the ladder in the corner, and said laughingly:

“Jacob’s ladder when it rains; only there are no angels ascending and descending. My room is above—an old man’s contrivance.”

As we walked up on the roof, he narrated with the complacency of a little boy how he built the house himself; how he was somewhat discouraged in digging the foundation when the folks laughed at him; how he built the outside wall first, to hide himself from the observation of the passers-by, and after that he got along finely. At this juncture I stopped to examine a large cage on the roof. It contained several white mice.

“They are pleasant little fellows, especially when the moon shines,” said my host, and, stooping down, he opened the little door, whereat several of the little creatures ran out into his hand.

Replacing them with some difficulty—for they seemed reluctant to be shut up again—we went down the stairway and over to the part of the building opposite the studio. As we passed the door I looked in again at the grim skeleton, and then turned away quickly. But he laid his hand gently on my shoulder, and said:

“You young people don’t like the sight of skeletons, because they tell an unpleasant truth very plainly. I call that skeleton the Naked Truth; it’s a splendid antidote against a disease called pride.”

As we passed the chicken-coop he had to caress a few favorite bantlings. Then came an old storeroom, then a carpenter-shop, then a blacksmith-shop, where he told me he did all his own carpentering and smithing; then a hole in the wall containing a wheelbarrow, pickaxes, and spades, with which he amused himself in the evening, as, indeed, the lovely little garden attested. The gold-fish in the cistern seemed to be his especial favorites. When he dipped his hand in the water they all flocked around and nibbled it vigorously. Nor did they evince the slightest disinclination to be caught. I remarked that the cistern was large enough to bathe in.

“Precisely,” he answered; “I made it for that purpose—the fish were a second thought. I learned to swim in there. It is very pleasant on a warm evening.”

I asked him how long he labored in building up his little home.

“Seven years, like Jacob; only the patriarch had the advantage of me there, too—he got a Rachel in the end, and I have only—” He paused and looked about him. The friendly dog and cat had appeared on the scene, a hen began to cackle boisterously, which left no doubt in the minds of the neighbors that the great feat of laying an egg had just been achieved. The little shadow which saddened his face for a moment passed away in an instant, and he completed the sentence—“this live-stock.”

“And your art,” I subjoined.

“And my art,” he admitted pleasantly. “Say,” he added, as he saw me moving towards the steps which led down to the garden door, “do you think the good _père_ would like to sell that picture?”

I thought not—I was sure he would not; and, with a promise to come and see him often, I left him. I have gone to the old studio repeatedly since, and each visit has been a new confirmation of my first impression—that he was the happiest old artist in the Eternal City.

LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.

(FROM THE FRENCH.)

JUNE 13.

What a lovely day, my sister! Everything is singing, around and within me; my mother is making rapid progress in her convalescence. Baby has five double teeth, and Lucy is radiant; Adrien, Gertrude, and Hélène left us this morning to be present at the marriage of which I have already told you; René and his brothers are gone out; Berthe and all the darlings in the country; Lucy is going out, and your Georgina is by the side of the reclining-chair. Poor mother! how sweet it is to watch her revive. Johanna’s Bengalese birds, brought hither to enliven our dear invalid, are hopping about gaily in their gilded cage; my beautiful exotics are flowering in the _jardinière_; everything is living, animated, radiant. My mother can now converse; all her wishes are now for her complete recovery, that the _two sisters_ may meet. But first we shall fulfil our vow, and go to tread the holy mountain upon which the Blessed Virgin Mary placed her heavenly foot, and hang our _ex voto_ in the beloved sanctuary. To revisit La Salette without you, my Kate, will be to me both sweet and bitter.

Hélène has no secrets from me; she permits me to read her journal—pious effusions of a soul belonging wholly to God. If I did not fear to be indiscreet, I would transcribe for you these pages, all palpitating with divine love.

Yesterday I took all the small population to the fair. The displays in the open air, under gigantic chestnut-trees, made them wild with delight, but Aunt Georgina willingly shut her eyes and ears. In the evening there is so much noise and animation, it rather reminds one of _Vanity Fair_. How sweet is solitude when one returns! Kate, as time goes on, the more my happiness increases in solidity and depth. René appears to me still more attractive, more gentle, good, and handsome than ever. I fear the future, since happiness is an exception.

Margaret tells me to-day of her arrival in Paris; you will see her before I do. “I can but bless God,” she writes, “for having mingled wormwood with the honey of my golden cup; I should have loved earth too well.” Poor Margaret! I persist in my opinion that she is mistaken, and that her imagination deceives her. Can you imagine what a whole life would be without sunshine and without love?

Mme. de T—— has long been insisting that I should consent to set out with René, but I should not forgive myself if I were to leave her side, feeling that I am necessary to her. It fatigues her to speak, and I understand her look. How good is God to have given me another mother! Lucy is going to spend two months with hers. Her communicative gaiety, her cheerful spirit, and her lively chatter make her valuable to us, not to speak of her excellent qualities. To amuse our beloved invalid we got up a little drama yesterday, and some _tableaux vivants_. It was superb.

Here I have been interrupted to give my mother some music. I played her the _Symphony in La_.

And hereupon, dear Kate, I make you my best curtsy, and hasten away to René.

JUNE 16.

Thanks to “this ingenious art of painting speech and speaking to the eye,” we already know that Hélène has apparently enjoyed herself very much on her last appearance in the world. Adrien and Gertrude have despatched quite a volume to my mother. Gertrude will carefully keep the white and vapory toilette of her daughter, who had, she says, a charming expression, like that of an exiled angel, in those drawing-rooms where she was the admired of every eye. They announced their return for the 18th. It seems to us all as if they had been absent for months. Separations, departures—these are the real crosses of life.

Read the _Beatitudes_, by Mgr. Landriot. It is very fine, this eloquent commentary on the magnificent words of our Saviour. The _beati qui lugent_ too often finds its application.

The last four days I have been to Hélène’s paralytic. The poor woman was quite confused at my eagerness, while I was so happy to wait upon her that I would willingly have done so on my knees. My charities will not be rewarded in heaven; I have too much sense of pleasure in them, too much enjoyment. God is present to me in the poor. “May God bless you, my ladies!” This is the most delightful adieu I have ever heard.

René, to whom I have given a detailed account of my morning, says that he should be curious to see me doing the house-work for my good old woman. I have probably done it very badly, but then I shall soon become used to it. Benoni keeps his sweetest smiles for me, and I am teaching him your name. A thought of Mgr. Dupanloup often comes into my mind: “The borders of the Ganges, which send us Oriental pearls, have not given us simplicity; I have found it in the heart of a child.” Picciola is rich in it—in this sweet and charming simplicity which is the sister of innocence. “Would you not consent to give her to me?” I said yesterday to Berthe. This morning the pretty dove came leaping into my room, exclaiming, “Now I have two mammas! Good-morning, mamma!”

Adieu for the present, my sweet one.

20.

Dearest, we set off to-morrow. My mother declares that she will not be completely cured except at La Salette. Hélène is enthusiastic about it. What a festival! What joy!

I am pressed for time. We are packing up. All is commotion; every one coming and going; everybody calling everybody else. Picciola runs from room to room with outstretched hands, offering her services. I send you a kiss. Unite yourself to us. René will write to you when we are in the train; an impossibility to me. I shall pray for Ireland.

LA SALETTE, June 20.

Why cannot we die here, dear Kate? It is truly the vestibule of heaven. I have no need to describe to you the landscape, the chapel, my emotion on finding myself again in the same place where we had prayed together so much. My mother is making wonderful progress, and would fain not set out again any more. René, to whom I had described it all, assures me that the reality surpasses my poetic pictures. How sweet and good a thing it is to pray together, and to be at the very well-spring of graces! Hélène is overflowing with joy. Adrien and Gertrude weep no more.… And we are soon to see and embrace you again, to spend a month near to you. I think we shall be in Paris on the 12th of July. Dearest Kate, I regret you here! Oh! the inconstancy of my poor heart, so happy to give up to God the better part of itself, and then desiring to take it back again. The gifts of the Lord alone are without repentance. O sweet, delightful, perfect friend! nothing can separate our souls, always fraternally united in the adorable Heart which gave itself for us.

La Salette! La Salette! To say to one’s self that here, where we tread, Mary has passed; that her voice, more melodious than all the harps of Eden, has been heard upon these heights; that this sky has beheld her tears, her propitiatory and beloved tears, mysterious pearls which should be gathered up by a seraph; to pray here, where the Mother of the Saviour has herself taught prayer; oh! what felicity: _Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare fratres in unum!_ Beloved, I have prayed for you, and soon now I shall see you. “Dear Georgina,” my mother said to me yesterday, “may God reward you for the sacrifice you have made for me!” Between this super-excellent mother, René, Hélène, and myself there passes a continual interchange of thoughts and feelings, and I could even say amongst us all.

Yours now and always, my sister.

* * * * *

AUGUST 12, 1867.

What, already? so soon? and we must resume our correspondence! Again I have quitted you, my Kate, my visible angel guardian … Hélène is also gone. The heavenly Spouse has placed in his own garden this delicate and charming flower, for which this world had no dew that was pure enough. “Let us be saints,” she writes to me; “it is only at this price that we may purchase heaven.” And I answer her: “It is also only at this price that this life is endurable; that the departures, the separations, the pain of absence, too sensible an image of death, can be courageously accepted.” Dear Kate, where shall we find each other now? May God protect you! Brittany enchants me. I walk along the beach; make people tell me all the legends of the country; hunt with René; but most often slip away into the little village church, or into the chapel of the château. We have an organ, and consequently superb festivals. Our almoner is a college friend of my brother’s; he has been kind enough to undertake Arthur’s education for a time, and we are all very glad of this arrangement; this good _abbé_ is really a learned man; the little girls are profiting largely by his stores of information, and we are busy with collections, botany, maps, etc. This _savant_ is moreover a traveller: he is lately returned from the new world! And hence we have stories of most exciting interest. My Picciola dreams about them. In short, the new-comer has already turned all the heads of the infantine world, and our Breton life will be at the very least as animated and joyous as our life at Orleans.

I am expecting Margaret, who says that she is coming to visit me, without naming the day. Our habitation is beautiful, antique, vast; with halls like those described by Sir Walter Scott. It is surrounded by immense woods, and brightened by a profusion of flowers. There too is the sea, blue and profound, image of life, with its waves and hidden rocks. I never look at it without an inexpressible longing to pass over it to behold again my Ireland. Kate, Kate, what a charm do not memories possess!

René is writing to you. I have not described to you my rooms, so exquisitely ornamented according to my own taste. Let us praise God, my sister!

AUGUST 13.

An unexpected visit; some Irish friends, the W——s. “We come to reconcile ourselves,” said Lady Helen gracefully to me. My mother-in-law gave them a most cordial reception, and they remained with us two days. You may imagine how happy I was. What details we had to communicate! Marie de S—— is at rest in God; no one had written to tell me. Beautiful and holy soul, remember us on high! The old men, almost centenarians, whom we left in our dear native place, are living yet, and death has stricken down another victim, in the brightness of youth and future prospects, George D——, only six days older than I am, and who died far from his home. He was brought back by his mourning family to the vault at V——, where his brother already reposed. He died a really holy death, … that is a consolation. They say that his father is distracted with grief. Dear Isa, whose aspirations tended towards the cloister, is giving up her happiness to remain in the world, there to pray, suffer, and comfort her family in their sorrows. Gerty is grown even prettier than she was—a lily. How much I have been questioned about my Kate!

A letter to-day from Lizzy who lovingly reminds me of my promise. It will be for next spring, I think. I took our guests to the village, the presbytery, the church, the asylum, and the hospital; all of which are either founded or supported by the liberality of Mme. de T——. A carriage!…

It was Margaret, dear Kate; not my Margaret of former times, warmhearted and open, talkative and gay, but Margaret pale, suffering, and yet finding again a spark of joy as she pressed me in her arms. I am going to devote myself entirely to her; she must be cured, and if possible undeceived. Aid me with your prayers!

AUGUST 25.

This dear festival of St. Louis makes me want to write to you. It is five o’clock; René is sleeping soundly; I have slipped on a dressing-gown, and now, after a prayer, I come to you, my beloved Kate, my sister by nature and affection. A balmy breeze reaches me through the half-open window, the aërial concerts are beginning, the universal prayer ascends to God. My soul is glad, like nature. After many hesitations, much feeling my way, and on René’s advice, I addressed myself to Lord William himself.… It was a very delicate matter, and my timidity was up in arms; but Margaret’s life was in question. How I set about it I do not in the least know; my good angel was with me. The excellent lord thanked me almost with tears; the melancholy of our friend was too evident to him, and he had tried in vain to break through the wall of ice that had grown up between them. All is now at an end; and we have convinced Margaret, who is reviving again to happiness. I know not what evil tongue had so poisoned the golden cup of “_the prettiest woman in England_.” The truth is that Lord William’s brother wanted to marry the young, portionless maiden of whom I spoke to you, whose views were above this world and fixed on heaven. Filial piety keeps her where she is, for she attends upon her grandfather—blind, like Homer and Milton, and like them a poet, says Lord William, who, being himself enthusiastic about poetry, was a frequent visitor to his relative, the aged bard, and thus unconsciously gave rise to the absurd story too easily believed by Margaret. How she regrets not having sooner sought into the truth of the matter! I am enchanted at this explanation, and also because my mother insists that our “dear English” shall not leave us for a month. We are planning excursions without end. Lord William and René are inseparable; my sisters dispute as to which shall have Margaret, who is more ravishingly beautiful than ever. Her fine voice rings majestically in the chapel; yesterday we went _en masse_ to surprise Mme. de T—— because it was her _fête_. You cannot imagine the effect of our choirs. René, Adrien, Edouard, everybody, the English peer too, sang. Your Georgina played the organ—not without tears of emotion.… My mother said she was _in heaven_. All day long bouquets and _hommages_ were arriving; these good Bretons are so grateful, so pious! To-morrow we go to Auray, next week to Solesmes, … a long way, … but I would willingly go to the world’s end.

Margaret almost worships the babies. Alix scarcely leaves her; Gaston has his private and his state visits to her. My Picciola is so intelligent that English has soon become easy to her. I converse with her in my mother’s tongue; we pray together. Am I not happy, dear Kate? Everything smiles upon me. Often I meditate upon the benefits which I have received from an all-merciful Providence, and especially upon my happiness in my friends. Apropos to this subject, I recollect a sad but charming remark of Louis Veuillot’s upon departures, those great sadnesses of life: “There are flowers of friendship that we have sown, and which spring up, but which we must abandon when their fragrance is sweetest!”… He goes on to speak of forgetfulness; the mourning wreath thrown by the oblivious world on the tomb of vanished friendships, and sorrowfully says, “All the flowers of human life are perishable!” Is it an illusion of my youth to believe that my affections are like the flowers of heaven, inaccessible to decay, strong against storms?… After the love of God, the first and greatest good, the surest element of even terrestrial happiness, I have friendship, and I rejoice in it with enchantment; then I have the love of my good René, so pure and Christian a love, which makes of our two souls one single being, in an indissoluble union; then reading, with its varied emotions, study, the faculties of enthusiasm, of admiration, of comprehension.… Oh! how fair is life. When I speak of friendship, it is the tender affection of my Kate that is especially in my mind—a tenderness to which I owe all that I am. Dearest and best beloved, I sometimes ask myself how it is that you have been to me a sister so _unique_, and finding no other motive for this choice affection than your loving charity, I bless God, who has permitted this to be in his merciful designs, which I cannot sufficiently adore. When I make my thanksgiving after communion, I am fond of taking a _general survey_ in my heart, so as to include in it names and memories, and after speaking to Jesus of all the souls in whom I am interested, I never fail to ask our rich and mighty Sovereign to bless, together with me, all who love or have ever loved me.…

God guard you, _carissima_!

AUGUST 29.

News from Ireland: Ellen is in great trouble; her son has a mucous fever which leaves small hope of his life. Alas! everywhere there is mourning and death. Poor friend! so Christian and so pious, so courageous under trials, how she must suffer, in spite of her fortitude and resignation! Have you often met with people so sympathetic as this amiable Ellen?—a heart of gold, full of tenderness and devotion, in so delicate a frame. It seems to me as if the tears which she drives back by her mother’s bed of suffering (who is still in great danger, as Margaret has written you word), and by the cradle of her beautiful little Robert, fall on my heart. Let us pray for her!

René is telling you about our pilgrimage to Auray. What happiness to be there with these good and dear friends, and with my mother, whose health is most satisfactory! Why are not you also here, dear Kate? Oh! I never cease to miss you, although I repeat to myself that nothing is wanting to my felicity.

Yesterday was the feast of St. Augustine, the great doctor of love. Would that I could love like him!… M. Bougaud has written the life of St. Monica, which I am told is very fine. Adrien left the book at Orleans. I had read the introduction, which is written in an excellent and elevated style. “It is the poem of the most incomparable love that ever was.” O Saint Augustine, pillar of the church, defender of the faith! pray for those who fight; obtain for them that love which purifies and sanctifies suffering, that holy and perfect love which alone is the life of the soul! I have a special affection for St. Augustine. His was so ardent and enthusiastic a nature; his lofty soul so great, so indomitable, and so athirst for happiness; then, after his conversion, how courageous was his faith, how apostolic his eloquence, and, above all, how mighty was his love of God, which, as it were, consumed him! In all this we behold with admiration the infinite mercy of the Creator. Do you recollect Ary Scheffer’s lovely picture of St. Monica and St. Augustine by the sea? One could spend hours before those already transfigured countenances, studying their thoughts, which are rendered almost visible by the genius of the artist.

Read a letter by Mgr. Dupanloup on the death of Cardinal Altieri. We still live in the times of men like Borromeo and Belzunce; the church never grows old. Cardinal Altieri was Bishop of Albano. The cholera broke out in that small town with such violence that a hundred persons died in a night. Mgr. Altieri assembled his servants and asked if they were willing to follow him to Albano. He set out, accompanied by one alone, and his almoner, and taking with him his will, to which he added a codicil. After three days, spent in heroic acts of charity and devotedness, he was attacked by the malady, and died in the arms of two other cardinals, who, happening to be at Albano when the scourge appeared, had not quitted the post of honor. This death is a great loss to the church. Mgr. Altieri was Camerlinga of the Roman Church, the highest dignity after the Pope. Louis Veuillot, in his biography of Pius IX., says: “There is no name and no character more Roman than that of Altieri.” The cardinal was only sixty-two years of age. Pius IX. at once desired to find him a successor. A messenger of the Holy See was sent to Mgr. Apollini: “It is necessary to set out immediately for Albano.” “I am ready,” was Mgr. Apollini’s reply. Is it not fine? What page of Homer equals this page in the history of the church? The Zouaves are also doing wonders of charity at Albano: making themselves _Gray Sisters_ for the living, and burying the dead; they are sublime. May God have pity on poor Italy! Mgr. Dupanloup concludes his letter by a few words full of sadness and apprehension. O my God! will not the eloquence of genius, the supplications of thy saints, the sufferings of thy martyrs, disarm thine anger? By the side of these solemn scenes yesterday’s paper contained a curious article: the “miracles” of the Zouave Jacob, of whom you must have heard, dear Kate. What times we live in! On the one hand we have spiritism, magnetism, all sorts of communications with demons, and on the other the wonderful development of noble thoughts, institutions of all kinds in aid of every form of misfortune, men of the highest genius raising imperishable monuments to the glory of God and the church! If our time is one of great errors and many troubles, it is also a time of great virtues and noble acts of devotion. Margaret told us that when passing through Périgord she stopped at Cadouin, where the holy _Sudarium_ of our Lord is offered to the veneration of the faithful. Before this august relic she prayed with indescribable emotion for our incomparable Pontiff, who is following in the footsteps of our Saviour up Mount Calvary. The revolution is about to march against Rome; what will be the consequence? “_Tu es Petrus._” … With this word one can understand the peace, serenity, and confidence of Pius IX. Suffer not, O Lord! that so many wandering and guilty sons shall die fighting against their own Father!

* * * * *

SEPTEMBER 6.

The sacrifice is consummated: Ellen has witnessed the death of her baby—her joy and pride. “Her husband comforted and sustained her like a Christian,” Lizzy writes. The paroxysm of her maternal anguish was fearful.

A child should never die before its mother; it is against nature, and is almost more than the heart can endure; the help of God is necessary; let us pray for her, my Kate. This dear, much-tried, heartbroken mother thought of me in her sorrow, and sent me a few lines. You will read them and will weep with me over this page of woe. I seem still to see that charming group: Ellen coaxing Robert to try and take his first steps, and he sending us kisses. All these joys, that golden dawn, those earliest days—who can bring them back to Ellen? May God console her, and may the sweet angel who strengthened Jesus at Gethsemani tenderly wipe away her tears! Margaret is as grieved as I am. Our trip to Solesmes is somewhat delayed; we are expecting more guests. I have just finished a splendid chasuble, which I take the liberty of sending to your address, my dearest Kate—in the first place, that you may admire it, and, secondly, that you may kindly let Mme. G. know about it, as she will have to complete my work. Have I mentioned to you a letter from the Bishop of Orleans to the faithful of his diocese on the festivals of Rome, and the approaching opening of an œcumenical council? It is splendid; there is magic in his style.

You do not forget Zoë de L——? Margaret met her in Paris, _poor_, and looking terribly aged. Through some inexplicable folly, she made an absurd marriage, and the change of position, her unexpected disappointment, the trials of heart and mind she has undergone, have altogether upset her. “It was ten minutes,” Margaret writes, “before I could recognize her.” Perhaps you could see her, dear Kate, and cheer her up a little. _La belle Anglaise_ and I want to be of service to her, and you must be our medium; René is writing to his banker, to place the necessary sum at your disposal. I will enclose the card on which Margaret wrote the address of this unfortunate Zoë.

Dearest Kate, pray for Ellen. There is, then, no such thing as perfect happiness in this world. If it were not for the compassion I feel for those whose troubles affect me so deeply, I should be too happy. How kind René is! He is angelic! I cannot note down to you, or I should have to write volumes, the thousand intimate and charming details which make my life a paradise.

Hélène rarely writes; when she does, it is as a seraph might. She is happy; she has entered into the place of repose which she has chosen, in the _hollow of the rock_, where the dove loves to hide; she has found her ideal. Gertrude reads on her knees the poetic effusions of her child.

Dear Kate, may all heaven be with you!

SEPTEMBER 15.

My dear one, excursions are robbing me of all my leisure, but not of the time to think of you. A pouring rain has interfered with our projects for to-day, and all the children have fled to _Mme. Margaret_, who takes a lively interest in these juveniles. Yesterday was the birthday of this delightful friend. We busied ourselves in preparations, whilst, at my request, Lord William drew his somewhat wondering Margaret away to the park. A solitary little drawing-room was rapidly transformed; it looked so pretty in the evening, with a profusion of flowers and lights, wreaths of ivy twining round the mirrors, and an illumination of the _heroine’s_ initials! She was greatly touched and delighted; Picciola recited some beautiful verses written by Edouard, and we presented her with bouquets, carvings, and paintings. A concert brought the entertainment to a close. Mme. de T—— will not hear of the departure of our dear friends. “Sisters ought not to leave each other before they are compelled,” she says. Kind, excellent mother! Yesterday we walked along the coast so often sung by the poet Brizeux, whom René quotes with so much Breton fire and fitness. “Look there,” Adrien whispered to me, “at all that pretty little brood!” Under the shadow of an oak about a hundred paces from us a dozen children were preparing a _dînette_.[205] How handsome they looked in their tatters, with their healthy and intelligent faces! Arthur had a bright thought: he proposed to Picciola, who was carrying the _cake-basket_, to share theirs among the poor little children. All the babies joined in the festivity, and bonbons and delicacies were freely distributed. Margaret sketched this pretty picture in her album. You see our walks are not without their charm.

On Monday, I visited a pious canoness who lives alone in a sumptuous residence. I was delighted with the kind and cordial welcome she gave me, and spent with her three of the most enjoyable hours I ever passed in my life. Mme. de Saint A—— is fifty-three years of age, though she appears older; she has been exquisitely beautiful. Now she is better than that—she is a saint; and next to the deep joys of the Eucharistic table, I do not think there is any greater enjoyment than to converse with such as she. The old castle overlooking the ocean has an antique and lordly aspect, with a certain character as of something religious, like a cenobite whom death has forgotten, kneeling by the borders of a lake. The sea in this place forms a sort of inland bay, or quiet lake, in which the great trees of the park seem to take pleasure in reflecting themselves. The dwelling has been visited by the dukes of Brittany, and one wing of the castle still bears their name. We ascended the steps of the staircase of honor, up which the noble mail-clad warriors so often rode mounted on their chargers. The room of Mme. de Saint A—— is entirely white, like the soul of the pious lady. It opens into the chapel. On each side of the altar several funeral epitaphs show this temple of prayer to be also the temple of memories. Mme. de Saint A—— showed us some water-colors worthy of Redouté, painted by her great-grandmother; and some wood-carving which excited the liveliest admiration of the gentlemen. It was impossible to quit this Eden; we admired the grottoes and plantations, and remained for _déjeuner_. We seemed to be in another world in this Thebaid of the coast. We kissed the trunk of an immense chestnut whose protecting boughs had overshadowed many generations, and which has a higher title to glory from having in ’93 preserved from revolutionary fury the stone statue of the Madonna which now guards the chapel. I shall never forget this visit—twenty leagues from our residence—nor the expression of that saintly face, the look and words which accompanied the kind pressure of my hand at the moment of departure.

Mme. de Saint A—— has lost all her dear ones by death. God and the poor still remain to her, a heritage worthy of her heart. Her artistic and literary tastes are a great resource for her in her solitude, which is occasionally shared by some friends at a distance, who are faithful to this “_fragment of the past_,” as she said in showing us the castle.

One hall, that of “the libraries,” contains treasures. Adrien, who is an enthusiastic and learned archæologist, eagerly examined its contents. Several rare manuscripts have passed into his possession; we came home laden with riches. My share is a beautiful water-color drawing. Shall we ever see this hermitage again?

Dear Kate, René and Margaret have finished their letters before me. Adieu and _á Dieu_!

Dreamed of Ireland, her emigrants, her martyrs. Oh! how dear our sacred island is to me.

SEPTEMBER 20.

Kind, loving, and beloved sister, three letters in your welcome handwriting are come to me at the same time. Thanks for what you have done for Zoë; she has written to tell me about it, and of your zealous endeavors to make her more courageous. I have no more anxiety about our poor friend since you are in her neighborhood.

René has procured for me _Femmes Savantes et Femmes Studieuses_,[206] by Mgr. Dupanloup.

It is an excellent book, elevated and at the same time practical, and quite in accordance with the views of my dear husband. Our studies together are truly profitable? The good _abbé_ is very alarming just now. He says that blood will be shed in France, much blood; with other sinister predictions. May God guard you, dearest Kate!

The village is in mourning: five deaths this week. One is that of the father of seven children; Margaret is placing six of them with the Sisters at P——. The rich English lady makes herself almost worshipped by our Bretons.

Ellen has written to me; she is more calm, but wonders that she can live.… Her mother, broken down by this last blow, sank three days after Robert. To force her away from the sad associations of home her husband is taking her to Scotland, where they will remain until the spring. I wish they were with us; we would try to comfort them. Ah! Kate, how I pity mothers.

Finished the full-length portrait of René for our mother. How I have enjoyed working at it—dear, kind husband! At this moment he is playing Thalberg’s _Moïse_, and I hasten to join him. I should not be Irish if I did not love poetry and music.

Love me as I love you, dear sister.

SEPTEMBER 28.

I am in a state of transport, dearest! For eight days past we have been almost constantly in the carriage, and have seen Solesmes and its jewels of stone, the handiwork of artists full of faith such as our times do not find in their successors. Only imagine, dear Kate: I saw nothing at Solesmes but the church and Sainte Cécile! On coming out I closed my eyes, the better to recall those visions of beauty before which death would seem more sweet. Beneath an arched roof on the right two personages are placing Our Lord in the sepulchre; these are Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, the former in a rich Oriental costume and the latter in a dress of the time of Louis XI., which looks singular enough at first sight. Sitting before the tomb, St. Mary Magdalene, bending low, with her head resting on her hands, abandons herself to grief. It is very beautiful Kate. Of all that I have seen that looked _living_ in sculpture, nothing ever impressed me so much. This Magdalene is the jewel of the whole. She seems to live and breathe; nothing could render the expression of sorrow and of prayer in her countenance, nor the naturalness of her posture; one feels as if she might raise her arms, and that her mouth might utter her lamentation; one _feels_ that her eyes are overflowing with tears.… Follow me now into the chapel on the left. Here is the swooning of the Blessed Virgin, in a deep niche over the altar. Again, our Lady, kneeling in ecstasy, supported by St. Peter and St. John, is about to receive communion from the hands of her risen Son. In this mystic idea there is to my mind exquisite poetry. Almost all the apostles and the holy women are there; the figures in this group are very numerous, and there are among them heads of an ideal beauty. I have looked so long at these more than artistic, almost heavenly, works, that they will long remain in my mind. The entombment of the Blessed Virgin faces that of Our Lord, and is strikingly effective. The position of our Lady is admirable, and there is something heavenly in her countenance, which love transfigures even in death. St. John, St. James the Less, Dom Bougner, an abbot of Solesmes, who by a pious anachronism had himself represented in this solemn scene, and another saint, hold the corners of the shroud. All four are excellently rendered. St. Peter is leaning over our Lady, and contemplates her with an indescribable expression of love. This figure is one of the most attractive of all. Behind are the holy women, whose looks betoken the deepest grief, and some of the apostles, who are speaking to each other. All these figures are admirably grouped; not one lessens the effect of the rest, and the whole scene is of touching grandeur. It was difficult to tear one’s self away from the contemplation of those animated and speaking forms.… There are other groups: Jesus in the midst of the doctors, the Assumption, the Coronation; wonderful works by men who have remained almost unknown. Why were you not there, dear Kate? This is always the cry of my heart, which wants you everywhere.

To see Dom Guéranger formed part of our plan. When one has read his _Sainte Cécile_ and his admirable pages on the _Temporal Power of the Popes_, it is a happiness to listen to him in his monastic humility. What a fine head he has!—a countenance so expressive of both intellect and sanctity, and such vivacity and genius in his look! We were present at the Benedictine Office, but went first to Sainte-Cécile, a monastery of Benedictine nuns which Dom Guéranger is building at some distance from the abbey. It will be splendid: magnificent cloisters, and in the middle of the great quadrangle one of those marvellous fountains that we used to admire in the pictures of the cloisters in Spain.

Benediction, in the abbey church, was very beautiful. At the moment when the benediction is given a dove descends upon the altar; the sight is striking when the heart is already predisposed to heavenly emotions. When, at the conclusion, the monks stood up to chant the _Te Deum_, that song of the eternal Jerusalem which I never hear without a thrill of inward joy, I felt an indescribable impression of happiness and peace. Oh! how sweet it must be to serve God thus, and spend one’s life in study and in prayer.

Dearest Kate, may God bless you, may he bless us all, and may he deliver Ireland!

OCTOBER 2.

To-day Sarah B—— takes a lord and master. God grant that she may be happy; that her heart, so upright, delicate, and loving, may not be disappointed! She is in communication with Margaret, to whom she has related the causes of her _almost_ rupture with Mary. Both had suffered greatly from the loss of that affection which for twenty years had filled their life; this marriage draws them nearer together. Mass has been said for her, in this sweet corner of our Brittany, this oasis. Margaret is about to leave us. What bitterness is linked to every separation! How often our heart is divided, our life cut in twain, and our happiness destroyed! We went on Monday to C——, where we have an aunt, superior of a convent of the Visitation. “Convents do not change, like the world,” said René, when we came out from the parlor; “it even seems to me that these ascetic faces do not grow old. And I know men of forty years of age who appear to be sixty, so much have passions worn them out. Why is not every Christian house a monastery? Why do not all men love our good God?”… My aunt was very affectionate; promises of prayers were mutually exchanged.… I am prayed for in many sanctuaries, in many retreats, pious homes of refuge for wounded souls and for timid doves, dwellings where lilies bloom, and where the Holy of Holies makes his habitation. And everywhere, on every coast on which a Catholic hand has planted the Cross of Christ, I am prayed for, in virtue of this great communion of saints, this dogma so divine and so full of comfort, the sweetest of all, it seems to me, giving hope for those who do not yet pray for themselves! Oh! can I wonder that the religious life, to which our Saviour promised a hundred-fold in this world and paradise in the next—this life of self-renunciation and of sacrifice—has stolen my Kate from me? Madame de P——, Lucy’s mother, is seriously ill; and her son the _abbé_, the _grand-vicaire_, the holy priest, the joy and consolation of her heart, is with her. All the _Edwards_ have just left us; Gaston has been ill, and is recovering slowly. His pale, gentle face so little resembles that of the rosy boy who smiled so gaily upon us only a few weeks ago, that we are all pained at the change. I trust God will spare this pretty little angel to dear Lucy; but were the hosts of heaven to open their ranks to receive this little brother, who, however, pitying the mother, would think of pitying the child? Oh! what have I said? In my desire for heaven I was almost forgetting earth!

_Lady Sensible_, Marguérite, is gravely working in the embrasure of the window at a set of baby-linen which she will have made entirely herself. This child will be a remarkable woman; there is something singularly attractive about her; she talks little, but thinks much, and her words are full of solidity and good sense. She is charmingly pretty; last winter, in her little dress of black velvet over a blue silk skirt, she looked like the daughter of a king.

Dearest, here is your letter, in the white hands of Picciola, and a letter from Hélène, triumphantly brought to me by Alix! Kind little angels! who possess the understanding of the heart, and so read mine. Thanks, dear sister; may our Mother in heaven repay to you all the love you bear me!

Margaret leaves to-morrow; she is gone to say good-by to her poor people. What a kind, sweet friend she is! and now the ocean is soon to separate us.

Pray for the travellers, beloved Kate, and for your own Georgina.

SEPTEMBER 13.

This autumn set in icy cold; to-day the weather has been mild and the sun splendid; it was like a resurrection; my spirit revived with nature. How I miss Margaret! She has had a prosperous journey. “The aspect of everything is changed.” God be praised!

A kind visit this morning from a neighbor, the Baroness de T——, mother of three sweet children, whom she brings up herself. This charming woman is in deep mourning for her brother; riches are no shield from the unlooked-for strokes of death. In positions where people are in possession of everything, it must be dreadful suffering to be helpless to detain here below, at the price of all one’s gold, those who are carried off by death. We are said to be on the point of a grievous and terrible crisis; I can easily believe it; it is the general expectation of minds. Everything suffers; all families are stricken in those dearest to them, all is trouble and distress. M. V. R. is dead at Dublin, without confession, without hope, without God! Is there no angel for these poor wanderers, to make one ray of light shine before their eyes? Nelly, the mourning Nelly, confides her grief to me: “What a night of anguish! and what tears I shed! No priest beside this dying bed; my mother in despair, I on my knees, my eyes dried up with weeping, doubting if it were a dream or a reality, and wondering whether so many ardent prayers must be in vain! The only religious ornament in the room was a little picture I had drawn when a child, and which my poor uncle had not observed, or else tolerated it on my account; its subject was the conversion of a sinner. This seemed to me providential. I could not believe that this life, so troublous, so agitated, and so sinful, so far from God and from the practice of religion, could go out without one spark of divine light to illuminate it, or without some thought of penitence finding entrance, which might obtain pardon before eternity.… Alas! I have but one hope, and I cling to that in the fulness of my trouble like one who is shipwrecked to a fragment of the vessel; it is that, in passing judgment on a soul, God is mindful of all the prayers that will be offered for it!”

Poor Nelly! how well I understand her. I hope, I hope; who knows what passes in that supreme moment, in that terrible grappling of death with life, between divine mercy and the sinner, who may in one instant make an act of perfect contrition and love?

Would you like to have a page out of Hélène’s journal, the receptacle of her inmost and most secret confidences, which she left with her mother, and which René and I read with enthusiasm? “‘Knowest thou the land where the orange tree blossoms?’ was the vague question of the melancholy Mignon to all around him; and I, for my part, ask everywhere, ‘Knowest thou the land whither flows all my love? Knowest thou the land to which mount my desires? Knowest thou Carmel, the sacred mountain where I shall possess my God?’ I also could say, “Knowest thou this beloved home, where I have so often sat with gladness in my heart? Knowest thou this mother who loves me with so true a love, this father so fond and tender, these kind, indulgent brothers, this noble-hearted grandmother, all this charming family who have made my life so sweet and golden?… O nature! and I am about to leave all these! I communicated this morning, the Feast of St. Teresa, the illustrious and seraphic lover of God, the fairest flower of Carmel, the glory of the church, a soul so strong and lofty in her perfection that she no longer desired any happiness in this world, and repeated, ‘Lord, let me suffer or die!’ Edouard Turquety, the sweet Catholic poet, has written some beautiful verses on this sublime thought. O great St. Teresa, eagle of love! whose flight reached to such heights, draw me after you; detach me from earth, gain for me that I forget for God all which is not God!

“‘Emporte-moi, douce pensée, Effusion d’un cœur jaloux, Je suis la veuve délaissée Emporte-moi vers mon Epoux.’”[207]

Dear Kate, do you not doubly love our Hélène?

OCTOBER 21.

Do you know the _Meditations on the Way of the Cross_, by the Abbé Perreyre? I find in this book a comprehension of suffering which can only belong to a superior mind, and one which has drunk from one of the bitterest cups of life. There are passages in it which seemed to thrill me, especially this thought, that “trial breaks souls and forces them to shed around them floods of love.” I like to pass before your kind eyes all that I read and admire. René yesterday quoted me a beautiful thought of Mgr. of Orleans on La Moricière: “A man is a prism; the rays of God pass through him; it is not he who is beautiful—it is the rays, it is God; but without him we should not see them.” Read on Sunday, by the same genius, the postscript to the letter of M. Rattazzi; it is admirable for its power, expression, and lofty feeling. The Archbishop of Rennes has written a few lines to Mgr. Dupanloup full of warmth and energy. It is said that our troops are going to Rome. God grant that it may be so, for his own glory, for the safety of Pius IX., and for the honor of our poor France! Oh! must it be written on the page of our history that the eldest daughter of the church has forfeited her mission, and that she has failed to say to the abettors of the revolution, “You strike not my father with your sacrilegious hand without first passing over my body”? I am indignant and amazed at beholding the Catholic world remain as if stupefied when it ought to rise as one man to defend the holy Pontiff. René and his brothers have all served under the Breton hero in the cause of Pius IX. Adrien’s two sons are gone to fight under his banner; they set out of their own accord, after receiving the blessing of their father, mother, and grandmother. Pray for them, my Kate! Gertrude is on her Calvary. Our Brittany will be worthily represented at Rome. _Sursum corda!_ God keep you, my well-beloved!

OCTOBER 31.

Splendid weather! the air full of warm, poetic odors. I have been rather unwell, but am better again; do not be uneasy about me, dearest. Good news from every quarter, but sadness at home, for Gertrude and Adrien are leaving us, having heard that one of their sons is ill at Rome; so they hasten thither with all speed. I should like to accompany them, it is so delightful to travel. Mgr. of Orleans has written to his clergy, requesting prayers for the Pope and the army of Italy. There is just now a certain movement of religious enthusiasm in France. Numerous volunteers are enrolling themselves in the pontifical army, and there are among them those who leave their children, their young wife, or their betrothed; and the bishop says that if there are at the present time mothers weeping over a son who has died a martyr in the holiest of causes, there are those who weep still more bitterly because they have no son.… Is not this the highest expression of Christian patriotism? Rome is the fatherland of the Catholic universe; happy indeed are her defenders!

_Evening._—I have just come in from a long walk, alone, on the sands. René is gone with his brother as far as Tours, whence he will not return before to-morrow; my mother had to write, and to pray; the good _abbé_ had undertaken the charge of all the children; the _grown-up people_ were variously occupied; I wanted to enliven my solitude, and have been to visit my poor people, and in the presence of immensity have lifted up my soul. It was the hour of twilight, which had therefore a double attraction. I love solitude in the evening; the soul, disposed by the calm of nature for meditation and prayer, rises without effort to God. I do not like to shorten these moments, and willingly prolong them until it is dark. There is always a certain solemnity which attaches to things that end. If we thought of it well, how much we should be impressed by the close of a day! How many souls there are who will not see another! How many sheep have this very day quitted the green pastures of the Good Shepherd! How many tears have the angels gathered up! Tears of the mother shed over the coffin of her first-born, over a son who is fighting, over a youth who is going astray; tears of sorrow, of repentance, of holy joy, tears of all, alas! and for every cause. Is there a human eye that knows not tears? Oh! how many things one day contains. It may be a prodigal child brought back; an upright life sanctified by sacrifice, a martyrdom, a consecration to God. It may be an overflowing of evil and impiety, and, on the other hand, prayer poured out in floods before the altar. A great church-festival, a first communion, a far-distant island conquered to the Gospel, a battle gained over the enemies of the faith—these, these are a day! Oh! the history of a day would be long.… Whilst the glittering world, returned from its pleasures and festivities, slumbers beneath its gilded ceilings, the world of charity has already made the angels smile, the world of poverty has already suffered, the world of industry is at work, the apostolic world embarks on the vast ocean or sets foot on unknown shores, the world of science studies and sounds the deep abyss of learning, the world of prayer, the truly Catholic world, prays to God, sings his praises, writes, speaks, teaches, lives for God! Everything revives, and in this immense concert of humanity, wherein are heard so many discordant notes, to which so many voices are daily wanting, the Eternal Ear distinguishes the most imploring notes—the notes of supplication and repentance. Evening comes, and the day ends; a useless day for many of God’s creatures, a golden day for some. And the angels of night spread the shadows over cities and solitudes, while the angel of justice and the angel of mercy, two white-winged seraphs, inscribe in the Book of Life the good and evil of this day; while, in the splendor of eternal light, the heavenly concert incessantly continues.… Oh! when shall we behold this day?… Pale dawns of this world, fleeting hours, days without beauty, you are but a point in a life, and this life has but one day; and this day, what is it “in the ocean of ages,” what is it in Eternity?

Hélène speaks to me of heaven: “Oh! day of deliverance, cloudless day, when I shall behold my God, when I shall drink of the torrent of eternal delights, and mingle my feeble voice with the harmonies of the heavenly Jerusalem, my soul sighs for thee!…”

Edward and Lucy return to us to-morrow, glad and happy; their mother is recovered. Good-night, my Kate!

TO BE CONTINUED.

[205] A “little dinner,” in which everything is usually on a small scale.

[206] “Learned and Studious Women.”

[207] Bear me away, sweet thought, Fruit of a jealous heart; From lonely widowhood, Oh! bear me to my Spouse.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

It was the December of 1775. The British colonies in America were agitated with wild excitement. News had been received of the unsuccessful attack on Quebec by the Continental troops under Montgomery and Arnold, and of the fall of the brave Montgomery.

The friends of the colonial cause had set great hopes on the success of this enterprise, which would give them the command of the St. Lawrence, and deprive the British of a most important arsenal for their permanent supply of troops and munitions of war. They were grieved and desponding over the disastrous result, while the loyalists, rejoicing at the check thus given to the progress of the rebellion, looked confidently for its speedy close, the restoration of the royal governments, and the return of the several provincial governors who had discreetly abdicated at the first outbreak, and retired to safer quarters. No doubt their enthusiastic public demonstrations of joy assisted in fanning to a flame the smouldering elements of resistance among the colonists, who, exasperated at the persistently oppressive measures devised and forced upon them by the mother country, were even beginning to utter whispers of an entire disruption, and a formal assertion of rights, in a declaration of independence.

Near a pleasant village in the northern part of New Jersey there stood—and may be standing yet, for the builders of those days had an eye to permanency in the solid structures they reared—a farmhouse of spacious dimensions, built in the favorite gambrel-roofed style then customary in country dwellings. Mr. Foote, the owner of the mansion, and of many broad acres around it, was a fine specimen of a country gentleman after the old English pattern. Bigoted in his attachment to everything English, he clung tenaciously to all the customs and traditions which his father, in transplanting them to American soil, had cultivated with an ardor all the more vehement for the difficulty of assimilating them to an order of things so entirely different from that in which they had formerly existed. These traditional treasures he had bequeathed to his children as a sacred legacy of far more value than the paltry lands, tenements, and appurtenances they would inherit from him, and so his son continued religiously to regard them.

Early in life he married a lady from the neighboring village who had been reared in the same sentiments of devotion to the mother country. After a few years of happy domestic life in their retired home, she died, leaving him with a family of five lovely daughters. Some years later he married a widow from Philadelphia, whose only child by her former marriage was the wife of a banker in that city, Mr. von Francke.

Not far from the dwelling of Mr. Foote, and still nearer to the village, was the residence of Mr. Thorpe, a handsome building conformed to the fashion of European suburban mansions. He was also an Englishman in his tastes and habits, but of a less tenacious cast than his neighbor, whom he often annoyed by assailing some of his cherished whims and humors. Nevertheless, they lived on terms of the most cordial intimacy and friendship.

Mr. Thorpe married the only child of Mr. Earle, a banker in Philadelphia, who was the senior partner of Mrs. Foote’s son-in-law. She was a beautiful and highly accomplished lady. Endowed with rare ability, discrimination, and firmness, no sophistry could mislead the nice sense of justice which governed all her decisions. Her father’s position and financial operations had opened a wide circle of acquaintance in all the cities of the new world, and his fine social qualities, combined with the fascinations of his gifted daughter—whose mother had died when she was too young to realize the loss—attracted crowds to his hospitable mansion. Great was the surprise in the fashionable city circle among whom she moved when she chose from the host of her admirers a plain country gentleman, of unquestionable merit, it was true, but of very simple, not to say rustic, manners and retiring habits.

She brought to her secluded home all the refined graces and elegant embellishments of her former one, and sustained perfectly, in the midst of her rural associations, the quiet dignity that had always distinguished her; while she continued to exercise the generous hospitality to which she had been accustomed in her father’s house.

Some years previous to the beginning of the war of independence, her father retired from active business, left his affairs in the hands of his partner, Mr. von Francke, and went to share his daughter’s home, now adorned with seven fair sons, so tenderly beloved by their grandfather that he could not bear to be separated from them. New Jersey was then, as it is still, a thoroughfare between the States of the Atlantic coast. From the first settlement it had been the most turbulent of the provinces. Always violently agitated by territorial and political questions, it was prepared to enter with vehemence into the merits of those which had arisen between the colonies and the mother country. In none of them were the exciting topics of the day discussed more fiercely, _pro_ and _con_, than in this.

During the stirring events of the years immediately preceding and following the memorable “’76” the house of Mr. Thorpe, much to the chagrin of his intolerant neighbor, became the rendezvous of many prominent men, most of them old friends of his father-in-law, of all shades of political opinion, and of every religious and non-religious party.

Through the holidays of Christmas and New Year’s the two families always entertained a multitude of friends, and there was a round of festivities between them, in which the neighboring villagers participated. Mr. Foote, who, as might be expected, was a Tory of the most malignant type, selected his guests from the class who were in sympathy with him, and accused his more moderate neighbor of treason, because he, his father-in-law, and his lovely wife tolerated persons of different views, and acknowledged the force of their objections to British rule.

Fifty years later it was my good fortune, among the felicitous chances of a specially favored childhood, to pass the greater portion of three years under the roof of a house built after the precise pattern of Mr. Foote’s, though of somewhat smaller dimensions, in a little village on the south bank of the St. Lawrence. Here his youngest daughter, Anna, resided, and shared her home with her step-sister, Mrs. von Francke, from Philadelphia, the widow of Mr. Earle’s partner, who occupied a suite of rooms set apart for her use, and was always attended by her waiting-woman, a smiling German matron somewhat advanced in years and very fond of children.

It was my delight the moment school hours were over and the ceremony of dinner despatched—for the habits of the stately old English home, and the late dinners with their successive courses of fish, flesh, and fowl, were as rigidly preserved through all the changes and chances of founding a home in the wilderness as they had been under more favorable circumstances—to mount the stairs with “Auntie Francke,” now much past eighty, but as sprightly as myself, and while my companions, the daughters of the house, were indulging in a wild game of romps outside, draw my little arm-chair—she had a half-dozen of them provided for the small members of the household—to her side in the corner of the cheerful wood fireplace, and listen to her stories of other times.

As I have said, she was then past eighty, but the certainties of a position which placed her out of the reach of such cares and anxieties as surround ordinary lives, united with a serene temperament alive to all tender sympathies, had preserved the youth of her heart to atone for the ravages of time and adorn the decaying shrine with undying verdure and sweetness.

After the lapse of more than fifty years, how well do I remember the graceful attitudes of the erect form, the carefully-adjusted drapery of her rich, old-time costume, and, above all, the loving gleam of her mild black eye as it rested upon me at such times! The maternal instinct of her affectionate heart, never having found its proper object in offspring of her own, overflowed towards all the young within her reach, and her room was a perfect museum of winking and crying dolls, strange puzzles, dissected pictures, flocks of magnetized ducks and geese, with miniature ponds wherein to exercise them by aid of a steel pencil—of all wonderful toys, in short, which she procured on her annual trips to Philadelphia, and was wont to set as traps to catch the little folk she so dearly loved. Her waiting-woman was an apt assistant in pursuit of such small game; and it has often been a wonder to me since how, with their precise, methodical ways and exquisitely tidy, punctilious habits, they could endure much less enjoy, the dire confusion and anarchy which resulted from these captures.

For my own part, I was by nature a quiet, reserved child. Though I could join tolerably well in a wild frolic, I preferred the chimney-corner and a story, for which I was a most persistent beggar when there was any chance of success. From my earliest childhood stories relating to history, and especially to the history of our own country, enthralled me beyond all others. This fancy had been fed by constant association in my own home with grandparents who had borne an active part in the scenes of the Revolution. They entertained many old friends whose memories were also stored with incidents and anecdotes of that period. Thus their interest was kept alive and their conversation constantly directed to the political and social events of those days, which opened the mind of their eager young listener, almost prematurely, to subjects of grave import quite beyond what would seem natural or appropriate for one of tender years.

What a treasure, then, was “Auntie Francke” to me when I was taken from my quiet home in the woods, and left a trembling, homesick little stranger—much less as to size, indeed, than in age—under the hospitable roof of these dear friends of my mother in former years! On the score of that friendship I was received there to attend the village school with the daughters of the family, all older than myself. Mrs. von Francke’s room became at once my solace and delight, and even the _Tales of the Arabian Nights_ melted into utter insipidity before the wondrous sketches she could give of “the times that tried men’s souls.” For she had entertained daily at her home in Philadelphia, as familiar friends, General Washington, Pulaski, De Kalb, Rochambeau, La Fayette, De Grasse—all the foreign worthies, in short, together with a host of our own countrymen whose names will be household words as long as our nation exists. Her husband was brought into constant intercourse with such men by virtue of his occupation, and his inclination led him to extend to them most freely the hospitalities of his home.

When my companions would break into my chosen hiding-place in search of me, and find me the fascinated listener of their aged relative, they would warn her to beware what yarns she spun for my amusement; “for,” they said, “she will surely write them down and keep the record. If you could see what she puts upon her slate in school that has no relation to the horrors of arithmetic, you would believe she is to be of the unhappy number who take such notes!”

Whether acting upon the hint or no, I did indeed, when pondering in my own little nest of a room over what I had heard, jot down from time to time many scraps in the words of my kind old friend, from portions of which the following sketch is gathered.

* * * * *

On the 24th of December, 1775, a large assemblage met at the house of Mr. Thorpe. The guests, many of them former friends and acquaintances of Mr. Earle, were brought together from different cities of the Atlantic States, with a sprinkling of the country friends of Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe. At the same time an equally large party assembled at the residence of my step-father, Mr. Foote, among them, of course, my husband and myself. The object of both was to celebrate the festivals of Christmas and the New Year according to old-time customs. It was arranged that they should all join in Christmas festivities at Mr. Foote’s, and open the New Year with Mr. Thorpe.

At that period, when the minds of the country were fermenting over questions of vital importance, it was not to be hoped that such leaders of the disaffected as were entertained under Mr. Thorpe’s friendly roof—with whom it was half-believed that he and his family were in perfect accord—would mingle very harmoniously with the guests selected by Mr. Foote for their high-toned loyalty to king and church. I confess to having watched the social results of intercourse between such discordant elements with great trepidation. Thanks, however, to the crystallizing power of courtly etiquette, now lamentably on the decline, the mutual irritation was suppressed or kept within limits of strict decorum, and the wonted hilarities of the joyous season were undisturbed by anything more serious than certain heart-burnings connected with questions of precedence on the line of march to the dining-hall. These questions were decided according to the political preferences of the respective hosts, quite irrespective of rank and station. Of course the decision rankled none the less fiercely on that account. I noticed, however, that at the table of Mr. Foote his neighbor’s guests accepted their allotments, even when placed “below the salt”—as the most prominent among them were sure to be—with a graceful nonchalance which, if assumed, was a height of self-control unattainable by the haughty friends of their host.

It was amusing to see how the “tables were turned” when it became the part of Mr. Thorpe to play the host. I was placed near my step-father, and listened carefully to his remarks addressed _sotto-voce_, as the different courses were brought in and removed, to his particular friend, the former private secretary of the ex-governor of New Jersey.

“To think,” he exclaimed indignantly, “of that young upstart Carroll, an acknowledged papist and open promoter of disaffection and disloyalty, being invited to take precedence of such as you in the house of a friend of mine!”

“I yield the precedence with pleasure, I assure you,” was the reply. “This young Carroll is a man of no ordinary mark. Of his political errors, if errors they must be called, I can only say it is to be deplored that British rule should have furnished him with the weapons he wields so powerfully against it. He is likely to prove a weighty and influential foe in politics and in his profession. I have been present in court when he was unwinding webs cunningly woven by leaders of the Maryland bar; and, analyzing them thread by thread, he would expose their flimsiness with such convincing clearness and simplicity that the most unlettered juryman could comprehend it as fully as the learned jurists. He has wonderful command of language, and, with no attempt at eloquence, astonishing power in swaying the judgments and feelings of his audience.”

“The more shame for him!” exclaimed Mr. Foote; “when he might exert so potent an influence for king and country, that he should stoop to pervert his powers, and become the demagogue of a vile mob, for purposes of paltry private ambition!”

“That could hardly be his object. The suggestions of private ambition are all in the opposite direction. He has everything to lose in the probabilities before him, and but little to gain from the bare possibility of success in the future for the cause he has embraced.”

“Yes, thank God! there is scarcely the bare possibility of such a result. With the whole power of Great Britain against them, the rebels have little to hope for, and the punishment of this nefarious rebellion will be speedy and sure! Already the first note of triumph is sounded in the defeat of their troops before Quebec!”

“Perhaps you are right,” his friend replied; “but I have not been a careless observer of what is passing, and, if I do not greatly mistake the temper of this people, that disaster will only inspire them with new energy and determination. I regard the selection of George Washington to command their forces as a far more threatening token for British interests than this defeat at Quebec is for theirs. With such a leader, and the great mass of the people perfectly united through the length and breadth of this immense country to sustain him—even admitting that in the oldest settlements they are sparse, and those settlements widely scattered, and that their chief strength for the struggle lies in the very weakness and insufficiency of their resources—I confess I have grave misgivings that the conflict will be fearful and the victory dearly bought.”

“No doubt they will fight desperately, and will be sure of every papist in the country to a man! We have been altogether too tolerant with these seditious subjects of the pope. The rascals have crept in silently, until the provinces are filled with them. Scarcely a place of any size, except Boston, can be found that has not a popish Mass-house in full operation. They are gaining influence rapidly, too, with the American people. Observe, for instance, the company invited by our host. Yonder, next to that arch-traitor from Boston, John Hancock, and the plebeian philosopher, Ben. Franklin, sit a number of printers, five of whom, from as many different cities, are rank papists, kindred spirits of the guild, though not very polished. It is surprising to notice how many of the pope’s emissaries are printers! Convenient for disseminating error and sedition, you know; make good fighters, too. Then, on the opposite side of the table, are those fiery Irishmen, Fitzsimmons, Barry, and Moylan, with a long line of their fellows—rebels and papists all! Moylan has three brothers, I am told, of the same stamp. Near to us are French and Germans, of whom I know nothing but that they too belong to the pope, so it is fair to suppose they favor the rebellion. Then there is the Maryland delegation, led by Carroll—a pretty strong showing for his Holiness at the New Year’s banquet of a private Protestant gentleman! It is too late to remedy the evil now, but it ought to have been taken in hand long ago. If it had been dealt with effectually in the beginning, I greatly doubt whether the colonies would now be in the condition we deplore.”

“It is not easy to deal with it effectually. The province of Massachusetts Bay was very vigilant and severe from the start to keep them out, or to exterminate them when they crept in, but they are there now in considerable force.”

“Yes, indeed; for I have been credibly informed that they not only lent their aid in that villanous tea-riot, but that the Puritan ranks at Lexington and Bunker Hill were largely increased by the pestilent dogs, who fought like tigers, and could not be made to understand when they were soundly whipped! Well, well! we shall see what is to come. It looks dark enough now, and, if matters are to go on as they threaten, I shall accept the invitation of the home government to loyal subjects, and remove my family to Nova Scotia.”

Here he struck the key-note of the strain that thrilled my heart with apprehension. I fell into a painful reverie, which so absorbed me that I heard no more. I knew well that secret agents had been through the country describing large and desirable tracts of land in Canada and Nova Scotia, to be given to all who would withdraw from the sections in revolt; and proclamations to that effect had also been recently published.

Should he fulfil his threat, my beloved mother would be removed to a great distance from me, and the difficulties of travelling in times of such disturbance were so great that it must be long before I could see her again, if ever. Then I grieved to think of a separation from my dear Anna, the youngest and loveliest of the five sisters, many years my junior, and my special darling. I had been permitted to take her home with me after the holidays every year, and keep her through the remainder of the winter. Now I was no longer to enjoy that privilege. Besides all this, I knew that a strong attachment existed between her and Charles Thorpe, which had been forming from their childhood with the full approbation of their parents. What troubles might now be in store for them also!

Indeed, as I meditated upon the public, social, and domestic aspect of affairs, I could see nothing cheering or encouraging. Here was this little rural village, whose inhabitants were entirely divided among themselves—a type of the national condition: fathers against sons, wives opposed to their husbands, sons and daughters-in-law against their fathers-in-law. It seemed to form a present and dismal realization of the description given by our Lord.

The minds of old and young, and of all classes in society, were so pervaded with a sense of impending evil as to cast a dark shadow over the festive season, and cause its gay assemblies to take the character of political meetings, where matters of fearful import were discussed with bated breath.

It was well known that Mr. Thorpe, his father-in-law, and their distinguished guests, with other leaders of the disaffected who were constantly arriving and departing, held conclaves every night that extended far into the “wee sma’ hours,” many of which my husband was summoned to attend, to the intense displeasure of my irascible step-father, who denounced them all as a pack of infamous traitors, for whose treasonable practices hanging was the only proper remedy. Upon the whole, rankling irritation on the one part, and gloomy forebodings on the other, took the place of the cheerfulness proper to the season; and when the parties at the two houses dispersed to go their several ways, the leave-taking was a sad one for all.

Another year passed, and the Christmas of 1776 arrived. What changes those few months had wrought! Mr. Thorpe and his three oldest sons, John, Nathan, and Charles, had joined the Continental army early in the year. The father commanded the regiment of militia in which his sons served as privates. In one of the first engagements John was killed. Soon after Mr. Thorpe himself was brought home wounded and dying. He survived long enough to bequeath the cause to his wife and her father, and to receive the assurance that their lives and those of his surviving sons, with all their earthly possessions, should be devoted to its interests.

Mr. Foote had fulfilled his threat, and removed his family to Nova Scotia about the time when his life-long friend joined the “rebel” army. I had a brief and mournful interview with my mother before they left, and a stormy parting with my surly step-father, who was too much incensed against my husband and myself, for embracing the cause he so cordially hated, to be even coolly civil. His indignation was increased by the suspicion that we had influenced my mother’s sympathies in the same direction, though she very carefully abstained from manifesting any such tendency out of respect for his honest though misguided prejudices.

With him went a multitude of Church-of-England folk who were greatly regretted in that neighborhood; for they very generally acted from a sincere conviction of duty, and did not meddle unpleasantly with the opinions and decisions of their neighbors. A still greater number of Methodists went from New Jersey and Maryland to Canada and Nova Scotia, and their departure was the occasion for universal rejoicing to the friends of the country. The only regret was that they left a sufficient faction of their brethren to act as spies and informers in every village and neighborhood, and to bring all who differed from them in politics into serious trouble. We used to think we defined their position and character when we said, “They are all hand and glove with the _Hessians_!”

The Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July in that year had placed the day high in the calendar of those which mark the most glorious epochs in the world’s history. Meantime, discouragements had accumulated along the track of our army, until they culminated in that dreary autumnal retreat through New Jersey before the British forces which dispersed the hopes of our people as the winds scatter the leaves of the season. A little later the British took possession of Rhode Island. In the despair which followed these disastrous events society became utterly disorganized; and when Lord Howe and his brother-commanders of the British land and marine forces issued proclamations offering full indemnity and protection to all who would “return to their allegiance,” multitudes, among whom were many who had been accounted our most steadfast friends, accepted the offer from alarm, even while their sympathies and best wishes were with the cause they thus abandoned. Not one Catholic was of their number; they had no faith in British promises.

Great was the revulsion when our troops rallied to such glorious purpose at Trenton and Princeton! Those who had fallen away in the hour of adversity, and found to their sorrow how utterly worthless were Lord Howe’s paper “protections” to shield them from the vile outrages of the plundering Hessians, now returned in crowds, offering themselves and all they possessed to General Washington to further his efforts. His headquarters were made that winter in a town near the little village where Mrs. Thorpe resided. Mr. von Francke visited him frequently at his quarters during the winter as the financial agent of many friends of the cause in New England and the Southern States. I improved those occasions to accompany him and visit my dear friend, Mrs. Thorpe.

She was exerting all her energies, time, and money to prepare clothing for the soldiers and necessary supplies for the army. The buzz of spinning-wheels and the clack of domestic looms were heard in her house from day-dawn until late at night. That house was a workshop of tailors and shoemakers, and her agents ransacked the country for leather wherewith to make shoes. Every friend who visited her was pressed into the service, and during each precious moment the busy needles were plied and the knitting-needles clicked while we were visiting and chatting of the past, the present, and the prospects of the future. Most religiously did she thus fulfil the promise made to her dying husband, and seemed to find solace for her great sorrow in occupying herself constantly to aid the struggle for which her beloved ones had given their lives.

My heart ached for poor Charles, dejected and lonely in his separation from Anna, and grieving over the stern refusal of her father to permit any intercourse between them unless he would abandon the rebels and join the standard of King George. To add to his distress, he had heard, through a friend of Anna, that her father had determined she should accept the suit of an influential officer of the government in Nova Scotia, a very dissolute man, who was captivated by her beauty upon their first meeting at a dance in the house of the governor. Charles knew so well her father’s despotic rule over his family that he feared she might be compelled to comply with his commands.

Deeply as I sympathized with the young people, I could not afford them the aid they entreated for communicating with each other through my letters to my mother. The principles of my religion forbade that I should do any act to encourage disobedience to a father. Yet I could not regret that the kindness of General Washington made amends for my refusal, by furnishing better facilities for their purpose than I could have furnished.

The three following years passed on, marked by fluctuating fortunes and many hardships for our devoted troops and their dauntless leader. The surrender of Burgoyne in the autumn of ’77, and the alliance with France which followed, had awakened bright hopes of a speedy and successful termination of the conflict, but crushing reverses and bitter disappointments soon came.

The state of the currency baffled the strongest efforts and exhausted the resources of wise and able financiers. My husband, who was accounted extremely clever in affairs connected with the exchequer, was often driven to his wits’ end to provide for fearful contingencies, and then to confess his utter inability to meet further demands.

Mr. Earle placed his large fortune at the disposal of his country, and died soon after. His daughter gave better treasures when, with Spartan firmness, she yielded all her noble sons, one after another, for its defence.

In the terribly hard winter of 1779-80 General Washington again established his headquarters in New Jersey, in Mrs. Thorpe’s immediate neighborhood, and I went frequently to visit her when it was necessary for Mr. von Francke to go on financial missions to that place. Upon one of these occasions, early in the spring, what was my surprise to be greeted on the threshold by my beloved Anna, and to find that she was the happy bride of my desponding young friend of yore, Charles Thorpe, now a dashing lieutenant and prime favorite with the commander-in-chief. Their happiness was not unclouded, however; for they had been married without her father’s knowledge or consent. He had made every arrangement for her immediate marriage with the man whom he had chosen and whom she despised, and sent her to Boston to procure her _trousseau_. Very opportunely, General Washington made a journey to Boston about that time, with Charles in company as one of his _aides_. The wedding took place at the house of the friend with whom she was stopping. Many of Mr. Earle’s distinguished friends were present, and General Washington gave away the bride.

Her father was so enraged when he heard of it that he forbade her to enter his house again, or to expect that he would ever own her as his daughter.

* * * * *

When Mrs. von Francke reached this point in her story, she gave a bunch of keys and spoke some words in German to her waiting-woman, who soon brought forth from some hidden recess a small mother-of-pearl casket, with silver binding and clasps, of exquisite workmanship, and a package neatly folded and enclosed in an embroidered white linen case. The casket was first opened, and displayed a superb set of pearl jewelry, consisting of various ornaments for the coiffure, ear-rings, necklace, bracelets, brooch, waist-clasp, and buckles for the slippers. It was presented to Anna by Mr. von Francke when she departed for Nova Scotia. From the other package, after undoing many fastenings, designed to shield its contents from any possible contact with the air and dust, she drew a magnificent white satin dress, made in the old-time fashion, with an immensely wide skirt—for the crinoline of those days attained an amplitude far beyond the most extravagant expansion achieved a few years since by the leaders of _ton_—and a very long train. Around the lower part of the skirt a heavy pattern in leaves and flowers was embroidered with pure silver spangles and bugles[208] drawn on with silver thread; a tiny pair of white satin shoes which would rival in size the celebrated glass slippers of the fairy tale, embroidered with material and pattern to match the dress, with the toes pointed, and the points turned back until they nearly reached the pearl buckle on the instep; a splendid white thread-lace over-dress, much in the mode of the modern _polonaise_; a very long veil of the same material, attached by the inevitable orange-flowers—these completed the suit, and, with the pearls, formed the bridal costume fifty years before of Anna Foote, now Mrs. Charles Thorpe.

After showing me two miniatures, painted on ivory in the most finished and delicate style, and mounted in elegant gold lockets—the one of Anna in her bridal dress, and the other of Charles in the full military costume of that day—the articles were all carefully returned to their receptacle and Mrs. von Francke resumed her narrative.

* * * * *

During the long visit I paid Mrs. Thorpe at that time—the spring of 1780—the village where the army was quartered, and the town near by, were the scenes of many parties, balls, and entertainments of every kind.

The French minister, M. Luzerne, successor of the first minister from France, M. Gerard, came to pass some weeks at the headquarters of the commander-in-chief. He was accompanied by many distinguished foreigners. Among them was Don Juan de Miralles, resident at Philadelphia, from the Spanish court. He had visited us frequently in that city with Count Pulaski and MM. Gerard and Luzerne. He was a most affable and accomplished gentleman and an exemplary Christian.

Upon their arrival the gay festivities were kept up with renewed zeal and brilliancy. But while in full activity they were brought to a sad and sudden close by the death of this gentleman after an illness of only two days. Mr. von Francke brought a Spanish priest to attend his last hours and conduct the funeral solemnities, which were celebrated in the most imposing and impressive manner. General Washington and his staff, all the foreign officers and ministers in full costume, walked as chief mourners. Many members of Congress came to pay this last tribute of respect to one who had, by his shining virtues and gentle manners, endeared himself to all who knew him.

When Charleston, S. C., was taken by the British in May, 1780, Nathan Thorpe was severely wounded. He was carried to the house of a German Catholic in that city to whom Mr. von Francke had given him letters of introduction. There he lingered between life and death, as it were, for many weeks. He was faithfully attended night and day by a disabled Irish Catholic soldier, who brought an Irish priest to instruct him and administer the last consoling rites of the church to him in his extremity. His youth and a robust constitution prevailed, however, and he recovered. During this interval an attachment had been formed between him and a lovely daughter of his kind host, to whom he was married the ensuing autumn. As his health was not sufficiently reinstated to permit his return to the army, he entered upon the practice of his profession as a lawyer in Charleston, and finally achieved brilliant success and a large fortune therein.

In June of that year Knyphausen, with his Hessians, made a destructive raid through New Jersey, sparing neither friend nor foe; not even their Methodist cronies and instigators escaped rough treatment and severe losses, for which they received but slight commiseration from their fellow-sufferers, whose interests they had done all they could to injure and betray. Mrs. Thorpe’s property was seriously damaged and many valuable animals slaughtered by the merciless ruffians.

In July of the same year the French fleet under Count de Grasse arrived, and was welcomed with great joy by the whole country. The French troops commanded by Count Rochambeau were transported on these vessels. Soon after their arrival we became acquainted with that illustrious commander. I saw him for the first time at the celebration of Mass in our humble chapel. He was accompanied by Marquis La Fayette and Count de Grasse. After Mass Mr. von Francke, who had been in correspondence with them before, introduced me to them, and invited them to dine with us in our home, which invitation they accepted, and from that time they never failed to visit us when they were in Philadelphia.

In August the Continental forces, under General Gates, fought the bloody battle of Camden, S. C., and were defeated chiefly through the shameful failure of the militia to do their duty. The Maryland regiments, however—many of whom were Catholics—under their brave Catholic commander, Baron de Kalb, fought with unyielding firmness and desperation, atoning as far as possible for the poltroonery of their Protestant comrades of Virginia and North Carolina.

When even General Gates fled from the field, the Catholic soldiers advanced steadily and firmly to fight or die with the glorious De Kalb, who, when he saw others flying, drew his sword, and, shouting to his dauntless soldiers of the Maryland and Pennsylvania lines, “Stand firm, my boys, for I am too old to fly!” fell soon after, covered with wounds. The whole nation was in mourning when the news of his death was received. Demonstrations of sorrow were made in every city, and requiem Masses offered in the Catholic churches for the repose of his soul. Congress voted that the country should rear a fitting monument to his memory. It is still cherished by every true American heart, and will be as long as our people are faithful to themselves and to their country. He was one of Mr. von Francke’s dearest friends for many years, and we mourned for him as for a brother.

Through the remainder of that year, and during the spring and summer of 1781, discouragements in every form, and disasters that would have utterly dismayed a less determined people, surrounded our hapless country. The baseless currency became so depreciated as to be almost worthless. The iniquity of speculators, and the flood of counterfeits poured upon the colonies by Lord Howe, greatly increased difficulties sufficient in themselves to overwhelm the nation. Yet the courage and resolution of the people never faltered, and were fully responded to and sustained by the firmness of their representatives in the legislative assemblies of the different States and in Congress.

The heavy clouds began to break and our national prospects to brighten in the early autumn of 1781. We had so often seen our fairest hopes suddenly blighted that we hardly dared to accept such promising tokens as seemed to be given from time to time only to save us from utter despair. Now, however, we were destined to witness a consummation, sudden, unlooked-for, and beyond the wildest expectations of the most sanguine, in the entire defeat and surrender of the British troops under Cornwallis, on the 19th of October in that year—an event which virtually closed the war and secured our independence.

Intelligence of this astounding event was conveyed through the whole country, with the speed of the wind, by special couriers despatched in every direction. It was said that the fine horses of Methodist Tories—which had been spared by the British troops when they captured all that were of any value belonging to our people—performed splendid exploits of speed in disseminating the glorious news, to the unutterable indignation of their crestfallen owners!

Our nation, so long accustomed to desolating evils, now burst forth into frantic demonstrations of joy. Bonfires blazed on every hill. Public parades, and processions with banners, crowded the streets of every town. Illuminations and fireworks turned the darkness of night into noonday splendor. The rural populations, old and young, flocked to the villages and cities to join in the universal expressions of jubilant patriotism. Services of thanksgiving were held by Protestants. High Masses were offered in Catholic churches, and the _Te Deum_ was chanted there by Catholics marching in procession under the floating colors of the triumphant “Stars and Stripes.”

The members of Congress, of the Supreme Executive Council, and the Assembly of Pennsylvania, by special invitation of the French minister, attended in our church in Philadelphia during the celebration of divine service and thanksgiving for the capture of Lord Cornwallis. Our French pastor, Abbé Baudole, delivered an eloquent address upon the occasion.

New Jersey was more noisy than all the other States in her public manifestations of triumph. Nor was it unfit that she should be, since none had suffered so much in furnishing a common battle-ground and thoroughfare for the conflicting forces. Neither was it strange that she showed little toleration for the Tories at whose hands she had received persecutions, injuries, and insults of untold numbers and magnitude. Here, as elsewhere, the Catholic voice, the first that was raised in support of the conflict for independence, was also the first to plead, through both clergy and laity, for toleration and leniency toward these relentless foes of our country in her darkest hours.

Early in November we entertained a large and joyful party at our house. At our request General Washington and his lady presided at the reception of the guests. All the French and German officers with their attendants, the foreign ministers, and many of our own distinguished countrymen, military and civic, were present. Charles and Anna Thorpe were of my household at that time.

A succession of splendid private entertainments and public banquets was given in Philadelphia.

The joyful excitement was kept up by the nation through the following winter, and Mr. von Francke was absent frequently as the invited guest at public festivals which would not excuse him from attendance, although his health was rapidly declining.

In May, 1782, my rejoicing was quenched for ever by the painful event which left me a widow. The long-sustained strain and mental anxiety to which my husband was subjected during all those years of national embarrassment had so worn upon his frame that, when final success was assured and the strain no longer required, he sank into a decline, for the arrest of which all remedies proved unavailing, and survived only a few weeks. No hero that gave his life on any of those bloody battle-fields was, more truly than he, a martyr for his country.

Mrs. Thorpe, Charles, and Anna were with me during the distressing scene and until I had consigned my beloved to his final resting-place. He had for so many years belonged to the public that it claimed the right to conduct the ceremonial, outside of the church; and it was celebrated with most impressive solemnity, both as a religious and civic rite.

From that time Philadelphia became intolerable to me. I closed my house and accompanied my kind and gentle friend to the home in New Jersey which was always open to the afflicted. Here I remained until Charles removed to St. Lawrence County, N. Y.—then a dense wilderness—with his family. He had received a grant of lands from the government, which he exchanged for an extensive territory in that vicinity.

To that wilderness I came with my dear Anna to share the hardships and privations inseparable from the attempt to found a home in such a region. With these trials, wholly new to us, we have also received and enjoyed many blessings. She is surrounded by a blooming group of sons and daughters, and blessed with smiling, prattling grandchildren. We have seen a fine village grow up around us, and our country has been crowned with unexampled prosperity.

The one sole cloud over Anna’s happiness has been the stern refusal of my obstinate step-father, who still lives at a very advanced age, to forgive the daughter he so cruelly banished from his heart and home. I have often thought that, if the colonies had been subdued, he would have welcomed her back long ago. She has written many letters to him, but they are always returned unopened. My own dear mother died the year following Anna’s marriage. I saw her but once after her removal to Nova Scotia. The separation from her was one of the greatest trials of my life. Few indeed who have lived so long have suffered less from severe afflictions than I, and my heart swells with gratitude daily when I recall the varied blessings which the beneficent hand of Providence has poured upon my lengthened pilgrimage.

* * * * *

Some years later, when Mrs. von Francke was past ninety, I was on a visit to the dear friends of whom I have discoursed in this rambling sketch, when they received a message from Nova Scotia that the aged Mr. Foote was dying, and could not leave the world in peace until he had seen and been reconciled with his long-banished daughter. He requested that Charles should go with her.

There was bustling and packing in great haste. In a few hours after the message arrived they were on board a steamer, bound for Quebec, _en route_ for Nova Scotia. Mr. Foote lived some weeks after their arrival, and would not allow them to leave him for an hour. They remained until after the funeral.

Mrs. von Francke survived her step-father but a few months. All the elder members of the family have long since passed away.

It is many years since I have seen the lovely home of my childhood, or that other one, on the bank of the dear old St. Lawrence, where I passed so large a portion of childhood’s happy hours; but the memories connected with both, and with the dear friends who made those hours so happy, will never pass away.

[208] Elongated beads.

CONSUELO.

When, from the countless stars That gem the azure vault above, One flames and dies Across our skies, We mourn so bright a light Is lost to sight; And then—one brighter comes in view. In trackless wastes Our stars point true, And, dying, Ever thus renew.

When, from the countless _homes_ That deck this earth of ours, One altar fire Flames but to expire, We mourn a loved hearth So lost to earth; And then—we build a new. Wandering the world, Our hearth-fires woo, And, dying, Ever thus renew.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._ FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.

XIII.

In the meantime Sir Thomas More had returned to his home at Chelsea. He felt at first a slight decree of uneasiness on account of the indiscretions of the Holy Maid of Kent, the evident malice with which Cromwell had drawn them out, and the eagerness with which he had interpreted them.

But as he was accustomed to resign into the hands of God the entire care of his future, and as there appeared to be nothing with which he could reproach himself in the short and accidental relations he had had with that woman, he soon recovered his former tranquillity, and thought no more but of how he might be able to render some new service to the queen. He knew she had set out for Leicester Abbey, and he had already found means of writing to the abbot, whom he remembered having received at the chancelry on some particular business concerning the rights of the abbey, and the father abbot had appeared, as well as he could remember, to be an honest and intelligent man.

Feeling satisfied that the queen had, ere that time, received his communications, he had gone towards evening to take a walk with his children in the country.

They were all seated on the green slope at Chelsea. The Thames flowed at their feet; the freshness of the verdure, the perfumed breeze that arose from the meadow, the balmy sweetness of the air, all united to render the moment a delicious one.

“See, dear father,” said Margaret, who was sitting at his feet (she always kept as near him as possible), “see how beautiful the river is! How it comes with its silver waves to kiss the rich and verdant meadow which extends so far before us! Look at those flocks of sheep, following the shepherds to the fold; how docile they are and obedient to their voices! And those dogs, how active and intelligent! Oh! how I love the evening, when the horizon yet burns with the red glow of the sun as he descends to light up other skies.” And Margaret paused to admire in silence the pure and inspiring beauties of nature by which she was surrounded, while her eyes sought those of her father, as if to interrogate him.

More smiled as he regarded her.

“Well, my dear daughter,” he said, “why not speak thy whole thought?”

For he loved to listen to the forcible sentiments she sometimes expressed, so characteristic of her melancholy and enthusiastic temperament.

“Why ask that, father?” she replied; “for my thought is sad—sad as all things that end. The day has gone, never more to return! It is like a precious pearl that has been unstrung from a necklace where all are carefully numbered.”

“Thou art right, my daughter, and may be the happiness I have enjoyed this day in the midst of you will never more return!”

“What sayest thou, my father?” cried Margaret, alarmed. “Nay, wouldst thou leave us, then, and couldst thou live without thy children?”

“No, my child, no; but observe you not how the days of man are like the swift shuttle that flies to and fro in the hands of the weaver, and which he uses to trace, one after another, divers designs?”

“This one pleases me much,” said Margaret, smiling, “and I would like it to stop here.”

As she said this, she extended her hand toward Roper, who brought her a large bouquet of daisies[209] he had gathered for her in the fields.

“Here is my name written on my forehead by the hand of Roper,” she continued; and she placed the pretty white flowers amid the dark tresses of her lovely hair.

The father admired his beautiful young daughter, in whom, indeed, youth and beauty were united in all their brilliancy. Her small hands rested one upon the other; her white robe hung in graceful folds around, defining her perfectly-moulded form; her eyes, calm and serene in expression, yet shone with a thousand fires; one could read in their depths the strength and vigor of this young soul just entering upon life. Those features so calm and lovely, that union of charms and perfections, brought joy and happiness to the depths of the devoted father’s soul. He gazed at her in silence.

“A ray of eternal beauty lights up this beautiful countenance,” he said to himself. “This flower is born of my blood; it is being of my being, soul of my soul. Oh! blessed, blessed for ever be this child whom the Lord hath given to me! Margaret, my daughter,” he said after a moment’s silence, “tell me, I pray you, what is beauty?”

“Beauty?” replied Margaret, smiling at the unexpected question; and she raised towards him her eyes, whose lovely expression anticipated her answer.… “Well, … beauty is an undefinable thing,” she continued. “We recognize it in everything. Our souls are made to see it, to admire and love it; but I cannot, I believe, define it. It is there, and immediately we are enraptured with it. It is a ray of the glory of God; it is his power which flashes before our eyes, and our hearts are at once transported. The beautiful animal, full of life, strength, and agility, whose light and rapid steps seem scarcely to bend the delicate herbage of the field, his glossy coat permitting you to count his veins and admire the graceful and elegant proportions of his form; the plants rich with flowers and weighty with fruits; the birds with variegated plumage and tints of a thousand colors; the pure, azure skies of summer, the stars of night—such is beauty, my father; I feel it, but I cannot describe it to you otherwise.”

“Then, my dear child, what think you of the Being who has drawn all these things out of nothing, and who, by his powerful word, has given them everything, and preserves and watches over them all?”

“That he is,” replied Margaret earnestly, “the source and the veritable plenitude of all beauty; and that if we could see him either with the eyes of the body or those of the soul, we should be perfectly happy, since he must be, and is necessarily, the sovereign perfection of all that delights in this world. And if you speak to me of eloquence, that moral beauty of soul which subdues and carries everything before it, I find in it but a new expression of that Sovereign Intelligence who has placed in our hearts the faculty of feeling and loving beauty, the strength and elevation of thought, which an Intelligence superior to our own is charged by it to communicate to us.”

“Then, my dear child, what think you of the unbeliever?”

“What do I think of him?” said Margaret, intently regarding Sir Thomas. “I will tell you: I do not think he exists.”

“How say you! that he exists not?”

“No, he does not exist, because he cannot. God has created us free, but that freedom has bounds. We cannot uncreate or make ourselves cease to be, and in the same way we cannot destroy our reason beyond a certain point; we may deny the truth with our lips, but we cannot prevent our hearts from believing it; we may arrange, assert, relate, or invent a falsehood, but we cannot convince ourselves that it is true. The sad science of the atheist compels him to remove God as far as possible from himself; to call him by a name formed of several strange syllables which do not represent him under any form to his mind; then when he has come to drive him beyond the bounds of his narrow intelligence, he denies his Creator with that tongue, with that life, and in the name of that reason which he received from him. Such a man must be a liar, although he would not be willing to walk proudly in the public ways with the tablet of liar attached to his shoulders.”

More smiled at the strong comparison of Margaret; and as he derived an extreme pleasure from these philosophical conversations, he continued thus:

“You believe, then, there are no atheists?”

“No,” replied Margaret, “there is not one in good faith, because the most ordinary reason is enough to prevent all doubt that the admirable chain of all being, over whom man is established master and king, has not been created by itself, and that it is the work of a Sovereign Intelligence who has foreseen and established all things by a science of prevision and of power far beyond all that we are able to see, all that we can feel, and all that we possess.”

“Nevertheless, Margaret, they will tell you that there is a force, a blind power, who has created all that.”

“Then,” replied Margaret ironically, “I will ask them what they understand by a ‘blind power’; for power means, it seems to me, that which _can_; but that which is blind can do, can will naught. Those, then, who by a happy chance see, wish, and know something, I would ask to add to the stature of a man the height of one cubit; to organize a head that understands how to solve mathematical problems, to compose music, poetry, to learn, remember, and speak. What think you, my father: would it not be very convenient to have in your cabinet some of those thinking heads, arranged on a shelf, as are pitchers and pipkins? Miserable creatures!” she continued, indignantly, “how they degrade and dishonor mankind! And how do they dispose of their consciences? Why have they a conscience which commands them to do right and reproaches them for doing wrong, if it is not that man, born immortal, must one day render an account of all his deeds, and receive from God either a reward or punishment? No, it is not in weakness of the intellect that we must search for the origin of atheism, but in the corruption of the heart. If, then, the atheist denies God, he thereby testifies to his justice and power, even as the faithful bear witness to his goodness and mercy in acknowledging and honoring him. The one fears him because of the crimes he has committed; the other hopes in him because of the virtues he practises: behold the sole and only difference between the two men.”

“Well, my dear daughter,” replied More; “but the greater number of men who call themselves atheists follow only their own reasoning, as do you this moment, being almost always most profoundly ignorant of themselves and of their own nature, and entirely indifferent about the means of being instructed. Occupied solely with the present life, they attach themselves to mere sensual enjoyments, and, feeling that it would be necessary to abandon these in order to deliver their souls from the yoke of matter, they prefer thus to vegetate in forgetfulness of themselves and of all their duties.”

“Then, my father, you see that you agree with me on the point from whence I started out, which was that there are really no atheists, that the word is false, that it is taken in a false acceptation, and that it can only be properly defined in this way: ‘_One who in his own heart is a liar._’”

While Margaret was conversing thus with her father, and the rest of the family were enjoying the repose of innocence and freedom, a man silently turned around the foot of the hill and followed slowly the path leading through the meadow. His face was darkly clouded with care; envy and malice were hidden in the depths of his heart. He reflected within himself in what manner he should approach the host whom he came to visit, and whom he perceived sitting on top of the hill. Thus in an immortal poem we find the fallen angel thrice making the circuit of the terrestrial paradise, seeking where he should enter in order to attack the man favored of God.

“Father, here is some one coming!” cried the youngest of More’s daughters.

And she ran, followed by the house dog, with which she had been very busy fixing on its neck a collar of leaves.

“It is a gentleman dressed all in black, who has a beautiful chain hanging round his neck.”

As she finished speaking Cromwell appeared.

“Ah! it is you, Master Cromwell,” said More, rising graciously. “Let me welcome you among us. How fares it with you?”

For the more Sir Thomas thought he had to complain of any one, the more he exerted himself by his kind and polite manner to assure him that he felt no bitterness in his heart; this was the cause of the cordial reception he gave Cromwell, whom he would otherwise have avoided.

“Well, I thank you,” replied Cromwell, casting, as was his custom, a furtive glance on all around him.

He at once encountered the eyes of Margaret, which were fixed upon him with an expression of anger and scorn; for she could not endure him, having learned from the Bishop of Rochester how he had conducted himself in the hall of convocation, with what impudence he had sat himself in the midst of the assembly, and the manœuvres he had used to extort from the bishops an oath which must be followed by such fatal consequences.

He laughed to himself at the young girl’s displeasure, and made her a profound salutation. But she did not return it; and passing from the other side, she went and seated herself near her stepmother, who was knitting the leg of a stocking—the only employment in which she was passably skilled.

Cromwell remarked this movement; and if he was indifferent to it, he at least drew from it an inference as to the feeling of the family with regard to present affairs.

“Sir Thomas,” he said in a tone tinged with raillery, “I come, on the part of the king, to announce great news to you; it depends on yourself whether you find it good or bad. The king, our most gracious sovereign, is married, and he has espoused my lady Anne Boleyn.”

“The king married!” said Sir Thomas. “The king married!” he repeated. But he felt that Cromwell, who was aware of his great attachment to the queen, had only come to enjoy his discomfiture, or to watch him with some malicious design. He at once put himself on his guard, but turned visibly pale.

“He is married,” continued Cromwell. “The clergy laughed at him; but, by my troth, he has in his turn laughed at them! It was necessary that all this should come to an end. Yesterday his majesty advised the lords of his Privy Council of the decision he has taken of having the new queen publicly acknowledged. The communication should be made to-day in Parliament, and they will proceed immediately after to receive the oaths of all the members touching the succession to the throne, the supremacy of the king, and the separation from the Church of Rome.”

“Cromwell, can it be?” said Sir Thomas More, struck with consternation. “How rapidly all this has been brought about! And the queen, where is she?”

“Which one?” replied Cromwell, already affecting the tone of the court.

“Queen Catherine!” added More with a profound sigh.

“Ah! I understand. More obstinate than ever,” replied Cromwell in a tone of badinage. “She has retired to Easthampstead. We are occupied with her case now in council; she will be summoned to Dunstable, where an ecclesiastical commission will cut short all of her demands. Oh! all is over so far as she is concerned.”

More felt pierced to the heart, and each new expression of Cromwell wounded him afresh. He could not doubt but this cruel man had been sent to take an exact account of his slightest gesture and most insignificant word; he therefore vainly endeavored to restrain his feelings, but sorrow and the honest frankness of his nature carried him beyond the limits of prudence.

“Master Cromwell,” he said with dignity, “I know not why the king has sent you to me; but I think you know me so well that it would be useless for me, standing face to face with you, to disguise my sentiments; I therefore candidly acknowledge that what you have told me penetrates me with a mortal sorrow. My heart is deeply attached to Queen Catherine, but I am, by my duty, still more devoted to the king. It is with the deepest grief that I see those who surround him, far from telling him the truth, think only of flattering him, that they may obtain new favors from his hands. And you, who are his adviser, I exhort and conjure you never to tell him what he _can_ do, but what he ought to do; because, if the lion knew his strength, who would be able to subdue him? Until this time, as you know, we have not walked in the same road, nor have our eyes been turned to the same end; but now that I have entirely withdrawn from public life, when I can no longer cause you suspicion, when my sole and only desire is to live in obscurity, surrounded by my children, occupying myself with naught but the affairs of my eternal salvation, it seems to me I can disclose to you my inmost thoughts. I esteem you too highly to fear that you would abuse my confidence. Use your influence, then, with the king, if there yet be time, and try to arrest the disasters with which church and state are threatened!”

Cromwell felt confounded; come as a master, a triumphant enemy, he endeavored, but was unable, to recover himself in the presence of the calm and magnanimous virtue of a great man who seemed to place with confidence his destiny in his hands, and to esteem him sufficiently to exhort him still to fulfil his duty to his king and country. He experienced a momentary inspiration of good; but corrupt souls stifle such inspirations with the same facility that they are followed by the pure in heart. An instant’s reflection sufficed for him to recover his accustomed arrogance.

“That is an easy thing for you to say,” he replied, “having now, as you have just remarked, retired from public life. But for me it is very different; every day convinces me how dangerous it would be to resist the king, and I confess that I am by no means tired of life, and do not desire to lose my head on the scaffold, nor to die in poverty like that poor cardinal of defunct memory. That is why I must continue to act as I have done in Parliament, and I advise you to do the same; for, hearken, Sir Thomas: I have not come here of my own accord, but on the part of the king, to announce to you his intentions, and at the same time say to you that he has learned with great indignation of the correspondence you have kept up with that nun called the Holy Maid of Kent; that, notwithstanding, he will exercise toward you the utmost clemency, that he will strike your name from the bill of high treason which is entered against her, if he has reason hereafter to be satisfied with your conduct, and if you will publicly abjure the prejudices you have until this time manifested against Queen Anne, his spouse.”

“What say you, Master Cromwell?” cried Sir Thomas More. “I am implicated in the proceedings they have instituted against that woman?”

And the unhappy father looked round upon his children, who had gathered around him, and whom terror and alarm had rendered motionless.

“Master Cromwell,” he continued after a moment’s silence, “your visit is a cruel one; my children, at least, were not guilty, if any one else here is.” And his eyes rested on Margaret, who stood pale and trembling with horror and surprise.

But Cromwell knew very well what he had come to do; it was part of his design that the grief and solicitations of More’s children should break down his resolution, and induce him to yield to all they wished to demand of him.

“Margaret! my beloved child,” said More, especially concerned for her, “grieve not. I fully hope to prove, as clearly as the light of day, that I have nothing with which to reproach myself toward my king, and that I am an entire stranger to the follies of that woman. Listen, Master Cromwell,” he continued, turning towards him, without manifesting the least emotion, “I pray you say to the king, my sovereign, that nothing could afflict me more than to know I had incurred his displeasure. Nevertheless, I hope to prove that he is mistaken with regard to the acquaintance I have had with that woman. I have seen her but once, in the Sion Convent, in a chapel, and then because the fathers urged me to converse with her a few moments, and tell them what I thought of her virtue. She appeared to me simple and true in her conversation. The replies she made to the few questions I addressed her seemed to proceed from an humble heart and a pious soul. Since that day 1 have not seen her. This winter some one spoke to me about her, and told me she had made some predictions about the king, and asked me if I wanted to hear them. To which I replied—and I remember it perfectly—that I wanted to hear nothing about it, and, if it was true she had anything to reveal to the king, it seemed to me at least entirely superfluous for any other man to inquire into it. This is the whole truth, and I beg you, Master Cromwell, to say to the king I hope to prove it in the most undeniable manner.”

“This woman is only an instrument,” replied Cromwell, affecting not to reply to what Sir Thomas had said; “they have only used her and her pretended revelations in order to cause the conduct of the king to be censured by his people. I very much fear they will be severely punished—those, at least, who have employed her for that purpose.”

“I know not what will come of it,” replied Sir Thomas in a cold and quiet manner. “If it is true that there is a criminal impostor disguised under the appearance of virtue, they would do well to expose and punish her rigorously.”

And there the conversation ended. However much Cromwell desired that it should be prolonged, he neither knew how to renew nor to continue it. He concluded, therefore, to affect a degree of zeal and friendship, and summoned all his hypocrisy to his assistance.

“Dear Sir Thomas,” he said, “as you said but now, we have not always been of the same way of thinking. Some day I may change my opinions; but at this time I cannot begin to tell you how much anxiety I feel on account of the king’s anger in your regard. It appears that they have excited him most terribly against you. You must have some secret enemy who is using these means for the purpose of lessening you in his estimation and making you lose his favor.”

More listened, thinking if indeed it could be Cromwell who spoke in this manner.

“Verily,” he answered, “I must fain think as you do, for I have naught on my conscience touching that woman; and would to God I was in his sight as free from sin as I feel myself free from any thought of wrong or any transgression against our sovereign lord and king!”

“Sir Thomas, you have let your attachment to Queen Catherine show too plainly, and it is right well known that you are against the spiritual supremacy of the king.”

More made no reply. Tears arose in his eyes. He looked at Margaret. The young girl held one of her stepmother’s long iron knitting-needles, and seemed mechanically trying to sharpen the point with the end of her finger, which she turned rapidly around it. If Margaret had held a poignard, it was evident that she would have wished to plunge it into the heart of the traitor who stood before her. She said nothing, but her flashing eyes followed every movement he made. The others sat motionless, and Cromwell felt oppressed by the attention of all these souls weighing upon his own. He no longer knew what to say; he looked around, he hesitated, he tried to resume the conversation, and again broke down.

Sir Thomas, always kind, always considerate, wished to relieve him from this painfully embarrassing situation.

“Master Cromwell,” he said, “I see that you find it somewhat painful to tell me all you have learned that would be disagreeable to me; therefore let us retire from here. If it please you to sup with us, we will return to the house.”

“I do not think Master Cromwell is hungry,” said Margaret, changing color. “He is one of those men who subsist on evil as well as bread; it is a stronger and more bitter nourishment, the savor of which agrees better with their ferocious natures.”

“You are charming, charming, damsel!” replied Cromwell, turning toward her with that trifling manner, coarse and familiar, which he considered suitable to adopt in his intercourse with women farthest above himself.

“Margaret does not like compliments,” replied Sir Thomas More, who endeavored to repair, without seeming to have noticed them, the expressions of anger and scorn Margaret had permitted to escape her. “She is very sensitive,” he added.

“And very frank, it seems to me,” answered Cromwell quickly, in a tone insolent and easy.

“A little too much so, perhaps,” replied Sir Thomas gently; “but that is better than to be deceitful.”

“Are all these fields yours?” asked Cromwell.

“No, indeed, sir. I own very little land around my dwelling; besides, I gave a portion of it to Margaret, my daughter, when she became affianced to young Roper.”

Saying this, Sir Thomas turned and walked with Cromwell and his family towards the house. On their arrival Sir Thomas conducted Cromwell into his private cabinet.

“Listen, sir,” he said, after he had closed the door: “I would not wish to conceal from you that you have deeply wounded me by declaring in presence of my children that I had been accused of high treason. I have not been chief-justice so long without learning that this is the weight they will let fall on my head, and I know perfectly well that this accusation of high treason is like a glove, which they can make to fit any hand. As to what I think about the supremacy of the king, that I shall reveal to no man living. But, at least, be so good as to tell me how this action against me began, and who are my accomplices.”

“The nun,” replied Cromwell (perfectly well instructed in the particulars of an affair he had invented and intended to direct)—“the nun is accused of high treason toward the king. Her accomplices are Master Richard, Dr. Baking, Richard Risby, Biering, Gold, Lawrence Thwaites, John Adisson, and Thomas Abel. As to yourself and the Bishop of Rochester, you are accused of connivance; but, after what you have told me, I doubt not you will be able to prove your innocence easily, and your name will be stricken out at the commencement of the prosecution.”

“The Bishop of Rochester!” exclaimed Sir Thomas, his hands resting on the table, and entirely absorbed in reflection. He recalled the night when Fisher, seated in the same chair now occupied by Cromwell, had implored him not to accept the seal of state, and, upon his refusing to take his advice, prayed God never to permit them to be separated, but that their lives might terminate in the same manner and at the same moment. Lost in the recollection of his tender friendship, More forgot the frightful character of Cromwell, which no one, however, better understood than himself. He took him affectionately by the hand.

“Dear Cromwell,” he exclaimed, “how is this? The Bishop of Rochester? Ah! I implore you have his name removed. Let them be revenged on me, but not on him. Mercy for my friend!”

Sir Thomas was on the point of telling Cromwell that he had heard them both accused on that fatal night at Westminster; but on reflection he forebore, supposing him to be entirely ignorant of their presence in the church.

“Alas!” continued Sir Thomas, “if I have offended the king, let them punish me; but Rochester, what has he done? Devoid of ambition, occupied entirely with the duties of his bishopric, devoted to the king, at whose birth he attended, loved, esteemed by him, how can they suspect him of wishing to injure his beloved sovereign? Master Cromwell, I beseech you intercede for him!”

That prayer was very well understood by Cromwell, but he feigned not to hear it. He had not come to sympathize with, but rather to enjoy the sufferings of a just man, one whom he still feared, although he had entirely supplanted him.

“Sir Thomas,” he replied, “I cannot see why you supplicate me in behalf of the Bishop of Rochester, as though I were able to do anything in the matter. Justice is there, to be rendered to him, and to you also, if you prove that you are entirely innocent of this charge.”

“In sooth,” said Sir Thomas, “I swear to you that I know nothing about it. I have never considered it of sufficient importance to investigate the character and veracity of that woman. I believe, and am very well convinced, that being the creatures and the children of God, in whom we exist and from whom we have received all things, he will sometimes, in his goodness, manifest his will to us by some extraordinary means and supernatural ways, and also that he can change or interrupt in a moment events of which he has himself marked out the course; but, at the same time, I believe that this truth can be abused either by weakness of the mind, by error, or by folly. That woman, then, is perhaps guilty of no other crime than of having mistaken dreams for revelations; and if it is thus, I find that the more importance we give to trivial things, the more dangerous we make them, if in the beginning they were the cause of any inconvenience.”

“That is true,” said Cromwell; “but the king is very much wroth, and intends that this woman and all those who have believed in her shall be punished.”

“That alters the case,” replied Sir Thomas; and he paused thoughtfully.

“However,” said Cromwell, “there is a very sure way of conciliating his majesty, which is by praying my lady Anne to be your intercessor. If you wish it, I will request her, in your name, to intercede with the king for the Bishop of Rochester.”

“Ah!” said Sir Thomas.

He felt as though Cromwell had thrust a dagger into his heart. He bowed his head and was unable to utter a word. To save his friend by condescending to a base action—he had not courage to accept the condition.

“That is an assured way,” said Cromwell (and the vile wretch secretly applauded himself on the astute and skilful means he employed)—“infallible; a word from her will suffice.”

“No,” cried More, “no! The honor of my friend is as dear as my own. He would not will it.”

“He would not will it!” replied Cromwell, in an ironical tone. “What! would you, then, consider yourselves dishonored because she had interceded for him?”

“Ah! Cromwell,” cried Sir Thomas, regretting what he had said, “I implore you do not betray my situation!”

“I am far from betraying you, sir, since I offer you a very sure and very simple means of removing all that is dangerous in that situation. I can promise you that if you satisfy the king on this point, and if you testify that you accept and recognize him without any repugnance as supreme head of the church, not only will he pardon your fault, but he will overwhelm you with new favors.”

On hearing this proposal Sir Thomas looked steadily at him.

“Sir,” he said, “I thank you. I now understand what they ask of me, and why they have placed my name and that of my friend on the list of the accused, which, in reality, would not be able to reach or injure us. Now I have no longer any doubt. When will the trial begin?”

“What do you say?” interrupted Cromwell. “What! you refuse?”

“I refuse nothing,” said Sir Thomas modestly; “I only ask when the trial will take place, and when I must present myself at the bar.”

“But reflect on the wrong you do!” replied Cromwell.

“I have considered everything,” responded Sir Thomas.

“Ah! well, then, do as you please.… To-morrow the commission will assemble in the Tower, and I very much fear, from your obstinacy, that you will remain there.”

“In that event I will make my preparations to-night,” replied Sir Thomas.

At that moment Margaret hurriedly entered and announced supper, Cromwell took advantage of the occasion. He saw with great vexation the firmness of Sir Thomas, and, having promised the king that he would make him yield, he supposed the young girl would assist him in renewing the conference.

“Damsel,” he said, inclining toward her,” I am glad you have come; for, although you have treated me but ill, I am here to render an important service to your father. Persuade him, then, to listen to me, and not consent to separate himself from you, perhaps for ever!”

“My God!” cried Margaret, “my father separate himself from us? What do you mean? Speak! what do you mean? With how many maledictions, then, do you come prepared to strike our house?”

“To-morrow Sir Thomas is summoned to appear before the council. Let him promise to take the oath the king requires, and his life will be spared!”

“Stop, sir!” cried Sir Thomas. “My children are not in the habit of judging my conduct nor of designating the path I should follow! Your pity is of the cruellest, sir! May God grant you a more sincere friend and a more genuine compassion than that you have offered me to-day! Go, Margaret; go tell your mother I wait for her.”

To this formal and decided expression of her father’s will Margaret dared not reply; she left the room, but felt that a fearful calamity had befallen her, of which she knew not yet the entire extent, and she descended slowly, pausing on each step of the stairway, wrapped in painful reflection.

Sir Thomas soon entered the hall with Cromwell, to whom he gave the first place at table, and who accepted without remorse such cordial hospitality on the part of a man whom he had resolved to corrupt or ruin entirely.

* * * * *

When night was far advanced, and Cromwell had departed from the abode into which he had entered only to bring sorrow and desolation, Sir Thomas returned to his cabinet, which he loved like an old servant whom we never regret so much as when it becomes necessary to part with him. He entered, with anxiety and sadness in his soul, and took his accustomed seat; he put the light he carried in the same place where he had placed it for so many years, and from whence it had shone on so many vigils and so many good actions, and he looked around him.

“To-morrow,” he exclaimed, “to-morrow I shall have to leave this abode where I have so long tended and seen my father die, where I have welcomed my first dear wife, where my children have been born!… When the swallow leaves her nest, she has a hope of returning to it again; but I, can I indulge in that sweet delusion? Is it not certain that my ruin is resolved on, and that the king’s indignation means death? To-morrow, when the day shall have dawned, I must assume a cheerful countenance, a serene composure, and say to them: ‘Adieu, my cherished children! I will return very soon.’ I will return very soon! Shall I be able to utter words that are so foreign to my heart? And Margaret—Margaret will weep for me all the days of her life. I shall never behold her young children, nor bless them when for the first time their eyes are opened to the light of day, and I shall never hear them try to repeat my name. Alas! why must it be that the king is annoyed at my breathing the air?—a man, too, confounded among a million of his subjects! Of what importance to him are the thoughts that lie hidden in the bottom of my heart? Why, Lord,” he cried, raising his hands toward heaven, “hast thou not stricken me from his memory, and why hast thou suffered this prince of the earth to remember my name? Grant me an asylum where I may be able to finish out the days thou hast allotted me; the birds of the air find a shelter, the bears and ferocious beasts of the earth possess their dens, and no one comes to force them away! However, let thy will be done, and not mine.”

More remained for a long time leaning on the table. He then arose and walked the floor to and fro. He moved from place to place in the room; for he would be there no more, if they should summon and compel him to cave for ever his modest and beloved abode.

“They are all asleep,” he said. “I have consoled them. They have seen Cromwell with me, but they have not suspected that he brought the death-warrant of their father. A few hours of peace still remain for them, and to-morrow—to-morrow they will weep and feel that I am no longer with them! My eyes will no more behold my beloved ones; I shall no more hear their voices. They will seek me, but they will find me no more on earth.”

Here Sir Thomas was unable longer to contemplate with calmness the picture his imagination presented of the desolation and abandonment of his children. Looking around to be assured that he was entirely alone, he sank into a chair, and, bursting into tears, abandoned himself to the most bitter grief.

For a long time he remained thus. At length he arose; seeing that the clock in his cabinet was about to strike the hour of midnight, he returned to his table.

Taking up an enormous portfolio, he opened all the drawers. He took out a great number of papers and divers packages of letters; some of the latter were letters written by Margaret when a child, and he had preserved them as souvenirs of the progress of her youthful intellect; others were from the Bishop of Rochester; the greater number concerned a multitude of persons who had claimed or still sought his counsel and advice, his good offices, to reconcile their families, terminate their disputes, save them from dishonor, prevent their ruin by means of his credit and his money, and still more by the confidence and respect inspired in all by his virtues.

He untied the letters and threw them into the fire, where they were immediately consumed; for he knew with whom he had to deal, and how the most innocent things, the most trivial acts, would be brought up and construed into crimes against those who had held any intercourse with him. Those which concerned these persons he destroyed without regret; but when they had been entirely devoured by the flames, he turned with sadness to those of Margaret and the Bishop of Rochester, and could not summon sufficient resolution to cast them into the fire.

He looked at them and turned them over in his hands; they had given him so much pleasure! Those of his daughter had been dictated by the tenderest love; the virtues of his friend shone in every page of his, and proofs of attachment were inscribed upon every line, recalling the joys, the sorrows, and different events that had occurred during his entire life!

“Come!” he said with bitterness, “when Margaret shall no longer have a father, who will then have any use for these letters? Who will treasure them up? And thou, O my friend! No, we shall not remain separated; for, O my God! thou hast declared that he who giveth up that which he loves for thy sake shall find it again; and if man, thy creature, gives thee an atom, thou wilt return him an entire world. Have we not received all things from thee? And what thou takest from us for a moment, is it not to return it to us again in eternity?”

He cast the letters into the fire, but turned away that he might not see them consumed. He then examined his book of accounts, and saw that they were correct. Besides, his estate was so small he found but little difficulty in administering it. After retiring from office he had divided his lands between his children, and each one of them knew the lot assigned her.

When he had finished all that, he again began to walk the room, and went toward the window; the night was intensely dark and the heavens obscured by a mass of black clouds.

“Well! I have some time yet,” he said, and turned to sit down. “Everything is arranged; Margaret will send my books. Now I am prepared to depart. It would seem that I am dead, and they come already to blot all traces of my existence from this place. Ah! how harrowing is the thought. My God! my courage fails. Help me, Lord! Animate by a breath of thy strength the weakness of thy servant; for I am the work of thy hands! Have mercy on me and succor me; for sorrow hath fallen upon me and I am utterly cast down!”

As he pronounced these words he thought he heard a sigh; he paused to listen, but heard nothing more, and came to the conclusion that his troubled imagination had deceived him. Again, however, he heard a slight noise; he then arose and proceeded to listen at the door opening into the library. Opening it very softly, what was his surprise on seeing Margaret! Her back was turned towards him, and a lamp burned beside her. He perceived that she had taken a number of books from the shelves, as she had a pile of them around her, and was leaning earnestly over the one she was reading. So intently was she absorbed that she did not hear her father enter. He advanced slowly until he stood behind her chair, and saw that she was reading a book of jurisprudence written in Latin according to the general custom of the times, and which contained detailed reports of all the trials for high treason; her handkerchief was lying beside her, and it was saturated with her tears. Sir Thomas turned pale; he was obliged to rest his hand on the table, which groaned under his weight.

Margaret turned around in alarm.

“My father!” she cried, “here at this hour!” And she ran to him and folded her arms around him, while her tears began to flow afresh.

“Margaret, what do you here?” he asked as he sank into a chair.

“My father, my father!” She burst into a torrent of tears, and could say no more.

“I thought you slept,” she added.

“Margaret, you should be in bed!” said Sir Thomas, endeavoring to control his feelings.

She fell on her knees before him, and, burying her face in her hands, sobbed aloud; her hair, loosened from its fastening, hung in dishevelled masses down to her feet.

“Margaret, you are weak!” said More in an altered voice. “Is this the fruit of the lessons I have given you?”

“Dare you, then, say that I am weak, and reproach me because I weep for my father?” she replied, raising her head haughtily. “Do you no longer remember that I have never known a mother’s love, and that, since the day I left my cradle, you alone have directed all my movements, that in you alone have been centred all my affections, and to you have I always confided the most secret thoughts of my heart? You say that I am weak, when not a word of complaint has escaped my lips, when I have concealed my tears, weeping in the darkness of night, and when I have sat at table face to face with your executioner!”

“Margaret, my Margaret!” cried Sir Thomas; and he bowed his head on the shoulder of the child he so cherished, and pressed her to his bosom.

“Have I asked you,” she continued, turning away from him, “what you would do to escape from these tigers thirsting for blood? Have I advised you to recoil before them and lick the prints of their feet? No; I have come in silence to take counsel of the dead, some advice as to the crimes of the human race, because I have thought you would conceal your secret in your heart, and I would not be admitted to share it; that you would tell me what you did not believe, and I would not receive the truth from you. The truth!” she cried vehemently, and with a strength only lent her by excitement and suffering. “I know it now! I know, I feel, I have found out that very soon I shall see you no more; that I shall be alone upon the earth where I have found such joy and happiness in existing; that nothing will remain to me, and the future will be to me without a hope, and darkened for ever!”

“Margaret,” said Sir Thomas, “have compassion on your father!”

She then said no more, and they sat in silence, she with her arms clasped around his neck. She wept, and the tears continued to course slowly down her cheeks, whilst the lamp she had brought cast a feeble glimmer of light throughout the lengthy apartment, and over the rows of books arranged on the shelves; and thus the hours fled rapidly toward the fatal moment which she saw advancing with an agony indescribable.

O wicked and voluptuous prince! raise your head from your bed of down, draw aside the triple draperies of silk and gold that surround you; for your crimes keep vigil around your couch, and the justice of God numbers every tear you have caused to be shed! Far better would it be for you to sleep on an infected dunghill, in some obscure retreat; that your limbs, weary with toil and the heat of the mid-day sun, should tremble beneath the frosts of night, and that your hands were pure and free from iniquity in the presence of the most high God; for we cannot believe that man oppresses man without justice being meted out to him, or that the weak shall remain the prey of the strong. The day will come when a terrible vengeance shall fall upon the head of the impious, and he will see arrayed before him all the crimes he has committed. Then shall he cry aloud: “Why have I ever lived, and why has my mother ever borne me in her womb?” But light then will no longer be measured, night will have disappeared, century will no more follow century, and time shall be no more.

TO BE CONTINUED

[209] _Margarita_, _Anglicè_ Margaret, is the Latin word for daisy.—TRANSL.

A PROTESTANT BISHOP ON CONFESSION.

BY A CATHOLIC LAYMAN.

Bishop Atkinson, of North Carolina, in a “Charge” to the clergy of his diocese, took occasion to inveigh against auricular confession. To this Bishop Gibbons replied. The Protestant prelate now appears in “A Defence,” the purport of which we propose here to examine. Omitting any comment on the personal retort, we make our first quotation from the eighth page of this pamphlet:

“To object to the power of the priest to forgive sins is, according to this [the Roman Catholic] view, equivalent to objecting to the power of Christ to forgive sins. Is this to be maintained? Is this true?” Since to doubt Christ’s declaration is to call his power in question, we affirm that this _is_ true and is to be maintained. If the words of Christ are fallible, it must follow that he who spoke them is also fallible. “Whose sins ye shall forgive they are forgiven,” and “Whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”: Falsify these statements, and we make God a liar. Of the exercise of this power St. Paul says to the Corinthians: “If I forgave any, for your sakes forgave I it, in the _person_ of Christ”; and in condemning the incestuous Corinthian he judges him “with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Now, if St. Paul was indeed acting with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in his _person_, his absolution and condemnation were identical with Christ’s. If not, his arrogations were blasphemous and vain. But Bishop Atkinson asserts that “priestly absolution and the absolution of Christ are two entirely distinct things,” because the priest cannot have God’s infallible knowledge of the state of the soul, on which condition forgiveness depends.

Here is a confounding of things wholly different—the power of absolution, and knowledge infallible. Forgiveness _does_ depend upon the state of the soul, and, whether it be Christ or one of his ambassadors pronouncing absolution, the conditions requisite are absolutely one. Nor Christ nor his priest can pardon the impenitent; but infallible _knowledge_ of the state of the soul affects in no way the power of absolution. God reveals to any man his own soul’s condition, but to no man is given the power of self-absolution. So, also, he grants the power of absolution apart from the gift of infallible knowledge. The things are distinct and separate from each other. The latter of these powers our Lord alone possesses, but he seems not unfrequently, in the exercise of his ministry, to have purposely excluded all its influence over the former, to teach us that the two have no necessary dependence. Thus, he invests St. Peter with the power of the keys a short time before the fall of that apostle, and administers to Judas the clean Bread of Angels when he knows him to be a devil. Could a priest’s want of insight have results more appalling? But Bishop Atkinson here proposes a method most ingenious for testing priestly power, a “practical test” to be applied as follows: “When the power of Christ to forgive sins was doubted, he wrought a miracle to prove it, and thereby silenced the gainsayers. When the power of the priest to forgive sins is doubted, as it very frequently and very seriously is, can he work a miracle to demonstrate it?”

To demand a miracle in the sacrament of penance as a “practical test” of sacerdotal power is also to require it in every other sacrament and sacerdotal function. Has Bishop Atkinson tested by this rule _his_ baptisms, confirmations, communions, and, first of all, his orders? A “practical test” is of general application. When a child is baptized, the Episcopal clergyman thus speaks to the sponsors: “Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is regenerate and grafted into Christ’s church, let us give thanks unto Almighty God for these benefits.” Here, should his “practical test” be demanded to verify this statement, could the bishop produce it? Again, at the end of a marriage he says: “_I_ pronounce you man and wife,” and “Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” Is the clergyman then God? Else whence this change from first to third person?

How far, we are asked, in the judgment of a “thorough-going Roman Catholic”—one who is blind enough to take God at his word, while all the world smiles at his childish credulity—does the priest’s power of absolution actually extend? In the ordination service of the Episcopalian Prayer-Book stands this Catholic formula:

“Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be thou a faithful dispenser of the word of God and of his holy sacraments; in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

* * * * *

Now, the Catholic believes the church means what she affirms; that the literal declaration is the literal truth, since God himself spake it. He therefore receives the priest in Christ’s person, believing that the sins which he remits are remitted. But he knows the conditions upon which depends his cure when he seeks divine remedies. He knows that Christ himself cannot pardon the impenitent, and that the humble priest is not greater than his Master; but, upon the _same conditions_ that the Son of God required, he believes the priest’s decision _must_ be ratified in heaven. He remembers, too, the promises vouchsafed to those receiving, and the overwhelming curse pronounced on those rejecting, the messenger of Christ—a judgment more dread than that on Tyre and Sidon.

Though Bishop Atkinson denounces _auricular_ confession, we are not to understand that he opposes all confession. Nay, he deems it sometimes salutary, “sometimes even obligatory, from the ignorance and doubts of the penitent, from the enormity of his crime, from his consequent tendency to despair. But it is a _drastic_ medicine, not to be taken regularly, for thus taken it enfeebles the patient.” Does Bishop Atkinson really mean to tell us that a state of too great sanctity is one to be discouraged? that some _bile_ of imperfection is essential to the health of the moral constitution? and that this the drastic medicine would too thoroughly remove? If not, what does he mean? Did he look upon confession as a wicked imposition, we could readily comprehend his aversion to its practice; but this he denies, directing his attacks against _auricular confession_, which by the Council of Trent is thus defined: “A confession of all mortal sins, _however secret, with all their circumstances_, to a priest, in secret.” Here the bishop shudders—that secret mortal sins, with their attendant circumstances, should be matter of confession, and to a _priest_, in _secret_! To commit them in broad daylight would not be half so terrible! Confessing them in _secret_ is that which most appalls him. Such, he gravely tells us, is not the rightful mode. The proper thing to use is a very mild dilution of this potent, drastic medicine—something that will soothe and lull the troubled conscience, not purge it of its guilt. To support his strong assertions, he appeals to Holy Scripture and to the early fathers. Here we have a long quotation from a work of Bishop Hopkins. From this we learn that “the apostles exercised their office of remitting or retaining sins; for the sins of those _whom they thought fit_ (mark well the restriction) were remitted in baptism, while the sins of those whom _they judged unfit_ were retained.” Again: “These inspired men required repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ, and then administered baptism for the remission of sins to those _whom they judged_ to be truly penitent.” In a word, they acted always in accordance with _their judgment_. Now, the basis of sound judgment is a thorough understanding of the cause to be adjudged, and without this understanding there can be no prudent judgment. Were our Lord’s apostles gods who could read man’s secret conscience? And if not, how could they know the matter they were judging, or give a righteous judgment until they knew the matter? And just here we would ask, What constitutes matter, if not mortal sins? Not venial sins, surely; for these no Roman Catholic is called upon to mention.

But why, some one may ask, must particulars be stated in making a confession? and what is your authority for the secrecy observed? To this we ask in turn, If a sin be stripped of its aggravating circumstances, will any man maintain that it is honestly confessed? and since _God_ does not require us to confess our sins in public, should his faithful representative demand more of the penitent? Yet it is to these conditions that the bishop makes objection, and thus his “drastic medicine” is a talent in a napkin, a useless, dormant power not intended to be exercised. But what says the Church of England on this subject of confession? According to the bishop, she has left it “strictly voluntary”; but in her Visitation of the Sick we find this rubric: “Here shall the sick man be moved to make a special confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter. After which confession the priest shall absolve him (if he humbly and heartily desire it) after this sort:

“‘Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to his church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive thee thine offences; and by his authority committed to me I absolve thee from thy sins.’” “Here _shall_ the sick man be moved to make confession.” Is it left so “_strictly_ voluntary” as the bishop has declared it? And why now to the sick man does the church propose confession, when in the time of health she never urged it on him? Is he now in a condition for this strange and stern requirement? But Bishop Atkinson would say: “It is only _weighty_ matter he is called upon to tell.” Are not _secret mortal sins_ the weights that now oppress him? And why is he exhorted to a _special_ declaration? Is it not that death is near? But who is he that reckons the number of his days, and can certify unerringly how long he has to live? The thief in the night does not warn us of his coming. Behoves it not, therefore, that we live as dying men, lest, in an hour we think not, the Son of Man should come? If so, the rubric cited is appropriate to all. Thus, in his own communion, Bishop Atkinson will find that _special_ confession to a priest is recommended, and that this confession has all that constitutes _auricular_, except the bond of secrecy which silences the priest. This is left to his honor or personal discretion, untrammelled by all vows. But the bishop further tells us he himself has heard confessions “which, if divulged, would not only have caused shame and anguish, but very probably have caused bloodshed—confessions,” he continues, “_which I keep as sacredly as any Roman Catholic can those made to him_.” This, in our humble judgment, seems to border on _auricular_.

We come now to the question of doctrinal development—a process, as the bishop thinks, for hatching any novelty that priestcraft may devise. To this system he attributes auricular confession, which, according to his reckoning, was first imposed upon the church by Innocent III. at the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215. “And that this,” says he, “to the extent to which it was then carried, was a novelty in the church, is apparent from the tenor of the canon itself; for it requires _that it shall be often read_ publicly in the church, so that none may plead ignorant of the case.” In the _Book of Common Prayer_, at the baptismal office, appears the following rubric: “The minister of every parish _shall often admonish the people_ that they defer not the baptism of their children,” etc. Here, instructed by Bishop Atkinson, we learn, to our amazement, that the baptism of infants at a very tender age was first known in England after the Reformation, when this rubric was inserted. By his own line of argument we are forced to this conclusion: Had it not been a novelty, what need of this injunction? But, returning to our subject, does Bishop Atkinson forget that there existed heresies _before_ the thirteenth century, and that their watchword, like his own, was “Purity of Faith”? All remnants of these sects, of however ancient origin, are in unity with us upon this point of doctrine. To the Protestants alone belongs the honor of rejecting it, and hence they stand at variance, not only with the Pope, but with the rest of Christendom.

With regard to the new dogmas that have lately been defined, as Moehler well expresses it, our unity of doctrine is in _substance_, not in _form_. As the Infant in the manger and the Victim on the cross, identical in _substance_, were yet unlike in _form_, so also truth, in broader light, assumes more striking aspect. Calculus is but a _form_ of primary arithmetic. As in the natural order, so in the order spiritual, development is but the pulse of vigor and vitality. Even in the life of heaven itself they go “from strength to strength.” The loftiest branches of the oak were once within the acorn; nor could they have developed save as they there existed.

Thus, to a grain of mustard-seed our Lord compared the church, and to the mite of leaven that leavened the whole lump. She is “the pillar and the ground of truth,” which if once shaken, truth itself must fall. To her alone is man responsible, since God commissioned her to teach the world and bring all men to knowledge of his truth. To her St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine bowed; to her St. Ambrose and St. Bernard yielded entire submission. Like Bossuet and Fénelon, the doctors of all ages—whatever their contentions and discussions, however wide their difference of opinion—have ever looked to Rome, and sought her final judgment as the decree of God.

Bishop Gibbons, in reply to the “Charge” of Bishop Atkinson, remarked the contradictory doctrines that prevail in the Anglican communion with regard to confession; some execrating it as a Romish innovation, while others, holding tenets identical with ours, preach and practise its observance as a sacrament of Christ. Bishop Atkinson professes to discover a parallel to this in the various opinions of the Catholic theologians with respect to the limits of the Pope’s infallibility. Let us see upon what grounds he establishes comparison, and how far the comparison is supported. Papal Infallibility is a dogma of the church, an article of faith, to be by all accepted under the last penalty of excommunication. With the Protestant the force of this dogma is experienced, not, indeed, as to the Pope, but with regard to Holy Scripture, which, as the word of God, he _must_ hold to be infallible. Now, the general truth that the Bible is infallible the Catholic and Protestant both equally maintain. To doubt it would be heresy. But admitting, as we do, the general proposition, how many minor differences remain to be adjusted! The Catholic believes that the church alone is able to interpret Holy Scripture, and that without her guidance men may wrest God’s very word unto their own destruction; that the written Word requires some infallible interpreter before we can rely upon its meaning as infallible, since the Scriptures, though infallible, inspire not every reader with their own infallibility. But the common run of Protestants receive their Holy Bible as if it had been printed and handed down from heaven in the language, form, and binding with which they are familiar. They forget that, after all, it is a mere translation and as liable to corruption as any other text in the hands of a translator. The Pope they think presumptuous; the printer and translator infallible. But even here believers may hold diverse opinions with integrity of faith. “How far,” one may ask, “extends infallibility? Is it only in the spirit, or in the letter also? ‘Unless a man _hate_ his father and his mother he cannot be my disciple.’ ‘If ye shall ask _anything_ in my name, I will do it.’ With what exact restriction are these words to be received? Can errors typographical, misrenderings, etc., affect in any way the truth of the infallible? Are all the dates and numbers, in their common acceptation, infallibly correct? Does inspiration equally pervade the whole Bible, the Old and New Testaments? How must we understand St. Paul’s teaching by command and teaching by permission? Was he in each infallible?” All these questions might arise among sincere believers holding the general truth that the Scriptures are infallible. As we have before observed, Papal Infallibility is an established dogma, an article of faith, and the questions now at issue among Catholic theologians are precisely of the nature of those among all Protestants with regard to Holy Scripture. When a definition of a dogma of faith has been promulgated to the universal church, it is acknowledged as infallible by all; but the Pope sometimes teaches in a less determined species, and _then only_ can even the most lax theologians raise the question how far his teaching binds. Are disputes among the Anglicans analogous to these? Bishop Atkinson would stickle for his sacerdotal character; Bishop Whittle, of Virginia, would hoot the very notion. At Mount Calvary, in Baltimore, a child becomes regenerate in the sacrament of baptism; at St. Peter’s, five squares distant, no such change can be effected. At the former Mass is said and the Sacred Host is worshipped; at the latter the Host is bread, and to worship it is idolatry. For whether it be bread or the golden calf adored, such worship is idolatrous. And if the Host be Christ, _not_ to worship is denial of our Blessed Lord’s Divinity.

Are the Quaker and the Mormon more at variance in faith? But Bishop Atkinson interrupts us. “I am not the church,” he says, “nor is Bishop Whittle, nor the pastors of the churches to which you have referred.” Be it granted; but we ask, then, What _is_ your church’s teaching? Surely, one of you is wrong, and has the church no voice to decide the question for us? Can idolatry be taught in her communion with impunity? For, in Dr. Gramnici’s judgment, this is Mr. Richie’s crime: the worship of the creature instead of the Creator. It is too true. All that the Church of England boasts is _latitude_ of doctrine. She has no power of utterance to define or to condemn. The wranglings of her children have silenced her for ever. The enormities of Darwin, if they threatened, could not rouse her; nor, roused, has she the unity to utter an anathema.

Having noticed many points on which we differ from Bishop Atkinson, in conclusion we remark one on which we quite agree. This is when, speaking of St. Bernard, he styles him “the great saint.” But the question upon which he appeals to this great father is hardly one on which we hoped to find the bishop laudatory. Having chosen him, however, to plead his cause against _us_, we needs must think that he supports his advocate, and holds him orthodox, at least, upon the point at issue—the Immaculate Conception. Let us hear what St. Bernard has to offer on this point. “Thou art that chosen Lady,” says he, “in whom our Lord found repose, and in whom he has deposited all his treasures without measure. Hence the whole world, O my most holy Lady! honors thy chaste womb as the temple of God, in which the salvation of the world began. Thou, O great Mother of God! art the enclosed garden into which the hand of a sinner never entered to gather its flowers. Thou art the paradise of God; from thee issued forth the fountain of living water that irrigates the whole world. The day on which thou camest into the world can indeed be called a day of salvation, a day of grace. Thou art fair as the moon; the moon illumines the night with the light it receives from the sun, and thou enlightenest our darkness with the splendor of thy virtues. But thou art fairer than the moon; for in thee there is neither spot nor shadow. Thou art bright as the sun—I mean as that Sun which created the world. He was chosen amongst all men, and thou wast chosen amongst all women. O sweet, O great, O all-amiable Mary! no tongue can pronounce thy name but thou inflamest it with love.”

A DAY AMONG THE KIOWAS AND COMANCHES.

It was rather cold and frosty in the early January morning as we rode eastward from Otter Creek to the Kiowa and Comanche reservation, in the Indian Territory. Toward noon, however, the sun came out, brilliant and warm. The effect on the transparent covering of the trees and shrubs was dazzlingly beautiful. Some were encased in a bright armor, cunningly linked in chains of crescents. I detached a perfect “ice-plant,” with every curve of the stem, every nerve of the leaves, taken in ice. The humblest weeds on the prairie sparkled with frosty diamonds. But as the sun grew warmer they began to bend under their gorgeous burdens, as if wearied by their splendor, like tired beauties after a ball.

In the afternoon the weather was as clear and balmy as on a day in June. Our way lay through the most beautiful part of the Indian Territory. We skirted the southern slopes of the Wichita Mountains. These, as if in honor of our coming, exhibited all their jewelry in its brightest lustre. Down their dark slopes ran shining streams, like chains of silver adorning their broad breasts. Stones of gray and yellow and green and purple were heaped together in distracting profusion, the whole seen through the most surpassingly tender of violet tints, too delicate to be compared to the filmiest marriage-morning lace. As we proceeded the country became more and more diversified. Upland and vale succeeded each other in delightful variety. Beautiful glens, wooded slopes, bold mountain-crests, filled the landscape. The day had become warm enough to free the babble of the scores of pretty little streams that flow into the Cache. We rode through groves of mesquite and forests of oaks. The long, straight paths through the oak-woods made one think of the long alleys of Versailles. We pass along the Main Cache; the scenery is ravishing. To the right flows the stream. It is thickly wooded; and through the English effect, produced by the smoke of a prairie fire in the far distance, it brings back the memory of a railroad glimpse of the line of Windsor Forest. Occasional circles of oaks in the midst of noble stretches of upland render more striking the likeness to the park scenery of old England. To the left are the mountains. They actually furnish the luxury of rocks, covered with moss and mould as green as you could see upon Irish ruins. What a joy was the spectacle of so lovely a region to our eyes, that had been starved for months on sand-hills and treeless deserts!

We passed hundreds of lovely sites for cottages, in pleasant nooks, sheltered from all cold winds by wooded slopes that opened towards the south and bounded semi-circular vales of marvellous fertility. Indeed, in beauty of scenery and in richness of soil I think this portion of the Indian Territory may be considered the garden of the western world.

But, alas! nothing earthly is perfect. The brightest prospect has its shadow. Over this seeming paradise, where you can see in a day’s journey the loveliest characteristics of the most favored climes, malaria spreads its black and baleful wings.

I visited the reservation of the Kiowas and Comanches soon after it was entered by one of the expeditions that operated against the hostile bands of these Indians and of the Cheyennes in the winter of 187-. This force had driven in a number of Kiowas and Comanches. It was a close race between the troops and the Indians. But the latter, having the great advantage of the start, throwing away all _impedimenta_, leaving their line of flight marked by abandoned lodges, lodge-poles, ponies, cooking utensils, etc., had won the race by a few hours only, and surrendered not a moment too soon. I wanted to see all I could see of Indians while opportunity offered. I visited the commanding officer of the adjoining military post, and made known to him my wishes. He received me with great courtesy and kindness, placed a vehicle at my disposal, and instructed his interpreter to accompany me through the Indian camps. The Indians had pitched their _tepies_ in the timbered bottoms along the streams for several miles around the fort.

The interpreter was an “old Indian man.” I found him intelligent and polite. He had evidently been well brought up and fairly educated. His language was generally good; and when he indulged, occasionally, in a graphic, frontier mode of expression, it was easy to see that this was an after-graft, though not the less apt and piquant on that account. The Indians on the reservation were divided into two great classes, those under civil and those under military control. The former were under charge of the agent; the latter under that of the commander of the fort. These were again subdivided into the incarcerated, the enrolled, and the paroled (pronounced by the employees of the post and reservation, _pay-rolled_).

The imprisoned were again subdivided into two classes: the more guilty and dangerous, who were placed in irons and confined under strict surveillance in the post guard-house; and the Indians of less note and guilt, who were in confinement, but not in irons. Of the first the principal was White Horse, a Kiowa chief, a murderer, ravisher, and as great a general scoundrel as could be found in any tribe. These really “bad Indians” did not number more than half a dozen. The Comanches and Kiowas belonging to the second subdivision were confined within the walls of an extensive but unfinished stone building, intended for an ice-house, one hundred and fifty feet by forty. They numbered about a hundred and twenty.

I told the interpreter I should like to begin by a visit to White Horse.

“Then,” said he, “we shall have to see the officer of the day; for the sergeant of the guard has orders to let no one visit White Horse without special instructions.”

Two old squaws, evidently in great distress, now came up to the interpreter, and, having shaken hands with him, began to talk to him with great eagerness.

“You’re in luck,” said the interpreter to me. “These are two of his mothers who want permission to see him.”

“Two of his mothers!” I exclaimed. “How many mothers has he, for heaven’s sake?”

“Only one regular one,” he replied, laughing. “The other is his aunt; but among these Indians the aunts also call themselves mothers.”

Accompanied by the two squaws, we went to seek the officer of the day. We soon found him. He was a tall, fine-looking, genial, impulsive Kentuckian, a cavalry officer. He went with us to the guard-house. He first took the interpreter and myself into the prison-room where White Horse’s five companions were confined. They looked greatly dispirited. They all shook hands with us with great warmth. I noticed the eagerness of the last hand-shaker, who seemed to fear that we might leave the cell before he had gone through the ceremony with each of us. Poor wretches! I presume they thought their hour was nearly come, and, like drowning men, they grasped even at the semblance of straws. They evidently had some rough idea of “making interest” with the victor “pale-faces” in a forlorn hope for pardon. They were effusive in their manifestations of friendship for the officer, who, with his revolver in his belt and his long cavalry sabre clanking at his heels, represented Force to them. Force is something Indians understand, and they respect its emblems. Indeed, most of them have been afforded but poor opportunities to understand anything else.

The officer then conducted us to a private room, into which he ordered White Horse to be brought. A clanking of chains was heard along the corridor, and White Horse, doubly ironed, stood in the door-way. He entered, not without a certain untutored majesty of gait, maugre his irons. He put out his manacled hands, and energetically went through the ceremony of hand-shaking, beginning with the officer of the day, and giving him an extra shake at the end.

White Horse was a large, powerful Indian. He wore a dark-colored blanket which covered his entire person. I could discern no indications of ferocity in his countenance. His face, on the contrary, had rather what I should call a Chadband cast. His flesh seemed soft, oily, and “puffy.”

White Horse’s mother and aunt were now permitted to enter. The mother rushed to her son, threw her arms around him, kissed him on both cheeks, while the tears rolled down her face; but she uttered not a word. The aunt kissed him in like manner. White Horse submitted to their embraces, but made no motion of responding affection. He seemed a little nervous under their caresses, and probably under our observation. The mother took hold of his chain, looked at it for a moment, and then came another paroxysm of silent grief, revealing itself in tears alone. They sat on a rough wooden bench, White Horse in the centre, his mother on his right, his aunt on the left, each holding one of his hands in both of hers. White Horse uttered no sound; no gesture betrayed any emotion, yet I thought I could detect a moistening of the eye. This made me feel that I had no business there, gazing on his grief and that of the poor Indian women. I suppose I ought to be ashamed to say it; but the truth must be told, and I must confess that, villain as he was, I could not help feeling for him. Of course it was a weakness, but I am miserably weak in such matters. I believe I should have pleaded for mercy towards him, though he showed little mercy to others. There are few human beings who do not, at some time in their lives, need mercy shown them; and when they themselves cry out for it, it must be a great consolation to them to reflect, as they look back, that they, in their time, have not been deaf to the cries of others.

I signified a wish to withdraw, and left, accompanied by the officer and the interpreter. Before we were permitted to depart, however, we had to shake hands with White Horse and the two squaws. The women looked at us with an appealing expression, as if, in their poor, simple minds, they thought it possible that, in some way or other, we might have an influence on the fate of the son.

We next visited the unfinished building in which the one hundred and twenty lesser Indian criminals were confined. They were bestowed in a sufficiently comfortable manner. Common tents were ranged along the walls, and there were fires burning at proper distances down the centre of the building. The occupants of the tents were mostly engaged in gambling with monte cards and in various other ways. Your Indian is unfortunately “a born gambler.” They quitted their play, however, and crowded around us, eager to shake hands with us, and uttering the Indian monosyllabic expression of satisfaction, which sounds as if written “how.” This hand-shaking took some time, as every Indian insisted on going through the ceremony. When I supposed I had shaken my way through the crowd, I was touched on the arm, and, turning, met a face which was evidently not that of an Indian, though its owner was garbed in Indian guise. He put out his hand, saying “how” in the usual way. I said to him in rather “Brummagem” Spanish that he was not an “Indio.”

He shook his head and replied: “No.”

“Mejicano?” I asked.

“Si,” he replied with a broad grin.

The other Indians crowded around us, laughing and nodding their heads, ejaculating: “Mejicano! How! how!” and turning towards each other with gestures of wonder or admiration (exactly as I have seen the chorus do at the Italian opera). This was no doubt done with a rude idea of flattering me on my perspicacity. There are worse judges of human nature than the untutored Indian. I suppose there is very little doubt that, had I any power over their fate, the compliment would not have been thrown away on me, or on most men for that matter.

Of course they wanted tobacco, and we gave them what we had about us. They had a good deal to say to the interpreter. Every one had some little grievance to complain of or want to be satisfied. At length, after some more hand-shaking, we escaped from them.

On leaving the prison-house we learned that we should not find the principal Indians in their camps until later in the day, as they were then collecting in the commanding officer’s office to talk about sending a party to find some of the Cheyennes, who, having been driven from the brakes of the Staked Plains, were supposed to have gone to southern New Mexico. The interpreter said I should have a good opportunity to see the “head men” there; we could visit the camps afterwards. To the office we went, and found there about fifteen or twenty chiefs, among them Little Crow and Kicking Bird, the head chief of the Kiowas. If ever there were a good Indian—and there are many very honest people west of the Mississippi who think that no live Indian can be good—I think Kicking Bird was a good Indian. During the recent troubles he never left his reservation, was constant in using his influence in favor of the whites, and never wavered in his fidelity to the government.

He was a fine-looking Indian, and had as winning a countenance as I have looked upon anywhere. The expression of his eyes was remarkably soft and pleasing. There was a quiet, natural dignity in his manners, tempered by great natural grace. I was taken by his appearance from the first, and shook hands with him with pleasure and sincerity, which was not the case on every occasion of hand-shaking that morning. Kicking Bird, as nearly as one can judge an Indian’s age (an Indian is generally as great a chronological difficulty as a negro), was then about thirty-five years old. He was somewhat above the middle height, richly but not gaudily dressed. Hanging by a loop from his left breast were a pair of silver tweezers.

After the “talk” was over and the arrangements for sending out the party agreed upon, every chief except Kicking Bird had some private “axe to grind”—something to ask for. As the presentation of these “private bills” was likely to take much time, we withdrew, mounted our wagon, and drove to the Kiowa camp.

The camps of the three tribes, Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches, were pitched in the fringe of timber that borders Medicine Bluff Creek and the Main Cache. The day was bright and warm for the season. The scarlet and white blankets of the Indians, seen here and there among the trees, gave life and color to the landscape. Crowds of children gambolled and shouted, and seemed to enjoy themselves intensely. They had no idea they were the children of a doomed and dying race. There was no trace among them of the stoicism of the Indian of maturer years. No crowd of French urchins playing around the Tour Saint Jacques in the grounds of the Palais Royal, or the gardens of the Tuileries, was ever more full of gayety and _espièglerie_ than these little savages. They threw their arms about and “kicked loose legs” as naturally and with as much _abandon_ as any white children could have done. Some, more industriously inclined, built little _tepies_, or lodges; others made tiny camp-fires, playing “war-party”; others, with miniature bows and arrows, skipped along, shooting at the small birds that crossed their path. Now an urchin, more bold than the rest, would hop alongside our wagon and return our “how, how” with compound interest. Emboldened by his example, others would follow, until we had a crowd of little red-skins of both sexes about us, hopping, laughing, and “how-how”-ing. Occasionally they indulged in a general shout of good-natured merriment, which may very probably have been caused by some more than usually good joke at our expense.

Our first visit was to Kicking Bird’s lodge. It was quite roomy, being a _tepie_ of twenty-four poles. In rear of the lodge, and carefully covered by a paulin, like the carriage of any civilized gentleman, stood our friend Kicking Bird’s “buggy.”

Kicking Bird had not yet returned from the talk at the post. His wife, a buxom young squaw, profusely beaded, brightly blanketed, vermilion-cheeked, but not over-washed, did the honors. She had a child about ten months old—a lively, stout little red rascal, whose flesh was as firm as vulcanized rubber. The little wretch was just beginning to walk. He was _in puris_, of course. He took wonderfully to us. He would try to walk across the lodge to each of us in turn, falling at every other step, and getting up again with a loud crow of determination. Then he would toddle from one to the other, holding by our boot-tops as we stood in a circle around him, and being jumped as high as arms would admit of by each in turn, to his intense delight and the great enjoyment of his mother.

We walked through the camp and watched the squaws tanning buffalo-hides and preparing antelope-skins. I was very anxious to get a papoose-board, as a telegram from a medical friend had just informed me that there was an opportunity of utilizing such a piece of furniture in the family of a very particular friend. But I could not beg or buy one, even with the help of my friend the interpreter. We asked several squaws, but not one of them would sell. I heard afterwards that an extravagantly high price, backed by the Indian agent’s influence, failed to procure one. The squaws no doubt consider it “bad medicine” to sell a papoose-board.

A gaudily-dressed Indian, whose cheeks were streaked with paint of all the colors of the rainbow, approached us. In my civilized simplicity I supposed that this glaring individual was some very big chief indeed. I asked the interpreter what great chief he was.

“Some Indian _plug_,” responded that gentleman; “no chief at all.”

“How comes he to be so extravagantly adorned?”

“They can wear anything they can beg, buy, or steal.”

My mistake reminds me of a similar one made by Indians with regard to some white visitors. Col. —— visited an Indian camp, accompanied by some officers and a cavalry escort. The colonel and the officers were dressed in fatigue uniform, with merely gold enough about them to indicate their rank to a close observer on close inspection. The observed of all the Indian observers, however, was a “fancy” Dutch bugler, with his double yellow stripe and his bars of yellow braid across his breast. To him the most respectful homage and the greatest consideration were paid.

As we passed one of the Kiowa lodges, a young man, seemingly about twenty-five or twenty-eight years old, came out to meet us with outstretched arms. With the exception of Kicking Bird, he was the most pleasing Indian I met. He was very fair-skinned for an Indian, bright, intelligent-looking, with a frankness of manner rare among Indians. He was presented to me as Big Tree, a paroled Indian.

The interpreter told me that, up to the time Big Tree was taken with Satanta, the former was an Indian of no note. He was innocent of crime, and achieved a reputation merely by his accidental associations with Satanta.

Notwithstanding the lesson I had received, when we met some gaudily-bedizened Indian I could not refrain from asking who he was.

The interpreter’s answer was invariably: “Only some Indian _plug_.”

We drove to the Comanche camp, and visited the lodge of Quirz-Quip, or “Antelope-Chewer.” I had met him at the “talk” in the morning. He recognized me and shook hands in a very friendly manner. Quirz-Quip’s countenance was not an attractive one. It was at its best then, however, for he was in high glee at his good fortune in reaching the reservation, even with the loss of almost everything he had, and the troops close at his heels. He only got in a few hours ahead of them, and they had been gaining on him hourly. As his dinner was ready, Antelope-Chewer invited us in to join him in the repast, and I accepted the invitation eagerly.

The lodge was a large and comfortable one. No doubt it had been kept standing on the reservation for the use of the squaws and children while Antelope-Chewer was on the war-path, and for a pleasant and safe resting-place for that gentleman when the troops made the war-path too hot for him. Mats were placed around the lodge. On these we sat tailor-fashion. Valises, made of buffalo-hide, scraped and painted in the usual Indian fashion, were placed at intervals around the _tepie_. The fire was in the centre, in a hole eighteen inches or two feet deep. The lodge was pleasantly warmed, and there was not the least smoke. Two young bucks occupied about four yards of the lodge. They lay stretched at full length on their backs. Each had a bow and arrow, with which he amused himself by toying. The arrow was in its place, ready to be sped. Ever and anon they would draw the arrows back to the head, and then relax the strings again. I felt that the rascals would have sent the barbs through us with pleasure, if they could only do so with safety. We were unarmed, it is true; but there were thirteen companies of cavalry and five of infantry within a mile and a half, and the chances of ultimate escape were more than doubtful. I should not wish to meet even my worthy friend Quirz-Quip off the reservation, if I were unarmed and no help near.

The young men merely nodded to us as we entered, without changing their positions or intermitting their bow-play. They gave us a half-careless, half-supercilious smile, and glanced at each other, as if they should say:

“Buffalo-Heart, my boy! what _does_ the governor mean by bringing these fellows here?”

They seemed to look upon us as a pair of young scions of the old French _noblesse_ might have looked upon a republican guard detail entering their private apartments in their ancestral château.

We shook hands and exchanged grunts with the squaws and children. The interpreter joked Quirz-Quip about his race with the troops. The Indian laughed, indulged in several “how-hows” and _buenos_ (the Comanches use a good many Spanish words), and shook hands with me again with great seeming cordiality. He was evidently very much elated by his good fortune in getting to a place of safety, and showed it by repeated chuckles.

Dinner being ready, we drew closer to the festive fire-hole in which the viands were cooking. As a not very comely old squaw put forth a not very clean hand and arm to serve the first course, a young gentleman who had joined our party made a precipitate retreat. The young fellow was troubled with a delicate stomach. Another gentleman, having tasted of the first course, said he found the _tepie_ rather close and withdrew. There remained of our party, then, only the interpreter and my unworthy self to do honor to Antelope-Chewer’s hospitality.

The party assembled around the hospitable stew-pan consisted of the old squaw who did the honors of the camp-kettle; a younger squaw, plump and dirty, evidently the latest favorite; Antelope-Chewer and several little Chewers, ranging from six months to twelve years old; the aristocratic young bucks (whose food was handed to them by the old squaw), the interpreter, and the writer. The repast consisted of stewed buffalo meat served in the vessel in which it was cooked. Each _convive_ takes his clasp-knife in his right hand, seizes one end of the piece of meat with the thumb and forefinger of his left, and cuts off a piece of the required size. It is “bad medicine,” as well as _mauvais goût_, to take more than you can consume. The manner in which salt was used struck me as being an improvement on our civilized mode of using it. It was served dissolved in water in a shallow vessel, and each guest dipped his piece of meat in the fluid. Of course if this method were adopted in our hotels or boarding-houses, I should wish to have my salt and water served in an “individual” salt-vessel.

There was no bread. The Indians on the reservation had received no flour for weeks. We had the Indian substitute for bread—the fat of the meat cut off in strips, pressed, and served separately, cold. There are worse substitutes. A cup of coffee (without milk, of course) concluded the repast. It was by no means bad. It was hot and strong, though not quite sweet enough, as the ration of sugar issued to the Indians was insufficient. I enjoyed it, however. It is only justice to say that Quirz-Quip’s coffee was much better than some I have tasted in railroad eating-houses and “end of the track” towns.

Dinner being over, we left the lodge to walk through the camp, and especially to visit and view a bridge made by the Indians themselves across the Medicine Bluff. It was a structure of mud and logs quite creditable to Indian ingenuity and industry. It showed that the lessons of their teacher—the beaver—had not been thrown away upon them.

We invited Antelope-Chewer to come with us to the fort bakery, and we would make him a present of a dozen loaves of bread. He consented, but said he wanted his squaw to go too.

“He wants her to carry back the bread,” said the interpreter.

We agreed, and got into the wagon. Quirz-Quip desired that the plump and dirty squaw should ride inside with us. To this we would not submit, and insisted that she should take the seat beside the driver. Indeed, I felt already an itching sensation all over me—no doubt the effect of imagination; for the interpreter assured me there was no danger of anything of the kind, unless I should spend a night in a lodge. I assured him that such a thing was not at all probable. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding two or three baths, it was some days before my epidermis regained its accustomed tranquillity.

We drove to the Apache camp for our young friends who had fled from Quirz-Quip’s hospitality, and returned by the Comanche chief’s lodge to pick up the plump and dirty squaw. She had become tired of waiting, and had gone away, much to her lord’s disgust and our satisfaction.

We drove to the bakery and bought a dozen loaves of bread for Quirz-Quip. He wished us to drive him back to his camp with the bread. The interpreter told him we could not do it. Then the modest Comanche asked us to lend him the wagon to take the bread. The interpreter shook his head, and assured him that it was impossible.

“Then,” said Quirz-Quip, “how am I to get the bread to camp?”

“If you are too lazy to pack it,” said the interpreter, “you can leave, and be confounded.”

As we drove away, we saw him, with a rueful countenance, spreading out his blanket on the floor to receive the coveted bread but hated load.

On our return from the camps we passed by the agency. I asked what kind of a man the agent was. I was answered that he was “a good sort of man,” but “he knows nothing about Indians or their ways.”

“He is a Quaker, I suppose.”

“A kind of a _made-up_ Quaker, like a good many of ‘em.”

We stopped at the agency door, and I was introduced to the agent. He was a gentleman in his manners, and looked to me like an honest man. There was to be an issue of blankets on the following day. The agent kindly said he would be glad to have me present, and if I would come he would send a wagon for me. I accepted at once.

The Indian agent was as good as his word. He sent a carriage for us about half-past eight next morning. The issue was to take place about half-past nine. It was nearly half-past eleven, however, before the Indians began to arrive. Your Indian is invariably unpunctual. You may set what hour you please, but you cannot make him come until he is quite ready. By half-past twelve they began coming in considerable numbers and the issue commenced. The women and children were out in great force, and were in high good-humor, chatting and laughing in the gayest manner possible. Each family ranges itself in a semi-circle; the chief, or male head thereof, stood about the centre of the chord. Each chief, after receiving the number of blankets to which he was entitled, tore in two a double blanket of each color; there were only black and white blankets to be issued that day, no scarlet ones, greatly to the disappointment of the squaws and children. Beginning at one end of the semi-circle, the chief threw a piece of each color at the head of the person for whom it was intended. It was caught with a shout of glee and many remarks, evidently of a humorous nature, judging by the laughter with which they were hailed. Sometimes the dignified chief, with as near an approach to a smile as his dignity would allow, threw a joke with the blanket at the head of a dependant. His jokes, like those of all persons in power, were always greeted with applause. When the blanket was so thrown as to strike the recipient full in the face, the merriment was uproarious. Our friend Quirz-Quip was present, of course. He was very busy, getting all he could, and dividing what he got among his interesting family. He was harder to please than if he had always been a good Indian and had never left the reservation to go on the war-path.

The blankets were of very good quality. They were marked with the letters U. S. I. D. It was found necessary to stamp the blankets to prevent the Indians from gambling or trading them away to Mexicans in the summer.

Here and there some wretched squaws stood apart from the general throng, as if they were Pariahs among their sisters. They seemed utterly forlorn and miserable. They took no interest in the busy scene before them. Their faces wore an expression of blank hopelessness. The world had nothing for them in the present, nothing in the future. They came to the issue as mere drudges, to carry back the blankets to the camps. They had each an angular piece cut out of the nostril. This is the Scarlet Letter of the Comanches.

When the issue was over I visited the Indian hospital and had quite an interesting chat with the doctor. The Indians were then suffering a good deal from colds, influenza, etc., brought on by exposure at night, “making medicine”—_i.e._, performing incantations. As we went from the hospital to the carpenter’s shop, I met young Satanta, a paroled prisoner, son of the notorious Satanta who was delivered by the War Department to the civil authorities in Texas to be tried for murders and robberies committed by him within the boundaries of that State. Satanta, Jr., was a bright-eyed young man of twenty. He wore a long, straight red feather in his hat, and carried in his hand a bow, from which ever and anon he discharged an arrow as he went, and picked it up again.

An Indian, who evidently thought he was suffering under a very great grievance, now met us and talked very earnestly and excitedly to the interpreter.

“That Indian is smarting under the sense of some great wrong, real or fancied,” I said.

“Yes,” said the interpreter, smiling; “he has trouble with another Indian about a greyhound pup. I promised this fellow and another a pup each (I have the finest greyhounds in the Territory). The other fellow, while I was away, took both the pups, and won’t give this fellow his. They are just like children in many things.”

There was little doing in the carpenter’s shop. I was shown some work done by a young Indian which was fair, for an Indian. There were no Indians at work, but I was told that Kicking Bird’s son was to begin his apprenticeship the following week.

Nor was there anything doing at the school. There were hopes of opening it the following month, with twenty Apaches, twenty Kiowas, and the same number of Comanches.

The trader at the military post was also the trader for the Indians. The store was thronged from morning to sunset by Indians of both sexes. Comanches, Kiowas, Apaches, hung around in groups, standing in the doorways, blocking up the windows, when they were closed, with their faces against the panes, or their heads and the upper part of their bodies thrust in when they were open. The majority of the trader’s store-idlers are women, young girls, and children. They are by no means backward in begging. The clerks told me it was not wise to leave anything on the counter even for a moment when the red brethren and sisters were in the store; they had to be watched as narrowly as fashionable white kleptomaniacs.

I was rather pleased with the appearance of the Indian agent. He seemed honest and frank. Of his ignorance or knowledge of Indians and their ways I can say nothing. “Old Indian men” are apt to think that, in the way of knowledge of Indians, they have pulled the ladder up after them.

I thanked the agent for his politeness, and said that, if he did not think it impertinent, I should like to ask a question or two for my own information and satisfaction. He replied that he would be very happy to give me any information in his power.

“Well,” said I, “not to mince matters, you know they say a great many hard things about Indian agents.”

“Of course I do. When I received this appointment, one of my most intimate friends wrote to me not to accept it, warning me that, were I as pure as snow, I should be denounced by everybody as a swindler and a thief before six months.”

“It is said that for several weeks the Indians on this reservation have been without bread. Is this true?”

“It is. The freight contractors have failed to deliver the flour. I cannot issue what I have not. To make up for the lack of flour, I issue four pounds of beef to each Indian daily.”

“It is charged that the beef is poor. Is this charge true?”

“It is. What can I do? Like a quartermaster or commissary, I can only issue what I have on hand. If I had not this beef, the Indians would have nothing to eat. I cannot throw it back on the contractor’s hands, and wait for a better quality of meat; for while I was waiting the Indians would starve or leave the reservation to find subsistence where they could.”

“What is the allowance of coffee and sugar?”

“Four pounds of the former and eight of the latter to one hundred rations.”

I now took a friendly farewell of the Indian agent, and went away with a vague impression that it is not the poor, subordinate official who makes most money out of the Indians, but freighters and “big contractors,” and perhaps more especially their financial “backers,” the speculators of the great Eastern cities.

On our way back to the post we met Kicking Bird returning to his camp. He was mounted on a large cream-colored mule. We stopped, shook hands with him, and chatted a little. The interpreter joked him about riding a mule. Kicking Bird laughed, and said that as he was going to live hereafter like a white man, like a white man he should ride a mule.

It was the last time I saw Kicking Bird. Shortly afterwards he delivered up to the military authorities a number of the revolted Indians. Among them was a brother of one of his squaws. In revenge she poisoned the faithful chief.

Poor Kicking Bird! He had given his gorgeous war-bonnet to a veteran officer of the army as a token that he had left the war-path for ever. He proposed to teach his children the white man’s language and the white man’s peaceful arts. He fell a martyr to his fidelity to the government.

DE VERE’S “THOMAS À BECKET.”[210]

It is doubtful whether two years ago even the admirers of Aubrey de Vere looked for anything strikingly new or startling from his pen. His measure seemed filled. He was known and read as a poet whose melodious verse was the expression of thoughts lofty as well as tender, of profound meditations and large aspirations, of purity without fleck, yet cold almost as it was chaste. This were an enviable fame at any time, infinitely more so just now, when the ambition of our poets seems to be that of the prodigal, to waste their divine birthright on worthless objects, to live riotously, and finally, when all else is gone, to feed themselves and their readers on the husks of swine. Suddenly _Alexander the Great_ appeared, and in the author we beheld a new man. At once his fame took wings, while he, with the unconscious ease of one who took his place by right, strode beyond the men of to-day, and entered into that narrower circle of larger minds whose names are written in brass, whose works live after them and become part and parcel of the English tongue. One sign of Mr. de Vere’s undisputed success was significant. It is only such a transcendent genius as that of Dr. Newman that can overleap the barriers which prejudice has set around the Catholic name. It is still true, though less so than formerly, that the grand old name of “Catholic” blazoned on a literary scutcheon is regarded as a bar sinister by the non-Catholic press. Yet even this difficulty of caste was overcome by Mr. de Vere, and his _Alexander the Great_ was hailed by critics of every class and kind of thought to be a return to the palmy days of English drama, and a welcome addition to English literature.

Two years have passed, and a new drama is presented to us by the same author. From Alexander the Great to Thomas à Becket is a long stride and a trying one. It is a passage from the height of paganism to the height of Christianity. The hero of the one is the personification of the pride and the pomp, the glory and shame, the greatness and essential littleness, of paganism. The hero of the other is one of those men who throughout the Christian era, even up to our own times, have been found to stand up in the face of the princes of this world, and, if need be, pour out their hearts’ blood in confessing Christ and upholding his kingdom on earth.

We may as well say at once that in the new drama we miss many things which in _Alexander the Great_ won our admiration. We miss the sustained magic of those lines, almost every one of which is poetry of the highest order, yet so skilfully adapted that whosoever speaks them speaks naturally and in keeping with his character. In no place in _Alexander the Great_ could one say, “Here speaks the poet,” “Here the rhetorician,” “Here the dramatist.” This much, indeed, is true of _Thomas à Becket_. We miss, too, the brilliant epigrams, the proverbial wisdom of the brief sayings thrown so liberally into the mouths of this character and that. We miss the sharp contact and contrast of character so perfectly worked out among the different types of Greeks. There is no place in the later drama for such a conception as Alexander himself, the slow growth and development under our eyes of his many-sided character, with his strong resolve, his dreams, his daring hopes, his insane ambition, his thorough, practical manner of dealing with things as they pass, his slow-coming doubts, his wonder at the world, at his own mission in it, and at the unseen power that rules them both from somewhere. Indeed, we cannot call to mind a like conception to this in any drama.

The reason for the absence of such features as these is plain. In the one case the poet was freer to follow the workings of his own imagination; in the other he is more closely bound down to history, to facts, to the very words often spoken by his characters. And how thoroughly he has studied his subject may be seen in the preface to the drama, which is an admirable, though condensed, history of the whole struggle between St. Thomas and Henry II. But in compensation for what we miss we find a robustness, an off-hand freedom betokening real strength, a truth and naturalness of coloring, a noble manner of dealing with noble things, a straightforward honesty that winks at no faults, on whichever side they lie, a boldness and vigor that never flag from the first line to the last. There is less art than in the other, but much more of nature’s happy freedom. Moreover, the interest of the drama is none the less really of to-day because it represents men who lived and events which occurred seven centuries ago. Has this century seen no Henries or his like? Who shall say that we have no Beckets? Are there no men to-day ready to stand up in the face of princes calling themselves Christian, to risk land and life and all they have in the cause of Christ, at the same time that they obey their princes, be they Catholic or non-Catholic, “saving their order” and “saving God’s honor”?

The whole world makes sad reply. And though in these scientific days it is not the fashion to dash the brains of God’s priests out in the sanctuary, a method equally effectual is adopted to quench, if possible, the spirit within them. They are drained of such means as belong to their offices by fine upon fine; every effort is made to compel them, as was the case with St. Thomas, to betray their trust, to recognize rebellious, apostate, and recreant priests. And at length, when there is not a penny left, they are either driven into exile, as was St. Thomas, or cast into prisons where their martyrdom consists of a thousand petty insults and deprivations, and where, to take up recent examples, they are regaled on soup which is scientifically bad. After all, does there not seem something more magnanimous in the fierce brutality of the Plantagenet and his men?

The whole drama of _Thomas à Becket_ turns on the struggle between the archbishop and the king, and there is no hesitation on the author’s part in deciding which side to take in the contest. Mr. de Vere has certainly the courage of his convictions, and he is bold in their expression in days when St. Thomas is still regarded by the great majority of English readers as a mischievous and meddlesome prelate who courted, if he did not richly deserve, his fate. Let us, with Mr. de Vere’s permission, picture to ourselves a moment his lost opportunity of making himself infamously famous. Had he, with his great gifts and acknowledged place in the ranks of _literati_, only taken the other side; had he painted St. Thomas according to the orthodox Protestant reading, how his book would have been devoured, and what reviews written of it down all the line of the anti-Catholic army of writers! What comfort Mr. Gladstone would have found in such a convert in his next tilt with the Rock! Were it not a thing simply natural in any honorable man to adhere to the side of truth, and, more, to satisfy himself of the truth where doubts were raised, we should call it noble in Mr. de Vere thus to spurn the example of so many gifted writers of his time whose great ambition seems to be to pander to the vices around them. Indeed, not the least interest attached to this drama lies in the treatment, by a calm, poetic, yet deeply philosophic mind, of the momentous struggle which it portrays—the struggle ever old yet ever new between church and state.

The drama is in five acts. The first opens at Westminster with the election of Thomas to the primacy, embraces his resignation of the chancellorship and first rupture with the king, and ends beautifully and solemnly with his consecration as Archbishop of Canterbury. This act is very interesting. It plunges at once _in medias res_. Not a line is wasted, and so natural is the coloring that one lives and moves among the men of long ago as completely as in Shakspere. Becket’s friends and foes come and go, and have their say about the new prelate and his appointment to the “Rome of the North.” Naturally, the appointment to such a see still filled men’s minds while the memory of Anselm lived,

“Stretching from exile a lean, threatening arm”

against the first Henry. It is plain from the start that Becket’s mitre is not to be wreathed with roses. Even were the king a tamer soul, the new archbishop leaves enemies behind him—time-serving prelates who hate an honest man, others who envy him his place, nobles, knights, and rascals who have felt his strong hand while chancellor. The scene shifts to Normandy and shows us Henry’s court at Rouen, presided over by his perfidious and vicious queen, Eleanor, whose bitter tongue ever fans the flames that threaten Becket, whom she hates. Here we see Henry at his best, when, as he thinks, all is going well with his scheme.

“Thomas, Archbishop— That hand which holds the seal, wielding the staff— The feud of Crown and Church henceforth is past. … Henceforth I rule! None shares with me my realms.”

Here we have, too, a thrilling picture of his wrath when this pleasant scheme is at once knocked to pieces by Becket’s resignation of the chancellorship. And now the fight begins.

In the second act come up the memorable scenes at Northampton with the question of the “Royal Customs.” In these trying scenes, where king and prelate enter the lists against each other, the dramatist has exhibited a power worthy the occasion, and, to our thinking, they are the finest in the drama. We can only glance at them and pass on. The forces are marshalled: on the one side the power of the king with the bandit nobles—for most of them were little else—and the craven prelates; on the other Becket, his oath, and his conscience. The scene between Becket and the bishops, where they strive to break down his resolution, is admirable, as showing the inner character of the man, the steadfast churchman, military half, who has not yet quite lost that outspoken scorn he used so freely while still in and of the world. His brief replies are full of negative meaning, and, when he does break forth, the scorn of the king is puny beside his words.

“My lords, have you said all? Then hear me speak. I might be large to tell you, courtier prelates, That if the Conqueror’s was an iron hand, Not less ‘twas just. Oftenest it used aright Its power usurped. _It decked no idiot brow With casual mitre: neither lodged in grasp That, ague-stricken, scarce could hold its bribe, The sceptres of the shepherds of Christ’s flock._”

And never were there nobler words than these:

“Bishops of England! For many truths by you this day enforced, Hear ye in turn but one. The church is God’s: Lords, were it ours, then might we traffic with it; At will make large its functions, or contract; Serve it or sell; worship or crucify. I say the church is God’s; for he beheld it, His thought, ere time began; counted its bones, Which in his book were writ. I say that he From his own side in water and in blood Gave birth to it on Calvary, and caught it, Despite the nails, his bride, in his own arms. I say that he, a Spirit of clear heat, Lives in its frame, and cleanses with pure pain His sacrificial precinct, but consumes The chaff with other ardors. Lords, I know you.

* * * * *

To-day the heathen rage—I fear them not; If fall I must, this hand, ere yet I fall, Stretched from the bosom of a peaceful gown, Above a troubled king and darkening realm, Shall send God’s sentence forth. My lords, farewell.”

And surely Becket might have spoken this:

“My king I honor—honoring more my God; My lords, they lie who brand mine honest fame With fealty halved. With doubly-linked allegiance He serves his king who serves him for God’s sake; But who serves thus must serve his God o’er all. I served him thus, and serve.”

But we could quote all this magnificent scene.

In the third act Becket escapes to France, visits the exiled pontiff at Sens, and finally takes refuge at Pontigny. The calm of this holy and peaceful abode seems to permeate this portion of the drama, offering a happy relief after the late fierce storms. There he abides, “musing on war with heart at peace,” and his spirit, without slackening in its strong purpose, grows insensibly calmer, milder, and more humble. From this dwelling he is driven forth by order of the king, only, as the king himself bitterly says, to “stand stronger than before.” The persecution is turning against the persecutor, who confesses in words Shakspere might have written:

“I have lit my camp-fires on a frozen flood, Methinks the ice wears thin.”

But he is a man as full of device as resolution, and at his back are men still fuller of device. The plot thickens, and at last even Rome seems to fall from the archbishop, and give him over to the power of his enemies. Something of the old fierce spirit leaps up, and Rome itself is not spared, until he is reminded by John of Salisbury, his tried and faithful friend, of the Pope that

“Who sits there Sits on God’s tower, and further sees than we.”

Whereupon Becket breaks out into a speech full of beauty and of truth, which we regret our limited space forbids us to quote. At the end of it the two cardinals enter to endeavor to find a way for patching up a peace between the archbishop and the king. It must be borne in mind that in those days the church was in sore straits: the pope in exile at Sens; an anti-pope backed by all the power of the German emperor. As Cardinal Otho truly says:

“A mutinous world uplifts this day its front Against Christ’s Vicar! Save this France and England, I know not kingdom sound.”

And here was Becket, the champion of the church, doing, in the eyes of many, what best he could to drive England also into the enemy’s camp. All these circumstances render the intellectual and spiritual duel between the archbishop and the cardinals one of intense interest, which again confirms what we noted in _Alexander the Great_, that Mr. de Vere has the true dramatic instinct of bringing together at the right place and right time opposing elements. It is the clash of contraries that imparts greatest interest to a drama, and the right working of the conflict that shows the dramatist’s skill. The contrast between the plausible, keen, politic, Italian nature, as it would be called by some, of Cardinal William, and the straight, unbending, single-minded nature of Becket, who is so rooted in his position that nothing but death could tear him from it, is perfect. The cardinal builds up a very strong case in a negative manner against the archbishop. He hints at mistakes on the latter’s part; he counsels yielding here and there, or rather puts it to Becket why such and such might not be instead of such and such. In fact, his Eminence shows himself a thorough diplomat in cases where the issue was not a duel to the death. It would be amusing, were it not something of a far higher order, to see how Becket, with a strong, straight sentence or two, cuts mercilessly, half scornfully, through the cardinal’s fine-spun webs one after the other as they appear, scarcely giving them time to rise. Cardinal William is at length nettled into breaking quite through the diplomatic ice, and bids the archbishop resign. Becket refuses to listen to any voice but that which proceeds from the chair of Peter, and with this the act closes.

The fourth act opens with a beautiful scene between the nun Idonea and the aged Empress Matilda, whose character, small part as it plays in the drama, seems to us one of the most finished of all. Henry is back in England, only to find

“All’s well; and then all’s ill: who wars on Becket Hath January posting hard on May, And night at ten o’ the morn.”

On the other hand, Becket, with half-prophetic eye, seems to see the beginning of the end. After each new struggle, each new humiliation, he rises greater because humbler, leaving the dross behind him. Here is his own estimate of himself:

“Once I was unjust. The Holy Father sees as from a height; I fight but on the plain: my time is short, And in it much to expiate. I must act.

(_After a pause._)

I strove for justice, and my mother’s honor; For these at first. Now know I that God’s truth Is linked with these as close as body and soul.”

How true is this we all know. It only required a Luther to make of Henry II. a Henry VIII., and he had not stood so long in doubt as did the latter. The plot deepens. What an admirable touch it is that shows him, when the gravest news arrives from England, falling back a moment on his happier days at hearing of a smart retort given by his old pupil, the youthful prince! At last the king and Becket are brought together, and again in this long, historic meeting Mr. de Vere rises fully and easily to the level of the event. The inner vein of deceit for which he was marked shows through the monarch’s speech, and once a lurid burst of passion flashes forth like lightning and as quickly disappears. This prolonged scene, at the end of which the mask is almost openly thrown off by the king, ends the act, and is a fitting preparation for the consummation which is to follow.

The fifth act opens with preparations for the return of the archbishop to England. His heart and those of his friends are filled with the gloomiest forebodings. Ill-rumors thicken around them. Becket himself, in a speech of wonderful beauty and pathos, describes the “sinking strange” at his heart as, standing still on the French coast, he looks towards England. It is the flesh asserting itself and gaining a momentary victory over the spirit. He sails at length, and history tells us how he was received. It was a matter of life or death to his foes. There was only one end to a contest with a man of his stamp—either submission on their part or death to him. The drama hurries on towards the catastrophe. The queen fans the flame. As Lisieux says:

“Year by year She urged his highness ‘gainst my lord the primate; Of late she whets him with more complicate craft: She knows that all she likes the king dislikes, And feigns a laughing, new-born zeal for Becket, To sting the royal spleen.”

The short scene in which the barbed words of the queen draw a contrast between Becket’s triumph and the king’s humiliation is one of the many dramatic gems set in this drama. So graphic is the scene as she rises on the throne, cup in hand, and cries:

“A toast, my lords! The London merchant’s son: Once England’s primate—henceforth King of England!”

that we scarcely need Leicester to tell us:

“Behold her, Lisieux! _That smile is baleful as a winter beam Streaking some cliff wreck-gorged; her hair and eyes Send forth a glare half sunshine and half lightning._”

At last falls that memorable feast of St. Stephen, and the end comes.

“The man is changed. Seldom he speaks; his smile Is like that smile upon a dead man’s face, A mystery of sweetness.”

The saint is already looking beyond this world. Standing at the window, as we are told he stood, he looks out and beholds the ground robed in snow. Here is how his poet makes him speak of it:

“How fair, how still, that snowy world! The earth Lies like a white rose under eyes of God; May it send up a sweetness!”

What other poet in these days could give us so pure and perfect an image as that—a flower plucked, surely, from the paradise of poets? The sweetness is sent up. It rises from the martyr’s blood.

Such is an outline of this drama. The character, of course, on which the attention fastens chiefly is that of Thomas à Becket, and we think that in the portrayal of this great character Mr. de Vere is as happy as in his Alexander. Becket is a very easy man to write about, but a most difficult one to set living and real before us. In him for a long time the layman and the clerk struggled for mastery. There is no possible doubt that up to the time of his elevation to the primacy he was a man who lived in, and to a very great extent of, the world. He rejoiced in pomp and pride, in large retinues, in splendid appointments, in ostentatious display. He was not at all averse to showing that the arm of the cleric could tilt a lance with the bravest knight. Yet through all the temptations of such a life as his he undoubtedly retained his purity of heart, a right sense of his true vocation, and an honesty of purpose that never swerved. Certain it is that, in procuring his appointment as primate, Henry thought he had, if not exactly a tool, a devoted friend and a sensible man, who would not forget the favors his monarch had showered on him, and would be troubled by no such nice scruples as vexed his predecessor, Anselm. Becket had shown himself to be a keen-eyed, resolute, active, honest minister, with no sordid touch in his nature, with an intense sense of duty to his king and country. Indeed, had he not been a Catholic cleric, in days when clerics lawfully assumed many a civil office, there can be little doubt that he would have been pronounced, even by Protestant historians, to be one of the best and truest English chancellors that ever held the seals.

At a day’s notice this man, by the express command and desire of the king, is sent back to his real duty—the tending of Christ’s fold. He obeyed against his will, foreseeing already something of the issue. But the fashion of the world is not brushed off in a day, however changed may be the heart and conduct. To-day he is the gay and brilliant chancellor of England, highest in the favor of his king; to-morrow, primate of England, and appointed to that post, as he knew, to betray it. The man is not yet a saint—very far from it; and in his seizing of this character just as the robes of the world were falling from him and he had donned the livery of heaven; in his awakening to the new and tremendous responsibility that had fallen upon him; in the gradual taming of his fiery and impetuous spirit; in the struggle between personal love for his royal master, pity for the disasters necessarily brought upon the kingdom by his action, and his clear conception of duty throughout all; in the slow braying of this spirit in the mortar of affliction until speck by speck all the dross was shaken and cast out, and the whole man left clean and pure for the sacrifice—in all this Mr. de Vere has shown the skill of a great artist. The obvious temptation for a Catholic in treating such a theme was to make Becket a saint too soon. Mr. de Vere has not fallen into this mistake, and the result adds largely to the effect of the drama. Not till the very last scene do we feel that Becket lives already above this world, and only awaits his translation. The night before his death the flesh still urged flight when he knew that death was coming surely and swiftly. And when the curtain drops for the last time on that terrible scene of the outraged sanctuary and the murdered archbishop, then do we surely feel that the spirit of a saint and martyr has flown to heaven.

The conception of Henry is almost equally good. The following picture of him will be remembered:

“Your king is sudden: The tidings of his march and victory reach us Like runners matched. That slender, sinewy frame, That ardent eye, that swift, onstriding step, Yet graceful as a tiger’s, foot descending Silent but sure on the predestinate spot— From signs like these looks forth the inward man. Expect grave news ere long.”

Excellent foils to Becket and to each other are Becket’s two fast friends, John of Salisbury and Herbert of Bosham. The contrast between the two is well drawn by themselves:

“JOHN OF SALISBURY. Herbert, you jar me with your ceaseless triumphs, And hope ‘gainst hope. You are like a gold leaf dropped From grove immortal of the church triumphant To mock our church in storm! For manners’ sake, I pray you, chafe at times. The floods are out! I say the floods are out! This way and that They come a-sweeping.

“HERBERT. Wheresoe’er they sweep The eye of God pursues them and controls: That which they are to him, that only _are_ they; The rest is pictured storm.”

A mightier hand than Mr. de Vere’s might own so graphic a picture as this:

“Go where I might, except among the poor, ‘Twas all one huge conspiracy of error, Conspiracy, and yet unconscious half; For, though, beneath, there worked one plastic mind, The surface seemed fortuitous concurrence, One man the hook supplying, one the eye, Here the false maxim, there the fact suborned, This the mad hope, and that the grudge forgotten. The lawyer wrote the falsehood in the dust Of mouldering scrolls; with sighs the court-priest owned it; The minstrel tossed it gaily from his strings; The witling lisped it, and the soldier mouthed it. These lies are thick as dust in March.”

And the “reptile press” had not yet come into being!

There is not a weak line in this drama. It will be welcomed by all Catholics as a glorious illumination of the history which it pictures. Our boys should dwell on it in the schools. From no book can they gather a better idea of one of the most marked epochs in English history. It will, like _Alexander the Great_, bear reading and rereading, disclosing each time new beauties of thought and expression. Many of the speeches set one’s veins a-tingling, so vivid and real are they. The pictures of churchmen are a study. There is the prelate courtier, the prelate politician, the false ascetic, the blasphemous apostate, the timid prelate, who trembles between his conscience and his king. In striking contrast to these stand out Becket and his true men, while to and fro among the cleric gowns stalk the stalwart nobles, half-bandits, most of them, sick in turn of prelate and king. Mr. de Vere makes masterly use of these many opposite elements, groups, parts, and rearranges them with the highest dramatic effect.

The general tendency of English poetry in these days is downwards. It has gained nothing; it has lost much. It is least strong in its highest, the dramatic form. Without pretending to be at all dogmatic in mere literary criticism, we take this last statement to be indisputable. The failure, however, is not from lack of effort. There is surely some strange fascination about the drama. It would not be at all hazardous to say that nine out of every ten men with any literary pretensions, if they have not actually written dramas, have at least had the ambition and intention at some time or another to write them. What may be the precise reason for this general tendency towards that peculiar form of literature, unless it is that so very few succeed in it, we do not know, and do not care to inquire just now. The unattainable, however, always possesses a strong fascination for aspiring minds; and as the dramatic literature of all countries is that which, though the least in quantity, has fastened itself most upon the hearts of the people, it is at least a worthy ambition which aims at this royal road to fame. The discovery of the North-west Passage has not been a more fatal lure to mariners than the drama to literary adventurers. Even men of approved position in other branches of literature, poets of fame, novelists whose names were household words, statesmen and philosophers, have failed at this last fortress that fame seems to hold only for her most favored sons. Here no art can win an entrance; the sweetest strains cannot charm the locks asunder, the profoundest thoughts cannot melt them. Nature and nature only holds the key.

A glance at a few of the writers of the century will reveal how true is this. Even Byron with his passionate soul, his strangely mixed nature, his bitterness and sweetness, his loftiness of thought and expression combined, his marvellous power over words, has written dramas which as poems are splendid, but as dramas wretched. Shelley was the only poet of his day who produced a really dramatic work, but its revolting subject unhappily removes it from clean hands. The lesser lights of our own day have each in turn attempted a like flight only to meet with disaster. Who thinks of Browning’s _Strafford_ now? Who has cast a second glance at Swinburne’s _Chastelard_ or _Bothwell_? Notwithstanding the “gush” with which it was at first hailed by some English critics, Tennyson’s _Mary Tudor_ has fallen flat, both on the stage and off it, and honest men have come to the conclusion that it rather detracts from than adds to the well-earned and well-worn fame of the author. The only good purpose it has served was to bring to light a real drama on the same subject by the father of the author whose latest work now claims our attention. Of that we shall have something to say at another time. Even that proverbial philosopher, Mr. Tupper, was seized with the inspiration in this centennial year of ours, and we heard something of a drama wherein George Washington was to figure as the hero, but it faded out of sight before it had well appeared. Sad to say, our own Longfellow’s _Spanish Student_, the only drama he ever published, happens to be about the worst of his productions. Mr. Disraeli even, in his wild youth, perpetrated a drama which was presented some years since at a second or third class London theatre, and, we believe, almost ruined the management. At all events it failed. And Bulwer Lytton’s best known drama is not one-fiftieth part as good as his poorest novel.

Bold then is the man who would tread this royal road which is strewn with so many a brave wreck. Rash the man who, with name and fame established, with the well-won laurels of a lifetime on his brow, would add a final and a crowning leaf plucked from this garden of death. Happy the man who, in face of the thousand dangers that beset his path, goes on his way boldly, grasps and holds the prize that a thousand of his fellows have missed. Mr. de Vere has won this prize. His dramas are dramas and nothing else. They are not verses stitched together without a purpose and a plan. They are not mere description; they are instinct with _act_. We hope and believe that one who has accomplished so much and so well in so short a time may, as we do not doubt he can, do much more. The prizes to be won in this, to Mr. de Vere, new field are as many as the aspirants; but the winners are few. As Catholics we are proud of such a poet. As readers and observers we rejoice in these degenerate days at seeing so resolute a return to loftier thoughts and purer, to great conceptions, to real English, which is free at once from the affectation of the archaic and from the flimsy jingle that tries honest ears, to a right depicting of scenes and events that have stirred the world.

[210] _St. Thomas of Canterbury._ A Dramatic Poem. By Aubrey de Vere, author of _Alexander the Great_. London: Henry S. King & Co. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

THE PRISONER OF CHILLON.

It has been the lot of more than one disreputable character to be glorified by great poets. From Spenser to Tennyson have the praises of “Gloriana” been sung, to the no small detriment of truth, and of far worthier personages than she who, although in some respects a great queen, was guilty of ferocities almost beyond the capabilities of man, and of prolonged and calculating cruelties contrary to the very nature bestowed by God on woman. Again, Satan himself is portrayed in Milton’s stately poem as a being more magnificent than malignant. He “hates well” certainly, but his own utter hatefulness, and the base ingratitude to his Creator of which he is the first example, is sufficiently veiled to incline one to feel something akin to admiration or pity for the arch-rebel against God, the crafty seducer and pitiless destroyer of the souls of men.

Passing over other instances of false renown, and undazzled by the halo of romance cast around the “Prisoner of Chillon” by Lord Byron’s melodious lines (it would be more plain-spoken than polite to write this word, as here it ought to be written, _i.e._, without the _n_), let us examine, by the sober light of history, into the merits of this more-than-doubtful hero, rendered by his captivity a person of interest, although there is every proof that the story of his arrest, in violation of a safe-conduct granted him by the duke of Savoy, is an invention.[211] Still more, however, does Bonivard owe his celebrity to Lord Byron, who apparently knew nothing of the “Prisoner” whose imaginary sufferings he sang, beyond his name, his Protestantism, and the fact of his imprisonment. The poem opens with a string of fictions, among which it is amusing to read that Bonivard was loaded with chains for the religion of his father, and that the said father had died on the rack, a martyr to a creed he refused to abjure, etc.

But imagination has had the upper hand long enough. Certain of our contemporaries abroad having recently referred to the “Prisoner of Chillon” as a martyr for liberty of conscience, it is time to bring down from his pedestal this Calvinist apostate, pointed to by Protestants as one of their models of virtue, and who, we readily allow, turns out to be a fitting companion to similar “models” even more famous in their annals.

The Bonivards were an old _bourgeois_ family of Chambéry, who from the thirteenth century had possessed a certain extent of feudal property. Thus they were subjects of the princes of Savoy, whose worst enemies were then the Genevese and Swiss. Now, it was under the protection of these latter that Bonivard, himself a Savoyard, came, in the vain hope of preserving the rich revenues of his priory of Saint Victor, to plant his batteries against his native country. At Geneva, he took his place among the first promoters of the freedom of the future republic, but no sooner did the Reformation become a movement of importance, from the standing of some of its leaders, than Bonivard disappears from the front, and falls into a lower rank; since, although a writer of some power and possessed of real talents, he was utterly lacking in energy and dignity of character, as also in firmness and consistency of purpose. In proof of this, it is enough to observe the continual applications for money with which he harassed the council of Geneva, while he was at the same time playing fast and loose between Savoy and Geneva, in the first place, and afterwards between Geneva and Berne, according to the advancement of his own interests, self being apparently the sole object of his worship. This “vain and versatile beggar”[212] was called by one of the chiefs of the republic, the “_Stultus_ M. de Sans-Saint-Victor.”

Dr. Chapponnière, a Protestant, says that “Bonivard, exalted by some as a hero and a martyr for liberty, and by others charged with every vice, merited neither the excess of honor he received on the one hand, nor of condemnation on the other.” With regard, however, to this verdict, which would represent Bonivard as a man of simple mediocrity, we put the following questions: Was not François de Bonivard a traitor to his religion, which he abandoned? to his ecclesiastical character, which he violated? to his country, which he injured to the utmost of his power? to history, which he falsified? and lastly, to his _wives_, whom he deceived, and one of whom he abandoned to torture?

The “Prisoner of Chillon” had earned his detention in that fortress by fifteen years of open revolt against his lawful sovereign; and if, by reason of his six years of imprisonment he is to be accounted a great man, it is but just to allow his fourth wife, Catherine de Courtaronel, to share his greatness. Like him, she apostatized; like him, she quitted her convent and broke all her vows; like him, she was driven out of Geneva because of her evil life; like him, she was allowed to return thither on promising amendment; with him she lived, for some time unmarried, until the two were compelled by the Genevese authorities to submit to a marriage ceremony; like him, she was accused of adultery, and, more unfortunate than he, was made, by the application of frightful tortures, to avow herself guilty of the crime (which, however, has not been proved), her husband making no attempt whatever to save her from the torture. In consequence of the confessions thus extorted, she was condemned to be drowned; the sentence being duly executed.

We have here a terrible pendant to the six years of prison, and one which, this time, can neither be imputed (to quote M. Fazg) to “an infamous duke of Savoy,” nor yet (to quote Bonivard himself) to “a rascally pope.”

This brief sketch, notwithstanding its incompleteness as to details, which would, however, only darkly shade the outline here given, is sufficient to portray the real Bonivard, the avaricious and time-serving apostate, stripped of the interesting fiction which envelopes the Prisoner of Chillon, and to prove his worthiness of a niche by the side of Cranmer, Luther, Calvin, Beza, John of Leyden, and the rest of the reforming race.

[211] See, especially, Spon, _Histoire de Genève_, tom. 1. pp. 203, 204.

[212] See notice in the _Revue Catholique_ for June, 1876, by M. Leyret, to whom the present paper is largely indebted. Those who wish for full information on the subject will find it in the _Notice sur François de Bonivard, Prieur de St. Victor et sur ses Ecrits, par M. le Dr. Chapponniere_ (_Mémoires de la Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Genève_, tome iv.), also in the _Matériaux Historiques_ and the _Notices Généalogiques_ of Galiffe (tome iii.), but above all in the remarkable work by Canon Magnin, now Bishop of Annecy, on Bonivard and the Chronicles of Geneva (_Mémoires de l’Académie de Savoie, 2ème Séries_, tome iii.) who by even his moderation, as well as the pitiless logic of facts, crushes the pseudo-confessor.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

SANCTA SOPHIA, OR DIRECTIONS FOR THE PRAYER OF CONTEMPLATION, ETC. Extracted out of more than Forty Treatises written by the late Ven. Father F. Augustin Baker, a monk of the English Congregation of the Holy Order of S. Benedict; and methodically digested by the R. F. Serenus Cressy, of the same Order and Congregation. Now edited by the Very Rev. Dom Norbert Sweeny, D.D., of the same Order and Congregation. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

Next in importance to the choice of a spiritual director comes, no doubt, the selection of the kind and quality of spiritual reading proper for individual souls. Ordinarily they go together, and, granting the first choice to have been well made, the second should be left to be determined by it. One advantage, however, a suitable book presents even when compared with a suitable director. It is always accessible, a consideration of some importance, when one remembers how urgently spiritual writers seek to persuade the soul that in case wise direction can be had at no less cost, she should travel “a thousand German miles” to find it. It is true that with certain classes of religious reading, and especially with that class to which the _Sancta Sophia_ belongs, there is danger that indiscreet readers may mistake their own needs, and nourish pride on what is proper food for humility only. Another peculiarity belonging to them is one which we hardly know whether to class as an advantage or a disadvantage. Put into the hands of mature readers for whom they have been esteemed suitable on account of some natural tendency to introversion, and possibly of converts, to which class, by the way, the author of the _Sancta Sophia_ himself belonged, we have observed these charts of the more interior ways of spiritual life to create a temporary difficulty almost as serious as those they were intended to remove. The clearness and certainty with which the road is pointed out, and the obstacles to be surmounted described, fill the mind at first with such a sense of security as one feels who places himself in charge of an experienced guide to travel to regions by report well known but as yet unvisited. The objects of faith assume a new vividness, and the soul, beholding its own struggles and its own weariness reflected in the page before it, takes up its line of march with new vigor and readiness to endure what its predecessors also have endured. But it will be strange if its enemy do not avail himself of the very weapons used against him to raise the contrary difficulty, and to suggest that the very accuracy with which the internal conflict is described shows that nothing has been really achieved by the spiritual writers except the dissection of the soul itself, and that, considered as evidence for the existence of anything beyond its own struggles, their works are simply worthless. However, to “well-minded souls,” as Father Baker would say, such temptations against faith are not in reality more dangerous than any other, and may, with the help of prayer and prudent counsel, be fled from even while their immediate occasion is retained and put to its uses. For such souls, once firmly grounded in Catholic faith and with a natural predisposition for “the internal ways of the Spirit,” we know no better guide than the _Sancta Sophia_, now so happily reprinted. No doubt it is not adapted to general reading; the caution of the Benedictine father, Leander à St. Martino, is as necessary to-day as when it was prefixed to the earliest editions of the work. These instructions, he said, “are written precisely, and only for such souls as by God’s holy grace do effectually and constantly dedicate themselves to as pure an abstraction from creatures as may with discretion be practised; … consequently, for such as abstain from all manner of levity, loss of time, notable and known defects, vain talk, needless familiarity, and in a word do take as much care as they can to avoid all venial sins and occasions of them, and all things which they shall perceive or be warned of, to be impediments to the divine union of their souls with God.”

Let us hope that even the strict application of this rule would not too greatly narrow the circle of readers likely to be profited by the reissue of a volume which those well qualified to judge rate as the most solid and valuable work on prayer ever written in the English tongue. A more effectual barrier, perhaps, against indiscriminate readers, is raised by the style of the work itself than by cautions such as these. For while the quaint, sweet sobriety of its manner most happily matches the gravity of its matter, it is marked by an utter absence of all things likely to gratify curiosity simply, and makes no effort to do more than guide souls called to contemplative prayer along the secure road of abnegation and self-denial. Certain blemishes which pertained to the work in its original state are sufficiently guarded against in this edition by notes; and in its present form the _Sancta Sophia_ is undoubtedly better fitted than before both to the needs of the contemplative orders for whom it was originally written, and to those of devout souls living in the world.

MITCHELL’S GEOGRAPHICAL TEXT-BOOKS. Philadelphia: Published by J. H. Butler & Co.

One of the best proofs of the excellence of these text-books is the continual popularity which they have enjoyed, in spite of the publication of so many competing works by other authors. Of course they have been kept up to the times by additions, and improvements corresponding to the increase of geographical knowledge.

The series consists of eight books, two being occupied with ancient geography, and is progressive, so as to suit every age and capacity. For Catholic schools it is, so far as we can see, not open to any objection, and as good as any set of books not expressly written for them can be.

We are particularly pleased with Prof. Brocklesby’s _Physical Geography_, which forms part of the series. It is full of information for grown persons as well as for the young, is profusely and finely illustrated, as is the rest of the series, and will be found to be a most readable and instructive book.

The maps and charts are throughout the series executed with that clearness and beauty which have always characterized Mitchell’s atlases.

THE LIFE, LETTERS, AND TABLE-TALK OF BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON.

MEN AND MANNERS IN AMERICA ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. New York. Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1876.

These two volumes are the first instalments of the “Sans-Souci Series,” intended as a companion to the “Bric-à-Brac Series.” The life of Haydon the artist is full of painful interest. The present volume is a condensation by Mr. R. H. Stoddard of the larger Engglish life.

_Men and Manners in America One Hundred Years Ago_, edited by H. G. Scudder, tells pleasantly enough how men and women lived and moved and had their being in this country a century ago.

Transcriber’s Note:

Obvious printing errors, such as upside down or backwards letters and accent marks, mismatched open and closed quote marks, duplicate words, and incorrect spacing between words, were corrected. Unprinted letters and final stops were added. Alternate and obsolete spellings were left unchanged.

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_.

Footnotes in the text were numbered in order and moved to the end of the article in which the anchor occurs. Footnote anchors in tables were changed to letters. Many table footnotes have multiple anchors. Added missing footnote anchor to [190].

Noted, but left unchanged: Some listings in the Contents are not in alphabetical order.

Spaces were used instead of decimal points to separate dollars from cents and pounds from shillings in “Labor in Europe and America.”

Hyphens occasionally used inconsistently, e.g. text contains both churchyard and church-yard. ‘Home Rule’ when used as a noun has no hyphen; otherwise, it appears as Home-Rule or Home-Ruler.