The Cloister and the Hearth

Not a day passes over the earth, but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows. Of these obscure heroes, philosophers, and martyrs, th...

“Ay, ay!” said the old man; “but my poor bones are stiff, and indeed the fire is too hot for a body to kneel over with these short straws. St. John the Baptist, but the young ma...

“That you will,” was the reply: then he whispered in her ear: “This is my good princess; but you are my queen.” He added aloud: “Wait for me, I pray you, I will presently return.”

It was near four o'clock in the afternoon. Eli was in the shop. His eldest and youngest sons were abroad. Catherine and her little crippled daughter had long been anxious about...

Ghysbrecht Van Swieten was an artful man. He opened on the novice with something quite wide of the mark he was really aiming at. “The town records,” said he, “are crabbedly writ...

“Look into your own heart and write!” said Herr Cant; and earth's cuckoos echoed the cry. Look into the Rhine where it is deepest, and the Thames where it is thickest, and paint...

One bright morning unwonted velvet shone, unwonted feathers waved, and horses' hoofs glinted and ran through the streets of Tergou, and the windows and balconies were studded wi...

While the burgomaster was exposing Gerard at Tergou, Margaret had a trouble of her own at Sevenbergen. It was a housewife's distress, but deeper than we can well conceive. She c...

Margaret cut off a huge piece of venison, and ran to the window and threw it out to the green eyes of fire. They darted on to it with a savage snarl; and there was a sound of re...

The banns of marriage had to be read three times, as in our days; with this difference, that they were commonly read on week-days, and the young couple easily persuaded the cure...

The strange glance of hatred the burgomaster had cast on Gerard, coupled with his imprisonment, had filled the young man with a persuasion that Ghysbrecht was his enemy to the d...

Ghysbrecht Van Swieten kept the key of Gerard's prison in his pouch. He waited till ten of the clock ere he visited for he said to himself, “A little hunger sometimes does well...

Gerard and Margaret went gaily to Sevenbergen in the first flush of recovered liberty and successful adventure. But these soon yielded to sadder thoughts. Gerard was an escaped...

As if this had been a concerted signal, the back door was struck as rudely the next instant. They were hemmed in. But at these alarming sounds Margaret seemed to recover some sh...

Where is the woman that cannot act a part? Where is she who will not do it, and do it well, to save the man she loves? Nature on these great occasions comes to the aid of the si...

Martin Wittenhaagen, standing at the foot of the stairs with his arrow drawn nearly to the head and his knife behind him, was struck with amazement to see the men come back with...

Jorian Ketel went straight to Margaret's room, and there, to his infinite surprise, he found the man he had been in search of, pale and motionless, his head in Margaret's lap, a...

Ghysbrecht Van Swieten could not sleep all night for anxiety. He was afraid of thunder and lightning, or he would have made one of the party that searched Peter's house. As soon...

Gerard warned by recent peril, rose before daybreak and waked Martin. The old soldier was astonished. He thought Gerard had escaped by the window last night. Being consulted as...

The courage, like the talent, of common men, runs in a narrow groove. Take them but an inch out of that, and they are done. Martin's courage was perfect as far as it went. He ha...

Speech is the familiar vent of human thoughts; but there are emotions so simple and overpowering, that they rush out not in words, but eloquent sounds. At such moments man seems...

The effect was so sudden and magical, that the shooter himself was stupefied for an instant. Then he hailed his companions to join him in effecting the capture, and himself set...

Life and liberty, while safe, are little thought of: for why? they are matters of course. Endangered, they are rated at their real value. In this, too, they are like sunshine, w...

Not far on this road he came upon a little group. Two men in sober suits stood leaning lazily on each side of a horse, talking to one another. The rider, in a silk doublet and b...

Denys caught at Gerard, and somewhat checked his fall; but it may be doubted whether this alone would have saved him from breaking his neck, or a limb. His best friend now was t...

It was the afternoon of the next day. Gerard was no longer lightheaded, but very irritable and full of fancies; and in one of these he begged Denys to get him a lemon to suck. D...

THE worthy physician went home and told his housekeeper he was in agony from “a bad burn.” Those were the words. For in phlogistic as in other things, we cauterize our neighbour...

Things good and evil balance themselves in a remarkable manner and almost universally. The steel bow attached to the arbalestrier's back, and carried above his head, had sunk hi...

Gerard was staggered by this sudden communication, and his colour came and went. Then he clenched his teeth with ire. For men of any spirit at all are like the wild boar; he wil...

Here Gerard made acquaintance with a monk, who had constructed the great dial in the prior's garden, and a wheel for drawing water, and a winnowing machine for the grain, etc.,...

Gerard was almost as eager for this promised land as Denys; for the latter constantly chanted its praises, and at every little annoyance showed him “they did things better in Bu...

In the refectory allusion was made, at the table where Gerard sat, to the sudden death of the monk who had undertaken to write out fresh copies of the charter of the monastery,...

In the public room they found the mistress, a buxom woman of forty. She curtsied to them, and smiled right cordially “Give yourself the trouble of sitting ye down, fair sir,” sa...

A wild sight met the eyes of the rescued pair. The room flaring with torches, the glittering breastplates of the archers, their bronzed faces, the white cheeks of the bound thie...

“It was a blessed sleep,” said Gerard; “methinks Heaven sent it me. It hath put as it were a veil between me and that awful night. To think that you and I sit here alive and wel...

The alderman, pleased at being called bailiff, became communicative. “In a case of blood we detain all testimony that is like to give us leg bail, and so defeat justice, and tha...

The culprits were condemned to stand pinioned in the marketplace for two hours, that should any persons recognize them or any of them as guilty of other crimes, they might depos...

as I love thee. But the ancients must surely know; and they held women cheap. 'Levius quid femina,' said they, which is but la Jeanneton's tune in Latin, 'Le peu que sont les fe...

“Ay did we. For now I think on't, I did hear them last night scurrying under our window, and howling and whining for man's flesh in yon market-place. But no fat burgher did pity...

Rude travel is enticing to us English. And so are its records; even though the adventurer be no pilgrim of love. And antique friendship has at least the interest of a fossil. St...

Some are old in heart at forty, some are young at eighty. Margaret Van Eyck's heart was an evergreen. She loved her young namesake with youthful ardour. Nor was this new sentime...

Denys, placed in the middle of his companions, lest he should be so mad as attempt escape was carried off in an agony of grief and remorse. For his sake Gerard had abandoned the...

Letters of fire on the church wall had just inquired, with an appearance of genuine curiosity, why there was no mass for the duke in this time of trouble. The supernatural expos...

A change came over Margaret Brandt. She went about her household duties like one in a dream. If Peter did but speak a little quickly to her, she started and fixed two terrified...

Experienced women are not frightened when a woman faints, or do they hastily attribute it to anything but physical causes, which they have often seen produce it. Catherine bustl...

The little party at the hosier's house sat at table discussing the recent event, when their mother returned, and casting a piercing glance all round the little circle, laid the...

Catherine was a good housewife who seldom left home for a day, and then one thing or another always went amiss. She was keenly conscious of this, and watching for a slack tide i...

Denys took an opportunity next day and told mother and daughter the rest, excusing himself characteristically for not letting Cornelis and Sybrandt hear of it. “It is not for me...

Catherine was in dismay when she reflected that Gerard must reach home in another month at farthest, more likely in a week; and how should she tell him she had not even kept an...

MARGARET BRANDT had always held herself apart from Sevenbergen; and her reserve had passed for pride; this had come to her ears, and she knew many hearts were swelling with jeal...

Among strangers Margaret Brandt was comparatively happy. And soon a new and unexpected cause of content arose. A civic dignitary being ill, and fanciful in proportion, went from...

The reader already knows how much these two had to tell one another. It was a sweet yet bitter day for Margaret, since it brought her a true friend, and ill news; for now first...

“Not a jot, Denys, not a jot. But an I hated them like poison I would not disobey my love. Denys, 'tis so sweet to obey, and sweetest of all to obey one who is far, far away, an...

“In very deed she hath. Fear me not, good mother. Let her come and read the letter of the poor boy she hath by devilish arts bewitched and then let her go. Give me your words to...

When she recovered, her head was on Catherine's arm, and the honest half of the family she had invaded like a foe stood round her uttering rough homely words of encouragement, e...

About two months before this scene in Eli's home, the natives of a little' maritime place between Naples and Rome might be seen flocking to the sea beach, with eyes cast seaward...

Gerard took a modest lodging on the west bank of the Tiber, and every day went forth in search of work, taking a specimen round to every shop he could hear of that executed such...

About a week after this the two friends sat working together, but not in the same spirit. Pietro dashed fitfully at his, and did wonders in a few minutes, and then did nothing,...

Gerard walked silently beside Teresa, wondering in his own mind, after the manner of artists, what she was going to do with him; instead of asking her. So at last she told him o...

From their day Italy was never without a native scholar or two, versed in Greek; and each learned Greek who landed there was received fraternally. The fourteenth century, ere it...

FRA COLONNA had the run of the Pope's library, and sometimes left off work at the same hour and walked the city with Gerard, on which occasions the happy artist saw all things e...

But she declined. “'Twill be time to put a slight on the Gerardo, when his work discontents me.” Then Gerard, who knew he was an excellent draughtsman, but not so good a colouri...

“His breath is even, his hand moist. I know there be learned leeches would wake him, to look at his tongue, and be none the wiser; but we that be women should have the sense to...

Nor was he a prey to despair alone, but to exasperation at all his self-denial, fortitude, perils, virtue, wasted and worse than wasted; for it kept burning and stinging him, th...

In an apartment richly furnished, the floor covered with striped and spotted skins of animals, a lady sat with her arms extended before her, and her hands half clenched. The agi...

It happened, two days after the scene I have endeavoured to describe, that Gerard, wandering through one of the meanest streets in Rome, was overtaken by a thunderstorm, and ent...

The former grew peevish. It was past nine o'clock. At last he sent Andrea to Gerard's room on the desperate chance of his having come in unobserved. Andrea shrugged his shoulder...

For there on that spot an event had just occurred, which, take it altogether, was perhaps without a parallel in the history of mankind, and may remain so to the end of time.

A woman has her own troubles, as a man has his. And we male writers seldom do more than indicate the griefs of the other sex. The intelligence of the female reader must come to...

In the guest chamber of a Dominican convent lay a single stranger, exhausted by successive and violent fits of nausea, which had at last subsided, leaving him almost as weak as...

Never was self-denial better bestowed; and like most rational penances, it soon became no penance at all. At first the pride and complacency, with which the assassin gazed on th...

“As is the race of leaves so is that of men.” And a great man budded unnoticed in a tailor's house at Rotterdam this year, and a large man dropped to earth with great eclat.

The Dominicans, or preaching friars, once the most powerful order in Europe, were now on the wane; their rivals and bitter enemies, the Franciscans, were overpowering them throu...

A Catherine is not an unmixed good in a strange house. The governing power is strong in her. She has scarce crossed the threshold ere the utensils seem to brighten; the hearth t...

THE new pope favoured the Dominican order. The convent received a message from the Vatican, requiring a capable friar to teach at the University of Basle. Now Clement was the ve...

But young as he was, he had already learned many lessons of ecclesiastical wisdom. For one thing he had been taught to pause, ie., in certain difficulties, neither to do nor to...

“Now just you go back,” said she, “and tell them I can't come, and I won't: they have got Kate,” So he departed, and Catherine continued her sentence; “there, child, I must go:...

Not long after this, as the little family at Tergou sat at dinner, Luke Peterson burst in on them, covered with dust. “Good people, Mistress Catherine is wanted instantly at Rot...

True: for we can predict in some degree the consequences of a stroke with any material weapon. But a lie has no bounds at all. The nature of the thing is to ramify beyond human...

She who had wept for poor old Martin was not likely to bear this blow so stoically as the death of the old is apt to be borne. In vain Catherine tried to console her with common...

“'Twas well thought of,” said Jerome. He then told him he had but delayed till he could obtain extraordinary powers from the Pope to collect money for the Church's use in Englan...

“Methinks waiting for their best friend's coffin, that and nothing to do, are enow to make them worse than Nature meant. Why not set them up somewhere, to give 'em a chance?”

She recovered herself, and laying her hand on his shoulder, said solemnly, “Luke, he is not dead. Dying men are known to have a strange sight. And listen, Luke! My poor father,...

Margaret, in hers, vented her energy and her faith in her dying father's vision, or illusion; and when this was done, and Luke gone, she wondered at her credulity, and her consc...

The next day, Sunday, after mass, was a bustling day at Catherine's house in the Hoog Straet. The shop was now quite ready, and Cornelis and Sybrandt were to open it next day; t...

The sermon had begun when Margaret entered the great church of St. Laurens. It was a huge edifice, far from completed. Churches were not built in a year. The side aisles were ro...

The cool church chequered with sunbeams and crowned with heavenly purple, soothed and charmed Father Clement, as it did Margaret; and more, it carried his mind direct to the Cre...

While Jorian was putting on his doublet and jerkin to go to Peter's tomb, his tongue was not idle. “They used to call him a magician out Sevenbergen way. And they do say he gave...

“She is not the duke; she is a poor, good lass, that hath waited not minutes, but years, for a graceless son of mine. You can put the meat on the board all the same; then we can...

What that sensitive mind, and tender conscience, and loving heart, and religious soul, went through even in a few hours, under a situation so sudden and tremendous, is perhaps b...

It was the day after that terrible scene: the little house in the Hoog Straet was like a grave, and none more listless and dejected than Catherine, so busy and sprightly by natu...

Not many days after this came the news that Margaret Van Eyck was dead and buried. By a will she had made a year before, she left all her property, after her funeral expenses an...

My reader is aware that the moment the frenzy of his passion passed, he was seized with remorse for having been betrayed into it. But perhaps only those who have risen as high i...

One day as he lay there sighing and groaning, prayerless, tuneless, hopeless, a thought flashed into his mind. What he had done for the poor and the wayfarer, he would do for hi...

HER attitude was one to excite pity rather than terror, in eyes not blinded by a preconceived notion. Her bosom was fluttering like a bird, and the red and white coming and goin...

The startled hermit glared from his nurseling to Margaret, and from her to him, in amazement, equalled only by his agitation at her so unexpected return. The child lay asleep on...

Margaret went back to Rotterdam long ere Gerard awoke, and actually left her boy behind her. She sent the faithful, sturdy Reicht off to Gouda directly with a vicar's grey frock...

A priest is never more thoroughly a priest than in the chamber of death, Gerard did the last offices of the Church for the departed, just as he should have done them for his sma...

A fortnight after this a pale bowed figure entered the Dominican convent in the suburbs of Gouda, and sought speech with Brother Ambrose, who governed the convent as deputy, the...

Jerome was as morose as ever in his general character, but he had somewhat softened towards Gerard. All the time he was in England he had missed him more then he thought possibl...

In compliance with a Custom I despise, but have not the spirit to resist, I linger on the stage to pick up the smaller fragments of humanity I have scattered about; i.e. some of...