Chapter 7

Then his father calls him home; and when he has returned to Annécy, Bernard finds that every preparation has been made for his approaching wedding with the daughter of the great Lord of Miolans. "_Sponsa pulchra_," beautiful bride, this young woman was, according to the record, and doubtless this was true. The attitude of Bernard toward this marriage his father and mother could not understand. He held back constantly, and urged all sorts of objections to its immediate consummation, but on no ground which seemed to them reasonable. So the wedding-day was set. The house was full of guests. Every gate and door of the castle was crowded by armed retainers, and there seemed to be no escape. Bernard retired to his own room, and in the oldest manuscripts are given the words of his prayer:

"My adorable Creator, Thou who with thy celestial light enlightened those who invoke with faith and confidence, and Thou my Jesus, Divine Redeemer of men and Saviour of souls, lend a favorable ear to my humble prayer; spread on thy servant the treasures of your infinite mercy. I know that Thou never abandonest those who place in you their hope; deliver me, I supplicate Thee, from the snares which the world have offered me. Break these nets in which the world tries to take me; permit not that the enemy prevail over thy servant, that adulation may enfeeble my heart. I abandon myself entirely to Thee. I throw myself into the arms of thy infinite mercy, hoping that Thou wilt save me, and wilt reject not my demand."

Then to the good Saint Nicholas:

"Amiable shepherd, faithful guide, holy priest, thou who art my protector and my refuge, together with God, and His holy mother, the happy Virgin Mary, obtain me, I pray thee, by thy merits, the grace of triumph over the obstacles the world opposes to my vow of consecrating myself to God without reserve--in return for the property, the pleasures, and honors here below, of which I abandon my part, obtain me spiritual good all the course of my life, and eternal happiness after my death."

Then Bernard retired to sleep, and in a dream Saint Nicholas stood before him and uttered these words:

"Bernard, servant of God the Lord, who never betrays those who put their confidence in Him, calls thee to follow Him. An immortal crown is reserved for thee. Leave at once thy father's house and go to Aosta. There in the cathedral thou shalt meet an old man called Pièrre. He will welcome thee; thou shalt live with him, and he shall teach thee the road thou should traverse. For my part, I shall be thy protector, and will not for an instant abandon thee."

Then Bernard opened his eyes and the vision had disappeared. He was overcome with joy. His resolution was taken. Though he knew no way out of the castle, nor from the bedroom in the tower, in which he had been locked by his thoughtful father, yet he was ready to go.

Taking up a pen, he wrote to his father this letter:

"Very dear parents, rejoice with me that the Lord calls me to His service. I follow Him to arrive sooner at the port of salvation, the sole object of my vows. Do not worry about me, nor take the trouble to seek me. I renounce the marriage, which was ever against my will. I renounce all that concerns the world. All my desires turn toward heaven, whither I would arrive. I take the road this minute.

"BERNARD DE MENTHON."

Laying the letter on the table, he soon found himself on the way outside the castle grounds, and along this path he hurried, over the mountain passes, toward the city of Aosta. So say the oldest manuscripts; but in the later stories the details are more fully described. From these it would appear that Bernard leaped from the window eighteen or twenty feet, his naked feet striking on a bare rock. On he ran through the night; on over dark and lonely paths in a country still uninhabited; over the stony fields and wild watercourses of the Graian Alps, and when the morning dawned he found himself in the city of Aosta, a hundred miles from Annécy.

In an old painting the manner of his escape is shown in detail. As he drops from the window he is supported by Saint Nicholas on the one side, and an angel on the other, and underneath the painting is the legend "_Emporté par Miracle_." It is said, too, that in former times the prints of his hands on the stone window-sill, and of his naked feet on the rock below, were both plainly visible. Eight hundred years later the good Father Pièrre Verre celebrated mass in the old room in which Bernard was confined; and he reports at that time there was both on the window-sill and on the rock below only the merest trace of the imprints left by Bernard. One could not then "even be sure that they were made by hand or foot." But the chronicle wisely says: "Time, in effacing these marks and rendering them doubtful, has never effaced the tradition of the fact among the people of Annécy."

In the morning, consternation reigned within the castle. The Lord of Menthon was filled with disgust, shame, and confusion. The Lord of Miolans thought that he and his daughter were the victims of a trick, and he would take no explanation or excuse. Only the sword might efface the stain upon his honor. The marriage feast would have ended in a scene of blood were it not, according to the chronicle, that "God, always admirable in His saints," sent as an angel of peace the very person who had been most cruelly wronged. The Lady of Miolans, "_sponsa pulchra_" beyond a doubt, took up the cause of her delinquent bridegroom, whom God had called, she said, to take some nobler part. When peace had been made, she followed his example, taking the veil in a neighboring convent, where, after many years of virtuous living, she died, full of days and full of merits. "_Sponsa ipsius_," so the record says, "_in qua sancte et religiose dies suos clausit_"; a bride who in sanctity and religious days closed her life.

Meanwhile, beyond the Graian Alps and beyond the reach of his father's information, Bernard was safe. In Aosta he was kindly received by Pièrre, the Archdeacon. He entered into the service of the church, and there, in spite of his humility and his self-abasement, he won the favor of all with whom he had to deal. "God wills," the chronicle says, "that His ministers should shine by their sanctity and their science." "Saint Paul commends prudence, gravity, modesty, unselfishness, and hospitality," and to these precepts Bernard was ever faithful. He lived in the simplest way, like a hermit in his personal relations, but never out of the life of the world. He was not a man eager to save his own soul only, but the bodies and souls of his neighbors. He dressed in the plainest garb. He drank from a rude wooden cup. Wine he never touched, and water but rarely. The juice of bitter herbs was his beverage, and by every means possible he strove to reduce his body to servitude. When he came, years later, to his deathbed, it was his sole regret that it was a _bed_ where he was to die, instead of the bare boards on which he was wont to sleep.

His fame as a preacher spread far and wide. There are many traditions of his eloquence, and the memory of his words was fondly cherished wherever his sweet, rich voice was heard. "From the mountains of Savoy to Milan and Turin, and even to the Lake of Geneva," says the chronicle, "his memory was dear." So, in due time, after the death of Pièrre, Bernard was made Archdeacon of Aosta.

In these times the high Alps were filled with Saracen brigands and other heathen freebooters, who celebrated in the mountain fastnesses their monstrous rites. In the mountains above Aosta the god Pen had long been worshiped; the word pen in Celtic meaning the highest. Later, Julius Caesar conquered these wild tribes, and imposed upon them the religion of the Roman Empire. A statue of Jupiter ("_Jove optimo maximo_") was set up in the mountain in the place of the idol Pen. Afterwards, by way of compromise, the Romans permitted the two to become one, and the people worshiped Jovis Pennius (Jupiter Pen), the great god of the highest mountains. A statue of Jupiter Pen was set up by the side of the lake in the great pass of the mountain; and from Jupiter Pen these mountains took the name of Pennine Alps, which they bear to this day. The pass itself was called Mons Jovis, the Mountain of Jove, and this, in due time, became shortened to Mont Joux. Through this pass of Mont Joux the armies of every nation have marched, the heroes of every age, from Saint Peter, who, the legend says, came over in the year 57, down to Napoléon, who passed nearly eighteen centuries later, on a much less worthy errand. The Hotel "Déjeuner de Napoléon," in the little village of "Bourg Saint Pièrre," recalls in its name the story of both these visits.

In the earliest days a refuge hut was built by the side of the statue of Jupiter Pen. In the early pilgrimages to Rome this became a place of some importance. Later on, marauding armies of Goths, Saracens, and Hungarians, successively passing through, destroyed this refuge. In the days of Bernard the pass was filled with a horde of brigands, French, Italians, Saracens, and Jews, who had cast aside all religious faith of their fathers, and had re-established the worship of the demon in the temple of Jupiter Pen.

The old manuscripts tell us that in the middle of the tenth century the demons were in full sway on these mountains; that through the mouth of the statue of Jupiter the worst of lies and blasphemies were spoken to those who came to consult it. These worshipers of strange old gods lived by plunder, and exacted toll of all who came through the pass. The same conditions existed on the Graian Alps to the southward. On one of these mountain passes, some fifty miles from Mont Joux, there lived a rich man named Polycarpe. He, too, did homage to Jupiter, and on the summit of a tall column which he built in the pass he had placed a splendid diamond, which he called the "Eye of Jove." People came from great distances to be healed by its magic glance, and the mountain on which he dwelt was the mountain of the Columna Jovis. This became changed, in time, to Colonne Joux, the Mountain of the Column of Jove. And the demons of these two heights, the Mountain of Jove and the Column of Jove, sent down their baleful call of defiance to the valley over which Bernard ruled as Archdeacon of Aosta.

It came to pass that a troop of ten French travelers crossed over the pass of Mont Joux. In the pass they were attacked by marauders, and one of their number was carried away captive. When they came down to Aosta, Bernard, the Archdeacon, fearlessly offered to go back with them to attack the giant of the mountain, to rescue their friend, and to replace the standard of the cross over the altar of the demon.

That night, so says the old chronicle, Saint Nicholas appeared to him in the garb of a pilgrim and said: "Bernard, let us attack these mountains. We shall put the demon to flight. We shall overturn this statue of Jupiter, which the demons have taken possession of to bring trouble among Christians. We will destroy it, and we will destroy the column and its diamond, and in their place we will build two refuges for the use of the pilgrims who cross the two mountains. Go thou, as the tenth one in this band; then wilt thou conjure the demons. Thou shalt bind the statue with a blessed stole, and its ruins will mingle with the chaos of the mountains. Thus shalt thou destroy the power of evil to the day of judgment."

And in proof of the thoroughness with which Bernard performed his work, it is told that a spiritualist who took pleasure in tipping tables came through the pass in 1857. The monks were incredulous of his powers, and he wished to convince them by an actual experience. His efforts were all in vain. The tables, the record tells us, were quiet as the rocks. The traveler, astonished, said: "This is the first time they have failed to obey me." And thus, says the record, the pledge of Saint Nicholas was accomplished. The enemy had never more an entrance into the mountain.

When Bernard and his followers reached Mont Joux, they found the mountain filled with fog and storm, but his heart was undaunted. Passing boldly between the guards of the temple, he flung, so the story says, his blessed stole over the neck of the statue of Jupiter. It changed at once into an iron chain, against which the statue, now become a huge demon-monster, struggled in vain. The good man overturned it and flung it at his feet. With the same chain he bound the high priest who guarded the demon. The struggle was short, but decisive. In a few minutes, so the chronicle says, Bernard had banished the demon of Mont Joux and his accomplices to eternal snow and ice to the end of time, and had commanded them to cease forever their evil doings on the mountain.

An old painting in the Hospice shows this scene in vivid portrait. Bernard stands erect and fearless, his fine face lit up by celestial zeal, his bare head surrounded by a halo, a pilgrim's staff in his right hand, the stole, now become a chain, in his left, while one foot is on the breast of the demon, which gasps helpless at his feet. The demon has the body of a man, covered with a wolf's rough, shaggy hair, his fingers and toes ending in sharp claws, a long tail, rough and scaly, like the tail of a rat, coiled snake-like above his legs, the head and ears of a wolf, the horns of a goat, and on his back an indefinable outgrowth, perhaps the framework of a horrible pair of wings, its long tongue thrust out from between its bloody teeth. He was certainly a gruesome creature.

And thus it came to pass in the year 970, in the place of the temple of Jupiter Pen, but at the other end of the lake, and in the very summit of the pass, was built the Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard. From that day to this, almost a thousand years, the work of doing good to men has been humbly and patiently carried on.

Not long afterward, in a similar way, Bernard attacked the Graian Alps, overthrew the column of Jupiter, crushed its bright diamond to the finest dust, which he scattered in the winds, and built in its place a second Hospice, which, with the pass, has borne ever since the name of the Little Saint Bernard.

Silver and gold, the builders of this Hospice had none. Ever since the beginning, they have exercised their charities at the expense of those who cared for the Lord's work. All who pass by are treated alike. Those who are received into the Hospice can leave much or little--something or nothing, whatever they please,--to carry the same same help to others.

In the book of the good Saint Francis de Sales long ago, so the chronicle says, these words were written:

"There are many degrees in charity. To lend to the poor, this is the first degree. To give to the poor is a higher degree. Still higher to give oneself; to devote one's life to the service of the poor. Hospitality, when necessity is not extreme, is a counsel, and to receive the stranger is its first degree. But to go out on the roads to find and help, as Abraham did, this is a grade still higher. Still higher is to live in dangerous places, to serve, aid, and save the passers-by; to attend, lodge, succor, and save from danger the travelers, who else would die in cold and storm. This is the work of the noble friend of God, who founded the hospitals on the two mountains, now for this called by his name, Great Saint Bernard, in the diocese of Sion, and the Little Saint Bernard, in the Tarentaise."

And so the Hospice was built, and in the enthusiastic words of a chronicle of the times, "Tears and sorrow were banished, peace and joy have replaced them; abundance has made there her abode; the terrors have disappeared, and there reigns eternal springtime. Instead of hell, you will find there paradise." Not quite paradise, perhaps, so far as the elements are concerned, but a dozen kindly men, a legion of dogs, big, cheerful, and noisy, a warm fire, a simple meal, and a God-speed to all men, whatever their race, or creed, or temper.

I need add but a word more of the history of Bernard himself. One day an old man and his wife came up to visit the Hospice and to pay their respects to the monk who had founded it. Bernard met them there, and at once recognized his father and mother. He received them sympathetically, and they told him the story of their lost son. Bernard spoke to them tenderly of the work to which God must have called him. He told them they should rejoice that their child had been found worthy of his purposes, and after a time they seemed to become reconciled, and felt that He doeth all things well. Then Bernard told them who he was, and when after many days they went away from the Hospice, they left the money to build in each of them a chapel.

Bernard died in the year 1007, at the age of eighty-three. His last words were these: "O Lord, I give my soul into thy hands." The words, "The saint is dead," passed on from mouth to mouth throughout these Alpine regions. The peasants had canonized him already a hundred years before the sanctity of his work was officially recognized at Rome.

The story of his burial is again marked by miracles. Rich men vied with each other in making funeral offerings. One gave him a magnificent stone coffin, but this man had been a usurer. Usury was a sin abhorred by Saint Bernard, and the people found that no force or persuasion could place his body within this coffin. So another tomb, less pretentious, but more worthy, was found. At the end Bernard's remains were divided among the churches, each of whom claimed him as its own. To the Hospice fell his ring and his cup, a tooth, and a few finger-bones, and, most important of all, his name--the "Great Saint Bernard."

The chronicles give a long list of miracles which since then have been wrought in his name. These are for the most part wonderful healings, the stilling of storms, the bringing of rain, the driving away of grasshoppers. However, men are prone always to look for the miracle in the things that are of least moment. The life and work of the man was the real miracle, not the flight of grasshoppers. The miracle of all time is the power of humanity when it works in harmony with the laws and purposes of God. Consecrated to God's work, and by the work's own severity protected through the centuries from corruption and temptation, the work of the monk of Aosta has outlasted palaces and thrones. Through the influence of charity, and piety, and truth, the demon has been driven from these mountains. When the love of man joins to the love of God, all spirits of evil vanish as mist before the morning sun.

[1] St. Bernard de Menthon must not be confounded with Bernard de Clairvaux, born in 1091, the preacher of the Crusades.

THE LAST OF THE PURITANS.[1]

I have a word to say of Thoreau, and of an episode which brought his character into bold relief, and which has fairly earned for him a place in American history, as well as in our literature.

I do not wish now to give any account of the life of Thoreau. In the preface to his volume called "Excursions" you will find a biographical sketch, written by the loving hand of Mr. Emerson, his neighbor and friend. Neither shall I enter into any justification of Thoreau's peculiar mode of life, nor shall I describe the famous cabin in the pine woods by Walden Pond, already becoming the Mecca of the Order of Saunterers, whose great prophet was Thoreau. His profession of land-surveyor was one naturally adopted by him; for to him every hill and forest was a being, each with its own individuality. This profession kept him in the fields and woods, with the sky over his head and the mold under his feet. It paid him the money needed for his daily wants, and he cared for no more.

He seldom went far away from Concord, and, in a half-playful way, he used to view everything in the world from a Concord standpoint. All the grandest trees grew there and all the rarest flowers, and nearly all the phenomena of nature could be observed at Concord.

"Nothing can be hoped of you," he said, "if this bit of mold under your feet is not sweeter to you than any other in this world--in any world."

Although one of the most acute of observers, Thoreau was never reckoned among the scientific men of his time. He was never a member of any Natural History Society, nor of any Academy of Sciences, bodies which, in a general way, he held in not altogether unmerited contempt. When men band together for the study of nature, they first draft a long constitution, with its attendant by-laws, and then proceed to the election of officers, and, by and by, the study of nature becomes subordinate to the maintenance of the organization.

In technical scientific work, Thoreau took little pleasure. It is often pedantic, often bloodless, and often it is a source of inspiration only to him by whom the work is done. Animals and plants were interesting to him, not in their structure and genealogical affinities, but in their relations to his mind. He loved wild things, not alone for themselves, but for the tonic effect of their savagery upon him.

"I wish to speak a word for nature," he said, "for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, to regard man as an inhabitant, a part and parcel of nature, rather than as a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement; if so, I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization. The minister and the school committees, and every one of you, will take care of that."

To Thoreau's admirers, he is the prophet of the fields and woods, the interpreter of nature, and his every word has to them the deepest significance. He is the man who

"Lives all alone, close to the bone, And where life is sweetest, constantly eatest."

They resent all criticism of his life or his words. They are impatient of all analysis of his methods or of his motives, and a word of praise of him is the surest passport to their good graces.

But the critics sometimes miss the inner harmony which Thoreau's admirers see, and discern only queer paradoxes and extravagances of statement where the others hear the voice of nature's oracle. With most literary men, the power or disposition of those who know or understand their writings is in some degree a matter of literary culture. It is hardly so in the case of Thoreau.

The most illiterate man I know who had ever heard of Thoreau, Mr. Barney Mullins, of Freedom Centre, Outagamie County, Wisconsin, was a most ardent admirer of Thoreau, while the most eminent critic in America, James Russell Lowell, does him scant justice. To Lowell, the finest thoughts of Thoreau are but strawberries from Emerson's garden, and other critics have followed back these same strawberries through Emerson's to still older gardens, among them to that of Sir Thomas Browne.

But, setting the critics aside, let me tell you about Barney Mullins. Twenty years ago, I lived for a year in the northern part of Wisconsin. The snow is very deep in the winter there, and once I rode into town through the snowbanks on a sled drawn by two oxen and driven by Barney Mullins. Barney was born on the banks of Killarney, and he could scarcely be said to speak the English language. He told me that before he came to Freedom Centre he had lived in a town called Concord, in Massachusetts. I asked him if he had happened to know a man there by the name of Henry Thoreau. He at once grew enthusiastic and he said, among other things: "Mr. Thoreau was a land-surveyor in Concord. I knew him well. He had a way of his own, and he didn't care naught about money, but if there was ever a gentleman alive, he was one."