Chapter X
"O Rome, Mistress of the world, red with the blood or martyrs, white with the innocence of virgins, we salute and bless thee in all ages, and forever."
The first real stopping-place Robert made under the cloudless sky of Italy was at Milan, and its magnificent cathedral was the first place visited. This church, after St. Peter's at Rome, is the finest in Italy, and is built of pure white marble. There are few Gothic edifices so rich in ornament, or of so light and airy an appearance. His next visit was to one of the old Dominican convents, named Sainte Marie des Graces, where he saw "The Last Supper" of Leonardo da Vinci, one of the great Italian painters and the protégé of François I.
The ancient capital of Lombardy does not present a very agreeable appearance, notwithstanding its numerous palaces, which is owing to the arrangement of the streets, which are so long and narrow that nothing shows its real magnificence, not even the cathedral. The memory of Eugene Beauharnais is always dear here, where as the delegate of Napoleon he exercised sovereign power, and Robert saw with pleasure that the glory and benefits of the one and the wise conduct of the other were not effaced from the hearts of the Milanese. From Milan he went to Parma, where he saw a number of choice paintings by Correggio, Lanfranc, and Mazzola, and at the cathedral the magnificent fresco of the Assumption; at the church of Saint Sepulchre, the Madonna and Child. He also visited the Farnese gallery, and the tomb of this family in the church of the Madonna Steceata. From Parma he went to Genoa, surnamed the superb. This rich city is the rival of Venice, and is proud of her antiquities, and the power she has always held on the seas. She has almost entire the schools of Michael Angelo and Bernini, and has a prodigious number of paintings and sculptures. Thus was Robert obliged at each step to stop and pay his tribute of admiration to what be saw. And Genoa has produced so many distinguished artists that for a long time science and art have flourished there and acquired a high degree of renown. Robert passed three months of study there, which was longer than he intended, as he was burning with a desire to get to Rome, for it was there that he intended seriously to open his studies, but he could not resist the charm which held him in first one, then another place. From Genoa he sailed for Leghorn, and from there to Florence, which all travellers unite in considering one of the most beautiful of Italian cities. It is situated at the foot of the Apennines, and the number of its gardens and their beauty, its public squares, ornamented with fountains and statues, the shores of the Arno, with their charming quays, and the grandeur of the palaces, designed and embellished by Sanzio and Buonarroti, its smiling suburbs, and the brilliant titles of its citizens, combine to make it a most attractive place. Its largest gallery was commenced by Cardinal Leopold de Medicis, and is built in two parallel galleries, and at their end a third is placed, which stands on the right bank of the Arno. Here are classed in perfect order the master works of modern art. {195} If the name of Medicis has odious remembrances in France since the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, it is not so in Florence or any part of Italy; on the contrary, it recalls there all that is most dazzling and generous in literature, art, and science. Talent always finds an asylum and a welcome in Florence, and Robert was favorably received by the persons to whom he had been recommended by his master, who, more for his genuine affection for him than for the honor of having such a pupil, had given him letters to men of high positions. What could be a more powerful stimulant for him than the flattering encouragement he received from persons of known taste and hearty appreciation? Believing that nothing that we wish to accomplish is impossible, Robert, with increased passion for his art, studied the old masters with determined energy, though never daring to hope he could approach their perfection. Mediocrity is always vain and boastful, while true merit is modest and mistrustful, and this was why Robert was ignorant of his wonderful talent. He left Florence with many regrets both as a man and an artist, but Rome was the crowning glory of his ambition, and he must go on. In passing through the gates of the sacred city be felt an emotion that it would be impossible to express; for the soul of the artist and the Christian were equally moved, and in his enthusiasm he cried with Tasso: "It is not to thy proud columns, thy arches of triumph, or thy baths, that I come to render homage; it is to the blood of martyrs shed for Christ on this consecrated ground!" At last he was really in Rome, whose walls enclose so many scattered leaves of the history of all nations, and the very name of which fills us with reverence. On the mutilated fragments here and there, and on the wrecks of past greatness, the artist deplored the too short duration of all earthly things, but the Christian reads there a salutary lesson which told of the early and of worldly joys. In this grand old city he settled himself and commenced to work, giving himself up with ardor to composition as the highest and truest art. In the beginning his ideas were not truly expressed, but still his pictures were full of talent. He preferred working at home and did not often go to the academy, but was aided in his studies by the advice of artists and connoisseurs. After a few years he composed works of wonderful power, and his genius seemed to take every turn; sometimes his conceptions were noble and sublime, then, again, delicate and tender, every passion being rendered with fidelity. As he became conscious of his rapid progress, the more his desire to find his father tormented him. It was not a sentiment of pride, still less of vengence, that made him wish it; it was the need he felt of a heart that responded to his own. It was the voice of nature crying unto him, "Thou hast a father; he lives, and thou dost not know him; search for him, and throw at his feet thy love and talent; speak to him of thy mother! See the task which is thine, now that thou art worthy of the name thou bearest." The young painter was admitted into many distinguished houses, and learned of his father, but could obtain no information which would put him on his track; yet he buoyed himself up with the uncertain hope that he might meet him in this city of repose and resignation. It is a place of sweet sojourn for those whose fortunes are cast down, and a dear asylum for troubled souls, the end of the artist's pilgrimage as well as that of the invalid, the tourist, and the savant. There all misfortunes are respected and all sufferings are consoled; and it is possible that the Count de Verceuil had been overtaken by some of the sorrows from which no one in this world is exempt; and surely he could not flatter himself that he would pass through life without the chastisement that falls on the heads of the guilty! God's patience is long-suffering, but sometimes his anger falls with a sudden blow on the hardened sinner, and makes him cry for pardon. {196} The impressions made upon Robert in this city of majestic ruins and antique monuments, and where the arts speak so noble a language, could not be other than exalted and religious. Before so many wrecks the soul is predisposed to pity all things here below; the projects we nourish appear so puerile, we conceive another glory and adore God and his imperishable glory. Faith gives to man a moment of calm in every trial, and opens to him the doors of a blissful eternity. These stones cry aloud to all, "Passing away!" but it is in a consoling and solemn accent, and brings down all our pity upon the worldlings who have forgotten Jesus our divine Master, who said, "Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words will never pass away." With the exactitude with which he always fulfilled his promises, he knew that the time for his return to France was drawing near, and that there were two persons there who counted with sorrow the days which were passed far from him. He was not ignorant of the fact that time hung heavily upon these poor old people, and that it was difficult for them to support the long hours. The remembrance of these friends followed him everywhere; they were near him in his excursions through Rome, at the Colosseum, at the Capitol; day and night he found them in his thoughts and his heart, and knew that they were impatient for his return, and would amply repay him for the regrets he would leave behind; and as he wished to visit Venice and remain there some time, he bade farewell to the ancient city of the Senate of the Caesars, now the residence of the Pope and the seat of the church militant. From there he goes to Venice, the queen of the Adriatic. From a distance, resting tranquilly on the surface of the sea, it resembles a number of vessels with countless masts, but on a nearer approach the charm is broken, and it stands boldly above the waves, revealing its wonderful beauty to the astonished eye of the traveller. Formed of more than sixty small islands, Venice is interspersed with canals without number, the largest of which is in the form of an S, and divides the city into two nearly equal parts. Everything in it has an original character, and silence reigns supreme over the city; no vehicles, and no pavements for them to rattle on, and the population, not being an industrious or commercial people, have nothing to make a noise at. But the great charm to Robert was in the magnificent palaces, nearly all of which were built by the great artists of Italy; and the churches, rich in pictures, frescoes, statues, and bas-reliefs, together with marble columns of rare workmanship. Before commencing his studies he visited the principal buildings, the church of St. Mark, on the front of which are four bronze horses, attributed to the celebrated sculptor Lysippus; then to the ancient palace of the doge, and to see the subterranean vaults, which are separated from the palace by the Bridge of Sighs, and then to the Arsenal, which occupies an island almost a league in circumference. This edifice is a citadel surrounded by high ramparts, and guarding its entrance are two colossal antique lions brought from Athens and Corinth. After seeing the city Robert renewed his favorite occupations, and, as in Florence and Rome, was inspired by the models in the Venetian galleries. Milan, Parma, Genoa, Florence, Rome, and Venice he had seen in turn, and they had each opened to him their treasures and their teachings. There was not a master the secret of whose genius he had not sought to discover; there was not one of his works he had not studied in its minutest details. Thus the object of his journey was attained, and his talent was ripened under the generous sun of Italy. He could now go home and consecrate the knowledge he had obtained to the glory of his art. "Only fourteen days," he said to himself, "before I set out for France." But the event of the year was coming on, the general confusion of which inspires the goddess Folly, and makes her ring her bells more noisily. {197} It puts every one in a complete vertigo, in which they think of nothing but giddy pleasure and dancing and feasting. There is not a village which does not take part in the rejoicings of the carnival, and it was something so new to Robert, that he could not return to Paris without seeing and taking part in it, an excusable curiosity in one of his age, and we will follow in the train of this festive season, which animates everything.
Chapter XI
"What are misfortunes and despair?"
Toward the end of the carnival license has no limit, and each one is eagerly drinking the cup of pleasure and rushing thoughtlessly into all kinds of amusements. Yet there is in this mélange of ranks, manners, and customs something so fantastic and extraordinary that Robert, unaccustomed to scenes of this kind, is perfectly confounded. He is dragged on by the popular current, which, in its course, made a thousand circuits, and carried him along, in spite of his wish to the contrary. He was, perhaps, the only person who was serious in the midst of all this nonsense--the only one who did not exchange a phrase or word with others--the only one who did not reply to the provoking questions put him by the laughing crowd abandoned to the freest gayety.
As night came on, exhausted with fatigue, be returns to his hotel, and, hearing cries not far from him, started in the direction from whence they came. The darkness was profound, and he could scarcely distinguish what passed him at any distance. But a few moments accustomed him to it, and, following the cries, he found a woman struggling to release herself from a man who was trying to drag her toward a gondola he had near. He advanced to defend her, when a fourth person appeared and struck the man with a poniard. He staggered and fell, uttering a horrible groan, and as Robert went to his assistance, the man, and the woman he had avenged, disappeared, leaving him alone to help their victim. Seeing no one near, he carried the wounded man to the door of his hotel, and what was his surprise to find it was Gustave de Vernanges, the son of his loved benefactress. Although he had nothing but painful remembrances of this young man, he was not the less sorrowfully affected in seeing the end to which his wickedness had brought him, nor less prodigal in his care of Gustave. The more he saw that his soul was exposed to peril, the more he desired to save his body, that both might at last be saved. But the days of the wicked are numbered, and God strikes them down. Woe unto them then if they are unprepared for their doom. Gustave sank rapidly, and the physician's art could not avail. Robert unceasingly prayed to God to give a few more days to this poor sinner, that he might be reconciled to his Judge before appearing in his presence. He wept with anguish when he found the shades of death were fast drawing round him. A deep-drawn sigh was heard in the room, and the unfortunate young man opened his eyes and looked round him. A second sigh, then a horrible groan, and thinking he was not recognized, he articulated in a feeble voice, "Who are you? Where am I?"
"Be tranquil," replied Robert sweetly, "you are at the house of a friend. You have been wounded, and, not knowing where you lived, I brought you here. You must be perfectly calm and quiet, for your wound is dangerous. If you have any messages to send your friends, I will faithfully execute them."
"Yes," replied Gustave painfully, "I feel that I am badly wounded, and will, perhaps, die, and so young too. I have no parents, but had a number of friends, who shared my pleasures and excited me to do foolish things, but where are they now? Oh! it is frightful to die when one is rich and has so much pleasure to look forward to. {198} Must I give up all these things, my titles, my wealth, and all, to go-- where? I, the rich Gustave de Vernanges, must I die at twenty-seven, struck by the hand of a common man?"
"You must not speak so," replied Robert. "In God's hand is the life you so much regret to give up, and, if he wills it, you will be saved; his power and goodness are great, but you must submit yourself to his divine will, and repent in all sincerity of heart. You are not without sin, for we are all sinners; but ask God's pardon for them, and you will then be tranquil, and peace of mind is necessary to health of body."
"For what must I repent," said the troubled voice of the unhappy Gustave. "What have I done? What are my faults? They are only what thousands of others have done. I have amused myself, and laughed at the sorrows of my victim. I gave them gold and rejoiced in their tears; passing my years in feasts and follies, and never trying to dry the tears I caused. Oh!" he cried in delirium, "I see it now through the mists of death. My mother! oh! how I treated her! The veil falls from my eyes! Remorse! remorse! I have sinned, and my mother that I did not love calls me now to repent. O God, my God, pardon me!" And in his fever and on his bed of sickness and pain he called upon his mother, whom he had killed by his wickedness, and upon God, whom be had renounced all his life, to save him.
The physician came in at this moment, and, looking at him, shook his head sadly, saying to Robert that death was near, and a priest had better be sent for to prepare him for the last change. He soon arrived, but Gustave was in a violent delirium, and could not understand his saintly exhortations.
"Pray the Lord," said the man of God to Robert, "pray that he will give this unfortunate young man enough consciousness that he may confess and receive absolution; and may his example, my son, teach you to fly from the vain pleasures of this world and its impure passions."
Robert then told him of the obligations he was under to the mother of Gustave, and how well he had known her for two years, and how he had since been separated from her son.
"And see," replied the man of God, "what would have been his end if God had not made you an instrument of reconciliation between him and his Maker. He led you near your enemy just at the moment when death struck the hardened sinner, to make him repent. The designs of the Almighty are impenetrable, but in their execution there is grace and pardon. Oh! let us pray, my son, and God will give both faith and hope, and will regenerate this poor heart, tortured by remorse."
The venerable priest and the young painter passed several hours in prayer, and the old man supplicated heaven with fervor for the conversion of one of his brothers to Christ.
Toward morning Gustave became conscious, and the persuasive and eloquent words of the priest moved the dying heart. He comprehended his sins, the greatness of his faults, and wept bitterly for his errors, and repented for the fatal passions that tempted him to commit so many crimes. He confessed, with heart-broken repentance, the many griefs he had caused his mother, and the name of Robert was spoken with hers, and his regrets at the sorrows he had given him. But when he commenced to avow all his follies of debauchery and infamous seductions, vanquished by shame, and the frightful remembrance of the hateful past, he cried out: "O God, do not pardon me, I am too guilty!"
"What do you say, my son?" said the priest? "You are guilty, it is true, but have confidence in God, and you will be pardoned. He has struck you down, to draw you more truly to himself."
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Gustave listened attentively, and was much moved at the goodness of a God justly irritated against him, and he felt the deepest sorrow at having been for so long an offender against his word; but his soul, full of the most bitter vices and most detestable wickedness, is now baptized in the waters of repentance. The body dies, but the soul lives; the Lord has ratified in heaven the absolution that his minister pronounced on earth. Gustave's strength was fast failing, and he felt that he was dying. The recognition between Robert and himself was touching, and the priest wept with joy and regret, blessing the one who was to leave life, and also the one who remained, to practise on earth every Christian virtue.
"Do not let me die alone, kind father," said Gustave to the priest. "I have lived so badly that I have need of your pious assistance to finish life more worthily."
The end was almost come. The physician could not retract his fatal sentence, nor give any hope, for the wound was mortal. The blade of the poniard had penetrated near the heart, and it was a miracle that he had survived so long. He heard his sentence pronounced with resignation, and accepted death as a just expiation for his sins, praying God to make it such. He suffered some days longer, testifying by his patience and his pious prayers the sincerity of his repentance, expiring with sentiments of burning contrition and sorrow for his sins on his lips. Robert was grieved to lose him so soon after his conversion and his return to virtue; and his sad and premature end was a grave warning of the result of worldly passions and giving way to vice, though Robert hardly needed such an example, his chaste and pure soul had always turned with horror and aversion from the licentiousness which beats the imagination and sullies its purity. Yet he was always on his guard, for be knew the feebleness of human nature and the dangers to which it is exposed, and the more he avoided the corrupting vices of the world, the better could he resist them, for no one is so brave in danger but that he may perish; and Gustave's death convinced him that Christianity is the only basis on which we can build immortal happiness, to which we all look forward after terrestrial joys lose their power of satisfying the desire for happiness which agitates man from the cradle to the grave, and which makes him attach such glorious hopes to religion, the only vessel that is never wrecked and that takes us safely to the eternal kingdom of perfect peace.
After having rendered the last sad duties to the unfortunate Gustave, Robert left Venice, but with very different feelings from those be promised himself. He traversed rapidly the Venetian Lombardy kingdom, then Piedmont, and, stopping some days at Turin, went on to Susa at the foot of Mont Cenis. There were two other travellers crossing this mountain at the same time, a man of about sixty years of age, and a young woman, either his wife or daughter. Their carriage followed them at some distance, but from either fear or curiosity they preferred going on foot or on a mule. Robert had bowed respectfully and exchanged a few polite salutations with them, but after that all effort to renew the conversation had been in vain, and he had renounced the hope of making any further acquaintance with the stranger, whose face of manly and severe beauty, though expressive of much mental suffering, had not escaped the eye of the artist, habitually accustomed to read all the emotions on the face. His sad countenance moved Robert so much that he turned round several times, not simply from compassion, but from a sentiment of irresistible and strange interest.
A mysterious and sympathetic influence was felt by the two others, who had certainly never seen him before; for the gentleman followed him with a pleasure for which he could not account, and watched his light and easy step, urging his mule on to keep near him, when the animal gives a sudden spring and throws him into a deep ravine.
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Chapter XII
"Extend to them the hand of pardon: They have sinned, but heaven forgives!" Lamartine.
Our young hero, wishing to have a view from the highest point of the mountain, was pushing on to reach the spot from where he thought it would be most extensive. When he had almost attained it, his foot slipped and for a moment he lost his balance, and it was this appearance of danger that kept the other traveller watching him, and led to his fall. But Robert was light and active, and raised himself by holding on to the rugged sides of the mountain and getting on a kind of plateau, when the cries, first of the man, then the lady, and then the guide attracted his attention and made him turn quickly. Then at great risk he leaned almost his whole body over the side of the precipice, and saw that imminent and terrible death menaced the man for whom his heart had conceived so much affection. The lady and the guide were both afraid to descend, for there was nothing to hold on to but some loose stones projecting out of the earth. The gentleman's position is both critical and perilous, but Robert descends cautiously to his side and assists him to climb up; and indeed it is almost a miracle that he is saved; and with a face radiant with joy Robert receives the thanks of the lady and the traveller, who, remarking a medallion Robert always wore, and of which he had obtained glimpses in the vivacity of his movements, said to him, in a trembling voice: "Where did you get that medallion, speak quickly!" And as if the reply he would receive was a sentence of life and death, he waited in horrible anxiety, as if his soul was suspended on the lips of Robert. Though surprised at this question, he was too polite not to answer without hesitation when he saw the agitation of the stranger. "This portrait," said he, "comes from my mother; it represents--" "Oh! pardon--the name of your mother?" eagerly interrupted the stranger. "Stephanie Dormeuil." "But what was her other name?" Robert hesitated a moment, then replied, "She was called Madame de Verceuil." At this answer a dazzling fire burned in the eyes of the stranger, and he made such a quick, impetuous movement that the cord which held the medallion was broken, and it fell to the ground. Robert stooped to pick it up, and heard these words, which overwhelmed him with astonishment: "O my God, the remorse I have suffered for twenty-five years!" and fainted, but the care of the lady and Robert soon brought back consciousness, and when he opened his eyes be caught Robert in his arms, and cried, "Oh! thou art my son, my own Robert! and I am thy father. Wilt thou pardon me, my son, my dear child, wilt thou pardon me?" "What! you are my father!" cried the artist, delirious with joy. "If you are, I must press you to my heart, which has so long called for you and needed you. I curse you?--for what? My saintly mother did not teach me this, but the contrary. O my God!" he said on bended knee, "you have fulfilled my prayers, you have given me my father." It is in vain that we can find words to express this touching scene. Robert was folded in his father's arms, repeating in a tender voice, "My father, my father!" He covered him with caresses and kisses, and calls his name with a joy so expressive, and a love so profound, that the count wept bitterly, and cried, raising his eyes to heaven, "O Stephanie, what noble vengeance thou hast given me!" Then gazing on his son, he was filled with pride at seeing the child whom he had lost when an infant, and found when a young man of splendid genius and glorious intellect. He said to him, with some embarrassment but with a lively interest, "My son, where is thy mother? What does she now?"
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"Alas!" said Robert, pointing to heaven, "she is there! She sees us, and her noble soul rejoices in our happiness."
The count understood it, his head was cast down, overwhelmed by the bitterness of his remembrances and his remorse. Robert had seized his hand and was pressing it affectionately, when he took the young woman and presented her to Robert, saying: "This is thy cousin, Julia de Moranges, who has been to me the best and most indulgent of nieces. I know you will love each other." They shook hands with frank cordiality, but here both filled with emotion at this strange meeting, and as this was not a favorable place for more extended explanations, and the guides were already impatient of so long a delay, they concluded to go on, and God knows the most tender sentiments filled Robert's mind. Filial love had ever been his first and strongest sentiment, and it burned in his heart with a passionate energy that charmed the count, and made him stop each moment to embrace his son, who had been the constant object of his regrets, for whom he had wept so much, and whose loss was the cause of the sorrow which had brought on premature old age.
Arriving at the top of this mountain, which is more than 2000 feet above the level of the sea, our travellers are on a plateau four leagues in circumference and covered with green pasture that charms the eyes, and in the middle of it was a large lake about thirty feet deep, filled with several varieties of fish.
The count was a man of extensive and varied information, and it was a pleasure for Robert to hear him talk, so charming and attractive was his conversation; and questioned by his son, the count related many things concerning Mont Cenis. "There is a certain celebrity," said he, "attached to the mountain we are crossing. Some authors pretend that Hannibal crossed here to enter Italy, and it is certain that Augustus opened a route, that was enlarged by Charlemagne. Thou hast before thee," added he, "the still more recent traces of the work that Napoleon commenced, and which is truly worthy of the great man who brought it thus far to perfection." It was not until they were descending the mountain that the count commenced to relate his life to his son, which we already know from his mother, but we cannot pass over in silence his poignant regrets at the loss of such saintly and sweet intercourse. When he looked at his son, left an orphan at twelve years of age, with no resources but his perseverance and good conduct, and reflected that he had come out of obscurity and made friends and a name, he blessed the wife whom he had so cruelly injured and who had given him a son, the glory of his white hairs and the love of his old age. But his remorse for his treatment of his wife was nothing to the fear that his son would refuse him his esteem and tenderness and would not consent to live with him. But these dread thoughts could not remain long in his mind; the respectful manner and caressing words of his son effaced them. The more he studied the character of Robert the more he felt the need of his love and of pleasing him, and the stronger was his desire to win the heart on which he set so high a price. To obtain this he gave him his entire confidence, and let him read his heart as he would an open book, and Robert saw the remorse his guilty conduct toward his mother had caused him. It was a painful avowal to make his son, but he had the courage; and the next day, after Robert had related to him the principal events of his life, he drew him to him, saying:
"I owe to thee, my child, a history of the years I have passed far from thee and thy mother, but it is not that I wish to make a parade of my regrets and my sufferings, but simply to tell thee in what way God called me to himself and to virtue."
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"My father," said Robert, "if the recital gives you pain, if it recalls too vividly your sorrows, do not tell me, I pray you, for I would rather you should chase away all sadness and smile yourself to life. I know I shall love you, and I want you to forget what you have suffered. It is not for me to judge you, and believe me, that, no matter what you say, my respect and love for you will always be the same."
The count took the hand of his son, but could not reply for some moments, then commenced thus: "If thy mother has not spoken to thee of my cruelty and injustice toward her, and, still more, if she has rather exculpated than accused me to thee, I owe it to her memory to avow that I alone was the guilty one, and that she was to me, to the last moment, a model of goodness, patience, and gentleness. She was right to leave me, for I was then so blinded by my passions that the threat which decided her to go I would without doubt have executed, if she had not taken the desperate part which has turned so happily to thy advantage. I say it to my shame, I was barbarous, wicked, and ungrateful to thy mother, and what is more frightful is that I was so with premeditation. Incapable of controlling my temper, and my pride wounded by the reproaches of my family, and by the railleries of the young fools I called my friends, I carried my treatment to blows and insults to her who gave thee birth. I know I make thee shudder and fill thee with horror, but I have cruelly expiated these moments of passion, for at heart I loved thy mother, and, when I reflected, I cursed my feebleness and self-love. Unfortunately these moments were of short duration, and the world and its attractions acted in a fatal manner on my heart, filled with the deplorable maxims of a corrupt, irreligious, frivolous, and mocking society. What, then, could stop me in the mad career which would soon bring me to the abyss already yawning under my feet? Nothing, for I hardly believed there was a God, and had none of the faith which thy mother has planted in thy heart. I was as blind and insensate as a drunken man, who knows neither where he is nor what he says. No curb could be put to my passions, for I was like the brute that obeys his instincts, only more miserable, as I had the voice of conscience to enlighten me while he is deprived of the soul, which is the divine essence. See, then, what I was when thy mother took thee far from me; and I was in a perfect transport of fury when on my return to the house I leaned from the servants that thy mother had gone, taking thee with her. At first, rage was the only passion that possessed my soul, and it was perfectly incomprehensible to me that a being as gentle as thy mother had ever proved herself should have the courage to take such a step; but maternal love was stronger than all things else to her, and when I found thy empty cradle, I wept and tore my hair in despair. It was the first time I had really felt as if I was a father; for when I kissed thy fresh young face, it was more from pride than from paternal tenderness; but when I knew thou wert gone forever, my heart was broken. I awoke at once, under the shock of this most agonizing, torturing sorrow, and from that moment my life of expiation commenced. But I do not date my return to God from that day, for it was a long time before my lips uttered a prayer. I suffered more than tongue can tell in the delirious life into which I was plunged, and which soon destroyed my health and left me with a sickness which was long and dangerous. In my hours of suffering and anguish you were always present to my mind, and I knew no one to whom I could confide my sorrow, and feared to die without seeing you. Days succeeded each other, until they became years; my despair increased and my loneliness was horrible. {203} The sign of a reprobate was marked like the curse of Cain upon my brow, and I was consuming myself in useless regrets, without having recourse to the love and compassion of God, when a providential accident brought near me one of those angels of charity who consecrate their lives to the care of the sick and sorrowing.
"A good sister of the order of St. Vincent de Paul came one day to excite my interest in favor of the poor, and her angelic face and her tender and persuasive voice touched me deeply. I was strangely attracted to her, and could not help contrasting her manner with the means used by women of the world to obtain what they desire. It was with pleasure, I might even say joy, that I gave her my purse, and we became engaged in conversation. She had read in my face the ravages of passion and the storms of the heart; and, as all sorrows were familiar to her, she easily guessed those of my soul, and forced me by her winning manner to confess to her the cause of my sufferings. Then when she knew all, she spoke to me in a language so filled with faith and charity that my frozen soul thawed under the warmth of her burning words. The name of God was so eloquent in her pure mouth that before she left me I pronounced it with faith and confidence. From this moment I prayed, and the saintly woman came several times to finish her work of grace. By her cares my body regained some strength, and my soul felt all the hopes of a Christian, all the salutary truths of our sublime religion. My repentance took the character of resignation, which gave some calmness and tranquillity to my desolate days. I bade adieu to the world, putting far from me its perfidious and deceitful charms, which I had before so eagerly sought, and all the illusions which had appeared seductive and worthy of my homage were dispelled. The veil had fallen from my eyes, and I loved now what I had hated. Thy mother appeared to me with her virtues and her touching simplicity and her charming candor and purity, and, now that I was in a state to appreciate her, I could behold her no more. At this time I lost my sister Helena, of whom thy mother has spoken to thee, and she left a daughter, thy cousin Julia. I took her to my home and heart, but still she did not console me for thy loss; for, good and amiable as she was, she was not my son, and the lost happiness is what we always sigh for, and which can never be replaced. My niece married and soon became a widow, when she returned to me, and, finding all her efforts to diminish my sadness without effect, she proposed our traveling. We have been all over Europe, and everywhere I looked for you and enquired for you, for a secret voice said to me always, 'Go on! go on! thou wilt find him.' I had already explored Italy from one end to the other, had visited cold England, crossed the German States, been through Spain and Portugal, when the fiery inquietude which kept me always moving made me turn my steps a second time toward Italy. It was doubtless a presentiment, since it was on this earth, a thousand times blessed, that I found thee--that we met! I feel that God as pardoned me, and my sorrows are at an end. Thou art the conciliating angel, the treasure and consolation and the last happiness of a penitent old man who has lost and suffered much. Oh! may thy love be the sign of the forgiveness thy mother has sent me, and a bond of peace and felicity. But," said the count, in a suppliant tone, in terminating this long and painful confession, "thou wilt not leave me, Robert? thou wilt live with me, my son? It would be too cruel to deprive me of thy presence, and, after having found my earthly heaven, thou wilt not plunge me into the depths of hell; for if I lose thy tenderness, I lose all."
"My father," replied Robert, "I could not leave you. I am too happy to possess your love to deprive myself of so sweet a joy. God has reunited us, and we will never again separate!"
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Chapter XIII
"Nothing can be dearer to a man than a father he is proud of."
Some days after this interview, Robert, the count, and Julia were travelling toward l'Auvergne. If the dead could feel in their cold graves, certainly Robert's mother would have felt a deep and holy joy in seeing her son and her husband kneeling on her tomb. But their eyes were not on the grave, but raised toward heaven, and Robert saw the same vision which had appeared to him in his youth, and he cried out: "I see it! O my father, I see it! She blesses us."
The name of Dormeuil was effaced from the modest stone, and that of Countess de Verceuil substituted, to the great astonishment of the people of the surrounding country. Then the count visited the little house which had fallen in ruins, and here Robert called up a thousand tender memories, and thanked God for the manifestation of his love in permitting him to find his father. But it was not for the rank he would have in the world, nor for the titles society would look upon with jealous eyes, nor for this wonderful elevation of his talent, which dazzled and made him happy. It was the power which God had put into his hands, to enable him to do good to others, and the knowledge of the future of repose and comfort he could ensure to the two objects of his early affection, good Madame Gaudin and the old soldier of the guard. It was of them that he thought when he said. "I am rich." How he longed to see Paris, and to be folded again to the hearts of his friends, from whom he had so long been separated. His father, seeing his impatience, smiled at the projects he formed for them, but was none the less anxious to know them and thank them for the cares they had bestowed on his son. At last they arrived, and when they reached the house a cruel thought crossed Robert's mind, that they might be "no more." His heart beat, and he scarcely dared to knock, but listened a moment, and--oh! what happiness--two well-known voices fell upon his ear. One said: "Six months have passed since his last letter, and no news of our dear child. What can have happened him?" "You must have patience, good woman," said the other voice, "he can't always find opportunities to write. I believe the reason he does not write is, that be intends to come some day soon." "Ah! I know he is not sick, and it is the faith of Cyprien says it. The Lord is too just to make so good a boy ill."
Completely reassured, Robert knocked and entered immediately. Two cries came at the same time from two hearts that joy suffocated. Robert raised Madame Gaudin in his arms; her too sudden surprise had overwhelmed her with emotion, and Cyprien cried, "It is you, it is you!" wiping away a tear. "I am happy, now, Mister Robert. I knew you would come back, but I have had a time consoling this poor woman, who saw everything in blackness and despair."
Robert pressed the faithful soldier to his heart, then covered Madame Gaudin with caresses, enquired for her health, and wished to know if either of them had suffered in any way since he left them. When the confusion of this sudden meeting had subsided a little, both Cyprien and dame Gaudin perceived that Robert had no luggage. "Where are your effects, my child?" said the good woman. Robert smiled, and said he had left them at home, "How at home? And do you not intend to remain with us, my dear Robert?" "Yes, of course, but we will live in another house, and I will take you to your new home." She opened her astonished eyes, and followed Robert, who descended the steps, and, calling a carriage, made his friends get in, and directed the coachman to drive them all to No. 110, rue Grenelle, Saint Germain.
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On the way Madame Gaudin tried to draw from him his secret, but all attempts were useless, for he took delight now in teasing her. Stopping in front of the hotel where his father was, he took the arm of his worthy benefactress and conducted her to the saloon where the Count de Verceuil waited. "Father," said he, as he entered, "here is the excellent woman who has taken the place of a mother to me, and who for my sake generously sacrificed all she had." "Madam," said the count with amiable courtesy, "excuse me that I did not come for you myself, as it was my duty to do, but I wished to allow Robert the pleasure of surprising you. You are at home here, madam, in the house of my son, and I hope you will always be his friend." "Your son?" she said, half stupefied. "Who, then, is your son? Ah! I know," she cried with lively anguish, a secret sentiment of jealousy coming into her heart; "it is Robert. God is just, and has given him this recompense. What I have done for your son, monsieur, anyone else would have done in my place, for no one could have helped loving so good and generous a child. But I do not merit so much kindness at your hands. I am only a poor creature, without either education or manners, so how can I live with you?" "These things are of little value in my eyes, my dear madam. What I honor in you, and what all honest and virtuous people would consider above everything else, is the nobleness of your soul and the virtues of which you have given so bright an example. You will give me great pain if you refuse an offer that comes from the heart, and that I make you in my name and the name of my son. We will live and enjoy together the favors God has been pleased to bestow upon us. And you will be ours, my brave Cyprien" said the count, taking the hand of the old soldier. "I know you love my son, and this entitles you to my friendship. Will you accept it?" "Oh! yes; with all my heart," replied Cyprien, looking affectionately at Robert, who was watching silently the interview between his father and his friends.
His father was kind and good, and often he blessed the day they met. Nothing can be dearer to a man's heart than a father he is proud of. Robert had experienced this feeling for his mother, whom he venerated almost as much as God. She was to him the type of every virtue. His misfortunes and affliction had entirely changed his father, and to the vain pleasures of the world had succeeded the practices of religion and the duties of the Christian. All the virtues he admired in his mother he found in the paternal heart, tried in the crucible of adversity. In a word, the father was worthy of the son as the son was worthy of the father, and a sweet harmony reigned in this family, bound to each other by the tenderest ties. All rank was effaced, and the noble count, the heir of a great name and an immense fortune, and the old woman and the old soldier lived with no other desire than to make each other happy. Robert did not give up his profession, and his name is now illustrious in the world of art! He married his cousin Julia de Moranges, and crowned with joy and happiness the last days of his father, who now sleeps the sleep of the just. Thus ends our story. We have tried to trace the struggling life of Robert, and its glorious recompense. We have tried faithfully to reproduce his touching virtues and the noble and beautiful sentiments that adorned his soul, and also to inspire our young readers with a desire to imitate him. We have tried to show the efficacious and all-powerful help of religion in nourishing the teachings of a Christian mother, and that a good and persevering child can overcome all obstacles. Have we, then, succeeded and obtained your approbation? If there are among you, my dear readers, some poor little orphans like Robert, call down the blessings of your mother upon your heads, and, though she lives in heaven, she will watch over you with tender solicitude, and the God of the motherless will be your sure refuge and your final Saviour. {206} Think not that you can live without constant prayer to God, the author of your beings and the giver of every good and perfect gift. Put your whole trust and confidence in him and his mercy, and whether obscurity or fame be yours, always remember that he knows best, and places you in whatever position best suits you. Should he give you the transcendent gift of genius, you must struggle hard to obtain its rewards, and, whatsoever you do, remember to do it for the honor and glory of God and the good of mankind; and then, when you are called to leave this life for that better world where all cares cease, you can welcome death, which will open for you the gate of life, and exchange with joy the changing scenes of earth for the unfading bliss of heaven!
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Original.
Confiteor.
"Confess therefore your sins one to another."--St. James v. 16.
By Richard Storrs Willis.
When to God alone I make confession, Why, my shameful heart! so light thy task? While so deep the shame and the emotion When to man thou must thy guilt unmask?
Only here we find the true abasement: More than God we dread the eye of man! Hence the justice that, by heaven's ordaining, Human guilt a human eye should scan!
Ah! how oft, by some great sin o'ermastered, Hearts in secret pray, but all in vain! Not till human ear has heard the story Peace descends and Guilt can smile again!
Thus must sin requite both earth and heaven; Since 'gainst man the wrong as well as God! Just amends are due the Heavenly Father-- Due my brother of this earthly sod!
Ye who fain would find a peace that's vanished. Heaven demands no long, desponding search! Seek the kind, attentive ear of Jesus, Seek his listening human ear--the Church!
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From The Contemporary Review.
Mediaeval Universities. [Footnote 46]
[Footnote 46: This article is not written by a Catholic, which the reader will easily see from some of its expressions. With these exceptions the article is very interesting.--C. W.]
Universities are not mentioned in mediaeval documents before the beginning of the thirteenth century. At that period, however, they stand before the eyes of the historian already fully developed, and in the very prime of vigorous manhood, without offering any clue as to their birth and lineage, except such as they bear visibly imprinted in their very nature. This remark holds good only for the most ancient universities--Paris, Oxford, and Bologna--all the other institutions of the kind being easily traced to their foundation, and recognized as copies of the ancient types. There are, indeed, documents extant which refer the foundation of the three mentioned universities to a very respectable antiquity, and according to which Paris claims Charlemagne as its founder; Oxford, Alfred the Great; Bologna, the Emperor Theodosius II.; and Naples, the Emperor Augustus. But these documents are each and all the fabrications of later times, which, agreeably to mediaeval disregard of critical investigation, could easily spring up and find credence, because they supplied by fables what could not be gained by historic evidence, the halo of remote antiquity. Setting, therefore, apart these spurious credentials, we prefer to trace the lineage of our venerable institutions as near as possible to their source by reading and interpreting the record they bear of themselves.
Twice during the middle ages the church saved literature from utter ruin: first when barbarous nations overflooded Europe in the great migration, and a second time during the confusion which arose upon the death of Charlemagne. Science was indeed the enfant trouvé, to take care of which there was no one in the wide world but the church alone. Under its fostering care literature and learning started on a new career in the asylums erected in the schools of abbeys, monasteries, and convents--a career, however, characterized by a peculiar timidity, which shrank from a critical analysis of sacred and profane literature alike--abhorring the latter for its savor of heathenism, revering the former with too much awe to subject it to dissecting criticism. In this narrowness of space, this timidity of development, the youthful plant might have been stunted in its growth, but for the breath of life which the genius of human civilization imparted to its feeble offshoot to rear it to the full vigor of manhood. This inspiration again proceeded from the church, which made the very marrow of her substance over to the school, that it might feed on it and wax strong, so as to become the bearer of mediaeval civilization, the leader of society in science and education. At a period when the church had given form to its doctrines by investing them in a dogmatic garb, so as to remove them from beneath the ruder or careless touch of experimenting heresy, faith was satisfied, and in its satisfaction felt secure from any perilous raid on its domain. Hence, it became less timid in facing the dissecting-knife of the philosopher; nay, on the contrary, it soon detected the new additional strength it might derive from the disquisitions of philosophical science; and thus it came to pass that the dogma of the church left the bosom of the mother that gave it birth, and placed itself under the guardianship of the school. {208} The result of this transmigration is but too evident. First of all, the interest of philosophical inquiry was duly regarded by obtaining by the side of faith its share in the cultivation of the human mind, and, on the other hand, the dogma or symbol of faith, which hitherto had evaded the grasp of human intellect, and therefore assumed the position of a power which, though not hostile, was yet not friendly to the aspirations of the human mind, now turned its most intimate and faithful ally. The motto of this alliance between dogma and philosophy--the well-known "Credo ut intelligam"--is the key-note of scholasticism. Thus, then, theology became the science of the school, when the dogma was completely confirmed and established, and the school sufficiently developed to receive it within its precincts; and this alliance, which produced a Christian philosophy in scholasticism, was the principal agent also in bringing about a new phase of the mediaeval school in the Studium Generale or University.
From the earliest centuries it had been a practice with the Christian church in newly converted countries to erect schools by the side of cathedrals. Where our Lord had his temple, science had a chapel close by. These cathedral schools became in the course of time less exclusively clerical, at the same rate as the chapters of cathedrals turned more secular in their tendencies. In consequence of this metamorphosis the cathedral school attracted a large number of secular students, while the monastic schools more properly limited themselves to the education of the clerical order. But for all that the cathedral school bore a decidedly clerical character. The bishop continued to be the head of the schools in his diocese, and through his chancellor (cancellarius) exercised over the students the same authority as over all others that stood under episcopal jurisdiction. Very often we meet with several or many schools connected with different churches of one and the same diocese. In this case each school had its own "rector," but all of them were subject to the supervision and jurisdiction of the bishop, or his representative the chancellor. Though they followed their literary and educational pursuits each within its own walls and independently of the others, yet on certain occasions they were reminded of their consanguinity of birth and their relationship to the church, when on festive celebrations, such as the feast of the patron saint of the diocese, rectors, teachers, and students of the different schools rallied round the banner of their diocesan, and appeared as one body under their common head, the bishop. Thus we see the cathedral schools brought nearer to each other by two agencies of a uniting tendency--the jurisdiction of the bishop and their relation to the church. That which had grown spontaneously out of the circumstances of the time awaited only the "fiat" of the mighty to accomplish its metamorphosis, and assume its final shape in the Studium Generale. The church required an able expositor of her dogmas, a subtle defender of her canonical presumptions, and both she found in the school. Popes then granted privileges and immunities to the cathedral and monastic schools of certain cities, and these schools, following the impulse and tendencies of the age, united in corporations and became universities. Under the circumstances it must appear a vain attempt to search for documentary evidence as to the first foundation of the three ancient universities. We can only adduce facts to show when and where such establishments are first mentioned, and yet we must not draw the conclusion that universities are contemporary with those documents which first bear direct testimony to their existence. For we all know that in primitive ages, when new institutions are gradually being developed, centuries may pass before the new-born child of a new civilization is christened, and receives that name which shall bear record of its existence to future generations. {209} As far back as the eleventh century, we find at Paris schools connected with the churches of Notre Dame, St. Geneviève, St. Victor, and Petit Pont, but it appears doubtful whether they had been united in a Studium Generale before the end of the twelfth century. The first direct mention of a "university" at Paris is made in a document of the year 1209. Oxford may, in point of antiquity, claim equality at least with Paris; and the assumption that Alfred the Great planted there, as elsewhere, educational establishments is certainly not without some plausibility. Concerning the existence of monastic schools in that town previously to the twelfth century, not a doubt can be entertained; but to refer the foundation of Oxford University to the times of Alfred the Great is simply an anachronism. Oxford, quite as much as Paris, or rather more so, bears in the rudimentary elements of its constitution the unmistakable traces of its origin in the cathedral and monastic schools. Bologna was one of the most ancient law schools in Italy. Roman law had never become quite extinct in that country; and in the great struggles between spiritual and temporal power, ever and again renewed since the eleventh century, it was ransacked with great eagerness for the purpose of propping up the claims of either pope or emperor, as the case might be. The Italian law schools, therefore, enjoyed the patronage of powers spiritual and temporal, which raised them to the summit of fame and prosperity, and then again dragged them to the very verge of ruin by involving them in the struggles and consequent miseries of the two parties. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa well understood how to appreciate the vantage-ground which presented itself in the codices of the ancients for the support of imperial presumptions, and consequently he expressed his favor and good-will to the lawyers of Italy by confirming the ancient law school at Bologna--a confirmation which was combined with extraordinary privileges to professors and students sojourning in that town, or engaged on their journey there or back. Bologna may, therefore, be regarded as a privileged school or university since the year 1158, without, however, being such in the later acceptation of the term, that is, endowed with the four faculties. Concerning this distinction we shall have to advance a few remarks hereafter.
The term university (universitas), in its ancient signification, denotes simply a community, and may, therefore, be applied to the commune of a city. Hence, the distinction will be evident between the expression "Universitas Bolognae" and "Universitas Studii Bonnensis"--the commune of Bologna, and the community of the university of Bologna. The elder title of a university is Studium, a term applied to every higher school, and supplied with the epithet Generale either from the fact of divers faculties being taught, or students of all nations being admitted within its pale. The most distinctive trait of the Generale Studium is manifested in the social position it had gained as a corporate institution invested with certain rights and privileges, like all other guilds or corporations of the middle ages. The university was the privileged guild, the sole competent body from which every authority and license to teach science and literature emanated. The man upon whom it conferred its degrees was, by the very fact of gaining such distinction, stamped as the scholar, competent to profess and teach the liberal arts. The graduate, however, gained his social position not by the act of promotion, but by the privileges which the governing heads of church and state had connected with that act. Hence, it was considered an indispensable condition that a newly erected university should be confirmed in its statutes and privileges by the pope, the representative of the whole community of Christians. The universities having gained a social position, their members were henceforth not merely scholars declared as such by a competent body of men, but they also derived social advantages which lay beyond the reach of those who stood outside the pale of the university.
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A short sketch of the universities erected in different European countries after the pattern of the three parent establishments may suffice to give our readers an idea of the zeal and emulation displayed by popes and emperors, princes and citizens, in the promotion of learning and civilization.
In the year 1204 an unfortunate event befell Bologna. Several professors, with a great number of scholars, removed from that place to Vicenza, where they opened their schools. This dismemberment of the university of Bologna must have had its cause in some--we do not learn exactly what-- internal commotion. The secession was apparently of very little effect, for the university of Vicenza, to which it had given rise in 1204, ceased to exist in the year 1209, most probably in consequence of the professors and scholars returning to the alma of Bologna as soon as this could be opportunely done. A more detailed account has been handed down to us concerning the secession of 1215, when Rofredo da Benevento, professor of civil law, emigrated from Bologna to Arezzo, and erected his chair in the cathedral of that city. A crowd of scholars followed the course of the great master. From letters written by Pope Honorius between 1216 and 1220, it would appear that the citizens of Bologna, in order to prevent the dismemberment of their university, tried to impose upon the scholars an oath, by which they were to pledge themselves never, in any way, to further the removal of the Studium from Bologna, or to leave that school for the purpose of settling elsewhere. The students, however, refused to take this oath of allegiance, a refusal in which they were justified by the pope, who advised them rather to leave the city than undertake any engagement prejudicial to their liberties. The result was the rise of the university of Arezzo, where, besides the ancient schools of law, we find in the year 1255 the faculties of arts and medicine. From a similar dissension between the citizens and scholars seems to have been caused the emigration to Padua, where the secessionist professors and scholars established a university which soon became the successful rival of Bologna.
In the year 1222 the Emperor Frederick II., from spite to the Bolognese, and a desire of promoting the interests of his newly erected university of Naples, commanded all the students and professors at Bologna who belonged as subjects to his Sicilian dominions to repair to Naples. The non-Sicilian members of the Alma Bonnensis he endeavored to allure by making them the most liberal promises. At any other time this ungenerous stratagem might have resulted in the entire ruin of the university of Bologna; this city, however, being a member of the powerful Lombard League, could afford to laugh at Frederick's decrees of annihilation. As long as its founder and benefactor was alive, the university of Naples enjoyed a high degree of fame and excellence among the studia of Italy, for Frederick spared neither expense nor labor in the propagation of science and literature.
Pope Innocent IV. erected the university of Rome about the year 1250, and conferred upon it all the privileges enjoyed by other establishments of the kind. But the praise of having raised that university to its most flourishing condition, and endowed it with all the faculties, is due to Pope Boniface VIII.
Lombardy owed its literary fame to the noble Galeazzo Visconti, who formed the design of erecting a university close to Milan which should provide for the increased wants in science and education among the population of that capital and the surrounding cities. {211} The site chosen for the purpose was Pavia, which had for a long time been the resort of literati of every description who had been educated in the neighboring university of Bologna. The new university soon acquired great fame, enjoying the special patronage of the Emperor Charles IV. of Germany.
The French universities were organized after the model of Paris, but most of them had to be contented with one or several of the faculties, exclusive of theology, which was, and continued to be, a privileged science reserved to Paris and a few of the more ancient universities. Thus we see that Orleans, where a flourishing school of law had existed since 1284, was provided in 1312 with the charters and privilege of of the Studium Generale. Montpelier University, according to some historians, was founded in 1196 by Pope Urban V.; but with certainty we can trace its famous school of medicine only as far back as the year 1221. To this was added the faculty of law in 1230, and Nicolas IV. finally established, in 1286, the faculties of civil and canon law, medicine and arts. Grenoble, Anjou, and a few others, though entitled to claim the privileges of the Studium Generale, hardly ever exceeded the limits of ordinary schools, whether in arts, law, or medicine.
The system of centralization, which at that time had already gained the upper hand in the church and state of France, impressed its type on social and scientific life as well. Paris became the all-absorbing vortex which engulfed every symptom of provincial independence; and the Alma Parisiensis developed in her bosom, as spontaneous productions of her own body, the colleges which were founded on so grand a scale as to outweigh in importance all the minor universities, each college forming, so to say, a "universitas in universitate." This observation holds good for England and the English universities.
Turning our attention to Germany, we find, in accordance with the social conditions of the country, the development of academic life taking a somewhat intermediate course between the Italian universities on the one side, and Paris and Oxford on the other. Though emperors and territorial princes vie with each other in the promotion of educational establishments, Germany nevertheless bears a close resemblance to Italy in so far as in both countries the opulent citizens are among the first to exert themselves in the propagation of science and the diffusion of knowledge. The university of Prague, founded by the Emperor Charles IV. in 1318, was soon followed by that of Vienna, founded in 1365 by Albertus Contraetus, duke of Austria, and Heidelberg, erected by Rupert of the Palatinate, and confirmed by the pope in 1386. The university of Cologne owed its origin to the exertions made by the municipal council, who succeeded in gaining a charter from Pope Urban VI. in 1388. Erfurt also is mainly indebted to the zeal of the citizens and the town council for its erection, which took place in 1392. Leipzig was founded, in its rudiments at least, in 1409 by the Elector Frederick I. of Saxony, but it started into the full vigor of academic life under the impulse imparted to it by the immigration of two thousand students, Catholic Germans, who, to escape Hussite persecution, had departed in a body from the university of Prague.
Spain, which we should expect to see forward in promoting institutions of learning, did not much avail herself of those fruits of science which had ripened to unequalled splendor under the Arabs in the eleventh century. Recalling, however, to mind the fearful struggles between the Christian and Arab population, struggles which for centuries shook that country to its very foundations, we can readily make allowance for the slow advance of learning in this state of bellicose turmoil. Yet, in spite of these unfavorable conditions, the schools received no inconsiderable attention from the Christian rulers of the country. {212} The ancient school of Osca, or Huesca, was revived; Saragossa, which is said to have been founded in 990 by Roderico à S. AElia, began to thrive again; Valentia was founded by Alphonse of Leon, and Salamanca in 1239 by Ferdinand of Castile and Leon, both of which schools arrived at their greatest splendor and the position of universities at the beginning of the sixteenth century, as did also those of Valladolid, Barcelona, Saragossa and Alcala.
In order to give a general survey of the progress of academic establishments in the different European countries, we subjoin a list of all mediaeval universities, with the dates of foundation, which in doubtful cases are accompanied by a note of interrogation. The dates of the most ancient universities require no further remark after our previous observations:
England and Scotland.
Oxford 11- Cambridge 11- St. Andrews 1412 Glasgow 1451 Aberdeen 1494 Edinburgh 1520
Italy.
Bologna 11- Piacenza 1248 Padua 1222 Piza 1339 Vercelli 1228 Arezzo 1356 Vicenza 1204 Rome 1250 (?) Naples 1224 Fermo 1391 Perugia 1307 Pavia 1361 Siena 1420 Parma 1412 Turin 1405 Florence 1348 Verona 1339 Salerno 1250 (?)
France.
Paris 11- Montpelier 1286 Avignon 1809 (?) Cahors 1332 Anjou 1348 Lyons 1300 Grenoble 1339 Perpignan 1340 Poitiers 1431 Caen 1433 Bordeaux 1442 Nantes 1448
Germany.
Prague 1348 Vienna 1365 Heidelberg 1386 Cologne 1388 Erfurt 1392 Leipzig 1409 Rostock 1419 Greifswalde 1456 Freiburg 1457 (?) Trier, (Treves) 1472 Ingoldstadt 1472 Basle 1460 Mayence 1482 Tübingen 1482 Würzburg 1400
Spain and Portugal
Huesca (?) Coimbra 1279 Lisbon 1283 Valentia 1210 Salamanca 1239 Valladolid 1346 Barcelona 1500 Saragossa 1474 Toledo 1499 Alcala 508
Other Countries.
Louvain 1425 Buda 1465 Upsala 1477 Copenhagen 1478 Cracow 1364
Entering upon the subject of the constitution or organization of the universities, we need hardly remind our readers that, in accordance with the nature of their origin and with the spirit of uniformity which pervaded the middle ages, the constitution of the different universities was everywhere essentially the same. The university of the most ancient date was not an exclusive school or establishment existing only for the higher branches of erudition, but it was a system or various schools, which chiefly aimed at the education of a competent body of teachers, a corporation of scientific men. This purpose could be, and indeed was, attained without splendidly endowed colleges or spacious lecture-rooms. The university, in its first rudimentary appearance, is an ideal rather than a reality. There are no traces of buildings exclusively appropriated to academic purposes, but the first house or cottage or barn, if need were, was made subservient to scientific pursuits, whenever a licensed teacher or magister pleased to erect his throne there. Nor did the Studium Generale confine itself to giving finishing touches of education, but it comprised the whole sphere of development from boyhood to manhood, so that the boy still "living under the rod" could boast of being a member of the university with the same right as the bearded scholar of thirty or forty years of age. The same academic privileges which were enjoyed by the magister or doctor extended to the lowest of the "famuli" that trod in the train of the academical cortége. {213} A Corpus Academicum, with its various degrees of membership, its distinction of nations and faculties, its peculiar organization and constitution--such are the characteristic traits of all the mediaeval universities which we are about to examine. To the Corpus Academicum belonged the students (scholares), bachelors (baccalaurei), licentiates, masters (magistri), and doctors, with the governing heads, the proctors (procuratores), the deans (decani), and the rector and chancellor (cancellarius). To these were added officials and servants of various denominations, and finally the trades-people of the university, designated as academic citizens. Every student was obliged to present himself within a certain time before the rector of the university in order to have his name put down in the album of the university (matricula), to be matriculated. He pledged his word by oath to submit to the laws and statutes of the university, and to the rector in all that is right and lawful (licitis et honestis), and to promote the welfare of his university by every means in his power. At the same time he had to deposit a fee in the box (archa) of the academic community, the amount of which was fixed according to the rank of the candidate, as it was not unusual for bishops, canons, abbots, noblemen, doctors, and other graduates to apply for membership in some university. After being matriculated and recognized as a member of the body, the student had to assume the academic dress, which characterized him as such to the world at large. The dress was identical with that of the clergy, and from this and other incidents every member of the school was termed clericus, and all the members collectively clerus universitatis whence clericus (clerc) came to designate a scholar, and laicus a layman and a dunce as well. The wearing of secular dress was strictly prohibited, and we can appreciate the benefit of this arrangement on considering the exorbitant fashions which prevailed in those days, to the prejudice of propriety and the ruin of pecuniary means. To carry arms, chiefly a kind of long sword, was a matter allowed sometimes, more often connived at, but frequently prohibited at times of disturbances among the scholars themselves, or during feuds with the citizens. Against visiting gambling-houses or other places of bad repute, passing the nights in taverns, engaging in dances or revels, or other diversions unseemly in a "clerc," we find repeated and earnest injunctions in the statutes of the universities. Where scholars were living together in the same house under proper surveillance, they formed a community known as bursa. Bursa originally denoted the contribution which each scholar had to pay toward the maintenance of the community, whence the term was applied to the community itself. The bursae had, like inns and public-houses, their proper devices and appellations, commonly derived from the name and character of the house-owner or hospes (host). Corresponding with the Continental bursae were the English hospitia and aulae, or halls, which, however, may be traced to higher antiquity than the former. It is not difficult to recognize in these institutes the germs of the later colleges. At the head of the hospitium or bursa stood the conventor, who was commonly appointed by the rector, in some places elected by the members of the bursa, and who had to direct the course of study, guard the morals of the students, etc. If the hospes or host was a master or bachelor, the functions of conventor naturally devolved upon him. The provisor took charge of the victuals, watched over the purchase and preparation of the same, and settled the pecuniary affairs with the hospes. Discipline in the bursae and halls was rigorous and severe, and it could not be otherwise at a time when the individual man was not restrained by a thousand formalities and conventionalities, but allowed to develop freely his inherent faculties and powers, often to such a degree as to prove prejudicial to the peace of society, unless they were curbed by the severe punishment which followed transgression. {214} We meet in the earliest times of the universities with but very few systematic regulations as far as internal discipline is concerned. This was a matter of practice, and left rather to be settled according to the requirements of each case as it arose. Practice, again, taught the pupil a lesson of abstemiousness and self-denial which might go far to outdo in its effect our best text-books on moral philosophy. The convictorial houses, as well as the university at large, were poor, being without any funds but those which flowed from the contributions of the scholars and members of the university. A life of toil and endurance was that of the scholar. If he had a fire in the winter season to warm his limbs, and just sufficient food to satisfy his gastronomic cravings, be found himself entitled to praise his stars. The lecture-rooms did not boast of anything like luxury in the outfitting. Some rough structure of the carpenter's making which represented the pulpit was the only requisite piece of furniture; chairs were not wanted, as the pupils found sitting accommodation on the floor, which was strewn with straw or some other substance of nature's own providing, and on which ardent disciples cowered down to listen to the words of wisdom flowing from the lips of some celebrated master. When, at a later period, the university of Paris went so far in fastidious innovations as to procure wooden stools for the pupils to sit upon, the papal legates who had come on a visitation severely censured the authorities for their indiscretion in opening the university to the current of luxury, which would not fail, they affirmed, to have an enervating effect on the mind and body of the pupil; and for a time the scholars had to descend again from the stool to the floor. Early rising was so general a habit in those days as to make it almost superfluous to mention that the pupils had gone through their morning worship and several lessons by the time the more refined student of modern days is accustomed to rise.
The lowest of academical degrees was that of Bachelor (Baccalaureus). [Footnote 47] Certain historical evidence of the creation of bachelors at Paris appears in the bull of Pope Gregory IX., of the year 1281, though the degree must be of a remoter date, for the pope alludes to it not as a novel institution, but in terms which induce us to admit its previous existence. When a scholar had attended the course of lectures prescribed by his faculty, and gone through a certain number of disputations, he might present himself as a candidate for the bachelorship. Having passed his examination before the doctors (magistri) of his faculty to their satisfaction, and taken the usual oath of fidelity and obedience to the university, he gained the actual promotion by the chancellor. Hereupon be proceeded with his friends and others whom he chose to invite, in a more or less brilliant cortége, to the banquet which he provided in honor of the occasion. In the procession the staff or sceptre (baculus, sceptrum, virga) of the university was carried in front of the new-made bachelor, as the emblem of his recently gained academical dignity. The bachelors were still only a higher class of students, and as such they are frequently called Archischolares. They, of course, preceded the students in rank, were allowed to wear a gown of choicer material, and the cap called Quadtatum, while the Birrettum [Footnote 48] was reserved for the doctors.
[Footnote 47: As to the derivation of this term hardly a doubt can be entertained. The ancient custom of carrying the academic staff or scepter (baculus) before the candidates on his promotion to the first degree, undoubtedly gave origin to the terms Bacularius and Baculariatus, which only in later times were corrupted into Baccularius and Baccalaureus. Thus with Kink against Balaeus, Voight, and others, who give the most fantastic derivations, such as bataille (batalarius), bas-chevalier, etc.]
[Footnote 48: Quadratum, the square cap; birrettum, a term still preserved in the French barrette, a cardinal's hat; in German the term barrett is used for the cap worn by priests when in official dress.]
{215}
The bachelors were closely connected with their respective faculties, and could not renounce this connection, or even choose another place of residence, without special permission. They formed the transition from the students to the masters, as they participated in the functions of both. They had to direct the private study and repetitions of the scholars, and work out the doctor's system, which the latter merely sketched in its principal theses and rudimentary outline. The bachelors, in fact, represented the hardest worked people of the body academic. In later centuries they were actually ill treated by the doctors of Paris, who confined themselves to deliver one single lecture in the whole year, leaving all the rest of the work to their inferior fellow-graduates. Besides their share in teaching the students, they performed other important duties. They were the industrious copyists of classical works, and while they thus toiled for the instruction of others in narrower or wider circles, they at the same time qualified themselves for the attainment of higher degrees. Opportunities for the advancement of their own erudition were given in the disputations. It was incumbent upon every doctor or master (magister) from time to time to hold and direct a public disputation, at which the doctors, bachelors, and students were present. The doctors, clad in the furred doctor-gown (cappa, taphardum), and with the birrettum, took their places on elevated chairs, which were arranged in a circle round the walls of the hall. The cross seats were occupied by the bachelors, behind whom mustered the plebeian students, in earlier times cowering on the floor, later on provided with the luxury of seats.
The presiding doctor, who directed the disputation, having entered the pulpit, chose from the text-book a certain passage and formed it into an argument (quaestio), the development or exposition of which was called determinatio. Now the task of the bachelors commenced, who, with respect to their functions, were called respondentes and divided into defendentes and opponentes. They had their own pulpit, from which one or other individual of their class delivered his argumentatio, pro or con, and then awaited the response of his antagonist. When, however, the contest required a rapid succession of questions and answers, both occupied the same pulpit, facing each other in a contest which very often did not lack the stimulus of personal animosity. When they became extravagant in their argumentation, strayed from the original question, or in the heat of the combat fell into excesses of language, it was the office of the presiding doctor to recall them to the point at issue, or, if need were, to impose silence. Sometimes, and perhaps not unfrequently, matters became so complicated as to leave a solution of the question more than doubtful, in which case the doctor, on his own authority, pronounced a decision, to which the contending parties had to submit. Similarly to the practice prevalent in tournaments, the disputations were wound up with a courtesy (recommendatio), a harangue in favor of the opponent. Students were not allowed to take part in the disputations directed by a doctor; but they had their own combats of the kind, presided over by a bachelor.
While promotion to the bachelorship took place four times a year, the competition for the license could occur only once or twice, commonly at the opening of the new scholastic year. The scientific requirements differed in different universities and faculties, and the course of promotion was not everywhere the same in all its details, but the following outlines will, we hope, give a fair picture of the generality of cases. The day of competition for the license (licentia docendi) being agreed upon between the chancellor and the respective faculties, it was publicly announced by placards at the entrance of churches and other conspicuous places, and several times pronounced from the pulpits of the clergy. {216} On the appointed day the candidates presented themselves before their respective faculties, and on the morrow they were introduced to the chancellor, to petition him that he would graciously accept them as candidates, and appoint the day of examination. Hereupon they pledged themselves by oath to be obedient to the chancellor, to promote the welfare of the university, to further peace and concord among the nations and faculties, to deliver lectures at least during the first year of their license, to be faithful to the doctrines of the church, and to defend them against every hostile aggression. Then the functions of the faculties began and ended with the examination of the candidate, who, upon having passed satisfactorily, was recommended to the chancellor for the actual reception of the license. Thus it becomes evident that the license was not the gift of the faculty, but emanated from the chancellor as the representative of the bishop, the church; nay, more, in several Italian universities it was, in spite of their democratic character, customary for the bishop himself to preside at the examination for the license and the promotion of the successful competitors. When the chancellor withheld his confirmation (as on several occasions of differences having arisen between him and the university it did happen), the most brilliantly sustained examination failed to make a licentiate out of a bachelor. The examination for the three higher faculties was held in the presence of all the doctors, any one of whom had a right to examine the candidate on the previously appointed "theses." In the theological faculty the questions were everywhere fixed by the episcopal representative, the chancellor, who even might interfere in the examination itself. The same right could be claimed by him in the faculty of law.
To pronounce judgment on the scientific qualifications of the candidate was the task of the whole faculty. On the appointed day the successful competitors appeared in the church in the presence of the chancellor, and, kneeling down before him (ob reverentium Dei et sedis apostolicae), they received the license, the chancellor using the formula: "By the authority of God Almighty, the apostles Peter and Paul, and the Apostolic See, in whose name I act, I grant you the license of teaching, lecturing, disputing, here and everywhere throughout the world, in the name," etc. (Ego, auctoritate Dei omnipotentis, et apostolorum Petri et Pauli, et apostolicae sedis, qua fungor in hac parte, do tibi licentiam, legendi, regendi, disputandi, hic et ubique terrarum, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.)
After the act was over there followed the payment of fees and the inevitable banquet. The arts faculty conferred with the license the degree of the magisterium at the same time. The license enabled the candidate to teach in public at all the universities of Western Europe. In the earlier centuries this prerogative of universal recognition of the license was not enjoyed by all the universities. That of Paris was honored with it as early as the year 1279 by Pope Nicolas III.; Oxford did not receive it until the year 1319; while the university of Vienna enjoyed it ever since its foundation by the bull of Pope Urban V. of the year 1365. When the church had performed her functions by bestowing the license upon the candidate, he was not therewith a member of the faculty. For this purpose he had to seek approval and reception from the respective faculty itself (petere licentiam incipiendi in artibus, in medicina, etc.), which, in the regular course of events, was never withheld. There was in this proceeding a manifestation of corporate right and independence which the faculties loved to display on this occasion. Though hardly more than a formality, it tended to give expression to their consciousness of being free corporations upon which no candidate could be intruded, though it were by the highest functionary of the university. {217} The bachelors, as we intimated before, may be considered a higher degree of students, and the licentiates, we may add, formed a lower degree of masters. They, therefore, sat in the same compartments with the masters, but in the rear; they might, like the doctors, wear the cappa (gown), but not the birrettum; nor were they allowed to deliver lectures on their own responsibility, but had to do so under the direction of a doctor. Licentiates, however, if reading by appointment of a doctor, or in his stead, were considered independent lecturers. To make the licentiate a doctor, nothing was required but the act of promotion --a mere formality again, but of no slight importance, for it was the final transaction which stamped the candidate as a man of learning, the legitimate and competent teacher.
The act of promotion was celebrated with the greatest possible splendor. The tolling of the church bells gave the signal for the procession to prepare. All the doctors, licentiates, bachelors, and students, having previously assembled in front of the candidate's house, they, upon the second signal being given by the bells, move in a pompous cortége toward the church, where the sound of trumpets and timbrels received them upon their entrance. For the court, the judges, the magistrates, and the members of the different faculties, separate accommodation was provided, the populace filling the remaining space. The doctors of the respective faculties having taken their seats, the chancellor opened the proceedings by a brief allocution, in which he permitted the candidate to ascend the pulpit (auctoritate cancellarii). The candidate delivered a speech (pulchram et decentem arengam) in honor of the faculty, and finally petitioned for the insignia of doctor. Upon this the promoter (one of the doctors of the faculty) ascended the pulpit and held an oration recommendatory of the candidate, and then, following his invitation, all the doctors formed a circle and received the doctorandus in their centre, where the promoter transmitted into his hands an open and a closed volume as the symbols of his scientific avocations, gave him the kiss of peace as the mark of friendship and fraternity, and placed on his head the birrettum in manifestation of his new dignity. Immediately after these ceremonies the new doctor ascended the pulpit (now sua auctoritate) and delivered a lecture on any theme fitting the occasion, thus availing himself at once of the acquired privilege. From this it would appear that the act of promotion belonged to the chancellor and faculty jointly, and not to the university as such, for its actual head, the rector, took no part whatever in the proceedings. The doctor alone had the right of wearing a gown ornamented with silk and fur, and the birrettum as indicative of his rank. In his social position he was considered of equal rank with noblemen, and therefore wore the golden ring and other attributes of the nobility, and in public manifestoes he always appears included in the aristocratic class of society. The titles of doctor and magister designated one and the same degree, and yet there was a shade of difference in their meaning, magister (master) being applied to scientific superiority or mastership, while doctor signified the person who, in consequence of this degree, exercised the functions of teacher or professor; hence, magister was the title of courtesy, doctor that of the professional man, a distinction which will become evident from phrases such as this: Magister Johannes, doctor in theologia, etc. Every doctor enjoyed the right, and during the first year of his license undertook the duty, of lecturing in that faculty which had promoted him.
The officials and servants formed no inconsiderable appendage to the university. They are mentioned under the names of notarii, syndici, thesaurarii, and the lower orders of beadles or famuli of various descriptions. More important, if not in position, yet in number, were the academic citizens. {218} To these belonged tailors, shoemakers, laundresses, booksellers, stationers, and a host of different trades, which had to provide for the wants of university men exclusively, and formed a body distinct altogether from the city tradesmen. All these servants of the university, the academic citizens and their servants, together with the servants of each individual belonging to the university, counted as members of this community. If we take into consideration that dignitaries of the church and of the state, and noblemen, visited the universities, accompanied by a numerous retinue of attendants and servants; that even scholars of the wealthier middle classes were followed by two servants at least (and in this case called "tenentes locum nobilium"--gentlemen commoners?), we can form an idea of the immense crowd of academic individuals resident in the great universities. As to the number of academic members in different places, the opinions of modern historians are at variance, and in spite of their controversies the real facts of the case have not been ultimately elicited. Wood, in his history of the university of Oxford, relates that in the year 1250 the number of members of that university amounted to 30,000! This fabulous number scarcely ever found credence among modern historians until Huber, the German historian of the English universities, entered the lists as the champion of Wood's thirty thousand. Though, historically, he has no new light to throw upon the subject, he makes his deduction in favor of the thirty thousand plausible enough. Taking into consideration the facts we have just advanced concerning the wide range of the term of academic members, adducing, further, the circumstance of Oxford having at that time attained the meridian of its glory by the immigration of Paris scholars in 1209, and the settlement of the mendicant friars there, he certainly urges on our minds the belief that the number of academic people must have been amazingly great. But looking apart from the circumstance that Wood's assertion is not confirmed by direct documentary evidence, that the average numbers mentioned before and after the year indicated turn in the scale between 3,000 and 5,000, we have scarcely any other measure by which to judge the above statement but the highest mark of numbers related of the other great universities. Allowing the most favorable circumstances to have worked in unison toward assembling a large crowd at Oxford University, we yet believe no one will be likely to uphold the assertion that Oxford University was at that time, or at any time, more densely populated than Paris or Bologna. In the year 1250, we know for a fact Germany was not in possession of one single university, and yet the number of academic scholars in that country was not inconsiderable. From want of a Studium Generale in their own country, German scholars had to visit foreign universities, and the current is clearly distinguishable in two directions, one to Italy for the study of law, the other to Paris for arts and theology. Even admitting Oxford's fame for its dialectic and theological schools having been on an equality with that of Paris, we cannot conceive how, in its insular position, it could rival with the great continental universities which offered ready access to students from all parts of Europe. Now the greatest number ever mentioned at the university of Paris is 10,000, when in the year 1394 all the members of the university had to vote in the case of the papal schism, and even this number cannot be relied on, as, according to Gerson's admission, several members gave more than one vote, and others voted who had no right to be on the academic suffrage. Admitting, however, that the gross sum may be an approximately fair estimate, we turn our attention to Bologna. This university undoubtedly contained all the advantages of celebrity, easy access, freedom of constitution, and whatever else may conduce to attract numerous visitors. {219} Yet the highest number is 10,000, mentioned in the year 1262. The universities of Salamanca and Vienna, certainly not the least among academic establishments, even in the time of their greatest success and most flourishing condition, could not boast of a number exceeding 7,000. From these data it may become sufficiently evident what we have to believe of Oxford's thirty thousand, a number which must stand on its own merits until it can be supported and confirmed by direct historic evidence. It is true the line of demarcation between trustworthy and fabulous accounts concerning numbers is very difficult to draw in mediaeval records, especially when they refer to institutions which, exposed to the vicissitudes of fortune, experienced a continual influx and reflux of scholars, so that the famous Bologna, which numbered 10,000 members in 1262, had fallen to 500 in the year 1431, not to mention the intermediate degrees in the scale of numbers.
The whole body academic, numerous and complicated though it was, did not require any considerable amount of regulating and governing agents. By the simplicity of rule and government the middle ages characteristically differ from our own wonderful machineries which claim for every touch that is wanted the experienced hands of hundreds of officials, and even then they are oftentimes served badly enough. Self-government was the ruling idea in the middle ages, and consequently we see the universities directed in their complicated progress by a number of officials comparatively so small as to fill the modern observer with amazement. The university being divided into different bodies or corporations (the nations and faculties), it left the direction and management or these different institutions chiefly to themselves. At the head of the nations stood the proctors (procuratores), and the faculties were governed by their deans (decani). The range of their official rights and duties will be illustrated later on. The president of the different nations and of the four faculties was the rector. He was elected for the space of a year, or six months only, by the proctors or presidents of the nations, and in earlier times regularly out of the arts faculty; at a later period, and in the younger universities, out of one of the nations and one of the faculties alternately. The rector was not to be a married man--at Vienna no monk either; Prague required him to be a member of the clerical profession, imitating in this, as in almost everything else, the university of Paris, where even the professors were bound to celibacy (nullus uxoratus admittebatur ad regentiam). The rector was the head, the president (caput, principale) of the whole university. Oxford and Prague alone, where the supreme power was invested in the chancellor, form in this respect an exception, but only so far as names are concerned, for the Oxford chancellor was eo ipso rector of the university. The rector's high dignity found expression in the title of Magnificus, which, in the middle ages, was allowed to none but princes imperial and royal, and a suitable dress distinguished the highest official of the university whatever he appeared in public. It is surprising to learn what an important figure a university rector played on public occasions. At Paris, and later on at Vienna, the rector, when officiating in his avocation, preceded in rank even the bishops. The rector of the university of Louvain (Loewen) Was allowed a life guard of his own; and even Charles V., attending on one occasion the convention of the university, took his place after the rector. At Leyden, the stadtholder, when appearing in the name of the states-general, allowed the precedence to the rector of the university; and whenever the rector of Padua visited the republic of Venice he was received by the senate with the highest marks of honor. {220} When at Vienna the court was prevented from attending at the procession on Corpus Christi, the rector of the university took the place of the sovereign immediately behind the sanctissimum. From the exalted station which a university rector occupied in society the fact is easily explained that dignitaries of the church, nobleman of the highest rank, and even princes of blood royal, did not slight the rectorial purple of the university. The rector wore, like the deans, a black gown, but on festive occasions he was dressed in a long robe of scarlet velvet. He acted as the president of the highest academic tribunal, and held his judicial sessions, assisted by the proctors, and if he so pleased he might invite the deans as well. In criminal cases occurring within the bounds of the university, he could inflict any, from the slightest to the severest penalties of the law. Hence, a sword and a sceptre, were carried before him when he traversed the streets or appeared on public occasions. He convened the meetings of the university corporations, and conventions held under any other authority (even that of the chancellor) had no legal power in carrying resolutions. What we have just stated concerning the rector holds good for the chancellor of Oxford. When Paris and other universities contrived to free themselves from the influence of their diocesan, Oxford never loosened the close ties which bound it to the church, and received without opposition its governing head from the bishop. But it must be borne in mind that the chancellor of the university had nothing whatever to do with the church of Lincoln, which had its own chancellor. Once appointed by the bishop, Oxford's chancellor entered upon all the functions, and the same independent position as the rector elsewhere. On the other hand, however, he represented the chancellor of the other continental universities, who formed the connecting links between the university and the church. During the middle ages the functions of the continental chancellor were restricted to the few cases of promotion at which be acted as the representative of the bishop, to give the sanction and blessing of the church to proceedings which were deemed as naturally belonging to her proper sphere of supervision and authority. Having so far finished our sketch of the different members of the Corpus Academicum, we may finally let them pass in review as they appeared at processions and other public occasions, according to rank and precedence. At the head of the train we see, of course, the rector followed by the dean, doctors and licentiates of theology, with whom went in equal rank the sons of dukes and counts, and the higher nobility generally. These were succeeded by the dean, doctors and licentiates of the law faculty, and the students belonging to the baronial order, and with the medical faculty proceeded the students of the lower nobility. The fourth division was formed by the dean and professors (magistri regentes) of the arts faculty and those bachelors of other faculties who were masters of arts, while the bachelors of arts followed, and the students closed the procession, they also being divided and following each other according to the succession of the faculties just described, where, ceteris paribus, seniority gave the precedence. As in all institutions of medieval society the division of ranks was strictly observed, and in case of need enforced in the most rigorous manner, a transgression in this respect being visited on any member with severe, sometimes the severest penalty, that is, expulsion from the university.
All the different degrees of individuals we have now examined were united in corporations, representing a union either according to local divisions in nations, or arranged with respect to scientific pursuits in faculties. Concerning the nations of the universities, former writers intricated [sic] themselves in great difficulties by recurring to hypotheses in which historical records did not bear them out. According to Bulseus and Huber the nations of the university represented the different tribes or nationalities which inhabited a country, and found a rallying point at the centre of science and education. {221} Now, this assertion is in open contradiction to the character and nature of academic nations, as may become evident from the following data which we have to advance. The nations of the English universities were, and always continued to be, those of the Boreales or northerners, and the Australes or southerners. Among the Boreales were included the Scotch, and with the Australes figured the Irish and Welsh. If it had lain in the plan of those institutions to preserve and foster the difference of national extraction and to develop it to the highest degree or contrast, how could this end be obtained by a corporation of men which contained in itself the contradictory elements of Celtic and Saxon derivation, elements then more sharply defined and opposed to each other than now? Directing our attention to Paris, we find at an earlier epoch there also only two distinct nations, the French and the English, the former comprising Southern, and the latter Northern Europe. When these two nations were multiplied into four no regard whatever was paid to the different nationalities, for the divisions were the English, French, Picardian, and Norman. Why, we may ask, was the nation of the Normans to hold a separate position from that of the English, with whom they were one body from a political point of view, or from the French, whom they resembled closely enough in language and manners? When at the University of Vienna the Austrian nation comprised the Italians, and the Rhenish nation, besides Southern Germans, the Burgundians, French, and Spaniards, where is the principle of nationality preserved? Turning finally to the Italian universities, we meet with hardly any other distinction but that of Cisalpine and Transalpine. How wide the difference between the nationalities of these academic nations must have been we may leave it with our readers to conclude, when we state the fact that in the Transalpine nation we find Germans, Scandinavians, Frenchmen, Normans, Englishmen, and Spaniards. What then, will be the question naturally proposed, was the meaning, tendency, and character of academic nations? The middle ages, in defining and separating the members of the university into nations, did not intend to sharpen the national contrasts and differences, but, on the contrary, to soften them down, perhaps to destroy them altogether. Not natural natural extraction, but the geographical situation it was which proffered the criterion for such division. If it were otherwise, they would have applied to these divisions not the term of Nationes (that is, ubi natus), but that of Gentes. Its chief support our view will derive from the fact that in the middle ages the distinction of rank and avocations far outweighed that of nationalities in our acceptation of the term. Just as chivalrous knighthood represented, without respect to the different countries, an institution coalesced into one body or corporation, so likewise the school had its centres of unity, independent of nationalities. The chief criterion of nationalities, language, formed in the scholastic establishments a centre of unity, Latin being the medium of conversation and literature, from the Baltic to the Adriatic, and from Cracow to Lisbon. The division into nations consequently aimed at uniting the different tribes according to the different quarters of the globe whence they had come. Every university was looked upon as a geographical centre, and the different nationalities were grouped into nations, and designated by the names of those peoples which resided nearest to the central point, the university. It is true, the division recognized by the university did not object to secondary combinations among students of the same nationality if they wished to enter into a league with their countrymen, so that the Germans, for instance, who belonged to the English nation at Paris, and to the Transalpine nation of the Italian universities, might at any place form a separate corporation known as a province. {222} These provinces, however, were not recognized by, or in any official relation to the proctors (procuratores). The name itself implies the nature of their office, that of being the representatives, the advocates, the attorneys of their respective nations. Not only graduates, but even students were eligible to the office, because doctrine or learning was not at all concerned where academic relationship offered the sole guide in the election. When the whole university was convened, each nation voted separately, and the majority out of the four votes (of the four nations) decided. Questions which concern the pecuniary contributions of all the members, or the external relations of the university and the like, were discussed and settled in the convention of the nations. The proctors, with the rector as their head, formed the court of academic jurisdiction, and they also elected the rector, who in early times was nothing but the supreme magistrate, the mayor, as it were, of the academic community.
The nations of which we have treated in the preceding paragraph formed the first and natural division of the Corpus Academicum into independent corporations, and may therefore outreach in antiquity the faculties. As soon, however, as the different branches of learning had fully grown into distinct sciences, it was merely in accordance with the corporate spirit of the times that the scholars of each respective science separated into independent bodies and assumed the form and constitution of corporations. The origin of these scientific corporations or faculties is, like that of the nations, and of the first universities themselves, shrouded in obscurity. The sciences represented in the different faculties may surely be traced back to the early centuries of mediaeval education, having their prototype in the Trivium and Quadrivium of the monastic schools; but without entering any further upon probabilities and conjectures about their origin, we proceed at once to a characterization of the faculties at the time of their full development, which is historically authenticated. In all universities the faculties represented the same quadripartite cyclus of sciences, that is, the Facultus Artium, Jurisprudentiae, Medicinae, and Theologiae. It was not requisite for a Studium Generale or university to comprise all the four faculties; on the contrary, we find at the early epoch of academic life hardly any university which professed the four branches of knowledge. Paris and Oxford, for instance, were originally confined to arts and theology, to which the schools of medicine and law were added at a later period, probably copied from the model schools of law and medicine in Italy. Turning to the peninsula of the Apennines we find there in the earlier times not a single university combining the theological with the other three faculties. Bologna did not gain the privilege of a theological faculty before the year 1362, when Pope Innocent VI. decreed that in the law university the faculty of theology should be established, and theological degrees conferred by the same. Till then it had been customary for Italians to betake themselves to Paris, for the sake of obtaining promotion in theology. Of other Italian universities, Padua received a theological faculty by Pope Urban V., upon the intercession of Francesco da Carrara, then, Signor of Padua. Pisa, when obtaining the confirmation of Pope Benedict XII., was allowed the "studium sacrae paginae;" but the right of promotion was a case altogether separately treated, and therefore expressly mentioned where it was bestowed, which, with regard to Pisa, did not take place. Ferrara also had a theological school exclusive of the right of promotion; but in the year 1391 it succeeded in gaining the privilege of promotion in theology, which, by the end of the fourteenth century, was more universally conceded. {223} But even then we find famous schools, such as Piacenza, Pavia, Lucca, Naples, Perugia, and even that of Rome itself, not participating in the said prerogative. The university of Montpellier (like most of the French schools, Paris excepted) had no theological faculty; and Vienna, confirmed by Pope Urban in 1365, was not favored with a theological faculty previously to the year 1384. These exceptions were owing to various causes, partly of a local, partly of a higher and more important nature. The interests of neighboring universities, for instance, might threaten a collision (as in the case of Prague and Vienna), or the pursuits of theological studies could be amply provided for by monastic and cathedral schools. But the principal cause of this system appears to lie in quite a different circumstance. The method of Scholastic sophisms had, in spite of the opposing movements of the popes, gained day by day more ground in the theological department, a fact which made a strict supervision, and therefore a more limited scene for theological operations a real desideratum. The greatest caution was deemed necessary, owing to the fact that even at Paris, since the scholastic method had gained superiority, startling doctrines were advanced, divergent from the traditional teaching of the church, and sufficient to cause apprehension.
Admission to degrees depended first of all on the diligent attendance at lectures, which the candidate had to prove by testimonials, and secondly on a certain number of years which he had to devote to the special studies of his faculty. For the bachelorship of arts a study of two, for the magisterium a study of three years was required. In the faculty of law the bachelor had, previously to his promotion, to go through a course of three years, and after seven years of study the license would be granted; while the medical faculty imposed for the bachelorship two or three, for the license five or six years, differing in proportion to the candidate's previous studies in the faculty of arts. After six years of theological study the candidate could attain the bachelorship in theology, whereupon his faculty pointed out one or other chapter of Holy Scripture on which he had to lecture under the superintendence of a doctor. Having passed three years in these pursuits he might gain permission to read on "dogmatics" or doctrinal theology (libri sententiarii). Bachelors were, therefore, divided into baccalaurei biblici and baccalaurei sententiarii, and both designated as cursores. A bachelor who had begun the third book of the sentences became baccalaurens formatus, and after three years' further practice, that is, after eleven years of theological study, he presented himself for the license. The head of each faculty, the dean (decanus), was elected by the graduates out of his respective faculty, in some cases for six, in others for twelve months. The community of the university was represented in three different conventions: the consistory (consistorium), the congregation (congregatio universitatis), and the general assembly (plena concio). The first was originally the judicial tribunal, and though its functions became more varied at a later time, it continued to be the representative assembly of the academic nations. The congregation was a meeting of a more scientific, and, as it were, aristocratic character, including only the doctors and licentiates of the different faculties. It formed the court of appeal from the sentence of the respective faculties. The general assembly, comprising all the members of the university, was convened on but few occasions, and then only for the celebration of academic festivals, or for the publication of new statutes, or especially in cases when contributions were to be levied from all the members of the university. On the last-mentioned occasion only had the students or undergraduates the right of voting; in every other instance they were restricted to silence, or the more passive though uproarious mode of participation, by applauding or hissing the proposals and discussions of their elders and betters. {224} Here, again, we have to point out a characteristic difference between the Cismontane and Transmontane universities. While the whole constitution of the universities on this side of the Alps, with their laws, statutes, etc., was dependent on the aristocratic body of the graduates, the universities of Italy, and chiefly that of Bologna, display a thoroughly democratic character. At Bologna the students were the gentlemen who, out of their number, elected the rectors. The Italian rector was, in fact, identical with our proctor, though his functions extended over a wider range. The aristocratic congregation of faculties is almost totally unknown in Italian universities, where the nations preserved their predominant position all through the middle ages. The professors were hardly more than the officials of the students, and in their service, though in the pay of the citizens. In the documents we never read of any legal transaction being performed by the faculties, but always by the rectors and the nations, or the rectors and the students, and even the papal bulls with respect to the Italian universities freely use the expression of a universitas magistrorum et scholarium. In short, the Italian universities were democracies, while the western, and chiefly the English universities present traits of a decidedly aristocratic character.
To complete the sketch of the organization of mediaeval universities we must add a few remarks concerning their position in society, and the relation in which they stood to civil and ecclesiastical authorities. The members of the body academic were subject to three distinct tribunals: internal discipline and jurisdiction belonged to the functions of the rector and proctors; violations of the common law which were committed outside the pale of the university, and required the apprehension of the delinquent, lay within the pale of the bishop's jurisdiction; and all cases falling under the head of atrocia were, for final decision, reserved to the law courts of the crown. The bounds of ecclesiastical jurisdiction being rather vague and undefined, collisions between the ecclesiastical and secular authorities would naturally arise. In order to provide for all emergencies the pope appointed conservatores, individuals who had no direct connection with the university, and could therefore the more effectually step forward as mediators when they considered its immunities and liberties endangered. The university of Oxford, for example, was placed under the guardianship of the episcopal sees of London and Salisbury, and the "ward," it would appear, contrived to get into so many scrapes that the charge of conservators was rendered anything but a sinecure. At one time we find them in a controversy with the crown, at another in a deadly feud with the city magistrates, and again occasionally exchanging not very friendly wishes with the bishop of Lincoln, the diocesan of Oxford. When they found their opponents refractory, they appealed to the pope, who at once despatched a legate to the scene of action, where, in nine cases out of ten, the controversy was decided in favor of the university, the darling child of the church. By the constitution of Pope Gregory IX., granted to Paris University in the year 1231, and soon extended to Oxford, the functions of the academic by the side of civil and ecclesiastic authorities were more clearly and satisfactorily defined. Most conspicuous in that constitution is a statute, according to which the chancellor of Paris as well as the municipal authorities had to take an oath to honor and maintain the privileges of the university. The relations between the academic authorities and the city magistrates, or, to use an academic phrase, between gown and town, remained at all times in an unsatisfactory state. In Italy the universities to a great extent owed their existence to the liberality of opulent citizens, who valued the institutions far too highly to disgust them by any infringement of their privileges. {225} Should, however, the city of Bologna show difficulties in their path, the scholars, well aware of a friendly reception elsewhere, packed up their valuables, or pawned them in case of need, and emigrated to Padua. If the commune of Padua grew in any way obnoxious to the university, the rectors and students at once decided on an excursion to Vercelli. The good citizens of Vercelli received them with open arms, and in the fulness of their joy assigned five hundred of the best houses in the town for the accommodation of their guests, paid the professors decent salaries, and to make the gentlemen students comfortable to the utmost the city engaged two copyists to provide them with books at a trifling price fixed by the rector. If the Bolognese emigrants did not feel comfortable at Imola, there was its neighboring rival Siena, which allured the capricious sons of the Muses with prospects far too substantial to be slighted by the philosophical students. These gentlemen having pawned their books, their "omnia sua," the city of Siena paid six thousand florins to recover them, defrayed the expenses of the academic migration, settled on each of the professors three hundred gold florins, and--to crown these acts of generosity--allowed the students gratuitous lodgings for eighteen months. However much an Italian student might have relished an occasional brawl in the streets, there was hardly an opportunity given him to gratify his pugilistic tendencies, while in this country the street fights between students and citizens often assumed the most fearful proportions. The more English citizens fostered a feeling of independence, derived from increased wealth and social progress, the less were they inclined to expose themselves to the taunts, and their wives and daughters to the impudence, of some lascivious youth or other. The students, on the other hand, able with each successive campaign to point out a new privilege gained, a new advantage won over their antagonists, would naturally find an occasional fight tend to the promotion of the interests of the body academic, besides gratifying their private taste for a match, which in those days, and in this country especially, may well-nigh have attained the pitch of excellent performance. We do not think it necessary or desirable to enter into the details of these riots between town and gown which are very minutely narrated in Huber's history of the English Universities. From the position which they had gained in England, it will easily be understood that the universities could not keep aloof from the great political contests of the times, so that as far back as King John's reign the political parties had their representatives at the academic schools, where the two nations of Australes and Boreales fought many a miniature battle, certainly not always with a clear discernment as to the political principles which they pretended to uphold.
It is very curious to observe the manner of self-defence which those gigantic establishments adopted when they were pressed by the supreme powers of church or state. In the first instance, they had recourse to suspension of lectures and all other public functions, a step sufficiently coercive on most occasions to force even the crown into compliance with their wishes. Should, however, this remedy fail, they applied to still more impressive means, which consisted in dissolution of the university or its secession to another town. Even the most despotic monarch could not abide without apprehension the consequences of such a step, if resorted to by a powerful community such as Paris and Oxford, for it had received legal sanction in the constitution granted by Gregory IX., and its results were far too important to be easily forecast or estimated. {226} We have already alluded to the frequent migrations of Italian universities, and need, therefore, only point out the impulse imparted to Oxford by the immigration in 1209 of a host of secessionist students and professors from Paris, the unmistakable influence on the development of Cambridge exercised by secessionist scholars of Oxford, and the rise of the university of Leipzig upon the immigration of several thousand German students who, with their professors, seceded from Prague, where Slavonic nationality and Hussite doctrines had gained the ascendency over Germans and Catholics.
The universities gradually emancipated themselves, rose higher and higher in the estimation of society, and thus became the sole leaders and guides of public opinion. Popes and emperors forwarded their decrees to the most famous universities in order to have them inserted in the codes of canon and civil law, discussed in the lectures of the professors, and thus commended to a favorable reception among the public. As the highest authorities of church and state, so did individual scholars appreciate the influence of Alma Mater. It was not uncommon for literary men to read their compositions before the assembled university, in order to receive its sanction and approval before publication. So did Giraldus, for example, recite his Topography of Ireland in the convention of the university of Oxford, and Bolandino his chronicle in the presence of the professors and scholars of Padua.
We cannot more fitly conclude our remarks on the social position of the mediaeval universities than by shortly narrating the occasion on which they displayed, for the last time in the middle ages, the immense power of their social position. The university of Paris, as it behoved the most ancient and eminent theological school, took the lead in the movements which were made in the case of the papal schism. Ever memorable will be the occasion when, on Epiphany, 1391, Gerson, the celebrated chancellor of the university of Paris, delivered his address on the subject before the king, the court, and a numerous and brilliant assembly. Owing to his exertions and the co-operation of the professors and members of the university, certain proposals were agreed upon which tended to restore peace and unity in the church. The king, for a time, was inclined to listen to these proposals, but being influenced again by the party of Clement VII., he ordered the chancellor to prevent the university from taking any further step in the matter. All petitions directed to the king for a revocation of the sentence proving futile, the university proceeded to apply means of coercion. All lectures, sermons, and public functions whatsoever were suspended until it should have gained a redress of its grievances.
In the year 1409 the Synod of Pisa was opened to take the long-desired steps against the schism. The universities were strongly represented by their delegates, not the least in importance among the venerable constituencies of the Occidental Church, the number of doctors falling little short of a thousand. Reformation of the church in its head and members, and a revision of its discipline and hierarchic organization, were loudly proclaimed by the representatives of the universities, foremost among all by Gerson, the chancellor of Paris, the most brilliant star in the splendid array of venerable doctors and prelates of the church.
Mediaeval universities were truly universal in their character, being united by one language, literature, and faith. With the sixteenth century nationalities were growing into overwhelming dimensions; national literature rose in defiant rivalry and joined revived antiquity in marked hostility against the scions of scholasticism; and, to give the final stroke, the unity of faith was crumbling; piecemeal under the reforming spirit of the age. The ties which had bound mediaeval universities to each other and to their common centre were sundered. Some became defunct; others led a precarious existence; all had a hard and troublesome time of it--a fact touchingly recorded in the annals of Vienna: "Ann. 1528: Propter ruinam universitatis nullus incorporatus est."
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This sad epitaph might have been written over the portals of more than one university and public school by the middle of the sixteenth century.
Literature.
Bulaerus, "Historia Universitatis Paris." Paris, 1665
Wood, "Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxon." Ox., 1668.
Herrnanni Corringii Opera (tom. v., "Antiquitatis, Academicae"). 1730.
Guia, "Historia de las Universidades, Colegios, Academias y demas Cuerpos Literarios de España," etc. Madrid, 1786.
Huber, "Die Englischen Universitäten." Cassel, 1839.
Dyer, "History of the University Colleges of Cambridge."
Dyer, "The Privileges of the University of Cambridge."
Fabranius, "Historia Academiae Pisanae." 1791.
Vincenzio Bini, "Memorie Istoriche della Perugina Università." Perug., 1816.
Francesco Colie, "Storia dello Studio di Padova" Pad., 1825.
Pietro Napoli-Signorelii, "Vicende della Coltura nolle Due Sicilie." Napoli, 1784.
Jacobus Faccioiatus, "Fasti Gymnasil Patavini," Patav., 1757.
Serafino Mazetti, "Memorie Storiche sopra l'Università di Bologna." Bolog., 1840.
G. Origila, "Storia dello Studio di Napoli." Nap., 1753.
F. M. Renazzi, "Storia dell' Università de Roma." Roma, 1804.
J. Bouillard, "Histoire de l'Abbaye Royale de St. Germain des Prez." Paris, 1724.
J. E. Bimbenet, "Histoire de l'Université de Lois d'Orléans." Paris, 1850.
F. Nève, "Le College des Trois Langues à l'Université de Louvain." Bruxelles, 1856.
Meiners, "Verfassung und Verwaltung Deutscher Universitäten." Göttingen, 1831.
R. Kink, "Geschichte der Kalserlichen Universität zu Wein." Wein, 1854.
Walaszki, "Conspectus Relpublicae Literariae in Hungaria." Budae, 1808.
C. J. Hefele, "Der Cardinal Ximenes." Tübingen, 1851.
J. P. Charpentier, "Histoire de la Rennissance des Lettres en Europe." Paris, 1843.
S. Voight, "Die Wiederbelebung des Classischen Alterthums." Berlin, 1859
J. B. Schwab, "Johannes Gerson," etc. Würsburg, 1858.
G. Tiraboschi, "Storia della Letteratura Italians." Venezia, 1828.
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Original.
The Lady of La Garaye. [Footnote 49]
[Footnote 49: The Lady of La Garaye. By the Hon. Mrs. Norton. 12mo, pp. 115. New-York: Anson D. F. Randolph.]
Two hundred years ago there dwelt in the lordly castle of Dinan, in Brittany, the chivalric Claud Marot, Count de la Garaye, and his gracious lady. Its fortress-like walls and majestic battlements reared themselves against the sky and frowned upon the woods and vales around as if with conscious dignity and power. Fair Dinan's town nestled in its protecting shadow as a gentle maid might seek security beside the burly form of some rough-appearing but tender-hearted giant. The porter kept its gates with a jealous yet a kindly eye, as should befit the keeper of his master's home, which was at once the sanctuary of his knightly honor and the hall of his knightly bounty. The gray-haired old seneschal, with shoulders slightly stooped by age and reverence, met the courtly guests, and bowed them welcome with a paternal smile and bustling orders to the underlings to prepare all needful things for their better cheer. The courtyard echoed to the baying of the hounds all eager for the chase, and men at arms in troublous times assembled here, mustered by the doughty
"Captains, then of warlike fame, Clanking and glittering as they came."
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A retinue of well-fed servants and buxom maids prepared the goodly feast, and ordered well the halls and chambers with their quaint and comfortable furniture. Its noble master and mistress held sway within their castle with fitting grandeur of demeanor, albeit with that graciousness which marks the gentlefolk. Honored by all the country round, rich in worldly goods, yet richer in virtue, happy in each other's love, the young count and his lady had but one thing to mourn, and that was that God had left them childless. A cruel accident banished for ever all hope of any heir: and so they lived and died, yet leaving a name behind them "better than sons and daughters;" and on this our English poetess has weaved a poem of surpassing beauty. We propose to present some idea of it to our readers, merely saying by way of preface that if anyone will read it as it is, he may dispense himself the further perusal of this article, which cannot convey in partial extracts that charm which pervades these flowing pages when undisturbed by the rude comments of a stranger.
The poem opens with the preparations for the chase, in which the lady is to take a part, and at once the noble pair are described to us:
"Cheerful the host, whatever sport befalls, Cheerful and courteous, full of manly grace, His heart's frank welcome written in his face; So eager, that his pleasure never cloys, But glad to share whatever he enjoys; Rich, liberal, gaily dressed, of noble mien; Clear eyes--full, curving mouth--and brow serene; Master of speech in many a foreign tongue, And famed for feats of arms, although too young; Dexterous in fencing, skills in horsemanship-- His voice and hand preferred to spur or whip; Quick at a jest and smiling repartee, With a sweet laugh that sounded frank and free, But holding satire an accursed thing, A poisoned javelin or a serpent's sting; Pitiful to the poor; of courage high; A soul that could all turns of fate defy; Gentle to woman; reverent to old age."--
We hasten at once to add the second portrait, painted with a delicacy of outline and warmth of coloring which display the touch of the master hand:
"Like a sweet picture doth the ladies stand, Still blushing as she bows; one tiny hand, Hid by a pearl-embroidered gauntlet, holds Her whip, and her long robe's exuberant folds. The other hand is bare, and from her eyes Shades now and then the sun, or softly lies, With a caressing touch, upon the neck Of the dear glossy steed she loves to deck With saddle-housings worked in golden thread, And golden bands upon his noble head. White is the little hand whose taper fingers Smooth his fine coat--and still the lady lingers, Leaning against his side; nor lifts her head, But gently turns as gathering footsteps tread; Reminding you of doves with shifting throats, Brooding in sunshine by their sheltering cotes. Under her plumèd hat her wealth of curls Falls down in golden links among pearls, And the rich purple of her velvet vest Slims the young waist and rounds the graceful breast."
The invited guests having all arrived, the merry party set off with cheers and laughter, little dreaming of the sad ending of so joyful a day. The game secured, Count Claud and his lady, returning together, meet with a roaring stream over which they must leap their horses:
"Across the water full of peakèd stones-- Across the water where it chafes and moans-- Across the water at its widest part-- Which wilt thou leap, O lady of brave heart?"
Now comes one of the finest passages in the whole volume. Who can read it without finding at the last line that he has been holding his breath?
"He rides--reins in--looks down the torrent's course, Pats the sleek neck of his sure-footed horse-- Stops--measures spaces with his eagle eye, Tries a new track, and yet returns to try. Sudden, while pausing at the very brink, The damp, leaf-covered ground appears to sink, And keen instinct of the wise dumb brute Escapes the yielding earth, the slippery root; With a wild effort as if taking wing, The monstrous gap he clears with one safe spring; Reaches--(and barely reaches)--past the roar Of the wild stream, the further lower shore-- Scrambles--recovers--rears--and panting stands Safe 'neath his masters nerveless, trembling hands."
But one word mars the power of these lines; the word safe in the line,
"The monstrous gap he clears with one safe spring."
The safety of the unexpected leap is told us just one instant too soon. There is an indescribable pleasure derived by the mind in being held in suspense in the contemplation of one passing through imminent perils, and that suspense cannot be broken, though it were but for the short time that one takes to pass from one side of the page to the other, without loss of power in the description, and of interest to the reader.
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But the lady! will she attempt to follow? Did she not mark his hair-breadth escape? The confusion of thought in the mind of the count caused by his own peril, the sudden, unlooked-for leap, the fear lest his wife should try to follow ere he can turn to warn her of the danger, the dumb horror which seizes him as he sees her horse in the air leaping to his certain death; are told in a few rapid lines, and then follows the thrilling tableau:
"Forward they leaped! They leaped--a colored flash Of life and beauty. Hark! A sudden crash-- Blent with that dreadful sound, a man's sharp cry-- Prone--'neath the crumbling bank--the horse and lady lie!"
Like a madman he rushes to her relief, clambering "as some wild ape" from branch to branch, trampling the lithe saplings under foot with giant tread. His love, his fear, his trembling excitement are told in one line:
"The strength is in his heart of twenty lives."
What a depth of meaning there is in that one sentence, and how happy the choice of words. When, in reading, we came upon the word heart where we expected to find "arm" or "frame," or some similar term which would express the increase of muscular and nervous power consequent upon strong mental emotion, we confess to having been startled by its originality, and we admire the line as it stands as a master stroke of true poetic genius.
Claud is so shocked at finding his beautiful and passionately loved wife apparently dead that he is struck deaf and dumb with grief. The noise of the passing hunt, the baying of the hounds, the cheery calls of the huntsmen, and shouts of the merry guests he neither hears nor heeds. It is some time ere he realizes the terrible accident. At last the thoughts shape themselves in his disordered brain, and, with one wild glance at her prostrate form, be catches her in his arms, and
"Parts the masses of her golden hair, He lifts her, helpless, with a shuddering care, He looks into her face with awe-struck eyes: She dies--the darling of his soul--she dies!"
Then follows one of those passages marked by that deep pathos for which this poem is so remarkable:
"You might have heard, through that thought's fearful shock, The beating of his heart, like some huge clock; And then the strong pulse falter and stand still When lifted from that fear with sudden thrill He bent to catch faint murmurs of his name, Which from those blanched lips low and trembling came: 'O Claud!' She said: no more-- But never yet, Through all the loving days since first they met, Leaped his heart's blood with such a yearning vow That she was all in all to him, as now."
Some passing herdsmen came to their relief, and the bruised and corpse-like form of the lady is borne back to the castle on a rude litter of branches. It is impossible for us to refrain giving the strongly drawn contrast in the following description:
"The starry lights shine forth from tower and fall, Stream through the gateway, glimmer on the wall, And the loud pleasant stir of busy men In courtyard and in stables sounds again. And through the windows, as that death-bier passes, They see the shining of the ruby glasses Set at brief intervals for many a guest Prepared to share the laugh, the song, the jest; Prepared to drink, with many a courtly phrase, Their host and hostess--' Health to the Garayes!' Health to the slender, lithe, yet stalwart frame Of Claud Marot--count of that noble name; Health to the lovely countess: health--to her! Scarce seems she now with faintest breath to stir."
And thus the first part of this exquisite poem ends. The second part is the "Convalescence" of the wounded lady. Her life returns, but she learns that she is an incurable invalid, that while life lasts she must remain maimed and sick, and, most cruel thought of all,
"Never could she, at close or some long day Of pain that strove with hope, exulting lay A tiny new-born infant on her breast."
She draws her fate from the unwilling lips of the physician, in whose friendly eyes the tears are glimmering as he pronounces
"The doom that sounds to her like funeral bells."
And now she hurriedly glances in her mind at all the dreaded consequences, among which arises the jealous fear lest she should lose the love of her beloved Claud. His wife, indeed, but no longer his companion; only to have the hours his pity spared. Heart-broken and crushed, she murmurs against the holy will of God and prays for death.
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The poetess here introduces a thought which shows her deep acquaintance with the human heart. We shrink from sympathy for our wounded pride, and strive to smile when our hearts are aching:
"Wan Shine such smiles; as the evening sunlight falls On a deserted house whose empty walls No longer echo to the children's play, Or voice of ruined inmates fled away; Where wintry winds alone, with idle state, Move the slow swinging of its rusty gate."
Her high-souled husband grieves to see her drooping under the jealous loss of her strength and beauty, and, in his undoubting love, unable to suspect that she fears to lose that love,
"Wonders evermore that beauty's loss To such a soul should seem so sore a cross, Until one evening in that quiet hush That lulls the failing day, when all the gush Of various sounds seem buried with the sun, He told his thought. As winter streamlets run, Freed by some sudden thaw, and swift make way Into the natural channels where they play, So leaped her young heart to his tender tone, So answering to his warmth, resumed her own; And all her doubt and all her grief confest."
The unburdening of the sore, doubting heart and the tender, comforting, loving assurance of Claud is one of the choicest scenes in the poem. Never did youthful lover pour forth more impassioned utterances than fell from the lips of that true man and noble husband. He tells her that her beauty was but one of the "bright ripples dancing to the sun" glancing upon the silver stream of his happy life, and continues the metaphor:
"River of all my hopes thou wert and art; The current of thy being bears my heart."
And last of all, when she, still incredulous of his unswerving faith, sighs her girlish doubts and moans for death, he with full heart and fervent words repeats his tale of love and makes profession of love's boldest offering, the sacrifice of his life, if it were the will of God, could she return again "to walk in beauty as she did before;" and then he whispers to her the thought that has arisen in his soul to answer the "wherefore" of the dreadful accident:
"It may be God, saw our careless life, Not sinful, yet not blameless, my sweet wife (Since all we thought of in our youth's bright May Was but the coming joy from day to day), Hath blotted out all joy to bid us learn Now this is not our home; and make us turn From the enchanted earth, where much was given, To higher aims and a forgotten heaven."
It is no little comfort in this age of sensual worldliness and practical unbelief in the providence of God to find the voice of Christian philosophy sounding yet clear above the grovelling utterances of a too often degraded muse.
The third part of our poem continues and exemplifies this thought. This world is God's world; we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Bereavement, pain, unforeseen and unexplained sorrow belong to life, and play their part in schooling the soul to higher aims. The heart must learn to wait on God. "Peace will come in that day which is known unto the Lord," says the author of the Imitation of Christ. We, too, can bring our own experience to the proof, and know that a stronger hand and a wiser heart has led and loved us. We quote but one extract from this third part; it is the summary of the whole:
"All that our wisdom knows, or ever can, Is this: that God hath pity upon man; And when his Spirit shines in Holy Writ, The great word COMFORTER comes after it."
To these sorrowing ones, bending beneath the cruel blow, and mourning over blighted hopes, God sent a friend; His friend, the minister of His counsel and His comfort, a holy monk. Let us transcribe his portrait:
"Tender his words and eloquently wise; Mild pure fervor of his watchful eyes; Meet with serenity of constant prayer The luminous forehead, high and broad and bare; The thin mouth, though not passionless, yet still; With the sweet calm that speaks an angel's will, Resolving service to his God's behest, And ever musing how to serve him best. Not old, nor young; with manhood's gentlest grace; Pale to transparency the pensive face, Pale not with sickness, but with studious thought, The body tasked, the fine mind overwrought; With something faint and fragile in the whole, As though 'twere but a lamp will hold the soul."
Words of holy counsel, lessons of humble sanctifying obedience, mingled with mild reproof, yet full of the deepest and friendliest sympathy, fall from the lips of the good priest and charm the unquiet spirit to rest. {231} Such words had doubtless fallen upon her ears before, but she had only been a hearer; now she was perforce a learner. How natural her complaint:
"What had I done to earn such fate from Heaven?"
And how deftly does the priest, wise in the counsels of God and in the sorrows of the human heart, catch up the text and bring its argument home to the questioner! "What have the poor done?" he asks in return, "what has the babe done that is just born to die? .... what has the idiot done? .... what have the hard-worked factory girls done?" (the verse says not factory girls, but implies it, a pretty little anachronism which we blame not, for the lesson of the Lady of La Garaye was meant for our own times.).... "what have the slandered innocent done?" And then he tells her, in strong contrast to her own luxury and ease, of the number who sicken and die, forsaken, uncheered by kind words, unaided by kind hands, wanting the commonest comforts of health which become craving necessities for the sick, and bids her know that
"What we must suffer proves not what was done."
The lady listened, and in her heart arose the wish to help the sick, the aged, and the poor. God had chosen her to be one of his angels of mercy to the suffering, and a minister of benediction to those that mourn. And, choosing her, he called her to the trial, and led her, all unwilling yet, through the fire of affliction. How her wish was accomplished and what fruit it bore is quickly told:
"Where once the shifting throng Of merry playmates met, with dance and song, Long rows of simple beds the place proclaim A hospital, in all things but the name. In that same castle where the lavish feast Lay spread that fatal night, for many a guest The sickly poor are fed! Beneath that porch Where Claud shed tears that seemed the lids to scorch, Seeing her broken beauty carried by, Like a crushed flower that now has but to die, The self-same Claud now stands and helps to guide Some ragged wretch to rest and warm inside. But most to those, the hopeless ones, on whom, Early or late, her own sad-spoken doom Hath been pronounced--the incurables--she spends Her lavish pity, and their couch attends. Her home is made their home; her wealth their dole; Her busy courtyard hears no more the roll Of gilded vehicles, or pawing steeds, But feeble steps of those whose bitter needs Are their sole passport. Through that gateway press All varying forms of sickness and distress, And many a poor worn face that hath not smiled For years; and many a crippled child, Blesses the tall white portal where they stand, And the dear lady of the liberal hand."
Nothing, we think, could be added to increase the beauty of this picture. In noting the impressions made by the perusal of this charming poem one cannot help calling attention to its healthful, elevated tone, and the purity of thought which pervades the whole. It is a gem of poetic art which all lovers of the true and beautiful must admire. It were needless to say that even by our copious extracts we have not presented all that is worthy of comment. There are very few verses, indeed, in the poem which do not possess equal merit with those of our quotations. The deep pathos which reigns throughout as its flowing rhythm glides smoothly along, is like the murmuring of a brook through quiet woods on a sunny day, compelling the chance wanderer to stop and pass a dreamy hour away by its leafy banks. There is a singular air of peacefulness and repose pervading it that we think to be its peculiar charm, and we envy not the reader who can rise from its perusal without feeling that he has enjoyed a delightful feast for both mind and heart.
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Original
Procession in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
A pilgrimage to the places consecrated by the events in the life of our Lord is, of necessity, full of the deepest interest. However familiar we may be at home with the narrative of all that Christ has done for us, that mighty work of love is invested with new force and power when we kneel at the places where it was wrought--when we meditate on the incidents of our redemption on the spot where it was effected. The offices of the Passion, in Jerusalem, have, therefore, a more striking character than in other lands. The ritual observances of the Catholic Church, everywhere so touching, have in the Holy City the additional impressiveness of recalling to memory events in the places where they occurred.
Every day in the year there is a procession in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is one of almost startling solemnity. Those who have been privileged to take part in it can never forget the emotions it excited, and which are renewed daily as the function proceeds. Although no language can adequately express these feelings, yet a description of the procession itself, with a reference to the circumstances in which it is made, may be of advantage, and aid, however imperfectly, in the understanding of this most impressive devotion. The detail of a liturgical service involving many repetitions and sentences in Latin is necessarily somewhat dull; yet it is hoped that the unusual character of the office about to be described will have sufficient attraction for the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD to induce them to peruse these pages. Should the writer furnish other sketches of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, they will probably be found of more general interest than this paper.
Late in the afternoon, compline being finished, the procession is formed in the chapel of the Franciscans. Each person is furnished with a lighted taper, which serves the double purpose of honoring the function and for reading the book of the hymns and prayers. The first time anyone is present a large wax candle is given him, and this he is permitted to take away as a remembrance of the office; on subsequent occasions the smaller one is used, which burns until the close of the service. The church being dark, it is difficult to read without this light, which also adds much to the impressiveness of the scene as the line of pilgrims stretches along. The number of persons in the procession varies, being, of course, larger when many strangers are in Jerusalem, as is the case at Easter. Some of the Catholics of the city, and occasionally the sisters of St. Joseph, are present, the priests and brothers of the convent being always there; thus the whole office has dignity and is reverently gone through.
While on the way from one station to the next, a hymn is sung; when the place is reached, incense is used; the people all kneel; a versicle and responsory are said, followed by a prayer, concluding with Our Father and Hail Mary. Of course, the whole office is in Latin, and thus to ecclesiastics from every part of the world it has a familiar appearance.
Beginning in the Latin chapel, in front of the altar of the blessed sacrament, the function opens with the antiphon, O sacrum convivium, and the versicle, "Thou hast given them bread from heaven, having in itself all sweetness." The prayer of the blessed sacrament, Deus qui nobis, is said. In the same chapel, a few feet to the right of the high altar, is the station and altar of the column of the flagellation of Christ. {233} A recess in the wall contains a portion of the column behind a grating of iron. In going to this, the hymn Trophos a crucis mystica is sung; the antiphon and prayer, "Pilate took Jesus and scourged him, and delivered him to them that he might be crucified. I was scourged all the day, and my castigation was in the morning, Look down, we beseech thee, O Lord, upon thy church which thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood, that it, being always enriched, may obtain eternal rewards: who livest and reigneet forever and ever. Amen."
With the hymn Jam crucem propter hominem the procession goes to the prison of Christ, a dark place where, according to tradition, our Lord was detained some time. Antiphon and prayer: "I brought thee forth from the captivity of Egypt, Pharaoh being drowned in the Red sea, and thou hast delivered me to this dark prison. Thou, O Lord, hast broken my bonds; to thee will I sacrifice the host of praise. Loosen, we beseech thee, O Lord, the chains of our sins, that, having been freed from the prison of this body, we may behold the light of glory, through Christ our Lord. Amen."
The hymn Ecce nunc Joseph mysticus is sung as the procession moves to the place of the division of the garments of Christ. Antiphon, etc.: "The soldiers, therefore, when they had crucified Jesus, took his vestments and made HERE four parts, to each soldier a part, and the tunic. They divided HERE my vestments for themselves, and on my clothing they cast lots. O God, who, through thine only-begotten Son, didst confer the remedies of salvation on a fallen world, grant to us that, being freed from vices and adorned with virtues, we may be presented in white clothing before the tribunal of thy majesty. Amen."
The procession, chanting the hymn Crux fidelis inter omnes, now descends a flight of stone steps, passes through the chapel of St. Helena, and down a second flight to the place where was found the holy cross, the reward of the pious search of the mother of Constantine. Antiphon, etc.: "O blessed cross, which alone wast worthy to bear the Lord and King of heaven! Alleluia. This sign of the cross shall be in heaven when the Lord shall come to judgment. O God, who didst HERE raise up a miracle of thy passion in the finding of the glorious cross of salvation, grant that by the price of this wood we may obtain the favor of eternal life. Amen."
Returning now to the chapel of St. Helena, with the hymn, Fortem virili pectore laudemus omnes Helenam, the people kneel in the centre of this edifice, while the priest who leads the devotion goes to the chief altar, which is near the place where the saintly empress waited while the search for the holy cross was made below. This chapel belongs to the Armenians. The antiphon, etc., are as follows: "Helena, the mother of Constantine, came to Jerusalem that she might find the cross of the Lord. Alleluia! Pray for us, O blessed Helena, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Mercifully hear the prayers of thy family, O Lord, that as it everywhere rejoices in the fervid study of blessed Helena, who here joyfully found the wood of the holy cross so much desired, so, by her merits and prayers, it may be able always to rejoice in heavenly glory. Amen."
The next station is that of the column of the crowning and mocking, in going to which the hymn Caoetus piorum exeat is sung. Antiphon, etc.: "I gave thee a royal sceptre, and thou hast put on my head a crown of thorns. Plaiting a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. O God, who, in the humility of thy Son, hast lifted up the fallen world, mercifully grant that, casting away the crown of pride, we may obtain the unfading crown of glory, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
The procession now ascends the flight of step leading to Calvary, going first to the place of the crucifixion, properly so called, where our Lord was nailed to the cross. {234} The hymn Vexilla Regis prodeunt is sung on the way from the place of mocking. The antiphon, etc.: "They took Jesus, and led him forth, bearing his cross: he went to the place called Calvary, in the Hebrew Golgotha, where they crucified him. HERE they pierced my hands and my feet, and they numbered all my bones. O Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, who, for the salvation of the world, at the sixth hour, didst ascend the gibbet of the cross on THIS Calvary, and for the redemption of our sins didst shed thy precious blood, we humbly beseech thee that after our death thou mayest grant to us joyfully to enter the gate of paradise: who livest and reignest for ever and ever. Amen."
A few steps to the left of this place is the spot where the cross was set up, and where the great High Priest offered the sacrifice which taketh away the sin of the world. Going to this, the hymn Lustris sex qui jam peractis is sung, the second verse of which recounts, word by word, some of the incidents of the gospel narrative:
"Hic acetum, fel, arundo, Sputa, clavi, lancea, Mite corpus perforatur, Sanguis, unda profluit: Terra, pontus, astra, mundus Quo lavantur flumine!"
The antiphon, etc.: "Now it was about the sixth hour, and darkness was over all the land even to the ninth hour; and the sun was darkened, and the veil or the temple was rent in the midst; and Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit;' and, saying these words, he HERE expired. We adore thee, O Christ, and we bless thee because by thy holy cross thou didst HERE redeem the world." The prayer (said in a low voice): "Look down, we beseech thee, O Jesus, upon this thy family for which our Lord Jesus Christ did not hesitate to be delivered into the hands of the executioners and made to undergo the torment of the cross: who with thee liveth and reigneth, world without end. Amen."
Chanting the hymn Pange lingua gloriosi, the priests and people now descend to the stone of unction, where the Redeemer was wrapped in fine linen after he had been taken down from the cross. This is midway between Calvary and the scpulchre, and on a level with the floor of the great church and the holy tomb. The nine verses of the hymn admirably express the thoughts and feelings which crowd the mind and heart. Redemption is accomplished, and through Christ's death we live. Antiphon, etc.: "Joseph and Nicodemus took the body of Jesus, and HERE bound it in linen with spices, as is the custom of the Jews to bury. Thy name is as oil poured out; therefore have the young loved thee. O Lord Jesus Christ, who, condescending to the devotion of thy faithful in thy most holy body, didst permit it HERE to be anointed by them, that they might reverence thee the true God, King, and Priest, grant that by the unction of thy grace our hearts may be preserved from all infection of sin: who livest and reignest for ever and ever. Amen."
The joyful hymn Aurora lucis rutilat is sung as the procession moves on to the most glorious scpulchre where was laid the Hope of the world, and whence he rose on Easter morn, triumphant over death and the grave. Antiphon, etc.: "The angel here said to the women, 'Fear not; ye seek Jesus of Nazareth crucified; he hath risen, he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. Alleluia.' The Lord hath risen from this sepulchre, alleluia, who for us hung upon the wood, alleluia. O God, who by the triumphant resurrection of thy Son, didst here bestow the remedy of salvation on the world, and, having conquered death, hast unlocked for us the way of eternal life, by thine assistance further our earnest desires which thou hast put into our hearts; through the same Christ our Lord. Amen."
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Then, going to the place where Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene in the habit of the gardener, the hymn Christus triumphum gloriae is sung. Antiphon, etc.: "Jesus, rising early on the morning of the first day of the week, appeared HERE to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven demons, 'Mary, touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.' We beseech thee, O Lord God, that we may be helped by the prayers of blessed Mary Magdalene, at whose entreaty thou didst not only raise up her brother who had been four days dead, but didst show thyself after thy resurrection here as the living Lord: who livest and reignest for ever and ever. Amen."
Lastly, going to the place where, according to tradition, Jesus appeared to his holy mother (this station being in the chapel of the Latins, in front of the altar of the blessed sacrament), the procession returns to the spot whence it started, singing the hymn,
"Jesum Christum crucifixum Ob peccatorum crimina, Hunc vidisti et flevisti, O gloriosa Domina," etc.
The above is an outline of the procession which is made every day in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. But to have a full understanding of its impressiveness, one must be in Jerusalem, and take part in it. In other countries, when reading of the passion and death of our Lord, we are left to imagine the appearance of places which are thousands of miles away; and this consciousness of distance will ever hinder that vivid realization of the incidents which may be had on the spot where they occurred. When the word HIC (here) is said by the officiating priest, all bow down and kiss the floor; and it is enough to melt a heart of stone to be so close to these most sacred spots when the mention of what our Lord has here done and suffered for our sins is made. There is no attempt to work upon the imagination or excite the feelings. The singing and praying are in a natural but reverent tone. It is felt that the devout Christian needs only to be here when the prayers are said, to have his heart subdued and filled with penitence and adoring gratitude and love.
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Original.
At Threescore.
There was but one in all the world, Fond heart, To whom thou gayest all, nor kept A part; And that was John. None e'er so gentle, nor so brave as he, None other's arm so strong or sweet to me To lean upon.
'Twas down upon the ocean shore One day, The heart I once had some one took Away; And that was John. Strange moment! for it seemèd then to me As if the rocks and sands and clouds and sea And all were gone.
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You understand, I do not mean Quite all: Some one was there, so handsome, straight, And tall; And that was John: But he was all to me, and nothing there Nor aught in this wide world with him could bear Comparison.
Long years have passed, and now my step Is slow. Though weak his arm, yet strong his heart, I know, To lean upon. Beside me seated in his high-backed chair, I see a tall old man with silvered hair; And that is John.
My day of life has always been Most bright, But now the shadows longer grow, And night Is coming on. I fear it not, for when my course is run, I look beyond the grave to meet with One More dear than John.
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Translated from the Spanish.
The Revenge Of Conscience.
Though one brief spring restores to earth the flowers Swept from her lap by autumn's stormy hours, Back to man's breast a lifetime will not win The heart's ease lost through one frail moment's sin.
White as a nest of gulls, in the cleft of a rock on the wild sea-shore, gleams Cadiz from the concavity of her walls. So audaciously is she seated in the very midst of the billows that the land reaches out an arm to retain her. This slender arm of stone and sand, wearing La Cortadura, a fortress constructed during the glorious war of independence, as a bracelet, separates the violent waves of the ocean from the tranquil waters of the harbor, and conducts to the city of San Fernando, which, situated in the curve of the bay, opens its dock-yards of La Carraca as hospitals to the vessels that return home, maltreated and bruised, from their perilous expeditions.
Poor wanderers, to whom the tempests are ever repeating what the blasts of the world unceasingly say to mortals, "On, on!" When they reach their country, they lay hold of her with their anchors, as children clasp the necks of their mothers with their little hands.
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Beyond the city of San Fernando, the beautiful and worthy neighbor of Cadiz, with its splendid Calle Larga, and its houses solid and shining as if built of massive silver, and beyond the bridge Zuazo, so ancient that its construction is attributed to the Phoenicians, the road divides into two branches the one on the left continuing to follow the curve of the bay, and that on the right taking the direction of Chiclana. It enters this pleasant town through a grove of white poplars, which, settled like hoary patriarchs in the midst of green fields, seem by their whisperings to be encouraging the weaker plants to strengthen themselves and stand like them against the heavy south-west winds. The town is large, and divided into two parts by the river Liro.
From two neighboring heights it was overlooked in former times by a Moorish tower on the one, and a Christian chapel on the other; symbols of its past and present. Within a few years the tower has disappeared and the chapel has become a ruin.
There was a temple and an altar, where The lonely heart might weep and lay its care: I wept. Once more I passed that way, And it was fallen to decay: Whereat I wept again!
The chapel was under the invocation of St. Anna. It was round and encircled by a colonnade, which commanded the view, in all directions, of a magnificent landscape.
At the foot of the isolated and abandoned tower lay a cemetery. Mouldering humanity creeping sympathetically into the shadow of the decaying ruin. This tower--this seal of stone upon the archives of the place; this inheritance of generations, which the district had guarded like the remains of a dead chief, embalmed by the aroma of the flowers of the field; this austere ruin, which had no longer any relations except with the departed, who were turning to skeletons at its feet; with the birds of night which hid themselves in its obscure recesses from the noise and light of day, and with the winds that came to moan sadly through its branches--this inoffensive tower could not escape modern vandalism.
Neither respect for the memories it evoked, nor reverence for the burial place it so appropriately guarded, nor the romantic in its aspect, nor the historic in its origin, could avail it. They demolished it under the sage protest that it was "ruinous." A ruin "ruinous!" A tower that bore the centuries as you wear days, "ruinous, ruinous!" That petrified mass which would have outlasted all your constructions of wood and clay!
The chapel, also, closed and forsaken, has become the prey of destruction, and its noble colonnade has fallen. Groves, convents, feudal castles, and palaces, the very ruins are disappearing, and they are not even building factories or planting orchards where they stood; to clothe the noble matron Spain, at least with muslin and flowers, instead of the tissues and jewels of which they despoil her. What, then, will remain to us? Pastures wherein to breed the ferocious beast, whose contests afford the refined and gentle diversion that enjoys, above all others, the favor of the people. My God! can it be that the natural ferocity and cruelty of man, like the atmosphere that discharges its electricity in thunder, lightning, and tempest, must have vent and expression?
In the times when Cadiz was the Rothschild among cities, times in which, according to strangers of note and credibility, her merchants lived with the pomp and splendor of ambassadors of kings, the greater part of them had in Chiclana country houses, built and furnished with marvellous richness and taste. Tarnished vestiges still remain of that elegant luxury to which the coming of Napoleon's Frenchmen gave the death-blow.
In the present epoch, in which we often see fulfilled the saying, "Ramparts fall and dust heaps exalt themselves," when old men recount the splendors of those days, new--we will not say young--men receive their stories as tales of the thousand and one nights, with incredulity and criticism alternating upon their lips.
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In their opinion, gallantry, generosity, and munificence afford material for an appendix to Don Quixote as fantastic virtues which can only exist in over-excited brains.
At the close of the last century, when the events which we are about to relate began to take place, Chiclana was at the zenith of her splendor. Cadiz shone with gold, and, like the sun, shed glory upon all her environs. Nowhere now do they throw away doubloons as they then did here, with the simple indifference of children tossing soap-bubbles into the air, and the lordliness of princes who neither count nor value what they spend in compliment to others. In this epoch occurred the incident which is told of the celebrated Duchess of Alba and the youth, who, seeing twenty thousand dollars upon her table, observed, in her hearing, that this sum, which to her was such a trifle, would make a man's fortune. "Would you like to have it?" asked the duchess. The youth admitted that he would. The lady sent him the money and--closed her doors upon him. In these days the contrary would have succeeded. The money would not have been given, nor would the doors have been closed upon one who, by any means whatever, had acquired it.
In one of the wide, cheerful streets of the above-named town stood a house of more distinguished appearance than the others, though it consisted of but one story, which was somewhat elevated from the ground and reached by a flight of marble steps. The door was of mahogany, studded with great nails of shining metal. The front of the house was surmounted by the arms of the family, carved in marble. Nobility and riches seek each other; in former times they were sisters, in these they are not even cousins. The house porch, the court, and all the apartments, even to the inferior offices, were paved with magnificent blocks of blue and white marble. Columns of jasper supported the four galleries which surrounded the court, and in the area, in the midst of towering plants and alabaster statues, a fountain flowed unceasingly, singing the same pure and infantile melody to the bud half opened in hope, and to the flower falling in leafless despair. Between column and column, embowered in green and flowery tapestries of jassamine and musk rose, hung the gilded cages of bright-hued birds. A canvas awning, cut in points at the edges, and bound with red, shaded the court and preserved its refreshing coolness. The walls of the parlor were of white stucco upon a blue ground; the chairs and sofa were made of ebony, with heavy silver ornaments and coverings of azure gros de Tours. The furniture was of slight and simple form and in the Greek style, which the Revolution had brought into favor, making it the order of the day, as it had also introduced the Phrygian cap, the names of Antenor, Anacharsis, Themistocles, Aristides, and other things less inoffensive than these. Upon the table, which was supported by four straight-fluted legs, stood a clock, constructed of white marble and bronze. At that time the taste for the pastoral and idyllic in art had passed, dispossessed by the grave and classic allegories which were presently to be superseded by the cannon, banners, and warlike laurel wreaths with which Napoleon would dispel in wide air the ardor and zeal of the Revolution. In its turn the epoch of the Restoration, which put an end to the supremacy of the sword as the sword had terminated the rule of the democracy, brought back monarchical ideas and religious sentiments with the chivalry, loyalty, and ancient faith which were to introduce the Romantic in literature and the Gothic in arts and customs. Following closely upon these came the taste for the fashions of the times called "of Louis the Fourteenth" and "Louis the Fifteenth." For men are, like children, enthusiasts of the new, and ever trampling with contempt upon the idol of the moment before. Shakespeare has said. "Frailty, thy name is woman!" Well might he have added, "Fickleness, thy name is man!"
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The clock formed a group, composed of an effigy of time, under the figure of an old man; two nude young girls with arms interlaced, leaning upon the old man, and representing innocence and truth; and two other figures, wrapped in dark veils, symbolizing sin and mystery flying from time, who, with raised finger, appeared to threaten them. The effigy of time was well and expressively executed; and when the clear and sonorous voice of the hour, counting its dead sisters, was added to its expressive gesture, it seemed like the warning voice of an austere patriarch, and could not fail to affect him who, meditating upon the sense of the allegory, heard the measured echo of its strokes. On each side of the clock was a bronze candlestick, in the form of a negro standing upon a marble pedestal and adorned with brazen chains. The negro carried upon his head and in his hands baskets of flowers. In the centres of the flowers the candles were set. The ceiling was painted to represent light, floating clouds of gray and white, through which was seen a nymph of the air, apparently holding in her hands the tasselled cords of azure silk which sustained an alabaster lamp, destined to filter a light as mild and soft as that of the moon, a light extremely flattering to female beauty, and therefore adopted for select reunions. In the middle of the room, upon a mosaic stand, rested a great glass globe. In it swam fishes of those lovely colors which the water displays in emulation of the air that has its gorgeous birds, and the earth that parades its charming flowers. Here they lived, silent and gentle, unvexed by the circuit which bounded their action, like pretty idiots, seeing everything with their great eyes, and comprehending nothing. The globe was surmounted by a smaller one filled with flowers, of which there was also a profusion arranged in jars in the recesses of the windows. The windows were hung with lace-edged muslin curtains, like those now used, except that the muslin was Indian instead of English, and the lace thread, made by hand, instead of cotton woven. As it was summer time, only a dim light was allowed to penetrate the drawn blinds. The atmosphere of the apartment was perfumed with flowers and pastilles of Lima.
Upon the sofa reclined a woman of extraordinary beauty. One alabaster hand, hidden in a mass of auburn curls, supported her head upon the pillow of the sofa. A loose cambric dress, adorned with Flanders lace, robed her youthful and perfect form. Through the lace of her robe just peeped the point of a little foot encased in a silken stocking and white satin slipper. At that time no other shoe was used by ladies of distinction upon any occasion, and luxury reached even to the wearing of lace slippers lined with colored satin.
The apostles of the last foreign fashion, admirers of the buskin, regard with sovereign contempt this rich and elegant custom, which, in their eyes, is guilty of two mortal sins--that of being old-fashioned, and that of being Spanish. The lady's left hand was adorned with a splendid brilliant, and held a cambric handkerchief of Mexican embroidery, with which, from time to time, she dried a tear that slid slowly down her pearly cheek.
The reader thinks that he divines the cause of this solitary tear shed by a woman, young, beautiful, and surrounded by the evidences of a luxurious and enviable position. He has decided that it must be the token of wounded affection, and has guessed wrong. Respect for truth, even at the sacrifice of admiration for the heroine of our story, obliges us to confess that this tear was not of love, but of spite. Yes, that brilliant drop, falling from eyes as blue as the sky of evening, gliding between those long, dark lashes, and across those delicately glowing cheeks, was the evidence of spite.
{240}
But before we proceed it is necessary to explain the cause of the ill-humor of our heroine.
Chapter II
The young lady we have been describing was called Ismena, and was the only child of Don Iago O'Donnell, whose family, in common with many others, had emigrated from Ireland in the time of William of Orange. After the capitulation of Limerick, the troops, who belonged to the most noble families of Ireland, entered the service of France and Spain. Philip the First, as was to have been expected, welcomed them, and they formed, in 1709, the regiments of Ibernia and Ultonia, and, later, a third called the Irlanda. These troops were commanded by James Stuart, duke of Berwick, natural son of James the Second by Arabella Churchill, sister of the famous Duke of Marlborough. The Duke of Berwick gained the battle of Almansa and took Barcelona by assault, and the king rewarded his great services with the dukedoms of Liria and Jerica, and made him a grandee of Spain. This gallant general had two sons, the elder was naturalized in Spain and inherited the titles of Berwick, Liria, and Jerica, to which he afterward united, by his marriage, that of the noble house of Alba, which had descended to a female. The second son established himself in France, where his descendants still exist and bear the title of dukes of Fitz-James.
The above-mentioned regiments are represented in our days by the descendants of the loyal men who composed them, for, as we have been informed, there are now ninety Irish surnames in the Spanish army, names which, for their traditional loyalty and bravery, and their hereditary nobility, honor those who bear them.
Don Iago O'Donnell married a Spanish lady, and his daughter, Ismena, united in her person the beauty of both types. Her slight and graceful Andalusian form was clothed in the white rose-tinted skin of the daughters of misty Erin, to which the impassible coldness of its possessor gave a transparent pearliness and purity that nothing ever disturbed. Her large violet eyes beamed from beneath their dark lashes with the haughty and expressive glance of the south. Her carriage, though somewhat lofty, was free and natural. Naturalness is, indeed, but another name for that "Spanish grace" which has been so justly famed and eulogized. The irresistible attraction which is born of it, and which, in former times, women shed around them as the flame sheds light and the flowers perfume, they owed to the men, who used to abhor whatever was put on, affected, or studied; anathematizing it in a masculine way under the expressive epithet "monadas." [Footnote 50] In naturalness there is truth, and without truth there is no perfection; in naturalness there is grace, and without grace there is no real elegance. Taste at present appears to lie in the opposite extreme, as if the Florentines should dress their Venus di Medicis as a show figure.
[Footnote 50: Monkey airs, splashness.]
The spirit of Ismena was far less richly endowed than her person. She possessed the cold, calm temperament of her father united to the haughty and domineering disposition she had inherited from her mother, and these qualities were exaggerated in her by the overbearing pride of the rich, beautiful, and spoiled child. Her mind was ever occupied in framing for herself a future as illustrious and brilliant as those which fortune-tellers prognosticate, and so she rejected all the lovers who offered her their affections, not one of them appearing likely to realize her dreams of greatness. But changes of fortune, like the transformations in magic comedies, come unlooked for and suddenly. Ismena's father lost his whole fortune within a few months; thanks to the treachery of the English, who seized so many of our ships and so much treasure before making a formal declaration of war with Spain. {241} The fatal war which brought upon us the fatal family compact! Don Iago, who had just lost his wife, retired, ruined, to his country house in Chiclana. But this retreat did not long remain to him, for the house was advertised for sale by his creditors. The first person who presented himself as a purchaser was the General Count of Alcira. General Alcira had just returned from a long residence in America. Though he counted but fifty-five years, he appeared much older in consequence of the destructive action of that climate, which, with its hot miasms, impairs the European even as it corrodes iron. Notwithstanding his age, the general had become the heir of a young nephew, from whose title the rule of succession excluded females. On his return he went to Seville, his native city, where he was received by his sister-in-law (who looked upon him as one come to deprive her and her daughters of the riches and title they had possessed) with such bitterness and hostility that, although he was one of the most generous of men, he was justly indignant, and determined to leave Seville and establish himself in Cadiz, and he decided well.
At that period, Seville, the staid, religious matron, with rosary in hand, still more the buckram stays and the high powdered promontory--that, without the hair, must have been a weight in itself--and the hoops with which a lady could pass with ease only through a very wide door. At her austere entertainments she played Baciga or Ombre with her canons, her judges, her aldermen; and her cavaliers. She had no theatre, being withheld therefrom by a religious vow. She had for illumination only the pious lights that burned before her numerous pictures of saints. She had no pavements, no Paseo de Cristiana.
Of course there were no steamboats, those swift news-bearers which have since united in such close friendship these sister cities, the twin jewels of Andalusia, Cadiz, even more beautiful than she is now, wore her drapery in the low-necked Greek fashion which we still see in portraits of the beauties of those days. Cadiz, the seductive siren of naked bosom and silver scales, bathed in a sea of water, a sea of pleasure, and a sea of riches. She knew well how to unite the art and culture of foreign elegance with the dignity, ease, and spontaneity of Spanish grace, and, though the fair Andalusian had adopted certain things and forms that were foreign, she was none the less essentially Spanish in her delicate taste and circumspection, and her attachment to her own nationality.
For, strange to tell, in those days the pompous and high-sounding assumption of the "Spanish" which now fills the unholy sheets of the public press, and resounds through all discourses like hollow and incessant thunders, was unknown. It did not blare in lyric compositions, nor was it made the instrument of a party for the promotion of such or such ideas, nor was the bull Señorito [Footnote 51] chosen with enthusiasm as its symbol.
[Footnote 51: The famous bull that, in 1850, in Seville, fought and killed a large tiger.]
But that which was Spanish was had with simplicity, as the brave man has his intrepidity without proclaiming it, and as the fields have their flowers without parading them, Spanish patriotism was not upon the lips, but in the blood, in the being; it was the genius of the people; and it became them so well, was so refined and generous, so gentle and chivalric, so in harmony with the gracious southern type, that it came to be the admiration and delight of strangers. But we have apostatized from it, do not understand it, hold it in slight esteem, and, unlike the ass that covered himself with the rich golden skin of the lion, we, more stupid than he, instead of smoothing and cultivating that which nature has bestowed upon us, wrap ourselves in one that is inferior to it. {242} Then the most candid gayety blended with an exquisite refinement pervaded social intercourse. There were neither clubs nor casinos, only reunions, in which gallantry was governed by the code contained in these ancient verses of Suarez:
"You are feared and worshiped; You to be obeyed: We saw humble worshipers, Of your frowns afraid. You the lovely conquerors; We your bondsman true: Ladies dear in vanquishers, We are slaves to you. You the praised and honored; Fairest under sun: We the lowly servitors, By your smiles undone."
The expression "to acquire a manner" was not then in use, but the practice of good manners was a matter of course and of instinct. The officers of the marine, brave and gentlemanly as they are now, but richer and more gallant, constituted the chief ornament of the society of Cadiz. They had formed themselves into a gay fraternity, at the head of which were the officers of the man-of-war San Francisco de Paula, and which, in playful allusion to the motto of the saint of this name--Caritas bonitas--styled itself "La devota Hermandad de las Caritas Bonitas" [Footnote 52] (The devoted Brotherhood of Beauty). In the theatre the national pieces of our own poets were played, and the farces of Don Ramon de la Cruz were enthusiastically applauded: at the brilliant fairs of Chiclana the inhabitants of Cadiz and Puerto congregated like flocks of gorgeous birds; and Cadiz retained, long years after, charms sufficient to inspire the song of Byron, that discriminating appreciator of the beautiful.
[Footnote 52: Caritas bonitas, Pretty faces.]
The General Count of Alcira desiring to buy a country house, that of Don Iago O'Donnell was proposed to him, and be went to look at it. The unfortunate proprietor threw it open to his inspection as soon as he presented himself. The count was charmed with all that he saw in the elegant mansion we have already described, and, above all, with the daughter of its master, whom they encountered writing in a retired cabinet that received light and fragrance from the garden. She was dressed in deep mourning, and weeping bitterly while she answered letters from two of her friends who had just married--one an English lord, and the other a nobleman of Madrid. How bitterly those letters caused Ismena to feel the contrast between the lot of her friends and that which compelled her, single and poor, to abandon even this house, the only thing that remained to her of the brilliant past.
Her tears moved and interested the good general to such an extent that, having bought the house, he begged the occupant to remain in it and admit him, the buyer, as a member of his family and the husband of his daughter. It is hardly necessary to add that Don Iago received this proposition as a message of felicity, and that his daughter hailed it as a means of escaping lower depths of the abyss into which fortune had hurled her. To paint the rage of the aunt's sister-in-law when she heard of the projected alliance would be a difficult task. She spread calumnies upon Ismena, ridiculed the marriage, and spit out her venom in bitter sarcasms, prophesying that the union of the ambitious beggar with the worn-out valetudinarian would remain without issue; in short, that Providence would mock their calculations, and cause the title, for lack of a male inheritor, to return to her own family. The excessive pride of Ismena, more than ever susceptible since her misfortune, was stung beyond endurance by those gibes and revilings. And she was still more chagrined when, after having been married two years without giving birth to a child, she seemed to see the prophecies of her enemy realized. It appeared that God would deny the blessing of children to the wife who desired them not from the holy instinct of maternal love, but to satisfy a base pride and a contemptible covetousness; not for the blessed glory of seeing herself surrounded by her offspring, but from the haughty and miserable desire of humiliating a rival--of triumphing over an enemy. {243} It is at this time and under the influence of these feelings that we have introduced Ismena, Countess of Alcira, bathed in tears. And for this we say that these drops, so cold and bitter, were not tokens of wounded love, but of rage and spite.
Chapter III
The general had learned that the house in Chiclana was for sale from his secretary, who was the son of Don Iago's housekeeper. A few words will explain this.
The general, when young, had for many years an orderly whom he loved well. The Spanish orderly is the model domestic, the ideal servant. He is wanting in nothing, has always more than enough, and does whatever is asked of him unquestioningly and with pleasure. If he were bidden, he would, like St. Theresa, plant rotten onions through the same spirit of blind obedience. He has the heart of a child, the patience of a saint, and the attachment of that type of devoted affection, the dog. Like him he loves and cares for all that belongs to his master, and, most of all, for his children, if he has any. And to such a degree does he carry this devotion, that one of our celebrated generals has said that "an orderly makes the very best of dry nurses." He has no will of his own, does not know what laziness is, is humble and brave, grateful and obliging. And in the household, where his coming may have occasioned the natural irritation and repulsion caused by whatever invades the domestic circle, his departure is always sincerely felt.
Before he left Spain the general, then a captain, had lived for a long time with his orderly in the greatest friendship, without the latter having lost the least grain of his respect for his chief. When the general went to America, his orderly, to the great grief of both, left him, and returned to his native town of Chiclana to marry the bride who, with a constancy not unusual in Spain, had waited for him fifteen years. A few years later the orderly died leaving one child, a son, to the care of his disconsolate widow. The poor woman, accompanied by a little niece she had adopted, took service with Don Iago O'Donnell. As for the boy, who was godson to the general, the latter sent for him, had him educated under his own care, and afterward made him his secretary. In this capacity he brought him back to Spain. Lázaro--so he was named--was one of those beings who are sealed by nature with the stamp of nobility, and who, aided by circumstances, become unconscious heroes by simply following their natural instincts.
Having learned from his mother that the house in which she lived was for sale, he had informed the general, who bought it, and with it his young and beautiful wife.
A beautiful woman she was; as fair and delicate as an alabaster nymph; as cold, also, and as void of feeling; a being who had never loved anything but herself; insipid and without sweetness; a jessamine flower that had never felt the rays of the sun.
Later in the afternoon, an attendant called Nora entered the room in which we found Ismena, to open the windows. Nora had been Ismena's nurse, and had never left her. She was a proud and cunning woman, and had done much to develop the perverse dispositions of the girl.
"Always weeping," she said with a gesture of impatience at the sight of Ismena's tears. "You will lose your good looks, and when your husband dies, all you have beside will be gone, youth, consideration, and wealth. You will then have no recourse but to turn pious and spend your days dressing up the holy images."
"I know too well that I shall lose everything, that is why I weep," replied Ismena.
{244}
"And who says that your lot may not be different?" answered Nora. "It is not your sister-in-law that has the disposition of your future; you yourself can do more to make your fortune than she to unmake it. Hope is the last thing lost, but then one must not cross one's arms while they can be of use."
"Idle talk," returned Ismena. "You know that my hopes are as vain as my marriage is sterile."
"It will amount to the same thing," said Nora, "whether you give birth to a son or adopt one."
The lady fixed her great blue eyes upon the woman as she exclaimed, "The count would never consent!"
"He need not know it," replied Nora.
"A fraud, a crime, a robbery! Are you beside yourself?"
"All that sounds very lofty, yet in reality you will only be doing some poor wretch an act of charity. Your nieces are well married; your sister-in-law has a rich jointure, and does not need the count's money. If they desire to have it, it is through ambition, and that you may not enjoy it."
"Never! never!" said Ismena. "Better to lose rank and position than become the slave of a secret which may bring us to dishonor. Never!" she repeated, shaking her head as if she wished to shake the fatal thought from her mind.
"I only shall know the secret, and I alone will be responsible. So it will be more secure in my breast than in your own."
"You will have to employ another person."
"Yes, but without confiding in him. I have already found the person. Your husband is about to embark for Havana. When he returns, be will find a son here."
"Nora, Nora! there is no wickedness of which you are not capable!"
"I am capable of anything that may result in benefit to you."
"But to deceive a man like the count would be the most unpardonable of crimes!"
"Ismena, I have often heard you sing:
'Deceit, a faithful friend art thou; 'Tis truth that is our bane. Pain without sickness she doth give; Thou, sickness without pain.'
But to-day you appear to be more high flown than the poets themselves."
"But the text alludes to love quarrels."
"It is very applicable to everything else in life. As if you had never known the case I have suggested to be put into practice; and is it not a thousand times worse when combined with infidelity?"
At this moment the count entered. "Ismena, my child," he said, approaching his wife, "I have come to take you out, your friends are already waiting for you in the Cañada. How is it that these lovely spring afternoons do not inspire you with a desire to go out and enjoy the free, balmy air?"
"I dislike to walk, and people worry me," answered Ismena, who had lost color at sight of her husband.
"You look pale, my child," replied the count with tenderness, "and for some time past you have seemed low-spirited. Are you not well?"
"There is nothing the matter with me," answered Ismena.
"At most," said Nora, "your sickness is not one that requires the attention of a doctor." And she glanced at the count with a meaning smile.
Irritation and shame sent the hot blood mounting to Ismena's face.
"Nora," she exclaimed, "are you crazy? Be silent!"
"I will be silent, sir count, for, as the saying is, 'the more silent the coming the more welcome the comer.'"
In the general's benevolent face glowed the light of a pure paternal hope.
"Is this certain?" he said, looking tenderly at his wife.
{245}
"Sir," said Nora, "have you not noticed for some time past her want of appetite and her general languor without apparent cause? She does not believe it, and will not be convinced, but I who have more experience am sure."
"Nora, it is false!" exclaimed Ismena, appalled.
"Time will show," replied Nora, with perfect composure.
"Time!" repeated Ismena indignantly.
At this moment they were interrupted by six deep measured strokes of the clock.
"That fixes the time for the event," said Nora, with an affected laugh; "six months from now, it says."
Chapter IV
Six months after these scenes the general, in an affectionate letter to his wife, announced his return from Havana, whither he had been upon important business. Ismena went to Cadiz to meet him, accompanied by a nurse who carried in her arms the supposed heir.
This child had been brought from the Iocluso, [Footnote 53] and the secret of the deception was known only to Ismena, to Nora, and to Lázaro; the latter being the person selected by Nora to obtain the infant from the asylum. How she had been able to persuade the good young man to bend himself to her wicked plot can be understood only when it is known that he believed it to have been sanctioned and arranged by his master. Lázaro doubted until Nora, who had foreseen his opposition, and was prepared to meet it, showed him the following passages in the last letter the general had written to his wife:
[Footnote 53: Establishment for the reception of abandoned infants.]
"The sails which are to bear me from you, and, with you, from all the sweetness of my life, are already spread. Adieu, therefore: I hope on my return to find you with a child in your arms, which will render our happiness complete.
"As I have told you before, you may, in the affair of which we know, and in all other's, trust Lázaro, in whom I place the most implicit confidence."
The letter ended with some tender expressions and the signature of the general.
Nora, quick to perceive the use she could make of the above passages in proving to Lázaro that the "affair of which we know," which was in reality a matter relating to money, was the same she had in hand, had kept the letter.
Lázaro, therefore, with the deepest sorrow, but the most entire devotion to his benefactor, brought the innocent little one; which thus passed from the bosom of an abandoned woman into the hands of a traitoress.
A little before the time at which we take up the thread of our story the babe had been reclaimed, and the administrator of the asylum had demanded it of Lázaro. Nora could find no means of escape from the difficulty this demand occasioned them but to send Lázaro out of the country. Ismena also vehemently urged his departure, and the devoted victim consented to go, knowing that his absence, without apparent cause and without explanation, would break the heart of his mother and of his young cousin, to whom he was soon to have been married.
He embarked secretly in a small coasting vessel bound for Gibraltar, which, being overtaken by a tempest off the perilous coast of Conil, was capsized, and all on board were lost.
This catastrophe, of which she believed herself to be the cause, overcame Ismena, and her suffering was augmented by a threatening presentiment that would allow her to fix her thoughts neither upon the past nor future without shuddering. The one reproached and the other appalled her.
{246}
Alas for the wretch that between these two phantoms drags out a miserable existence! Happy is he who, by keeping his conscience pure, preserves, amid misfortunes and sorrows, his peace of soul, the supreme good which God has promised man in this exiled state.
Chapter V
For many years the beautiful house at Chiclana remained unoccupied, the countess obstinately refusing to go there to enjoy the spring. Alas! for her there was neither spring nor pleasure, for, through divine justice, the results of her crime, a crime committed in cold blood and without a single excuse, weighed heavily upon her, as if the Most High had wished, by the force of circumstances, to impress upon her hard and daring spirit that which the sentiments of humanity had failed to communicate.
And these circumstances were indeed terrible, for she had borne the count, successively, two sons, whose birth filled the heart of their mother with consternation. To increase her chagrin, she saw the oldest of the three boys was growing up beautiful, brave, and sincere, occupying the first place in her husband's heart. For not only did Ramon--so the boy was called--sympathize with the general, but the equitable old man, seeing the hostility with which the countess regarded him, redoubled his manifestations of interest and affection toward the victim of her ill temper, and thus, by the force of a terrible retribution, God had brought remorse to that hard heart, and remorse had driven her from the house in which everything reminded her of her crime.
Remorse! Thou that bindest the temples with a crown of thorns, and the heart with a girdle of iron prongs; thou that makest the sleep so light and the vigil so heavy; thou that interposest thyself to cloud the clear glance that comes from the soul to the eyes, and to embitter the pure smile that rises from the heart to the lips; thou so silent in face of the seductive fault, so loud in thy denunciations when it is past, and there is no recalling it. Cruel and inexorable remorse! by whom art thou sent? Is it by the spirit of evil, that he may rejoice in his work and drive guilty man to despair; or by God, to warn him, in order that he may yet expiate his faults? For through thee two ways are opened to the soul--the way of death and the way of repentance. Weak wills and lukewarm spirits fluctuate between the two, shrinking alike from the furnace which would purify them, and the bottomless sea of anguish in whose bitter abysses the impenitent soul must writhe eternally.
These agonies to which Ismena was a prey, this remorse, this undying worm, had gnawed at her heart and life like an incurable cancer, and her tortures augmented in proportion as she felt her end approaching. In a continual struggle with conscience, which cannot be compounded with by human reasons or worldly purposes, because it is in itself a reason from God; every day more undecided whether to enter upon the course it indicated or to follow the path into which her pride had led her, Ismena, tearful alike of the fiery furnace and of the dreadful abyss, was approaching death as a criminal approaches the scaffold, wishing at the same time to lengthen the distance and to shorten it. When her end seemed near, the doctors insisted, as a last recourse, that she should try the air of the country, and the house at Chiclana was prepared for the reception of its proprietors. The most exquisite neatness was restored throughout. The awning once more covered the court, the birds twittered in their gilded cages, and the plants throve and bloomed, though Maria no longer sang as she watered them.
Announced by the sound of its bells, the carriage slowly approached and stopped at the door. But she who descended from it, and, supported by the general and a physician, dragged herself wearily through the marble portal like a corpse entering its sumptuous mausoleum, is only the wasted shadow of the once brilliant Ismena. {247} At twenty-eight she had lost all the brightness of youth, her splendid eyes were dimmed and cast down, her golden locks had become gray, and her white and faded skin was like a shroud that covers a skeleton. A few years had sufficed to produce this change; for, instead of the gentle and reluctant hand of time, it had been wrought by the destructive talon of suffering. The countess was borne to a sofa, upon which she lay for a long while so prostrated that she appeared unconscious of all that surrounded her. But when left alone with Nora, she became feverish and agitated, and called for Maria. Nora, foreseeing the violent shock the sight of this poor old woman, the unfortunate victim of her fatality, must produce, would have put her off; but the countess repeated the demand with so much exasperation that it was necessary to obey. When Maria came in, Ismena extended her arms, and, embracing her convulsively, laid her burning head upon the bosom of the faithful friend who had witnessed her birth. But Maria was serene, for in that bosom beat a pure heart. Her eyes had lost their former expression or cheerful happiness, but still shone with the light of inward peace.
"Maria," exclaimed Ismena at last, "how have you been able to bear your misfortune?"
"With the resignation which God gives when he is asked for it, my lady," replied the good woman.
"O blessed sorrows with which it is not incompatible!" was the agonized cry of Ismena's heart.
"I told you one day, my lady, that my son filled me with pride; and God has permitted that this son, my boast and my glory, should be defamed by all the appearances of a crime."
"Appearances!" said Nora. "Who says that?"
"Every one," answered Maria with gentle firmness, and, after a moments' pause, she continued with the same serenity: "A profound mystery hides from my eyes, as from those of all others, the circumstances of his flight; but, if anyone has foully caused it, may God forgive him, as I do! He and I know that my son was not--could not be--a criminal; this is enough for me; I will be silent and submit."
"And your motherly conviction does not deceive you!" exclaimed Ismena, falling back upon the pillows of the sofa.
They carried her to her couch, attributing her exhaustion to the excitement and fatigue of the journey.
Her agitation having been gradually calmed by a narcotic, she was once more left in the care of the nurse.
The general, with delicate fore-thought, had caused the flow of the fountain to be stopped, in order that the uncertain repose of his wile might not be disturbed by the murmur of its water. But the clock in the parlor struck twelve--twelve warning notes from the lips of time. As if the old man had counted with inflexible memory the twelve years she had survived her crime; the twelve years passed in luxury and surrounded by an areola of respect and public consideration, since, in sacrificing conscience to pride, she had also sacrificed the life and fair fame of a noble and innocent man.
Ismena awoke with a start and sat upright in her bed, her perplexed glances wandering in all directions, and a wild fever burning in her veins. A devouring inquietude possessed her; the weight upon her breast suffocated her. She sprang from the couch and rushed to the window; for, like Margret in the "Faust" of Goethe, she was suffocating for air. Moonlight and silence reposed without in a tranquil embrace. So profound was the calm that it weighed upon the burdened soul of Ismena like the still but oppressive atmosphere which precedes the tempest.
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She leaned her burning forehead against the window bars. The court lay black beneath--black but gilded; an emblem of her life. Then from a distance there came to her ears two voices, blended, like faith and hope, in prayer. They were the voices of Maria and Piedad reciting the rosary. There was something deeply solemn in the sweet monotony with which the words, without passion, without variation, without terrestrial modulations, rose to heaven, as the smoke rises from the incense of the altar, gently, without color, without impetuosity, as if drawn upward by celestial attraction. Something very impressive in those words, thousands of times repeated because thousands of times felt, in those petitions which are a verbal tradition from Jesus Christ and his apostles; words so perfect and complete in themselves, that all the progress and all the enlightenment of the human mind have vainly endeavored to improve them.
At what wretched variance was Ismena's soul with the grave and tranquil spirit of those words! She longed to unite in them, but could not!
"O my God!" she cried, withdrawing from the window, "I cannot pray."
But presently, drawn by the sacred and irresistible attraction, she returned. She heard Maria pronounce these words: "For the repose of the soul of my son Lázaro." And then the prayer of the two pious women continued without other departure from the accustomed words.
"Ah! holy God!" exclaimed Ismena, wringing her hands, "my voice is not worthy to unite with these pure tones which rise to thee unsoiled by guilt and unchecked by remorse!" She prostrated herself with her face to the floor, and remained until the last "amen" had mounted to heaven; then, as she rose, shrinking from herself as from a spectre, her eyes fell upon Nora, who had fallen asleep in a chair. She approached, and, clutching her with that right hand, once so beautiful, but now like the claw of a bird of prey, "You asleep!" she cried. "Iniquity asleep while innocence watches and prays! Wake up, for your repose is more horrible than your crime! You see her whom you rocked in her peaceful cradle entering--led by your infamous suggestions--into her coffin, and you sleep while she is agonizing! What do you see in the past? An unpunished crime; and you sleep! What do you see in the present? A usurpation, a robbery, a crime committed and continued from day to day in cold blood; and you sleep! What do you behold in the future? The divine and universal justice of God; so sweet to the upright, so terrible to the criminal; and you sleep! But this justice will yet cause to fall upon your head some of the weight, which oppresses mine! Bear, then, in addition to God's condemnation, the curse of her you corrupted! For I am the most guilty of women, and, Nora, Nora, but for you I should never have been what I am!"
Alarmed by Nora's cries, all the household hurried to the room to find the countess in a frightful and convulsed state bordering upon madness. Nora, too, was confused and incoherent, but this was attributed to her grief for the approaching death of her mistress.
Chapter VI
During the following day the sick woman remained in a state of terrible agitation, and at night the doctors were obliged again to administer a powerful narcotic, which caused her to fall into a deep sleep.
The count was occupied in arranging some papers that were scattered upon an antique ebony escritoire, ornamented in its various compartments with exquisite carved work and paintings. In it Ismena kept her papers. It had been opened that afternoon by her order to take out the writing materials she had demanded.
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Ismena had learned English from her father, to whom that tongue was perfectly familiar, and, as the husband replaced the papers, he fixed his eyes sadly upon a translation she had begun, grieved to think that she would never finish it. It was from "Hamlet," and his glance rested upon the last lines she had written--the monologue of King Claudius in the third act. The writing was indistinct, as if traced by a trembling hand. The translation, in which one familiar with the original would have noted some voluntary omissions, ran as follows:
"My crime is already rank; it calls to heaven. Upon it weighs the first curse that entered the world--that of the fratricide! My desire and my will impel me to pray, and yet I cannot, for the weight of my crime is greater than the force of my intention, and, like a man in whom two powers contend, I vacillate between ceding to the pressure of my guilt or giving myself up to my good intentions. But for what is mercy, if not to descend upon the brow of the sinner? And has not prayer the double virtue of preventing a fall and of lifting the fallen by obtaining his pardon? Then will I lift my eyes to heaven. But what form of prayer is appropriate to my crime? Can I ask and hope for forgiveness? Is there water enough in the gentle clouds to wash the blood from the hand of the fratricide? Is there remission for him who continues in the enjoyment of the benefits of his sin--his queen, his crown, his vain-glory? Ah! no, there cannot be! The gilded hand of iniquity may sink justice in the corrupted currents of the world, and the very price of guilt may buy the law of man. But there, on high, it is not so: there artifice obtains nothing and falsehood is of no avail: there, in the kingdom of truth, the deed will stand naked, and the sinner will have to be his own accuser. What, then, remains to us? To try the virtue or repentance? Ah! yes, it can do all. But, alas! if the sinner would repent and cannot? O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O soul, that in trying to free thyself entangled thyself the more in the meshes of thy sin!--angels, hasten to its aid!--melt, heart of steel!--inflexible knees, be bent! Alas! the words have flown, but wings are wanting to the heart; and the words that reach heaven without the heart find no entrance there!"
This imperfect translation, though it gave but a faint idea of the beautiful and elevated poetry of the writer, filled the general with admiration, for his was a mind accessible to all things beautiful and good. But when he glanced at his wife, who lay so pale upon her white bed, like a withered lily upon the snow, he reflected in all simplicity: "Why seek these pictures of crime and passion? Why should the dove imitate the boding cry of the owl? Why should the gentle lamb try to repeat the roar of the wounded and bloody lion?"
Having put the papers in their place, he seated himself at the foot of his wife's bed, and lifted his heart to God in a fervent petition for the life of her he loved.
The alcove in which Ismena lay opened into the parlor, and at this moment, with the pertinacity of a recollection always repulsed yet for ever returning, the clock struck eleven. Its metallic strokes, vibrating and pausing in the silence, suggested the idea of justice knocking at a closed door--justice, against whom there is no door that can remain for ever closed!
These clear sounds startled Ismena, and she awoke with a smothered moan.
The general, alarmed by her wild looks and confused words, approached, and, encircling her with his arms, said:
"Compose yourself, Ismena, for you are better; the healthy sleep you have had for several hours is restoring your strength."
"Have I been asleep?" she murmured. "Asleep on the brink of my sepulchre as if it offered me rest! Asleep when so little time remains to arrange my accounts in this world! Sit down, sir, for so I will address you, and not as my husband. I am not worthy to be your wife. I do not wish to talk to you as to a companion, but as a judge whose clemency I implore."
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The general, taking no notice of these strange words, which he attributed to delirium, endeavored to tranquillize his wife, telling her to put off the explanations she wished to make until she should be stronger; but Ismena persisted in being heard, and continued:
"I am about to die, and I leave all the good things of this world without sorrow; all except one, that I still desire and would fain carry with me to the grave. You, who have been to me father, husband, and benefactor, do not deny what none but you can give! For that which I implore, sir, is your forgiveness."
The general, as he listened, became more and more confirmed in the belief that his wife was raving, and again begged her not to agitate herself as she was doing. But Ismena only implored him the more earnestly to listen without interrupting her.
"If a woman," she said, "who has expiated a crime by all that remorse can inflict of torture and ruin; by the loss of health, of peace, and of life; if this wretch, in her dying agony and despair, can inspire the least compassion, oh! you who have been the most generous of men, you who have strewn my life with flowers, have one branch of olive for the hour of my death! Hear, without repulsing me, without deserting me in my last moments, without making my last agony more intolerable by your curse, a confession which will prove to you that my heart is not entirely perverted, since I have the courage to make it."
A cold sweat stood upon the forehead of the dying woman; her stiffening fingers worked convulsively; the words issued from her lips more interruptedly and fainter, like the last drops of blood from a mortal wound. Nevertheless, making one last heroic effort, she went on.
"I know that I am about to stab you to the heart, but by this means only can I die at peace with God. Here," she continued, drawing a sealed paper from under her pillow, "is a declaration made by me, for the purpose of preventing a dishonest usurpation, and signed by two reverend witnesses, which will prove to you that--Ramon--is not our son!" On hearing these words, the general sprang from his chair, but, overwhelmed with grief and astonishment, sank back again, exclaiming:
"Ramon! Ramon not my son! Whose, then, is he?"
"Only God knows, for his wretched parents abandoned him; he is a foundling."
"But with what motive?" The general paused a moment and then continued with indignation: "I see the motive!--ambition!--pride! Oh! what iniquity!"
"Have pity on my misery!" implored Ismena, wringing her hands.
"You are a base woman!" cried the general, with all the indignation of probity against dishonesty, and all the aversion of virtue to the thought of a crime.
Ismena had never before heard the paternal voice of her husband assume the firm and terrible tone with which he now cast her treachery in her face, and she sank under it as if struck by lightning. His profound sorrow and stern condemnation seemed to open an abyss between him and her, and render it impossible for the lips which had pronounced that severe sentence ever to utter the pardon she craved more than life. Pardon! most beautiful and perfect fruit of love, of which the value is so great that God's Son gave his blood to buy it, and which, therefore, his Father grants for a single tear, so great is his mercy! Pardon, divine gift, that pride neither asks nor yields, but that humility both implores and concedes. Pardon, that, like an efficacious intercession, lifts the sinner to heaven.
Had she perchance waited too long to ask it? For one moment the torrent of angry blood had swept generosity and sacred mercy from the heart of him she had injured; and must she die in that moment? {251} She sprang from the bed, and, falling upon her knees, laid her clenched hands against his breast, shrieking in a voice intercepted by the death-rattle:
"Pardon!"
Her last thought, her last feeling, her last breath dissolved in that last word. It reached the heart of her husband. Bending forward, he caught her in his arms, and lifted--a corpse.
And from the clock, as if time had waited for this moment to toll a voluntary and pious passing bell, there issued twelve slow and measured strokes.