III. The Christian's Feast
The large clepsydra in the atrium of the villa indicated the fourth watch of the night, an hour corresponding at the winter solstice to one o'clock in the morning, of the 8th of the Kalends, that is, the 25th of December. The slaves had ended their merry-making and retired to rest, when Aurelian and Sisinnius, led by Zoilus, took their way by a by-path over the fields toward the Latin road. The path crossed the stream and wooded hill near the villa.
Standing on the further slope of the hill, they paused to view the city and the surrounding country. The darkness of the early night had been relieved by the rays of the moon. Her white disc was painted on the sky between the luminous edges of the thin clouds, which were driven by the wind, as if in review, before her face. On the earth beneath, moonlight and shadow pursued each other over the woods and uplands. The palaces and monuments bordering the Latin and Appian Ways showed at times as if they were roofed with silver. Now and again her beams, stretching down like white bars between the clouds, rested on the roofs, cupolas, and steeples of the distant city, which stretched in illimitable magnificence before them, flashed out, and the next moment faded like a mirage into indistinctness and shadow. The lights in the streets and country villas flickered feebly "few and far between." {652} The hum of life and business was not, as in the daytime, borne on the wind to their ears from the metropolis, whose great heart, that in a few hours would throb with the pulses of renewed activity through all its arteries, was at rest, save only where the voice of the watchman or of the midnight reveller disturbed its slumber. Turning toward the Appian Way, which for fourteen miles was lined by a double row of monuments--homes for the living and homes for the dead--the trees bowed and tossed their branches in the fitful gusts like hearse-plumes above the tombs. In the lulls it was heard wandering and moaning within the vaults and the columbaria; [Footnote 233] so called because the ashes of the departed reposed in bronze and earthenware urns, ranged in hundreds, tier over tier, as in the cells of a dove-cote. The branches, dry and leafless, pointing their skeleton fingers skyward and creaking dolefully, might well remind a Greek or Roman imagination of imprisoned genii. And the melancholy wail of the breeze might be mistaken for that of unearthly visitants weeping over the remains of the dead.
[Footnote 233: From columba, a dove.]
Having delayed to survey this sombre scene, they continued their journey, and soon reached the Latin road, along which they proceeded to the Crossway, formed by it and the Appian Way about a quarter of a mile outside the Capena Gate. The old walls built by Servius Tullius around the city still remained; through these the gate opened between the Aventine and Coelian hills, nearly a mile from the present entrance of the "Queen of Highways" into the forum through the walls built subsequently by the Emperor Aurelian. The Appian aqueduct, of which scarce a stone remains to-day, rose before them from the ground some sixty paces from the gate, and, travelling on high arches, emptied itself into the reservoir within the walls. The lofty parapets of this gigantic structure, which carried the water underground for eight miles, were marked in the moonlight against the sky as if they had been cut from pasteboard. Turning their backs to the gate and facing southward, they saw that great military highway, built by and named after the Censor Appius four hundred years previously, as it topped the undulations of the country until it was lost in darkness and distance. Its pavement, made of solid blocks of basaltic lava, as the fitful moonlight rested on its receding line, might by a stranger be mistaken for the surface of a glancing stream. The death-like stillness of the sepulchral monuments and of the mysterious columbaria, and the motion of the cypress and other funereal trees interspersed among them, contrasted with the living magnificence and luxury of the villas, temples, and villages by which it passed. It was death beside life. The etymology of the word monuments [Footnote 234] proves that they were built designedly beside the public roads to warn travellers of the goal at which all their earthly journeyings would surely end. Thoughts like these passed through the minds of the three companions; nor were they put to flight by what followed.
[Footnote 234: Monumentum, moners mentem, to warn the mind.]
A funeral procession was issuing from the gate as they arrived at the Crossway. They concealed themselves among the trees of the gardens known for ages afterward as those of the poet Terence. Without being seen, they observed the procession as it wended near them. In front of and at intervals through it were slaves carrying torches, whose glare colored the sky and the monuments on either side with a red glow. Musicians, playing mournful strains on the flute, the pipes, and the horn, startled the silence of the time and place. They were aided by mourning females hired to chant the funeral song. After these came the mimics, directed by a principal, who represented the life and character of the deceased by imitations of his words and actions; slaves wearing the cap of freedom, as a sign that they had been emancipated before his death, followed. {653} Some of these bore the images of himself and of his ancestors; others, the civil and military crowns he had won, which proved him to have been distinguished as a citizen and a soldier. The remains rested on an ivory couch covered with drapery of purple and gold. Behind them were the children of the deceased, the sons in black mourning, with heads veiled; the daughters in white, with heads bare, and hair dishevelled. The quick march of the procession, the restless flames of the torches, and the acting of the mimics seemed strangely out of place with the sad occasion, and music, with the dirge of the female mourners and the silence or suppressed sobs of the children of the departed. It was another picture of life and death beside each other--a union so frequent with the ancients.
"There goes the funeral of Senecio," said Zoilus.
"Herenius Senecio, the senator! What, did he too incur the imperial anger?" asked Aurelian.
"He wrote a life of the proconsul Priscus, at the request of the widow Faunia."
"Is it Priscus who was put to death for the poem in which he was suspected to have caricatured under fictitious names the emperor's divorce from his wife?"
"The very same."
"Senecio," said Sisinnius, "ought to have been taught by the fate of Rusticus, who was executed for having written the life of Thrasea at the request of Arria, Faunia's mother. But he was always outspoken and headstrong in defence of friendship and truth. Hermogenes of Tarsus, who met a like fate for a like offence, was another example to warn him."
"Well, well," said Aurelian, "I do not wonder that Tacitus prefers to drudge as a civil officer in a distant province to remaining at Rome, although his great father-in-law Agricola, the conqueror of Britain, needs him to cheer his sinking spirits; nor that Pliny keeps himself so quiet and hidden."
"It was reported that Pliny was to have delivered Senecio's funeral oration," said Zoilus.
"Pliny in the affair of Bebius Masia showed himself a man of courage. But he has too much sense, I think, to do such an unnecessary thing in the present state of the imperial temper," said Aurelian.
"Yes, indeed, when we see the poetess Sulpicia in danger of her head for her ode on the expulsion of the philosophers; when booksellers are crucified; and when only those escape who, like Josephus, Juvenal, Martial, and Quinctilian, lay the unction of flattery unblushingly on, it were madness to attempt it. Alas!" continued Sisinnius, "are we not returning to a worse barbarism than that of the iron age? Philosophy, history, and poesy divine in exile, in prison, or in the tombs! Never was there an age that had more, purer, or nobler names to inscribe on the roll of fame! And all at the whim of one man who calls himself a god, and who thinks he proves his divinity by having the road to the capitol crowded with the flocks to be immolated to his statue!"
"It is the story of arbitrary authority invested in individuals from the monarch to the slave-owner, when its influence is not directed by humanity or religion," said Aurelian.
"Ay," interposed Zoilus, "and to the slave himself, who is by law allowed a vicarious ownership (dominium vacarium) over others. The little tyrant who has not the fulness of power is the worst; he always strives to swell himself to the bull size, like the frog in the fable, and tramples on the feelings where he cannot tread out the lives of his victims, just as recklessly as the elephant in the arena tramples on the corns of the gladiators. One of these, whom I know well to my cost, compassed the death of Senecio, and is likely to bring red ruin to many others before he dies himself."
"Who is he?" asked Aurelian.
{654}
"Arthus, who has crept up from low life to high favor with the powers that be."
"Arthus!" exclaimed Sisinnius, "the poor wretch! whose suspiciousness and unbridled impulsiveness of tongue and passion have left him without a sincere friend in the profession, into which he has worked his upward way without any education to fit him for it. He is only a craze of one idea; every one secretly laughs at his assumption of rank, knowing his origin; at his assumption of professional knowledge, knowing his Boeotic ignorance; and at his assumption of power, knowing how he acquired it."
"I can tell you, it is no laughing matter for the poor slaves, most of whom are his own countrymen, whose very blood he is coining into stone for that labyrinthine temple of which Domitian has permitted him to be the architect and builder. A joke perpetrated by Senecio in the life of Crispus with regard to this building is said to have angered him. Senecio compared the temple to the Cretan labyrinth, and said the congregation would require a thread to find their way out."
"There was another cause of Arthus's hatred of Senecio. In early life he proposed for the hand of Senecio's cousin. The first moment she saw him, she afterward declared she would as soon marry one of the brick walls he has since been building; because his heart, filled only with facts, figures, and money, seemed as cold, hard, and bloodless as the bricks and stones themselves. It is reported that she has since become a Christian. Unfortunately this creature Arthus has somehow found access to Domitian's ear, and manages with unsuspicious adroitness to have the first story about those who displease him. Less cruel natures than Domitian's find it hard to rise above prejudices that have once preoccupied their judgments."
"Well, well, it is a sad state of things. The Christians have, I often imagine, been sent in punishment for our having fallen away from the stern virtues of our ancestors, as the locust-clouds are sent in the East. But," continued Aurelian, "the less we say in this style the better, if we do not wish to join Senecio in his voyage over the Stygian lake. Even here the proverb may apply: 'Silvae habent aures.'"
"Yes," said Sisinnius, "here we are at the beginning of the ancient tombs, amid the mighty dead whose names are the morning-stars of our history!"
They walked silently and passed the monument of Horatia. Of cut stone, it was, after more than seven centuries, in good preservation: nay more, in the nineteenth century, after twenty-seven hundred years, it is comparatively untouched by the hands of time and weather. She had been killed by her victorious brother, the last of the three Horatii, because she wept for her betrothed, one of the Curiatii, slain by him in the contest of Rome and Alba for superiority. The sepulchres of the Metelli, of the Scipios, and of other noble families stood near the Cross road not far from the gate.
Pointing to these, Sisinnius spoke as if giving utterance to a train of thought that had occupied his mind:
"Where are they now the great, the noble, the heroic men, by whose martial deeds and unselfish patriotism the foundations of Roman greatness were placed? Is this all that remains of them--a hollow tomb raised as in mockery over a little ashes, if even so much of them after five or six hundred years be left? Alas! Aurelian, does not death make you sad to think on it?"
"Yes; and therefore I put it away, on the epicurean principle that it increases the misery of the destiny that inflicts it on us."
"Yet our ancestors did not take that view, and they have had repute for wisdom. They built their tombs in public places to remind living generations of the fleeting character of all things human. They placed a horse's head over the inscriptions as a symbol that death is only the commencement of another and a longer journey. {655} If the epicurean philosophy be true, they were deceived; but, if they were right, we are wrong in turning our gaze away from death, which, alas! is a terrible reality! Would it not be wiser to try and pierce the mystery of that horse's head, to draw aside the veil that shrouds that journey from our sight?"
"Men like Plato, and Socrates, and Cicero, have endeavored to do so in every age, and have failed. The great doubt, whether there be a hereafter or not, still puzzles the world. How can we hope to remove it when these giants fail? It is much better for our peace and happiness to follow the common belief in elysium and in the gods, and to drown the thought of death in forgetfulness, and to enjoy the pleasures of the present."
"It is a hard alternative, especially when the insecurity of the present is brought so strikingly before us by the passing away of men like Senecio and Priscus, and those of whom we were speaking. To believe in elysium and the gods is to rest our faith and hope on the creations of the poets. Enjoyment of the present does not bring happiness; and, even if it did, when these pleasures are over, (and we don't know how soon,) what is to follow? But yesterday Senecio, whose funeral we have witnessed, swayed the senate by his reason and eloquence. Does nothing of him remain now but the ashes gathered from the pyre? Why have the generations gone before erected those vast monuments, if all that is left be the dust in the urn? Fitter let it be borne by the wind over the face of the earth, if no spirit remain to take an interest in its preservation! Are the souls of the mighty dead, who slumber in those tombs around, 'nothing but a name'? Like the blast which bends the forest, and then, dispersed in air, is felt and heard no more? Oh! my blood runs cold to think it!
"And yet there is no certainty it is not so--no hope, after so many attempts, of now obtaining it. Better, then, enjoy the present and leave the future to fate," said Aurelian.
"No hope, no certainty!" repeated Sisinnius twice over, "no hope, no certainty! And death approaching with his inevitable lance set! It may be to-day, it may be to-morrow. Oh! is it not a wretched destiny that keeps us thus in the dark? We come we know not whence, we go we know not whither. Like persons lowered into a deep pit, we see a little sky above, but our gaze cannot penetrate on either side of us. Is there no delivery from this state of prison and anguish? What wretchedness is equal to that of the last sad moment? Who but the fool or madman, with such daily reminders of earthly life's vanity and shortness, can be deaf to the approaching footfalls of death?"
They had now arrived at the valley extending to the left, and watered by the fountain of Egeria. Here it was that the nymph dictated the laws to Numa. The valley contained also a temple of the Camoenae, and a sacred grove. At a little distance was a large village. The poet Juvenal complains that in the reign of Domitian pompous marble had displaced the grass of the vale and concealed the rock from which the water gurgled; and that the fountain, the temple, and the wood were owned and occupied by Jewish beggars:
"Hoc sacri fontis nemus, et delubra locantur Judaeis, quorum cophinus foenumque supellex. Omnis enim populo mercedem penrtere jussa est Arbor, et ejectis meudicat sylva Camoenis." Juv. Sat. iii.
Juvenal and the pagans of his time frequently confounded the Christians with the Jews. But the acts of early martyrs, like those of St. Cecilia, clearly show that the Jews alluded to in these verses were Christians, perhaps converted from Judaism. The surmise of the Abbé Gueranger is most likely true, that, when the Emperor Claudius banished "the Jews' from Rome on account of their dissensions, the Christians also were forced to leave the capital for a short time; but after their return many of them settled in this place outside the walls, and occupied the village called Vicus Camaenarum, where they seem to have rented the fountain as well as the temple and grove. {656} Here they could dig vaults, open subterranean galleries wherein to bury their dead, and to hide themselves in times of persecution. What confirms this supposition is, that here within the bowels of the earth commence the sombre galleries of the Christian catacombs. The statesmen and soldiers of pagan Rome sleep the long sleep of ages above, in monuments rising to the face of heaven, with all the surroundings of material greatness; while the champions and martyrs of the church repose in their lowly niches beneath, where a ray of sunlight never penetrates. What a contrast is here symbolized, and how true! The pride of the world raising itself like Lucifer to heaven, and the lowliness of the church bowing its head with Christian humility, and submitting to be trampled in the earth! As it was in the beginning, so it is, so it will be to the end.
At this point of the road Zoilus paused to impress upon his companions the rules by which they were to be guided. They were to pretend to be converts to the faith. He had succeeded in convincing those who had guard of the avenues to the Christian meeting-place that Aurelian and Sisinnius would make open profession of the new religion but for the dangers with which such a step would surround them and those dear to them; that they were eager to be instructed privately as neophytes; and that they asked to be admitted to the Christmas celebration in order to witness the ceremony by which one so dear to them as Flavia Domitilla was about consecrating herself to God. They did not wish, however, that Flavia or Theodora should be aware of their presence or of their conversion. Zoilus, who had been baptized by St. Polycarp at Smyrna, and who had made the Roman Christians believe that he was a zealous member of the church, succeeded in convincing them of the truth of his representations, and in obtaining admission for Aurelian and Sisinnius to the feast. The visits of Clement to the house of the latter, together with the conversion of Theodora and Flavia, rendered these representations plausible.
Not far from the Egerian valley is a semicircular underground chamber of large dimensions. It was the only one, to which at this early time the name of cata-tomb, (meaning a place near the tombs,) or catacomb, (meaning a deep and low place, or place of temporary rest,) was given. In after times the name has been applied to all the cemeteries radiating from the Vatican and underlying the city and the country for many miles. Some authors ascribe this chamber to a pagan origin. However this may be, it presents interiorly the appearance of a chapel much more spacious than most of those which have been dug out of the Roman campagna. Opening into it is a room which is said to have been occupied by many popes during the persecutions. In a corner of it there is a pontifical throne in marble. A circular bench, also of marble, still clings to its ruined walls; this is supposed to have been used by the priests and other ministers. In its centre is an ancient altar, at the base of which the orifice of a pit, or well, over which it was erected, is visible. Twelve arched tombs built into the walls form a cincture round it. In this well, according to an old tradition preserved and believed by St. Gregory, the bodies of Saints Peter and Paul were hidden by the oriental Christians, who attempted to steal these precious relics from the Roman city, but were prevented by a thunder-storm. After having been transferred thence to the Vatican grotto, they were a second time, in the reign of Heliogabalus, brought back for preservation, and for a time to the same place of concealment.
Here, on the occasion of which we write, we find the chiefs of the Christian church assembled. The rumors and near approach of persecution induced Pope Clement to select it for the celebration of the feast. {657} Here they could better avoid suspicion: their coming and going would be easily mistaken by outsiders for the visits of those whom curiosity or affection drew to the pagan monuments.
Many missionary churches in Asia, Africa, Gaul, and other countries had sent delegates, who were now conversing with Pope Clement in the room next the chapel. These delegates carried letters from the bishops and churches by whom they were delegated; and, having set out long before the festival and visited other churches on their way, they were able to give a faithful report of the progress and condition of the faith in the countries through which they journeyed. There was Andronicus, a priest of Corinth, who brought the sad tidings of the apostle St. John's arrest at Ephesus.
"Have you heard," said the pope, "when he is likely to be in Rome?"
"No; but the galley in which he sailed left the port of Corinth two days before my departure. Owing to the crowds coming to the Saturnalia at Rome, it was thought she was delayed at Ostium until after the festivities, when he is to be brought before the emperor himself."
"O my children! let us pray that God may soften the tyrant's heart, and that this last golden link between our time and that of our divine Master may not be yet taken away by martyrdom."
"I have been told by one of the brethren who was in Ephesus on the day of his arrest that the blessed John himself assured the faithful that he had much yet to do and suffer before his hour would come."
"Thanks and glory be to God for this glad tidings," fervently ejaculated Clement. "We shall try, and, if possible, have an interview with him."
The churches of Antioch and of Alexandria had also representatives in the meeting. The latter see, founded by St. Mark, who had been commissioned by St. Peter for that purpose, was described as being in a most flourishing state. From Gaul had come the missionary priest Galbinus, who had travelled through the Black Forest, and found many Christian communities among its fastnesses and along the Rhine and Rhone. He had delayed for a week at Marseilles, where he was entertained by Lazarus and Martha. Mary Magdalen he had not met; but the fame of her penitential life in a solitude outside of that city had spread far and wide, and filled the whole district with a holy odor. From Marseilles he had journeyed by the coast until he reached the Flaminian road. At the foot of the maritime Alps he had met many Christians practising the evangelical counsels in seclusion and peace. Thus the holy pope, through the delegates from the various churches, had full and detailed information as to the condition, prospects, and number of the faithful in the different regions of Christendom.
There was one visitor who more than others riveted the attention of all. This was Nicodemus, [Footnote 235] who had taken our Lord's body down from the cross. He arrived later than the others. When he entered, he knelt to receive Pope Clement's blessing; but the latter, embracing, kissed him on the cheek, and said:
[Footnote 235: It is very probable, says Tillemont, that Nicodemus visited Rome toward the end of the first century.]
"My father and friend! It is I who ought to receive yours. I have heard you were in the city for some days. Why not have come sooner to visit us?"
"Yes, holy father; [Footnote 236] I arrived in the city two days ago, and received from the kindness of some of my own nation, who after the fall of Sion came to reside in Rome, that hospitality and treatment which the wearied traveller requires. The last persecution--for I was then here--taught us all a lesson not to create suspicion by visiting prematurely the locality in which the brethren meet or the presbyter resides. Hence, though I had learned the secret of where you intended celebrating the feast, I deemed it well to delay my visit to the eve of it."
[Footnote 236: "Papa sancte," a usual mode of addressing bishops in the early ages.]
{658}
"Always cautious, Nicodemus," said Clement, alluding to the furtive night visit paid by Nicodemus to our divine Lord; but he checked the smile that played on his face, as he saw the tears rolling down the old man's cheeks.
"Pardon, pardon, my friend and brother! I did not mean to say aught painful."
"Nor have you. But I am overcome, in spite of myself, whenever I remember the eyes which beamed out upon me through the darkness of that night, and the face so transcendently beautiful, so tenderly compassionate, so profoundly sorrowful! That face and look are impressed here"--he laid his hand upon his heart--"I always bear them about with me like precious relics, which supply ample matter for my meditations. In the brightness of the day those sorrowful eyes shine out, in the darkness of night that beauteous face is luminous; in the desert and in the forum they alike are my companions, as they shall be to the grave."
He was silent. His eyes and thoughts seemed turned inward; the former as if riveted with dazzled, loving gaze on some unseen object which wholly filled the latter. After some moments, during which those present looked on in wonder, he became conscious of their presence and slightly embarrassed.
Clement, not seeming to notice the embarrassment, said:
"What changes have taken place since you and I became acquainted first! Having delayed beyond the midnight hour on Mount Calvary, I was brought by blessed Paul, with whom I was then travelling, to your house. I regret that altered circumstances and thickening clouds compel me to make a return of hospitality in these poor quarters. All are welcome; none more so than Nicodemus. I know all are satisfied while we have Him for whose love we resign all near us under the clouds," He pointed and bowed reverently toward the chapel, and then retired to prepare for the celebration of the sacred mysteries.
Meanwhile the eyes of all were fixed with curiosity on Nicodemus. His countenance was of the most decided Jewish caste. His face bore the wrinkles of over a hundred years; but his frame, like the sturdy oak whose surface may be serried by ages, did not present the appearance of decayed strength or health.
The visitors and guests of Clement entertained themselves with anecdotes of their respective missions; of the divers ways in which Providence had enlightened them with the true faith; of the countries through which they had preached, the people they had converted, the adventures they had met, and the miracles by which God had aided and rescued them. A history such as has never been, and cannot now be written, might be gathered from these conversations. A great many, especially the younger portion, felt a wish to question Nicodemus. They desired to hear from his own lips more of that beautiful face and those shining eyes that affected his imagination so much. They knew he referred to his nocturnal interview with the Redeemer; but they longed to hear more.
"Pardon me, venerable father," said Andronicus, with more courage than the others. "We would like to hear from yourself the history of your first interview with him. We do not ask through idle curiosity, but because we love to hear every little thing about him."
"That evening and night, my children--you will excuse the liberty one so much older than yourselves takes in thus addressing you--that evening and night will never leave my memory. It was summer time. I was strolling to 'drink the evening air' beyond the Taffa gate. The ringing laughter and white garments of the young people, as they visited the springs outside the walls, aided with the freshness and beauty of the atmosphere and scenery in dispelling feelings of void and loneliness, which--I could not account for it--had been for some months creeping over me. {659} I felt as if there were nothing in life to satisfy my heart. It was the hour for the evening sacrifice; I heard the trumpets of the Levites ringing out through the evening calm; and I saw the column of sacrificial smoke rising up from the temple, like a pillar of sand in the desert, through the clear air, until it was flattened by the far vault of heaven into fleecy clouds, which hung about its summit like the frescoes of a Corinthian capital. I stood to admire the beauty of its height and rounded straightness, when I was struck by an unusual glow in the heavens. I saw distinctly formed in the sky a golden crown, which seemed upheld over the inner court of the temple by a chain of sparks, as if suspended from the column of smoke. I was drawn toward the place; and after a quarter hour's hurried walk found myself at the avenue leading up to the temple. I was soon at the entrance, and, passing through the outer court, entered the open one of Sacrifice, over which the crown appeared to rest. The incense from the Levites' censers was ascending in curls about the column of sacrificial smoke like a binding of white ribbon about a black column. The court and side galleries were crowded. I lost sight of the golden crown; and began to fancy it was some play of imagination working on the sunset colors. I sought a remote corner of the hall, and, feeling a peculiar influence over me, bowed profoundly in the depths of my own soul before the majesty of Jehovah. Raising my eyes toward the smoking altar, I was seized with awe and terror in beholding the self-same crown resting over the head of a worshipper, who prayed in the shadow of a pillar. When the ceremony was over, I managed to get a glimpse of the face, which I recognized as that of Jesus of Nazareth. His eyes overflowed with tears. I yearned in my heart toward him by an almost invincible impulse; but I was afraid of being seen speaking to one so humble and so suspected. I waited and watched him on his way home. I followed him in the dusk as he hurried along a street, which I afterward saw him mark with footprints in his own blood. Turning suddenly at the cross formed by the road from the palace of Herod the Ascalonite and that now known as the 'Dolorous Way,' he addressed me:
"'What do you seek, Nicodemus?'
"I was startled by the sound of my own name, not dreaming that he knew it; and I glanced hurriedly up and down the arms of the Crossway to see if any one were within ear-shot.
"'Be not alarmed,' he said, in a voice which fell with velvet softness on mine ear. 'If you wish aught of me, enter here.' And he led the way to an humble house on the street to Calvary. There were two men, one young, with a cheek of downy softness, and the other middle-aged, with beard of bristling gray and fiery eye, awaiting him.
"'Rabbi!' they both exclaimed with glad surprise; but they hesitated when they saw me. For, as I afterward learned, they both recognized me as a member of the Jewish council, and therefore set me down as an enemy of their Master.
"'Peter,' he said, 'John and you will retire to another room. This man wishes to speak to me alone.'
"'But, Rabbi,' said Peter impulsively, 'do you know that he is one of--'
"'Peter! I knew him before I saw him. Do as I direct.' And Peter with reluctance left the room.
We were alone. Regarding me with a look which seemed to penetrate my whole being to the most hidden secrets and littleness of my soul, he again asked:
"'What do you seek, Nicodemus?'
"'Rabbi!' I ventured to say, subdued as I was by the mild radiance of those piercing eyes, 'we all know you are from God, for no one can work the wonders you perform if God be not with him. I seek knowledge of the kingdom that is promised.'
{660}
"'Amen, amen!' he answered solemnly, 'I say to you, no one can see that kingdom who is not born anew of water and the Holy Spirit.'" Here Nicodemus related the conversation the substance of which is recorded in the third chapter of St. John's gospel.
"At parting," continued Nicodemus, "I told him that, if at any time I could be of service. I would be glad to render it. I shall never forget the answer: 'My hour is not yet come. When it is, your charity shall not be forgotten. It will be your office to clothe for the last time the nakedness of this temple!' He pointed to himself. I did not then know his meaning: but, when I saw his bloodless body on his blessed mother's lap, and had the happy privilege of preparing it for burial, I remembered and understood his words."
"I have heard a varied account of our Lord's personal appearance," said Damian, one of the missionaries, an Irishman, [Footnote 237] or, as the old annalists have it, a Scotus by birth. "My venerated master, Joseph of Arimathea, who had many opportunities of seeing him, said that he at one time wore on his sacred humanity all the charms of godlike beauty, and at another presented in appearance almost the opposite extreme?"
[Footnote 237: Scotia, the ancient name of Ireland. In the reign of Domitian an Irish prince was a guest at the court. Joseph of Arimathea is said to have preached the gospel in the British Isles. At this time Britain was first discovered to be an island.]
"I remember distinctly the night I saw him in the court of the temple. I knelt beside him; and in the glare of the many lights saw every line and undulation of the golden ringlets that floated down his neck and shoulders. They were not of one color. At the summit they glowed with more than star-like brilliancy, which faded into other dazzling hues reflected from each undulation to their extremities. They talk of the colors of the rainbow; these were all exhausted in the surpassing loveliness of that noble head, above which the air-formed crown rested like a glory. When I saw his face as he rose from his knees, though sad in its expression as fancy in its furthest flight could paint it, it beamed with a beauty such as lover's eye never invested the beloved with, such as I shall never see until I gaze on it again, as I hope, in that kingdom, where, after God's increated beauty, it increases the happiness of the glorified to behold it. Once again I saw him. But, oh! how changed the human beauty of that face divine and those golden ringlets. They were matted in uncombed confusion with dried and drying clots of blood! The face was disfigured and ugly. I could scarcely imagine him the same person I had met in the court of the temple. These different appearances under different circumstances will no doubt account for the varying descriptions of him given by those who saw him." [Footnote 238]
[Footnote 238: Tradition is divided as to our Lord's personal appearance; some of the holy fathers describe him as a specimen of manly beauty; others say the contrary. We have borrowed from the letter of a Roman officer then in Judea.]
During the recital the old man's cheeks were wet with tears and his voice often trembled.
It was now after two o'clock, the hour appointed for the commencement of the celebration.
St. Justin, in his first apology to the Antonines, describes the manner in which the Christians celebrated their Sundays and other feasts. They met before sunrise and sang a hymn in praise of the Redeemer; then lessons from the Old and New Testaments were read, with the addition of prayers for the wants of the faithful and the conversion of the unbelievers; the presiding presbyter, who is a bishop or a priest, addressed the congregation; and finally, taking bread, blessed and brake it, saying, 'This is my body;' and in like manner he blessed and consecrated the chalice, saying, 'This is the cup of my blood.' The saint who was living at the period of which we write states the doctrine of the real presence and of the sacrifice as clearly as words can express them.
Clement, with his assistant deacon and subdeacons, sat in front of the altar. On the seats on each side were Nicodemus, Andronicus, Damianus, and the other clergy and missionaries. {661} Aurelian and Sisinnius were astonished to observe that their acquaintance and friend Clement was the chief in the Christian assemblage; and that his principal minister, in fact, his attendant deacon, was Vitus, the young officer of the imperial household, who had made himself so remarkable the night of the emperor's feast. But their amazement was doubly increased when, after the clergy had taken their seats, a procession of females veiled in black emerged from a side-door and knelt before Clement, opposite the centre of the altar. In front were two matrons, and between them the slender figure of a younger female, whose head and shoulders were concealed by a white veil. Aurelian's breath came thick and fast; Sisinnius, too, was excited. But Zoilus by a significant pressure restrained any open manifestation of their feelings.
The hymn chanted was composed specially by one of the brethren for the time and feast. It was as follows:
Christmas Hymn.
The flocks lay on the midnight plains, Where Jacob tended his of old, [Footnote 239] Where David woke his earliest strains And sang the Lion of Judah's fold, Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis Deo!
[Footnote 239: The plains of Bethlehem, where Jacob had tended the flocks of his father-in-law, and David those of his father.]
When suddenly the skies grew bright, And angel choirs in countless throng, With flashing wings, lit up the night, And chanted, as they passed along, Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis!
"Now glory be to God on high, And peace on earth to fallen man;" With star-like clearness through the sky, 'Twas thus the angel anthem ran, Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis!
We saw them by the new star's light Above the stable where He lay; We watched them through the livelong night, And through the heavens we heard them say, Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis!
After the hymn had been sung and the lessons from the sacred Scriptures had been read, the pope addressed the assembly in earnest words. He spoke of the mystery of the incarnation and the birth of the Redeemer, by which the promises made to the patriarchs and prophets were fulfilled. He said that there were amongst them that night those who, during his earthly life, had conversed with the "Word made flesh." He pointed out Nicodemus, who had taken the lifeless body of the Master down from the cross, and who had the singular privilege of seeing Christ arisen in his glorified humanity. "We, therefore," he concluded, "have no reason to repine, for we know in whom we trust. We may be poor in subjection, exposed to persecution. The amphitheatre and the beasts, the prison, the rack, and other tortures may await us. But we are not like those who have no hope, no security of the unseen hereafter. We depend on that love which induced him to allow himself to be nailed in agony on the cross, and, what is more, to be yoked, as it were, not only for time, but for eternity, to a body of flesh and blood like ours. That love is the guarantee that he will use his power to raise us up as he has promised, if it be our happy lot to 'confess him before men' by the shedding of our blood. And of his power how can we doubt? He who, when dead himself, yet was able to raise himself from the tomb up to a glorious and impassible existence, has power, now that he is seated in glory at the Father's right hand, to do the same for us. Let us not be sad, then, like those who have no hope. Let us gird ourselves for the contest before us." And he proceeded to strengthen his audience by showing how little the short sufferings of time were when balanced by the weight of glory to follow for ever. He then continued the ceremonies. As he approached the consecration, Aurelian and Sisinnius, despite the thoughts that engaged their minds, were struck by the rapt devotion and fervent prayers of the crowd of worshippers in the body of the chamber. They themselves had taken their place behind so as not to be observed; Zoilus had arranged this. Between them and the altar there was a large and motley gathering: slaves, plebeians, and some whose dress belonged to the rank of Roman knights; Jews, Greeks, and barbarians; men of different colors, races, and countries bowed before the altar and were animated by one spirit. {662} There was no distinction, save only that shown in the separation of the men from the women on the two sides of the chapel. The words of consecration, pronounced in a half-audible voice, fell ominously on the ears of Aurelian. "Hoc est CORPUS meum." Whose body? he asked himself. "Hic est calix SANGUINIS mei." Whose blood was contained in that cup? Were not those vague rumors true about the murder of infants in those Christian meetings? Alas! it was horrible to think that his own beloved Flavia had been entrapped and was now a sharer in those bloody orgies. But he would rescue her, or lose his fortune or his life in the effort. Different somewhat were the reflections of Sisinnius. The words of Clement had touched in his heart a chord which still vibrated with a longing to hear more. After all, had these men solved the mystery of death and of the life beyond the grave?
After the full completion of the sacrifice by the communion of the celebrant, Clement resumed his seat in front of the altar, with his face to the people. The golden plate which bound his temples flashed in the lamplight, and reminded many of Moses after his descent from the mount, with the rays beaming from his forehead. The three females, who had knelt during the ceremonies, now stood before the pope. The two matrons were turned sideways toward the congregation as they lifted the veil from the head of the central figure. In one of these Sisinnius recognized his own wife; and in the other a member of the imperial household, Priscilla, who had so gently restrained Vitus on the night of the emperor's feast from drawing the sword from his scabbard as the words fell from the stage:
"Domitian! Domitian! Beware! Beware!"
Aurelian's worst fears were confirmed as he saw, when the white veil was lifted, the beautiful features of Flavia Domitilla! But Zoilus kept beside him.
"My daughter!" said Clement, addressing Flavia, "have you duly and fully considered the step you propose taking?"
"Yes, father!" she answered, in a low, tremulous voice.
"But is there no other love to divide your heart from Him whom you propose espousing? Have you not pledged your troth and allegiance to another?"
"I did, when my eyes were shut to the eternal beauty of Him who has since revealed himself to me. If other love I have had, I now uproot it from my soul. I only ask to be permitted to devote myself to the service of Him whom my heart has too lately known, too lately loved. All other allegiance I hereby renounce."
"In the name, then, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I receive you as the spouse of him who has loved you from the beginning." He replaced the white veil upon her head; and, receiving a ring from Vitus, who stood beside him opposite Flavia, placed it on her finger. Then he administered to her the most holy sacrament. A smile played like a ray of sunshine over her countenance, which manifested the deep and overflowing happiness that welled upward from her soul.
Aurelian trembled like a reed as he heard her recall her promises to himself. But she was not mistress of her actions, he reasoned. Had he not seen her drugged with that unholy flesh and blood which were given her? Vitus, he thought, had so far succeeded; for was not he the only one present to whom she could be thus wedded? Zoilus watched his companions closely; and, when the assembly was dismissed, hurried them away by the private entrance.
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{663}
Under The Violets
Under the violets blue and sweet, Where low the willow droops and weeps Where children tread with timid feet When twilight o'er the forest creeps She sleeps--my little darling sleeps.
Breathe low and soft, O wind! breathe low Where so much loveliness is laid; Pour out thy heart in strains of woe, O bird! that in the willow's shade Sing'st till the stars do pale and fade.
It may be that to other eyes, As in the happy days of old, The sun doth every morning rise O'er mountain summits tipped with gold, And set where sapphire seas are rolled;
But I am so hedged round with woe, The glory I no more can see. O weary heart that throbbest so! Thou hast but this one wish--to be A little dust beneath the tree.
I would thou hadst thy wish to-day, And we were lying side by side With her who took our life away That heavy day whereon she died-- O grave! I would thy gates were wide!
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{664}
From The Lamp.
An Irish Saint. [Footnote 240]
[Footnote 240: Montalembert's Monks of the West.]
It is consoling in these gloomy days to think of the time when Ireland was the Island of Saints, and gloried in the patronage of St. Patrick, St. Bridget, and St. Columbkill.
It is to a foreigner that we owe the biography of St. Columbkill--named "Columba" from the Dove of Peace, and "kill," from the many cells or monasteries that he founded. He was descended, says Montalembert, from one of those noble races in Ireland whose origin is lost in the night of ages--the Nialls or O'Donnells of Tirconnel, who were monarchs of Ireland from the sixth to the twelfth century. The child was instructed in religion by the priest who had baptized him, and the legends tell of angels who watched over him from his birth; and they say that he asked familiarly of his guardian angel if all the angels were as bright and young as himself. From the house of the priest he was sent to the monastery of St. Frinan at Clonard, where he studied and labored like the rest, and, though a prince, he ground the corn they ate. One of his companions, afterward a saint, was angry at the influence which Columba naturally possessed over the rest; but an angel appeared to him, and showed him the hatchet of his father, the carpenter, bidding him remember that he had only left his tools, but that Columba left a throne to enter the monastery. Clonard, says Montalembert, was vast as the monastic cities of the Thebais, and 3000 Irish students learnt there from the "Master of Saints." Among the crowds who came to learn was an aged bard, who was a Christian. He asked St. Frinan to teach him, in return for his verse, the art of cultivating the soil. Columba was a poet, and studied with the bard. One day a young girl, pursued by a robber, was murdered at their feet, and Columba foretold his death, and was renowned through the island as a saint. He was ordained a priest in 546, and became, when scarcely twenty-five, the founder of monasteries, of which thirty-seven are reckoned in Ireland alone. The most ancient of these was in the forest of Durrow, or the Field of Oaks, where a cross and well yet bear the name of Columba. It stood in Clenmalire, now in King's county; and the noble monastery, as Bede calls it, became the mother of many others; so that Dermach as well as Hy became nurseries for the hundred monasteries founded by Columba. It has been said that St. Patrick had kindled such a flame of devotion that the saints were not satisfied with monastic life without retiring to the solitude of the surrounding forests, and there, under the canopy of the vast oaks, which had for ages possessed the wilderness, they found a more silent and solemn cloister. Such had been the monastery of St. Bridget at Kildare, and such was Durrow; and in the forest of Calgachus, in his native country, Columba built Derry, in a deep bay on the sea which separates Ireland from Scotland. There he dwelt, and he would not permit one of the oaks to be felled unless it was injured by age or storms, and then it was used as fuel for the stranger or the poor. Here he wrote poems, of which, says Montalembert, only the echo has reached us. The following verses might be written by his disciples, but they are in the most ancient Irish dialect, and perhaps convey the thoughts, it not the words, of Columba:
"Had I all countries where the Scottish tribes Have made their dwelling, I would choose a cell In my own beauteous Derry, which I love For its unbroken peace and sanctity. There, seated on each leaf of those old oaks, I see a white-winged angel of the sky. O forests dear! home and cell beloved! O thou Eternal in the highest heaven! From hands profane my monasteries shield, My Derry and my Durrow, Rapho sweet, Drumhorne in forests prolific. Swords, and Kells, Where sea-birds scream and flutter o'er the sea, Sweet Derry, when my boat rows near the shore, All is repose and most delicious rest."
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There are traces of the saint in these beloved foundations: among the ruins of Swords are still seen the chapel of St. Columba, and a round tower and holy well, but not the missal written by himself and given to the church. We have the rule he wrote for the monasteries, but it is said to have been borrowed from the oriental monasteries. He founded Kells in 550, and dedicated it to the Blessed Virgin. St. Columba's devotion was not confined to his own monasteries; he loved that founded not long before by St. Eudacus in Arran, the Isle of Saints:
"Arran, thou art like sunshine, and my heart Yearns on thee in thine Ocean of the West; To hear thy bells would be a life of bliss; And, if thy soil might be my last abode, I should not envy those who sleep secure Beside St. Peter and St. Paul. My light, My sunny Arran! all my heart's desire Lies in the Western Ocean and in thee!"
There are eleven Irish and three Latin poems said to be written by St. Columba, and one of these is in praise of St. Bridget, who was living when he was born. Columba was not only a poet himself, but the friend of the bardic order, who held from Druidic times so high a rank in society, and who frequented monasteries as well as palaces. Columba received even the wandering bards of the highways into his monasteries, and especially in one which he founded in Loch Key, which was afterward the Cistercian House of Boyle. He employed them to write the annals of the monastery, and to sing to the harp before the community. He loved books as well as poetry; and his passion was transcribing manuscripts which he collected in his travels, and he is said to have made with his own hand three hundred copies of the gospels or psalter. One of these remains. It is a copy of St. Jerome's translation of the four evangelists, and an inscription testifies that he wrote it in twelve days. He was once refused by an aged hermit the sight of his books, and the legend says that, in consequence of his anger, the books became illegible at the hermit's death. The anger of Columba about another manuscript led to more important consequences--his own conversion from a literary monk to an ascetic missionary. While he visited his old master, St. Frinan, he shut himself up by night in the church to make a secret copy of the psalter. His light was seen, and the abbot claimed possession of the copy. Columba appealed to his kinsman, the supreme monarch Dermot, who was the friend of monks; for, when an exile, he had found a refuge in the monastery of St. Kieran, the schoolfellow of Columba, which they both had built in an islet of the Shannon, and which became Clonmacnoise. Dermot decided that the copy belonged to the abbot. Columba was indignant. The murder of a prince of Connaught, whom he had protected, increased his anger against Dermot, and he foretold his ruin. His own life was in danger, he fled toward Tirconnel, and the monks of Monasterboys told him that his path was beset. He escaped alone, and passed through the mountains, singing as he went his song of confidence; and, as tradition says, these verses will protect all who repeat them on their journeys:
"I am alone upon the mountain, O my God! King of the sun! direct my steps, and guard My fearless head among a thousand spears; Safer than on an islet in a lake I walk with thee; my life is thine to give Or to withhold, and none but thou canst add Or take an hour from its appointed time. What are the guards? they cannot guard from death. I will forget my poor and peaceful cell, And cast myself on the world's charity; For he who gives will be repaid, and he Who hoards will lose his treasure. God of life. Woe be to him who sins! The unseen world Will come when all he sees has passed away. The Druids trust to oaks and songs of birds: My trust is in the God who made me man, And will not let me perish in the night. Him only do I serve, the Son of God, The Son of Mary--Holy Trinity, The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, with him Is my inheritance; my cell Is with the monks of Kells and Holy Moen."
{666}
Columba reached his country, and stirred up his clan, the Hy Nialls of the north, against Dermot, and the Hy Nialls of the south; and with the aid of the king of Connaught, whose son had been slain, Dermot was defeated, and fled to Tara. The victory was attributed to the prayers and fasts of Columba, and the manuscript which had caused this civil war became a national relic with the O'Donnells. It was a Latin psalter, and was enclosed in a portable altar, and carried by a priest into all these battles, and has been miraculously preserved to the present times.
But in the midst of his triumphs, Columba himself was conquered. He felt the pangs of remorse, and suffered the reproaches of the religious. He was summoned to a synod at Tailtan, and condemned, when absent, for having shed Christian blood. But Columba had always shared the contests of his clan, and, though a monk, was still a prince of the O'Donnells. He went to the synod which had condemned him unheard, to dispute their decision. When Columba entered, the abbot Brendan, founder of Berr, rose up and gave him the kiss of peace. All wondered, but the abbot said: "If you had seen, as I did, the fiery column and the angels who preceded him, you would have done the same. Columba is destined by God to be the guide of a nation to heaven." The excommunication was reversed, and the sentence of Columba was, that he should convert as many heathens as he had caused Christians to die in battle. Columba was safe, but not at rest; he went from desert to desert, and from monastery to monastery, to seek some holy teacher of penance. One hermit reproached him as the cause of war.
"It was Diarmid," he replied.
"You are a monk," said the hermit, "and should be patient."
"But," said Columba, "it is hard for an injured man to repress his just anger."
He went to Abban, founder of many monasteries, one of which was called the Cell of Tears. This meek soldier of Christ had often parted warriors in battle and gone unarmed to meet a pagan brigand, whom he converted to be a Christian and a monk. Columba asked him to pray for those whose death he had caused, and Abban told him their souls were saved. He then sought St. Molaisse, who was renowned for his study of the Holy Scriptures, and whose monastery is yet traced in the isle of Inishmurray, on the coast of Sligo. The stern solitary renewed the sentence of the synod, and added that of exile for life from his too beloved country. Columba obeyed. He told his warlike kinsmen, the Nialls of Tirconnell, that an angel had bidden him go into exile, on account of those whom they had slain on his account. None of them opposed the sentence, and twelve disciples determined to follow him. One was Mochouna, prince of Ulster. Columba refused at first the voluntary sacrifice, but yielded at last; and the devoted band left Ireland for ever.
It was in 563 that Columba left Ireland. Some say that he had offended King Diarmid by the severity with which he reproved vice. This is not the reason given by Adamnan, who succeeded him in his monastery of Hy, and left a collection of records, written at the end of the seventh century, which reveals the intention of the heroic apostle; and, as it contains facts related by competent witnesses, this precious relic of antiquity is more valuable than a well-arranged biography. It must have been from the traditions of his monastery that he describes the saint, who was by nature so warlike and impatient, as retaining a tender and passionate love for his country, and a sympathy with all his national habits, while he quitted Erin, in expiation of the crime to which that love had led him. Columba did more than this; he sacrificed his poetic tastes and learned pursuits to convert not only the half-Christian Dalirads, who had early left Erin for Scotland, but more especially the heathen Picts of the North, the descendants of the brave opponents of Agricola under Galgacus, who were not of his own Milesian race.
{667}
St. Columbkill was forty-two when he left his country in a wicker coracle covered with leather, in which he trusted himself with his twelve disciples, confiding solely in God, to brave the tempests and the enormous waves of the sea which parts the two countries, with only the light of faith and the strength of prayers to guide them through the rocks and whirlpools which beset the misty archipelago of isles lying below the mountains and deep bays, or fiords, of Lochaber. Adamnan describes his Irish tonsure, which showed an Eastern rather than a Roman teaching; the top of his head shaven, and his hair hanging down his back; his majestic countenance, whose pride was softened only by religion; his princely features, whose severity was mingled with a cast of irony; and his voice, whose tone commanded while it penetrated the heart, so that it is considered to have been one of the most miraculous of his gifts. Thus he braved the future, trusting in the simplicity of charity for safety in a savage land and savage tribes, to whom he brought the knowledge of truth and morals and the hope of heaven. His fiery temper, and the courage that fitted him for a soldier, and the genius which marked him for a poet or an orator, were devoted to the conversion of hostile chiefs; and the violence of his own feelings enabled him better to influence the people, while it was softened by the great sorrow of his life, the exile from his country. With a heart yearning for Erin and its noble clans, he reached the desolate island of Oronsay; and, ascending the highest part of the rock, he saw in the south the distant mountains of Dalreida. He rejected the consolation, and left the island for Iona. Then, finding that he could not from its highest point see the country he had abandoned, he fixed there his place of exile, and a heap of stones yet marks the spot where he discovered that the sacrifice was complete, and it is still called the Farewell to Ireland.
The island of Hy is low though rocky, and not a tree nor bush can live there; for not only do the winds sweep over it, but the very spray of the Atlantic moistens it with salt showers. It lies amid the islets on the coast of Morven, already celebrated by Ossian; Staffa and its basaltic columns are on the north, and Mull with its lofty mountains on the south. Barren islands lie on every side, separated by deep channels; and so narrow are the bays which run up between the mountains of the mainland that the water becomes a lake and the land a peninsula. Forests then clothed their sides; and the clouds, which almost always hang on their summits, fall and rise above the precipices and waterfalls of that lofty coast, peopled by unrecorded emigrants from Erin, whence Ossian had gone to Tara, and Fingal had made war and peace with the kindred tribes of Inisfail.
It was within sight of this repulsive field of labor, where his penance was to convert souls, that Columba and his missionaries founded a monastery destined to be the centre of religion and civilization to Europe. The first building was of twisted boughs inlaced with ivy, and it was many years before they cut down oaks in the forest of Morven to make the wooden edifices in use till the twelfth century. Thus Columba prepared for the future, but he had not forgotten the past. He felt the bitterness of exile, and wrote verses, in which he prefers "death in Erin to exile in Albania;" and then, in a plaintive but resigned tone, he sings:
"Alas! no more I float upon thy lakes Or dance upon the billows of thy gulfs, Sweet Erin; nor with Comgall at my side Hear the strange music of the wild swan's cry! Alas that crime has exiled me, and blood-- Blood shed in battle--stains my guilty hand! My guilty foot may not with Cormac tread The cloisters of my Durrow, which I love; My guilty ears may never hear the wind Sound in its oaks, nor hear the blackbird's song, Nor cuckoo, and my eyes may never see The land so loved but for its hated kings. 'Tis sweet to dance along the white-topped waves, And watch them break in foam on Erin's strand; And fast my bark would fly if once its prow To Erin turned and to my native oaks; But the great ocean may not bear my bark Save to Albania, land of ravens dire. My foot is on the deck, my bleeding heart Aches as I think of Erin, and my eyes Turn ever thither; but while life endures-- So runs my vow--these eyes will never see The noble race of Erin; and the tear Fills my dim eyes when looking o'er the sea Where Erin lies--loved Erin, where the birds Sing such sweet music, and the chant of clerks Makes melody like theirs. O happy land! Thy youths are gentle, thine old men are wise, Thy princes noble, and thy daughters fair. Young voyager, my sorrows with thee bear To Comgall of 'eternal life,' and take My blessing and my prayer, a sevenfold part, To Erin; to Albania all the rest. My heart is broken in my breast; if death Should come, it is for too much love of Gaels."
{668}
Time never effaced this passionate regret, and, as the legend says, when he was aged, he foretold that a wearied bird would be cast on Iona, and he bade his monks feed it till it could return to Ireland. But these regrets strengthened instead of dissipating his missionary ardor; and, while his natural disposition was unchanged, he became the model of penitents and ascetics and the most energetic of abbots. He received strangers and converted sinners. He established a rule for his monks, and dwelt himself like a hermit, lying on the bare ground upon a bed of planks. There he prayed and fasted, and there he continued to transcribe the sacred text, and to study the Holy Scriptures, so that three hundred copies of the gospel were written by his hand. Crowds of pilgrims visited him there, and many did penance; but one in particular received from him the same penance he was performing himself, an exile to the isle of Tiree and a banishment from the sight of Columba.
St. Columba was among his kindred in Lochaber. The Scots were a Dalradian colony, allies of the O'Neills; and he was the kinsman of their king, Connall, and from him he obtained a grant of the island of Iona, and he labored among these halt-formed Christians. Then, as if he would break even this last tie to Erin, he became the apostle of the Picts, by descent Scythians, by habits savages and heathens. Unconquered by Romans or Christians, they dwelt in glens, inaccessible except by water, and deserved, like their ancestors, the description of Tacitus, as dwelling at the extremity of the earth and of liberty; and to them he devoted the remaining thirty-four years of his life. He crossed the mountains which divide the Scots from the Picts, and reached the chain of lakes which extends from sea to sea. He was the first to launch his fragile boat upon Loch Ness, and he penetrated to the fortress of their king, Brude, which occupied a rock north of Inverness. The king closed the doors of his fortress; but Columba made the sign of the cross, the doors rolled back on the bolts, and Columba entered as a victor. The king trembled in the midst of his council, and rose to meet the missionary; he spoke to him with respect, and became his friend, though it is not said that he became a Christian. But the Druids were his enemies. They were not idolaters, but worshipped the hidden powers of nature, the sun and stars, and believed the waters and springs had the powers which were attributed by the Druids of Gaul and Britain to oaks and forests. Columba drank their sacred water in defiance, and they tried to hinder him when he went out of the castle to sing vespers. He chanted the psalm "Eructavit cor meum;" and they were silenced.
St. Columba preached and worked miracles among the Picts, and, though he spoke by an interpreter, he made converts. One day on the banks of Loch Ness he cried: "Let us make haste to meet the angels, who are come down from heaven and await us beside the death-bed of a Pict, who has kept the natural law, that we may baptize him before he dies." He was then aged himself, but he outstripped his companions, and reached Glen Urquhart, where the old man expected him, heard him, was baptized, and died in peace. And once, preaching in Skye, he cried out, "You will see arrive an aged chief, a Pict, who has kept faithfully the natural law; he will come here to be baptized and to die;" and so it was.
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He once healed a Druid by miracle; but he attempted to arouse the powers of nature against the saint, and, as he foretold, a contrary wind opposed the departure of Columba. But he bade the sailors spread the sail against the wind, and sailed down the Loch Ness in safety. Nor did he end his labors till he had planted churches and monasteries throughout these wild valleys and islands.
In 574, Connall was succeeded by Aidan on the throne of the Scots, and he desired to be consecrated by the abbot of Iona. Columba refused till he was commanded by an angel to perform the sacred ceremony at Iona--the first time it had been done in the West.
Montalembert observes that among the Celts the monastic was superior to the episcopal office, and therefore the abbot consecrated the first of the Scottish kings on a stone called the Stone of Destiny, which was ultimately carried to Westminster Abbey by Edward I., and is now the pedestal of the English throne. The Dalriads in Scotland were subject to the Irish kings, and it was to free them from their tribute that Columba was sent to Erin, which he thought never to see again. The new king went also, and they met the monarch and chiefs at Drumheath. Aed or Hugue II. was now reigning, and he it was who had given to his cousin Columba the site of Derry. Columba and St. Colman obtained the independence of Scotland; and afterward St. Columba attended another assembly, which was to decide the existence of the Bardic order. There were three kinds of bards: the Fileas, who sung of religion and war; the Brehons, who versified the laws; and the Sennachies, who preserved the history and genealogy of the ancient races, and decided on boundaries. These last frequented courts and even battle-fields, and their influence was now so much feared that the monarch proposed to abolish or to massacre the bards. They were, in truth, a Druidic order, but they became Christians, though they were independent of all but their own laws. Columba was a poet even to his old age, and he saved the bards from the anger of the king by proposing to regulate and diminish, instead of destroying, the order. His eloquence prevailed, and thenceforth the bards and monks were united in spirit. Fergall, their blind chief, sung to Columba his hymn of gratitude; and Baithan, one of his monks, admonished his abbot for his self-complacence. This Baithan was declared by Fririan, his brother monk, to be superior to any one on this side of the Alps for the knowledge of the Scriptures and the sciences. "I do not compare him to Columba," said he; "for he is like the patriarchs and prophets and apostles; he is a sage of sages, a king among kings, a hermit, a monk, and also a poor man among the poor."
Columba made afterward, several visits to his monasteries in Ireland, working miracles as he went; as when he went from Durrow to Clonmacnoise, and healed a dumb boy, who became St. Ernan. He was received there by the religious, who walked in procession to meet him, chanting hymns. He had not only a jurisdiction over all his monasteries, but a preternatural knowledge of all that went on there; and he once interrupted his labors at Iona to pray with his monks for the safety of some workmen at Durrow, and for softening the heart of its abbot, who was too severe on his monks. Columba was by nature impetuous and vindictive, and was still an O'Neill in party spirit. Often in the monastery of Iona he would pray for victory to his clan in battle, or he would pray for the men of his race or the kinsmen of his mother; and once, when aged, he bade them sound the bell of the monastery, (a little square bell, such as now hung round the necks of cattle,) and sound it quickly. The religious hastened around him, and he bade them pray for Aidan, his Dalraid kinsman, then in battle; and they prayed till he said, "Aidan has conquered."
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Adamnan tells us of his own sanctity. One day he retired alone to a distant part of the island, and he was seen with his hands and eyes lifted up to heaven, and surrounded by angels, and the place was named "The Mount of Angels." As he grew older, he increased his austerity. He plunged himself into frozen water; and, seeing a poor woman gathering bitter herbs to eat, he forbade that any other food should be brought to him. He used to pray alone in the little isle of Himba, and his hut was lighted up by night from heaven, while he sang hymns in a tongue unknown to his hearers. Having been there three days and three nights without food, he came out rejoicing that he had discovered the mysterious sense of several passages of Scripture. He returned to die at Iona, and was already surrounded by a halo of glory; so that, when he prayed in the church at night, the brightness blinded the beholders.
One day in his cell his attendants saw him in heavenly joy, and then in deep sadness, and they asked the cause.
"It is thirty years," he said, "since I began my pilgrimage in Caledonia; and I have long prayed that I might be released this year. I saw the angels come for me, and I rejoiced; but they stood still down yonder on that rock, as if they could not come near me; for the prayers of many churches have prevailed, and I grieve that I must live four more years."
At the time appointed he was drawn on a car by oxen to take leave of the monks who were working in the fields. Another day he blessed the granary of the monastery, and foretold his death. This was on Saturday, and he said it would be the Sabbath of his repose. As he returned he met the old horse which carried the milk to the monastery, and the horse laid his head upon the shoulder of his master, as if to take leave of him, and the saint caressed and blessed him. Then, looking down from a hill on the monastery and isle, he stretched out his hands to bless it, and prophesied its future sanctity. Then he entered his cell, and was transcribing the thirty-third psalm, where he came to the words, "Those who seek the Lord shall want no good thing;" and he said, "Here I must end; Baithan will write the rest." He went into the church for the vigil of Sunday, and, returning, he sat down on his bed of stone, and sent a message to his monks, and exhorted them to charity. After that he spoke no more.
Hardly had the midnight bell rung for matins when he ran first to the church, and knelt before the altar. It was dark, and one monk followed him, and placed his venerable head upon his knees. When the community came with lights, they found their abbot dying. He received the last sacraments, and opened his eyes, and raised his right hand in silence, to bless his monks. His hand fell, and he expired. He lay calm, and with the gentle sweetness of a man asleep in a heavenly vision. That very night two holy persons in Ireland beheld Iona enveloped in light; and then miracles began to be done while his body lay in the little church of Iona.
In the ninth century, when pirates ravaged the coasts, the body of the saint was removed to Down, and laid between those of St. Patrick and St. Bridget. The pirates were punished by sudden death. The Norman, Strongbow, died of a wound after destroying the churches of Columba and the saints, and De Lacy perished at Burrow while he built a castle against the monastery.
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From Chambers's Journal.
Charles V. at the Convent of Yuste.
Shade and sunshine play alternate on the convent's massy walls; In the cloister's dim seclusion soft the stealthy footstep falls; In the quiet garden-alleys underneath the citron's shade, Pace the monks with open missals, downcast eyes, and silent tread. Birds are singing, bees are humming, trees are whispering, while through all Steals the silver tinkling, tinkling of the distant fountain fall. Far away, the wild Sierras stretch their ridges dim and high, Carving weird and warlike phantoms in the blue and dazzling sky; Rising still in savage grandeur, till they reach the bounding main; Mute protectors of their country, bulwarks of chivalrous Spain. Who comes hither, slowly sauntering, pausing oft awhile to rest; Arms across so calmly folded, head declining on his breast? More than common spirit lurketh in the bright and clear blue eye; More than common toil and travail in the brows' deep furrows lie. Weight of years and weight of trouble somewhat bow the haughty form, But the haughty heart within it still is beating quick and warm; Iron heart that knew no bending, when the storm was fierce and loud, Soared above the thunder's roaring, dared the lightning, braved the cloud. Stalwart heart that still was foremost in the serried ranks of war; Triumphed o'er the Gallic legions, foiled the Moslem's scimitar. Hardy Germans; proud Burgundians; trusty Flemings, true as steel; Mountaineers of wild Galicia, cavaliers of Old Castile; Half the empire of the Old World; half the treasures of the New-- Mexico's gold-flowing rivers, silver mines of rich Peru; Wheresoe'er the sun ariseth, throwing o'er the hills his beams; Wheresoe'er his dying radiance lingers on the lakes and streams; Far as human foot can wander, far as human eye can scan, Bowed the nations, poured the treasures, marched the legions for one man. Yet he standeth there serenely underneath the chestnut bough, And the gentle air of summer playeth lightly on his brow. Gone the sceptre of the monarch, gone the priceless pearl and gem; Gone the purple robe of splendor, gone the regal diadem. March of armies, fall of kingdoms fate of war he little heeds, Kneeling on the chapel pavement with his missal and his beads, Listening to the simple brethren, chanting loud their matin hymn, Or the holy Ave Mary, wafted through the twilight dim. He hath conned life's sternest lessons he hath learned them long and well, And the deep experience knoweth which their silent teachings tell. Not the wildest hold of empire can the mind's expansion fill; Vain the grasp of worldly power, worldly riches vainer still. High o'er all that earth can offer, heaven's allurements beckon on, And the crown that never fadeth by the victor shall be won.
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Translated from the French.
The Crucifix of Baden.
A Legend of the Middle Ages.
Chapter VI
Eight days passed since Johann's departure before the young man again stood at the sculptor's door. Alas! in that silent and gloomy house, the click of the hammer striking the stone, the cutting of the chisel on the marble, the cheerful voices of the pupils, and the pure voice of Mina, singing her love lay in the morning or canticle at eve, were no longer heard. The great window of the atelier was opaque and black, and no spark of light appeared in the house save where the weak and pale light of a little lamp shone through the window of the young girl's room, at the top of the house, and seemingly shadowed by the angel's wings.
Johann sprang from his horse, tapped lightly at the door, and, throwing aside his travelling cloak, hastened to question the old servant.
"Where is your young lady?"
"Above in her room. Her malady hath much increased since last we saw you."
"And Master Sebald?"
"Is at her side. She speaks and weeps in her delirium, and the master desires that we should not approach her."
"But I may enter," said Johann. "Fear nothing, Martha, I will not disturb her--you well know that, when I departed, it was to bear a message for Demoiselle Mina."
Martha allowed the young traveller to pass, and he ascended the stairs rapidly yet softly, and glided noiselessly into Mina's room, of which the door stood half open.
Beneath the thick curtains of the bed, under a canopy of dark blue damask, the white form of the sculptor's daughter was dimly outlined, indistinct and floating like a shadow, and scarcely perceptible, save where the yellow ray of the silver lamp lit up two sparkling, ardent, agitated flames from beneath her dark lashes. How dry and desolate, and even fearful, were those late sweet glances, now glittering with the fires of fever! Tears would bring more gladness to her father's heart than that wild splendor. So thought Johann as he softly entered and hid behind a large arm-chair in his eagerness to escape those burning glances.
By the side of the bed Master Sebald sat gloomy and silent in a high-backed ebony chair. His grief-worn countenance and gray head rested upon a hand which seemed to Johann to have grown, even in the few days of his absence, more yellow and thin. The other hand was stretched toward the bed, and held clasped that of Mina. The old man watched every movement, every look, every sigh of his daughter. A moan from time to time broke from her lips; then she pushed back with her thin fingers the waves of golden hair which fell over her pale forehead, and began to speak in short, gasping tones:
"Wilt thou pardon me, my father?" said she. "Once thou hadst confidence in me and wert happy. Nothing was wanting to thee; neither the grace of God nor the respect of man; neither success nor genius. Ah! my father, when I reflect that thou mightest always have been so, hadst thou no daughter! Why came I ever into this world, or why died I not in my cradle? Then thou wouldst have mourned me, but with different tears with sweet and tender tears--tears of hope and benediction; thou wouldst have placed me in my little coffin, and, when afterward thou wouldst think of me, thou wouldst cease to weep, saying: I am a happy father, whose family is in heaven--there have my pious wife and angel babe flown.'"
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Here sobs interrupted her voice. A heart-broken sigh from the father replied.
The sick girl for a moment was silent, breathing painfully, and wiping away with her hand the drops of sweat which stood upon her brow. Then with a still more mournful voice, she continued:
"Instead of that I grew, I lived, and I loved in vain. Father! my tombstone must bear the thorns of grief the black cross of penitence. It will be a sad sight--my last dwelling. Mockery will sound around it; the passer-by will point it out scornfully, but, if thy malediction floats not over it, my father--if thou wilt there shed a tear on the green turf--"
"O my Mina! my only child, talk not of maledictions or tombs--I love thee. I tremble for thee, I pardon thee--and thou wilt live and yet be happy. Who can say that Otho has proved false? Who knows that old Hans is not mistaken? Who knows that we may not see him once more, generous, true, and loving thee, my Mina?"
"We will never see him more. He loves me no more, my father. If old Hans were mistaken--if the lady of Horsheim were not to wed Otho, Johann would long ere this have returned. Thinkest thou the good youth would delay to bring me glad tidings? No--he is generous, devoted, and tender. Why could I not love him? I have been very weak, alas! but father, rememberest thou not how tall and gracious was the count! How handsome he seemed with his red plume overhanging his black hair, and his fine form encased in his steel cuirass! And his voice that went so straight to the heart! his simple grace! his gentle nobleness! Who would not have loved such a gentleman? And thou, my father, didst thou not first love him?'
"Yes, I loved him, Mina; and I would yet esteem him."
"Contemn him not, father; and, above all, seek not to be avenged on him!" cried the girl, in a fit of sudden terror. "Should a proud cavalier like him espouse a poor maiden like me--one who is not even a lady? Thou hast genius and glory, my father; but thou hast no escutcheon. I should have loved Johann; he had such respect for thee--such devotion for me; he would have given thee a happy old age, and me a peaceful life; he loved me and would have sacrificed himself for me--he, who could find heart to see me happy in another's arms. Oh! when Johann returns, tell him that I was not ungrateful, and that, if heaven is opened to me, I will there pray for him."
Again her words were interrupted by a stifled sob; she turned, and her eyes fell upon the great arm chair. She cried out, with fixed gaze and trembling lips:
"Johann is here--and weeping! Why speaks he not?"
Then old Sebald turned and saw the young man.
"Come hither!" he cried. "Thou hast been at Horsheim; what hast thou seen? See how pale--how burning--how pitifully sick she is. Speak, my son; say that old Hans erred when he named the husband of the Countess Gertrude!"
Johann, erect and pale, for a moment did not reply; he made a few timid steps toward the old sculptor, and whispered as softly as he could:
"O master! why ask me now? Why force me to tell my tidings in her presence?"
And seeing a gesture of Mina's, he ceased. As low as he had spoken, she had heard. She lifted her eyes, clasped her hands, and made an effort to speak.
"Thou seest, father, that I was right," she murmured. "Thanks, Johann; thou hast proved thy courage and thy goodness, of heart, and I rejoice that I am yet able to bid thee farewell. But one last question--answer, if thou lovest me. When will Otho's marriage take place?"
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"In ten days," sobbed Johann.
"'Tis very soon," replied Mina, shuddering. "My heart will be scarcely cold, and a single green bud will not have appeared over my grave. But may the earth be green, and the sky blue, and life sweet to him."
Saying these words, she crossed her hands upon her breast, and, speaking no more, remained thus for long hours, without even casting a look upon the weeping Johann or upon her heart-broken father.
The physician soon came, and after him the priest. The first had marvellous secrets to cure the body; the latter had pious consolation and words of peace for the soul. But they sought in vain to cure the body or strengthen the soul of Mina. Each day, each hour, each moment stole a spark of the waning fire of life; her grief was too great for so frail a form to bear, and one evening at the end of July, ten days after Johann's return, she closed her eyes forever, holding her father's hand in hers and the crucifix to her lips. Johann was at her feet and received her last look. She had near her in dying the Supreme Consoler of heaven and her only two friends on earth, and there was in her last moments a tenderness which the heart of the youth never forgot.
Chapter VII
Two days after, when the body of Mina had been deposited at sunset in the cemetery at Baden, Sebald and Johann, the master and pupil, found themselves alone in the atelier. Strange! It was Johann, the younger, that seemed the most afflicted, most crushed. His eyes were swollen, his cheeks pale, his step tottering, and his face covered with tears. Old Sebald seemed much less changed; a few furrows the more on his brow, a few more white hairs on his head, were the only visible tokens of his grief. His step was as firm, his bearing as proud as before; but a strange, steady glare, glowing and piercing, showing little trace of weariness or tears, shone from his eyes, and it was this look that the master fixed upon his pupil as they entered the atelier that made Johann shudder before its clear and threatening light.
"Johann," said the master, "it is now my turn to ask thee a question. Sawest thou Otho of Arneck when thou wert at the castle of the Countess Gertrude?"
"Ay, master," replied the young man, with flushed face.
"Spokest thou with him?"
"Ay, truly."
"Didst say to him that I prayed his presence, or, at least, that he should explain himself? That I was in deepest sorrow, and Mina sick unto death?"
"Yea, truly, my master."
"And what response made he?"
"That he, too, was grieved; but that his word was pledged, and that until his marriage he might not leave the castle of the countess. The soft remembrances of youth, he added, mar not, among wise men, the projects of a riper age."
"'Tis well, Johann, and I thank thee," replied the sculptor. "I now know what I wished to know, and resolution is taken."
Then he rose from his arm-chair threw a gloomy glance around the wall of the studio.
"I return hither no more," murmured. "Here have I toiled thirty years with upright heart and pure hands. Nothing that I have here completed has been sullied or profaned. I feared and served God; I honored and I loved man. I then had a right to give purity to my virgins, the light of faith to my martyrs, the halo of love to my cherubims. But now all is lost--faith, renown, and child. Holy images! I cannot touch ye with bruised heart and violent hands; hating and cursing men, I may not mould the august form of the God of love. Therefore, no more will I appear in this retreat; its windows shall remain darkened, its door closed. I will carry with me only my grief, my memories, and this," he cried, seizing a sculptor's chisel with a short, polished, and keen blade, upon which he gazed with his strange look, as he gripped it with feverish strength in his hand.
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"Speak not so. O my master! clasp not that steel so tightly," cried Johann. "That will bring thee little of consolation or hope. Look for solace for thy sorrows to this," he said, holding an ivory crucifix before his master's eyes. "It was pressed to Mina's dying lips; she hath bequeathed it to us. Recallest thou not, my master, her smile as she gazed upon it? 'Twas because beneath the shadow of the cross even death seems sweet. There is the only refuge, and there will I find shelter. The world hath had but little of joy for me, and I but little of love for the world. The prior of the Augustines hath promised me a cell, and I will be happy, there to pass my life, praying or working beneath the poor robe of a monk, and preserving the memory and crucifix of Mina."
"It is well, my son," replied Koerner. "To each one his own succor and light, his own strength and safety. If, thanks to the priest's purer cross, thou findest calm and resignation, may I not seek the encouragement and strength of my sculptor's chisel? Who may say, that, without these walls, I am not destined to achieve some work that will immortalize my name and console my heart? Then, why not leave to a father's grief the hope of glory, of triumph, and--this little sculptor's tool?" demanded the old man, with flushed face and sparkling eyes.
"I wish thee triumph and glory, my master. But yet, if thou canst do so, remember, when thou art active, diligent, and famous, that thy old pupil Johann, who would not be an artist and became a monk, will never cease to bless thee and to think of thee in his prayers."
So saying, the youth, weeping, kissed old Sebald's hand and left the dwelling, carrying with him the crucifix, his last and only treasure. When he had departed, Sebald Koerner, too, left the studio, after casting a last look on the bas-reliefs, the balcony, the mouldings, and the statues. He double-locked the door and took away the key, and, issuing from his house, he walked for a long time through the fields. Arriving at length at the side of a deep pool near the foot of the hills, he bent over the tranquil waters and dropped the key therein.
The water plashed and the waves hastened in increasing rings from the spot, and then became even more clear and peaceful than before--stilling themselves ere the key had touched the bottom. Sebald then again stood erect, with his icy glance and strange smile, yet grasping the chisel in his hand, and then concealing it in his bosom as if it were a dagger.
Chapter VIII
One morning the Baron Otho of Arneck and the young Countess Gertrude, now his dear lady and noble wife, were partaking in their house in Baden of their morning collation of fruits, hydromel, and spiced cakes. How charming seemed their repast, since they enjoyed it together. The cakes were exquisite, the hydromel of the sweetest; the cups were of gold, the cloth of fine brocade; Gertrude beautiful and loving. What was needed to complete Otho's happiness?
When the young baroness had clapped her hands to order away the breakfast service, the servant who entered approached the knight, bearing on a silver plate a piece of parchment folded in the form of a letter.
"What have we here?" asked the noble lady. "Another invitation? Indeed, Otho, they become wearisome. We are allowed no rest, although happiest together."
"It is indeed an invitation, but not one for thee, my cherished one," replied Otho, when he had cast his eyes over the missive.
"In good sooth! And who is it who dares so soon to attempt to separate thee from thy wife?"
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"An unfortunate man, and as such thou must forgive him," replied Otho, smiling.
"And what demands he?"
"Thou shalt hear, sweet one."
And the knight, unfolding the sheet of parchment, read these words aloud to the baroness:
"An old friend--a once dear friend prays the Baron of Arneck to grant him a moment's converse for the sake of their common affection and of his unhappy lot. The Baron Otho is happy; that is a reason why he should seek to pay his debt of gratitude to heaven by aiding the unfortunate. Let him, then, not refuse this prayer which a friend's voice addresses to him.
"For many reasons, which the writer will explain by word of mouth, the meeting should be in the burial-ground of Baden; for the old friend of the Baron of Arneck can no longer have the honor of receiving him in his house, hereafter forever closed and accursed. The Baron of Arneck is expected tomorrow morning at six of the clock."
"How strange a letter! How strange a meeting-place!" cried Gertrude, turning pale. "Canst imagine, Otho, who hath addressed it thee?"
"Some banished friend. Thou knowest, Gertrude, that at the accession of the present margrave many nobles of Baden were exiled, and among them were some old friends of my father, and without doubt it is one of them who hath written this."
"But--but, Otho--why should he choose such a place of tryst? A place so solemn, so fearful! where there are only the dead and their tombs?"
"'Tis the time and place that should reassure thee, my cherished one. One harboring designs of evil would have appointed a forest, mayhap, or a hostel; but never a burial-place, where no Christian man would do aught of wrong, and, my sweet wife, nor my father nor I had ever friend among infidels."
"Thou wilt go, then?" said Gertrude.
"Of a surety."
"Alone?"
"Even so, for, if it be a proscribed exile who seeks me, our varlets must not know of his presence."
"But fearest thou no danger, Otho? When thou wert alone, thou mightest laugh at prudence; but now, canst thou forget that I am here? that I love and tremble for thee?"
"Fear not, my love. Even if this request should hide a snare--which I credit not--remember that the guards of the cemetery would not give entrance to a party of armed men, and that against one I have my skill to defend me and this," said he, drawing from his belt a pointed and keen-edged dagger. "But imagine not vain terrors, my Gertrude. He who hath written me hath mayhap for long years tasted naught of tenderness or joy, and our happiness should render us the more kind to the unfortunate."
The young wife felt proudly moved at these noble words of her husband, and the happy pair began their preparations for the margrave's reception, and spoke no more of the strange meeting of the morrow.
Otho, however, did not forget it; and scarcely had he perceived the first rosy tints of day when he arose and donned his pourpoint and cloak. Gertrude yet slept, and, after kissing his wife's forehead and tenderly stroking her flaxen hair, he sallied gayly forth.
Half an hour later saw him in the burial ground; but, although he had arrived before the hour appointed, saw that the unknown was already there.
A beautiful August morning spread its freshness and virginal splendor over the earth; turtle-doves cooed in the tall yew trees; and sparrows, pursuing each other among the lindens and lilac bushes, showered the dew drops which glittered upon the leaves in a rain of diamonds over the green turf; daisies lifted their little white heads and rosy crowns above the grass-grown graves; and the grim tombstones, and even the black crosses, seemed to cast aside their sombre look and to dress themselves almost gayly in the growing sunlight.
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"If Gertrude were here, she would cease to tremble," murmured Otho, advancing. "Who could fear in the midst of the melody yon tiny songsters pour forth, or surrounded by this light, this perfumed air, and walking in so verdant a sod?"
There was, however, a dark stain amid all this splendor. In an angle at the foot of a lofty ash stood a man whose tall form and black attire were sharply outlined in the surrounding brightness.
"Yonder is my unknown," thought Otho, and with a few rapid strides he approached him.
The man stood motionless, his head bowed upon his breast, his eyes fixed upon an oblong space upon which the grass had not yet begun to grow.
"Thou art doubtless he who hath called me hither," said Otho. "I am the Baron of Arneck."
The stranger quickly raised his head and threw back the hood of his mantle, exhibiting to the young knight's gaze thin locks of snow-white hair, and a face on which sorrow had traced more furrows than age.
"Master Koerner!" cried Otho, joyfully stretching forth his hand. "But why so much mystery and solemnity? You needed but to call me to your side, dearest master, if grief or calamity threatened, and, whatever might have conspired to keep me back, I had obeyed the summons; and, indeed, I have heard that you were afflicted, but I hope that the Demoiselle Mina hath fully recovered from her illness."
"She is healed, indeed," replied old Sebald again, lowering his eyes to the bare spot of earth.
"If I have not before presented myself at your house," continued Otho, who felt it necessary to offer some explanation, but who could not without blushing attempt it, "it was because I felt it well to silence by my absence the slanders of envious tongues, and, believe me, my master, that such a resolution cost me dear. For you, excellent master, I hold deep respect and warm friendship, and I honor and admire your daughter, who to me is a model of beauty, of wisdom, and of modesty. Her praises are ever upon my lips, and sweet memories of her in my heart."
"'Tis well--very well," murmured the old sculptor; "but be careful, Sir Knight, you are treading upon her grave!"
And with trembling hand and flashing eyes, he pushed Otho, who unwittingly had trod upon the turfless space, back, back, far from the grave.
"Can this be true?" cried the knight, turning pale. "Mina dead! sleeping here! She so young, so beautiful, so tenderly loved! And you called me not, master, to accompany her to the tomb to weep with you!"
"You are very generous, Sir Knight; but what I would demand of you is not your tears."
"Need you, then, friends or aid? You know, Master Koerner, that since I have known you I have been but too glad to place my influence, my relations at your service, and I would now gladly offer you the benefit of my fortune. Speak quickly, I pray you. Command of me what you need or desire."
"I will first relate to you a tale of truth, and then demand vengeance of you," replied the old man, in calm tones but with glittering eyes. "Sir Knight, you presented yourself at my dwelling with the fervor of an artist and the submission of a pupil. You sought, you said, a nobler and holier goal than success at court or the triumphs of war; you wished with ardent heart and zealous hand to produce the sacred images of our Saviour, his virgin Mother, and the saints. And I believed you, Sir Knight; for to me art was more glorious, more fruitful, more divine than aught else on earth, because in art I found my mission, my recompense, my safety, and my life. But you deceived me; you, who pride yourself on your name of gentleman; and, while feigning to study my art, you were killing my daughter. {678} Reply not; deny not my words," continued Sebald, fixing a lurid gaze upon Otho, whose words died on his lips. "She loved you, and for your sake died. But before condemning you, justice commands me to hear you. You yourself have just said Mina was wise, beautiful, and pure; that you lauded her virtues to the world: why, then, did you not wed her?"
"Because--because--" stammered Otho, blushing--"because, Master Sebald, your daughter was not noble. You well know, my dear master, that the customs of the nobility are sacred. Many a one of us is forced to silence the voice of his heart, lest, as they say, a stain should be cast on his escutcheon. Why was Mina a burgess's daughter and not a countess? But you yourself understand, my old master, that I, whose ancestors were counted among the companions of Charlemagne--that I could not take for my wife the daughter of a sculptor, without title, without crest or quarterings."
Otho pronounced these words in a low voice, with drooping head and downcast eyes. He dared not meet the glance of the sculptor, who remained a moment silent, and then spoke:
"Otho of Arneck, you have crushed the father and slain the child. As you say, the sculptor has neither title nor quarterings, but he has an arm for vengeance!"
And springing furiously forward, more rapid than thought in his movement, the old man, his eyes gleaming, but his hand grasping firmly the glittering chisel, flung himself upon the baron, and before the latter could draw the dagger from his girdle, the steel disappeared in the folds of his velvet doublet and buried itself in his breast. The hand that aimed it was firm, the blow was sure; the chisel as of old failed not to perform its master's will; and Otho of Arneck fell upon the bare space of ground--fell, never more to rise, upon the very spot where Mina lay cold and dead.
"Thou dost well--thou art avenged," gasped the fallen man, fixing his glazing eyes upon Sebald. "In thy place I had done likewise--but--in honorable combat--for I--I am a knight and noble. But I truly loved Mina."
His head dropped back, his limbs relaxed, and he was silent. The clear red blood of youth and health flowed from the wound and stained the bare earth.
Sebald, with his arms folded upon his breast, gazed upon his work.
"Let his blood flow on," he murmured at length; "let it moisten her coffin, as it should. And now I shall deliver myself to justice. My vengeance as a father and my mission as a sculptor are fulfilled."
He turned away and walked with rapid steps from the cemetery, leaving his weapon still fixed in the baron's body.
Chapter IX
A few weeks after the occurrences detailed in the last chapter, on a dull, gray day of the autumn of 1435, a crowd of the burgesses of Baden assembled in the great hall of justice to listen to the judgment to be pronounced against Master Koerner, the sculptor. "Who," said they, "would have imagined a few months since that a man so peaceful and just to all, an artist so skilful, so fervent a Christian, would be dragged to that seat of infamy?" They would as soon have expected to hear the judges condemn them themselves to death and to see themselves led by the grand-provost to the gibbet. Master Sebald a criminal! Master Sebald an assassin! Alas for poor humanity, if that were all sixty years of virtue could bring forth!
Nevertheless, there he was, the artist criminal--the white-haired murderer standing erect before the magistrates in their robes of ermine and carnation, before the ivory image of Christ crucified, with its black velvet background, which hung above their seats. {679} There he stood while near him on a table lay the mute witnesses against him: the velvet pourpoint, stiff with blood; the fine linen tunic, now reddish brown in its hue; the murderous chisel, with its once gleaming blade dark and rusty and covered with a crust of clotted blood.
Several witnesses were called: the servant who received from Master Sebald the treacherous letter, which he delivered to Count Otho; the keeper of the burial-ground, who testified to having seen the accused enter the field the dead on the morning of the twenty-second of August. But tears flowed fastest when the Countess Gertrude, the youthful widow of the baron, gave her deposition. While relating her mournful story, the noble lady swooned several times, and her beauty, her placid face, and long, closed lashes, and raving flaxen hair, unfastened and rolling in masses over her black robe, moved the auditory that more than once the life of the assassin seemed in instant danger.
But the depositions of witnesses were almost useless. The most striking evidence of his crime was the chisel lying there, still covered with the victim's blood. And when the president, after declaring to Master Sebald the crime of which he stood accused, asked, pointing to the blood-stained weapon, "Dost thou recognize thy chisel?" the old sculptor replied:
"Yes: it is mine."
"And thou seest that with it was the life of the Baron of Arneck taken. Canst thou say by whose hand he came to his death?"
"Yes--by mine," replied Master Sebald unhesitatingly.
"So thou hast already declared in delivering thyself up to the hands of justice," said the president. "But that declaration, made in a moment of trouble and grief, was insufficient. It needed a public avowal to confirm it. But one question more: Thou hadst doubtless motives for the commission of so barbarous an act?"
"Assuredly," replied the sculptor. "No man kills wantonly one who was for three years his pupil and his friend."
"What cause, then, impelled thee?"
The prisoner remained silent for a moment, bowed his head still lower, clasped his hands tight together, and bit his lips till the blood trickled from them; then he replied:
"No; my motives were too holy. I will not tell them."
"Reflect, accused," said the president. "It is because thy motives were grave that they should be revealed. Reflect; and say why such a crime sullies thy once pure hands."
"No," repeated Sebald, "I am ready to die, but the history of my crime dies with me."
Then a young man dressed in the habit of an Augustine novice, who had obtained the favor of remaining by the side of the accused, rose, and in a timid voice addressed the judges:
"Although, my lords, I know not fully Master Sebald's motives, I may, perhaps, suspect them. There are moments in the lives of the wisest and of the most just when the heart may harden and the judgment err under the goad of some great grief. Remember, my lords, that Master Koerner has lost his only child, and you, who knew the daughter, can conceive the grief of the father."
"Johann! be silent!" cried old Sebald, rising, trembling and furious. "Let the dead sleep in their graves. Their agony is past, and mine needs no increase. I make no avowals--I desire no defence. The crime was mine--the vengeance was mine, and I seek but to die with my secret!"
The old man fell back exhausted by this burst of indignation, and the young friar, covering his face with his hands, sank upon his knees before his master upon the stone floor, while the president glanced around upon his colleagues, as if to read their judgment in their faces.
"Before such a resolution," said he, "further questions were useless."
Then he called upon the prisoner to stand erect and listen to his sentence, which the clerk proceeded to read.
{680}
"Master Sebald Koerner, sculptor and burgess of the good city of Baden, having been convicted of having, on the morning of August twenty-second last past, treacherously wounded and killed the noble Otho Rayner, Baron of Arneck, and esquire to his highness the margrave, is condemned to die by the halter."
"Accused, hast aught to say?" asked the president when the reading of the doom was ended.
"Nothing," replied Master Sebald, bowing with folded arms before the judges.
The president covered his head with his black furred robe, and continued:
"Master! the justice of man hath pronounced thy doom, and will soon be satisfied. With a common criminal our office would here end, and but a few words of exhortation to repentance would accompany him to the executioner. But, criminal as thou art, we cannot forget that for sixty years thou wast our neighbor and our friend, and that those hands now red with murder have carved many a pure and holy image to strengthen and lift our souls toward God.
"How canst thou, whose works have so long glorified our Lord, now refuse to repent? Hast thou not read a thousand times the command, 'Thou shalt not kill'? Hast never reflected upon our Saviour's agony--his wounded hands, his lance-pierced side, his crown of thorns, the blows his face received, his shames, his griefs, avenged only by the words, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do'? Thou hast thought upon all this; thou hast even modelled with thy hands the bloody scenes of thy Redeemer's life; and yet thou couldst not learn to forgive--thou, who wast but a man!"
Here the president was for a moment silent, overcome by his emotion, and the old sculptor, as if shaken in his fierce resolve and gloomy pride by the words of his judge, slowly lifted his head and cast a troubled look around. "In the bitterness of thy heart," continued the president, "in the madness of thy wrath, all this thou didst forget; and yet to recall it all to mind, thou neededst but to lift thine eyes. Gaze not on us, Master Sebald; bear thy glances higher, and see above us the pallid face, the wounded form, the holy eyes of him who loved more than thou, who suffered more than thou, and who only avenged himself upon his torturers by saving them from death, albeit at the price of his own blameless life. Harken to me, betrayed friend! that Man-God had, too, a friend, and was betrayed by the kiss of that friend; listen, unhappy father! that Father was sold, scourged, crucified by his children. And if this God, reviled, dishonored, avenged not himself, was it not to set man an example of forgiveness? Thou hast not yet expiated thy crime, Master Koerner, and the hand of the executioner will soon deliver thee to a higher Judge. Christ will await thee at the gibbet, just and inflexible. Gaze on him ere thy death, poor sinner, with faith and love, for thy Judge is also thy Saviour."
So speaking, the president uncovered his head and pointed solemnly to the ivory crucifix. The eyes of Master Koerner followed the uplifted hand and rested on the agonized face of Christ. Then their fixed and stony glare grew soft; their dry and burning lustre grew moist; his lips quivered; he clasped his hands, and, after some moments of fierce struggling with himself, the old artist murmured in a trembling voice:
"Christ! God of the wretched--God of fathers alas! since Mina's death never have I turned mine eye to thee!"
His head fell once more upon his breast and his voice was choked in a sob, while Johann at his side lifted his hands toward heaven in an ecstasy of joy and gratitude.
There was a murmur and a motion in the crowd; then all was silence again as the voice of the president arose once more:
{681}
"A ray of grace from on high hath illumined thee; let us pray that it may conduct thee through the gates of death to eternal light, I have a few words more to address thee. The court, while punishing as it should the crime of the murderer, forgets not the merits of the artist. It therefore accords thee, to lessen the bitterness of thy last moments, the favor thou mayst most desire. Reflect, Master Sebald, ere thou fixest thy choice. Any grace thou mayst demand shall be accorded, any save life."
A murmur of astonishment and joy ran through the crowd, which was hushed only to hear the old sculptor's reply. Master Sebald remained long silent, but at length rose and spoke:
"I would not ask life were I free to do so," he answered. "My life hath already been too long, and she whom I love awaits me beyond the grave. But you have spoken of expiation, my lord, and it seems to me that even here below my death would not afford a complete one. My life, ended at the gibbet, may satisfy the justice of man; but what shall I do to appease the anger of my God? Dare I appear before him with no penitential act to plead for my pardon; no work of reparation wherein sweat and tears I might have washed my blood-stained hands? Repentance came while I gazed upon yon crucifix; in carving another, pardon might perhaps descend upon me from heaven. If the court will for a few weeks prolong my life, as I now see Christ's image before me, so will I produce it in the stone!" cried he with enthusiasm. "I ask not to quit my prison to live in the midst of men. No! let me be immured in a dungeon, let my door be sealed until I leave it to go to my death. Let but a ray of sunlight enter, that I may see to model the august countenance of my God, while I remain there with the thoughts of eternity and the remembrance of my crime for my only companions."
"Master Koerner," replied the judge, "thy request is that of a good Christian and a noble artist, and the court accords it with joy, in the hope that the work of thy last days may bring thee pardon and salvation. Thou wilt be led back to thy dungeon, and, before its door closes upon thee, all thou mayst require for thy work will be brought thee."
The judges arose and retired. Johann, radiant with joy, and his grief almost consoled, accompanied his old master to the prison, and then sought the stone, the clay--all that the sculptor could need. Even the fatal chisel, cleansed of its stains, was brought to him bright and shining, like the soul of the criminal which, stained by sin, would soon be cleansed by grief and labor.
Then the old sculptor passed his hand over his seamed brow and hollow cheeks and called for a mirror. The door was then built up with stone and mortar, and only an opening large enough for his food to be passed through was left, and Master Sebald stood alone in the cell which he was only to leave to pass to the gibbet.