Chapter I
"O grief beyond all other griefs! when fate First leaves the young heart desolate In the wide world." Moore.
It was at the close of the memorable 26th of June, 1848, one of the most dreadful days of that sanguinary strife called "the Revolution," which had desolated Paris since the month of February, that a man, dressed in a torn and blood-stained blouse, his face and hands black with gunpowder, and carrying a gun on his shoulder, climbed hastily the dark, dirty staircase of a house in the Rue de la Parcheminerie. He was followed by a miserable-looking child of apparently about eight years old, whose little, trembling legs managed with difficulty to keep up with the long strides of the individual before him, who from time to time looked back to see that he was coming.
On reaching the third story, the revolutionist, for such he evidently was, opened a door, and entered a dismal, bad-smelling room of poverty-stricken aspect. A woman of about forty was there, busily occupied over a small iron furnace casting lead bullets, of which a number ready for use were lying on the dirty brick floor beside her.
"Here they are, all hot, all hot," cried she with a fierce laugh as he came in. "I don't keep you waiting for your tools, you see; there's not a citizen of Paris that has a better help-mate than you, Auguste; is there, now? And I'm as ready with my knife as--but what have you there?" And the dreadful woman strode forward a step as she caught sight of the child, half-hidden behind her husband.
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"It's a poor little devil I picked up on a barricade," replied Auguste. "Ma foi! I believe that he had followed his father to the fight, where the citizen received his passport for the other world; the little one had hooked himself on to the corpse, and I had some trouble to loosen his hold, and afterward to put him on his legs again; but a drop of brandy did it at last, and here he is!"
"And what on earth are we to do with him?" vociferated the woman, who had listened to this explanation with many a shrug and menacing gesture. "I shall not feed him, I tell you. Where's the grub to come from, I should like to know?"
"Come, now," said Auguste soothingly, "be reasonable, do. Now that the dog's dead, you can give him the bones and lickings, can't you? It won't cost more to keep this little wretch than it did to keep the dog. Not so much, I believe."
"He's not worth either bones or lickings," screamed the wife. "Medor earned his living, while this beast of a child"--here she caught the frightened boy by the arm and whirled him violently round--"hasn't the strength of a fly!"
"He'll be able to pick up rags in a day or two, Pelagie, you will see; Come, now, let us keep him. Here, sit down, young one." And Auguste pushed the child down on a wooden stool.
Pelagie stormed, but Auguste at last gained the day, and even obtained a crust of bread for the wretched little creature, whose large eyes glanced from the one to the other of the speakers while they debated his fate. His thin, pale cheek still bore the traces of the tears he had shed when his father fell, shot through the heart, on the barricade, and his little blouse and torn trousers were stained with his father's blood!
We shall not repeat the conversation of the husband and wife on the events of the day--that day when the infatuated workpeople and proletaires of Paris murdered the venerable priest who, obedient to the call of his sacred duties, had come to the scene of strife and slaughter to preach mercy and forbearance. "The shepherd gives his life for his sheep," and, "May my blood be the last shed," were the last words of Archbishop Affre. Alas! when the torch of civil war is once lighted, men seem to grow mad; the fiercest passions of humanity are let loose, and ruin and death seem alone able to end the struggle. So has it ever been with the excitable people of Paris; so will it ever be with the ignorant and vicious. Many fell after the good archbishop, and among them Auguste Vautrin. He had gone off, carrying with him the newly-made bullets, and leaving the child whose life he had probably saved; he returned no more. A neighbor whispered to Pelagie that same night that her husband was lying dead in the Rue St. Antoine, but the depraved and unloving wife did not care to reclaim his body, and all that was left of the miserable man was consequently thrown ignominiously into the common grave of the misguided revolutionists.
Chapter II
"Pinn'd, beaten, cold, pinch'd, threaten'd, and abused, His efforts punish'd and his food refused, Awake tormented, soon aroused from sleep, Struck if he wept, and yet compelled to weep, The trembling boy dropped down, and strove to pray, Received a blow, and trembling turned away."
Crabbe.
Pelagie Vautrin, now a widow, continued to gain her living as before. She was what is called in France a "merchant of the four seasons," that is, a costermonger, hawking about the streets in a handcart the different vegetables and fruits of each season, sometimes even venturing on a load of salt mackerel, sometimes of dried figs. She was a strong, masculine-looking virago, who might have gained a tolerable living, for one day with another brought her in about three francs, had she not been given to drink. {256} Every bargain she made either to buy or to sell was ratified by a glass of brandy, so that by the time she had emptied her cart, her pocket was nearly empty too. At all times without gentleness or pity, she became almost ferocious when excited by liquor, and it was a cruel fate that had made the little orphan fall into her hands. He, poor fellow, seemed to be quite friendless. Questioned and cross-questioned by Pelagie and her neighbors, he could give no further account of himself than that he was called Marcel, and that his father was shot on the barricade; the child shuddered each time that he was forced to answer this. He appeared never to have known his mother, replying always that he had lived with his father, only with his father, and nobody else. He was a slight, elegantly formed boy, with the intelligent, delicate features peculiar to the true Parisian. Timid and nervous, he trembled each time that Pelagie addressed him, and implicitly obeyed her slightest order.
During the two days that followed the death of Auguste, Pelagie remained shut up in her dirty, close-smelling room. Whether she feared that the restoration of public order might expose her to the unpleasant observation of the law, or that the loss of her husband did really somewhat affect her, we know not; certain it is that she staid quietly at home, and even shared the bread and boiled beef that a neighbor had fetched for her from a gargote, or poor eating-house, near by, with Marcel. He had been provided with a heap of rags for a bed, and permitted to sleep. And for two nights, poor boy, he had slept as children, happily the poor as well as the rich, only can sleep--forgetful of the past and unthinking of the future. But on the morning of the third day, Pelagie got up in full possession of all her wonted energy and brutality.
"Out of bed, little beggar!" were her first words, as she pushed the sleeping child with her foot; "out of bed; you must begin to work for your bread. Now, listen to me," she continued, as Marcel, with a scared look, started up ready-dressed from his bed of rags; "listen, do you hear, to me. You will go search for all the bits of old iron, old nails, and things of that sort, that you can find in the streets and gutters. Here is a leathern bag to put them in; do you see? I shall tie it about your waist, and take care you don't lose it. And here is a basket and a hook; with this hook you will catch up all the pieces of paper and rag that you see, and put them into the basket. Now, mind what you're about: I shall have an eye on you, wherever you may be. Here is a piece of bread; and don't come back until your basket is full, or I shall skin you."
So saying, she thrust the bewildered, frightened boy out of the door, which she shut immediately, leaving him to grope his way down the dark, crazy staircase as he best might.
After two or three falls he reached the door of the house, and found himself in the narrow, filthy gutter called the Rue de la Parcheminerie--one of the impure, airless thoroughfares of that old Paris which the present ruler of France is levelling to give place to wide, healthful, handsome streets and squares. He stood a moment hesitating whether he should turn to the right or to the left, when the voice of Pelagie calling to him from the window above made him look up. "Be off!" she screamed. "I'm watching you, and mind you bring me back all you get!"
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The child shouldered his basket and ran on. Turning the corner and out of sight of his fierce protectress, if we may call her so, he stopped, poor little fellow! His basket and hook dropped to the ground, as with a gesture of despair he threw up his hands toward heaven and cried aloud, "O my father! my father!"
The cry and the gesture were not addressed to that Heavenly Father whose eye was then as ever upon him, full of pity and mercy though unseen and incomprehensible, for the unhappy orphan knew not how to pray; but we can believe that it was heard and answered, as if it had been a direct supplication to the throne of grace; not then, perhaps, but in the fulness of that time which he hath chosen for our consolation. A moment after, the boy gathered up his fallen basket and hook and diligently set to work. Not a rag or scrap of paper escaped his searching eye. Nails and metal buttons, and bits of old iron, and many a flattened bullet that had probably done some deadly work, all found their way into his basket or his leathern bag.
Toward twelve o'clock he found himself near the fountain in St. Michael's Place; tired and hot, he took a drink, and, seating himself on the curbstone near by, began to eat the piece of bread that Pelagie had given him that morning. His appetite was good, and he enjoyed his dry crust better than many a rich man did his sumptuous dinner that day. His little teeth went so busily and vigorously to work, that a hackney-coachman belonging to the coach-stand in the place, and who was lazily contemplating humanity from his box-seat, after watching him awhile with admiration, threw him a sou, telling him to buy some sausage, because he deserved something for the way in which he attacked that piece of brick-bat.
"He has teeth like a rat," cried the coachman, grinning, to one of his comrades; "the way he nibbles that crust, that's as hard as the stone he's sitting on, is a sight!"
Marcel took the sou, and returned a look of such smiling gratitude that the observant coachman again remarked to his friend that that little chap had eyes like the gazelle's in the Garden of Plants; "they're just as soft and tender," added he, "only blue." But the child dared not spend the money on himself--had not Pelagie told him to bring her back everything he got? So he put it into the bag with the old iron, and once more went to work. Steadily and earnestly he plodded on, all his little faculties concentrated on his task, so that at five in the afternoon his leathern bag was full, and his basket piled up and pressed down.
Glad and triumphant, with some hope of kind words this time at least, he turned toward the Rue de la Parcheminerie, and reached the wretched house just as Pelagie was pushing her empty handcart through the narrow passage into the yard, where it was put up under a shed for the night. He climbed the staircase and stood waiting for her on the landing-place before the door of her room.
"You here!" she cried when she perceived him. "What's brought you back so soon, you little vaurien?" [Footnote 114]
[Footnote 114: Worth-nothing.]
"My basket and my bag are both full, madam," replied Marcel, trembling as he looked up into the furious eyes of the drunken virago.
"I shall soon see that." She pushed him violently into the room. "Now, give me the bag."
She snatched it from him as she spoke and emptied out the contents on the floor.
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"Why, what is this?" she exclaimed as she caught sight of the sou. "Did you find this? don't you know what it is?"
"I know what it is, madam; it was given to me to buy some sausage with to flavor my bread."
"To flavor your bread, you little beggar! Good bread's not good enough for you, then! I'll flavor your bread, you idiot." And with her strong right hand she dealt him a blow on the side of the head that felled him instantly to the floor.
He hid his bruised face in his little trembling hands and lay there weeping silently.
"Get up, get up, you idle dog; you're not going to stay there, I can tell you! Come, take your basket and hook and be off again." The unfeeling woman pulled up the wretched child as she spoke. "What! crying! I'll have none of that! Come, be off! You'll get no supper, I promise you, until your basket's full again."
Down the crazy staircase once more the little orphan stumbled into the street--hungry and tired, his cheek blue with the cruel blow, and his young heart swelling with the sense of so much injustice and oppression. The thought came to him suddenly that he would not return again to that wicked woman; but then, where should he go? Who would take care of him? He wandered through many dirty, narrow streets while he thus meditated, and at last found himself before the old church of St. Etienne du Mont. He saw some children going in, and followed them. There was so profound a silence in the sacred edifice, such a soft, subdued light streamed in from the beautiful painted windows, that the child's agitated, angry heart seemed calmed almost by a miracle. He slunk into a dark corner, and there, doing as he saw the happier children with whom he had entered do, he knelt. He did not pray; he had never known a mother's care, never been taught to lisp "Our Father who art in heaven" at his mother's knee; but peace and forgiveness entered into the orphan's soul as he knelt, silent, unheeded, in that dark corner of God's house.
Half an hour after he slunk out again into the street, feeling better, he knew not why, poor ignorant boy, and only anxious to try to satisfy his task-mistress.
All the evening he went to and fro, filling his basket from the heaps of rubbish thrown into the streets as soon as night comes by the numerous inhabitants of Parisian houses. At last, when ten o'clock had struck from all the church-towers in the quarter, he again climbed to the third story. The door was ajar, he entered softly, and saw, by the light of a gas-lamp that was on the opposite side of the street, Pelagie Vautrin lying extended on her bed, and snoring the heavy sleep of the drunkard.
He crept, tired and hungry, to his heap of rags, and soon happily forgot for a few hours that he was motherless and fatherless, a little waif adrift on the sea of life.
Thus passed and ended Marcel's first day of labor.
Chapter III
"Thus liv'd the lad, in hunger, peril, pain, His tears despis'd, his supplications vain. ... Strange that a frame so weak could bear so long The grossest insult and the foulest wrong; But there were causes." Crabbe.
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Marcel had continued to ply this business for the profit of Pelagie Vautrin about two years, most times half-starved, and ofttimes beaten, and had become one of the quickest-sighted and quickest-witted of the little rag-pickers of Paris, when one wet winter's night, as he passed near St. Michael's Bridge, he put his foot on something hard.
To pick it up, to see by the nearest gaslight that it was a coarse linen bag, containing a quantity of gold coin, was the work of a minute; the next saw him running as if for dear life to the office of the Commissary of Police in the Rue des Noyers; he knew the place well by the red-glass lamp over the door. Almost breathless he handed his prize to the worthy magistrate, telling him at the same time where he had found it.
The commissary looked into his little, eager, intelligent face while he told his story, then taking his hand kindly, "You are a good boy," said he, "and, mark my words, your honesty will bring you good luck."
Marcel blushed with pleasure and surprise to be praised, but stood nervously twirling his ragged cap round and round.
"The man who lost the bag of gold," continued the commissary, "was here half an hour since; he is a poor clerk, and is in despair; he is afraid of going back to his employers to tell them that he has lost their money. You have saved him and his poor wife and children from much misery. Go, you are a good boy; but first tell me your name and where you live."
The child told him, it was written carefully down, and he then went away happier than he had ever been since that dreadful day when he had convulsively fastened himself to his father's dead body as it lay on the barricade.
But as he approached his miserable home, this happy feeling decreased; and he began to think of what Pelagie would say if she knew what he had been doing. To tell or not to tell, that was the question, and it was not yet decided when he opened the door of the dismal room, where Pelagie, drunk as usual, was making her preparations for going to bed.
"And where do you come from, vaurien?" asked she as he came in.
He did not reply; he was not prepared with a lie, and he feared to tell the truth. Pelagie, accustomed to prompt and ready answers from her victims, turned round and stared at him, surprised beyond measure at this unwonted hesitation.
"Do you hear, little beast, do you hear!" she screamed presently. "Where do you come from? Why don't you answer me?" And she seized him violently by the arm.
"Pray don't beat me!" said the child imploringly. "I will tell you. As I was passing over St. Michael's Bridge, I--I found--a bag--"
"A bag!" exclaimed Pelagie, still holding him fast. "A bag of what? Quick! quick! Speak faster!"
"Of gold," whispered the child, trembling, for he knew now that he should suffer for what he had done.
"Of gold? of gold? Where is it? Give it to me!" And she fumbled about his little breast, as if she thought it must be hidden there.
"I haven't got it!" said the boy, whose cheeks waxed paler and paler, but whose blue eyes met hers for once undauntedly. "I carried it to the Commissary of Police."
For one moment the drunken fury looked at him silently, and then burst forth in bitter curses and bitterer blows. Hard and fast they fell on the young head and tender face; he was knocked down and kicked up again--hurled against the wall--pushed into the fire-place--and at last thrown upon the cranky table, which fell with so terrible a crash that the noise fortunately brought up the tenants of the story beneath in time to prevent a murder; for it is too probable that would have been the end of this frightful scene, if no one had come to save poor Marcel.
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"Madame, Madame Vautrin!" cried M. Poquet, as he rushed into the room, followed by his wife and a number of the neighbors, "what is the matter here? Pray, be calm. You've beaten that child too much! Now, stop, or I'll go for the police." And the strong man seized the furious woman in his arms, while his wife and one or two other women got hold of Marcel and carried him down-stairs, covered with blood and bruises, to the Poquets' room.
Covered with blood and bruises! Such was this wretched child's reward for the first act of probity he had as yet found an opportunity of performing!
Be gentle, then, in your judgment of his future errings. O children of happier fortunes! ye who are encouraged in every generous thought and honest deed by the tender caresses of a mother and the approving smiles of a father, remember that he was an ignorant, homeless orphan, whose first good impulses were beaten out of him, or stifled by the vicious influences which surrounded him.
Monsieur and Madame Poquet were--it is a pity to be obliged to say it of such a kind-hearted couple--no better than they should be, rather, indeed, far worse. M. Poquet called himself a cobbler, but few, very few were the boots or shoes that could show trace of his handiwork. Talking politics in the cabaret [Footnote 115] at the corner, with idlers like himself, seemed to be his principal occupation; but there were rumors afloat that, at night, when honest men were sleeping peacefully in their beds, he and his companions were dodging the police, and trying to find the money they would not work for. Certain it is he generally had a forty-sous piece in his pocket, and few people knew how he got it.
[Footnote 115: Wine-shop.]
Madame Poquet earned or rather thieved her living as a femme de ménage [Footnote 116] and a very good living she made too; for, not satisfied with stuffing herself as full as she could of victuals at her employer's house, she regularly brought back every evening in a great basket, that was continually suspended at her arm, such a supply of cheese, charcoal, sugar, garlic, bread, cigars, cold meat, and such like, that there was not a better furnished cupboard nor better fed children than hers in the neighborhood.
[Footnote 116: Charwoman.]
These children consisted of a boy and a girl--Polycarpe and Loulou--cunning, ready-witted, unprincipled, and idle. Never had they heard a word of truth; their only teaching since they came into the world had been to lie and steal, but like their parents they were naturally merry and good-tempered; they had never been ill-treated, as children generally are among the vicious poor, and they were well-disposed to be generous with their pilfered plenty.
Such were the people who had rescued the orphan from Pelagie Vautrin's murderous hands, and who now washed away the blood from several cuts on his head, and applied such remedies to his poor bruised limbs as they were acquainted with. And Madame Poquet had a kind, motherly way with her that comforted poor Marcel wonderfully, and Polycarpe and Loulou showed much sympathy; and at last he was put into bed (a dirty one, it is true, but warm) with Polycarpe; and the boy fell asleep happier, notwithstanding his aches and pains, than he had been for many a year of his short life.
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For three whole days Marcel remained quietly with the Poquets, who would willingly have kept him altogether, and only hoped that Pelagie would let things be as they were. The fourth morning, however, brought a change. Scarcely had Madame Poquet taken herself and her great basket off for her day's work and pilfering, and M. Poquet slunk off a moment after to the cabaret at the corner, when Madame Vautrin appeared suddenly before the frightened eyes of the three children. She was sober, and in few words ordered Marcel to get his basket and hook and go to work. The trembling boy silently obeyed.
Chapter IV
"Alas! regardless of their doom, The little victims play! No sense have they of ills to come, Nor care beyond to-day. Yet see how all around them wait The ministers of human fate And black misfortune's baleful train."
Gray.
But Polycarpe Poquet did not drop the acquaintance so well begun; far from it; he seemed to have become really attached to the pale, weak child, who was about a year younger than himself, and proved his friendship by becoming a kind of amateur rag-picker and helping to fill the dreadful basket and leathern bag that Pelagie exacted twice a day. This business finished, he would lead off Marcel in quest of amusement, with the understood intention also of picking up a few sous as he best could, and Polycarpe was not at all particular.
All was new to Marcel; he had never yet had time to stroll through the great thoroughfares at the hours when the magnificent shops of Paris display their wonderful merchandise to tempt the luxurious rich. He had not even ever crossed the bridges since that fatal 26th of June, 1848, and knew nothing of beautiful Paris but the narrow and busy streets of the "Quartier Latin," the quarter of the great schools, of the College of France, the Sorbonne, and the Institute.
How wonder-stricken was he the day that Polycarpe conducted him to the Place de la Concorde! The sky was blue, the sun bright, the two beautiful fountains were spouting their many waters in feathery spray, the grand old chestnut-trees of the Tuileries gardens were in full bloom behind him, palaces on either side of him, and before him stretched away the magnificent avenue of the Champs Elysées, bordered by trees and flowers and grassy lawns, and bounded in the far distance by the Arch of Triumph! The boy's heart swelled within him, for the love of the beautiful was hidden in it, as well as the sense of the good and true, and he could not speak. He had never gazed before on so brilliant a scene, and he could find no words to express his feelings.
Polycarpe understood nothing of this silent admiration, and after loitering a short time around some of the cafés among the trees in the avenue, proposed going down on the quay to look at the river. They stopped for a glass of brandy at the nearest cabaret--for Marcel had learnt this dreadful habit from his friend, who had been accustomed to tipple from his very birth--and then, ready for any mischief, descended to the river's side. An old lady was standing there, gazing at the swift-flowing water, as if she were longing to throw into it a very apoplectic-looking little dog she held by a string.
"Marcel, Marcel," whispered Polycarpe, "I'm going to have some fun with that old woman. I'll squeeze some sous out of her, you see if I don't!"
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He started off running as he spoke, then suddenly stopped close to the dog.
"What a love of a dog!" cried he in apparent ecstasy. "I never saw a prettier little animal in my life! What kind of a dog do you call that, madam?"
"It is a Scotch dog, my young friend," replied the old lady, evidently much flattered; "you have very good taste, for he is really a very pretty creature."
"He is a love!" ejaculated Polycarpe.
"I have brought him here for a bath," continued the old lady. "I think that it would do him good if he would swim a little."
"That it would, madam," answered Polycarpe, stroking and kissing the fat, wheezy little animal; "but it would be well to give him a little rubbing first; his skin is rather dirty, I perceive, madam, on looking close. I'll wash him for you, if you like. I'm used to washing dogs. I wash my mother's dog every Saturday, madam."
"Really!" said the old lady. "Well, I should be glad to give Zozor a good washing, but I'm afraid he's difficult; he don't like it; he never did."
"That's nothing, madam. Julius Caesar--that's my mother's dog-- don't like it, but he's obliged to, for it's for his good. You should just see Julius Caesar when I've washed and dressed him! He's perfectly beautiful! He's a poodle, quite white, and I've cut his coat so that he has a flounce round each ankle, three rows of fringe on his hips, a fine bandelet on his side, a frill on his chest, and a magnificent tassel at the end of his tail."
"He must be very handsome," remarked the old lady, who had listened with much interest to this description.
"He is, madam. My mother says no one can dress a dog better than I can. So I'll wash Zozor, if you like; I'll not hurt him in the least."
"You're very kind, indeed," said the old lady. "I really shall be very much obliged to you. Now then, Zozor, don't be naughty; it will do you good, Zozor."
So saying, the trustful old lady undid the string attached to her pet's collar, and delivered the victim into the hypocrite's hands. In an instant the wretched little creature was smeared from head to tail with a villanous compound of black soap and soot that Polycarpe drew from one of his dirty pockets. The poor animal howled dismally as his tormentor daubed him all over, and more vehemently still when his eyes, nose, and mouth were crammed with the nasty, stinging mixture.
"Now, madam," said Polycarpe, when the poor beast was well plastered and utterly unrecognizable, "that's the first operation; and if you want me to go on, and wash it off, my charge is forty sous, paid in advance. I never give credit: it's a bad system; I've learnt that by experience."
"You wicked boy!" screamed the old lady, "you little impostor! you've killed my poor Zozor!"
The unlucky pet was rolling himself in the mud, in an agony of pain.
"You cruel, wicked boy! Oh! what shall I do? what shall I do?"
"Why, you've only to pay me the forty sous," said Polycarpe, who stood calmly contemplating the contortions of his victim, "and I'll continue my operations. Forty sous is not dear, madam, especially as I provide the soap."
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The old lady, unable to endure any longer the sight of her darling's sufferings, at last drew from her purse a piece of forty sous, and put it into the outstretched palm of the young scamp, who no sooner had closed his dirty fingers on the coin than he burst into an insulting laugh and took to his heels, leaving Zozor's mistress inarticulate with astonishment and rage.
Marcel had stood a little distance off while this scene was enacting. At first he laughed; but when he saw how much the poor dog suffered, the innate humanity of his nature was awakened, and as soon as his friend had disappeared he approached the yelling animal, and, with much difficulty and no little danger of being bitten, managed to seize him by the nape of the neck and throw him into the water. The miserable animal struggled desperately, and so got rid of a great part of the soap and soot; with the help of a boatman who had come up just in time, Marcel got him out again, and, after a little rubbing and rinsing, restored him to his weeping mistress, clean, but with blood-shot eyes and inflamed nostrils, and certainly very much the worse for his adventure.
The poor lady was profuse in her thanks. "You have saved his life," she cried; "I shall be eternally grateful to you; I will never forget you!" And she pressed her dripping darling to her heart, while she hastily climbed the steep that led from the river's side to the quay above.
Marcel followed when she was out of sight, and soon perceived Polycarpe waiting for him, and half-hidden behind one of the kiosks on the sidewalk in which newspapers are sold in Paris.
"So you washed that old woman's little monster!" cried he, as soon as he saw Marcel. "You needn't have done that. Here I've been waiting for you to go to Mother Crapaud's for a real blow-out. Come along, now, I'm as hungry as a wolf. Did you ever see an old woman so nicely done? O my eye! poor Zozor! wasn't he well soaped?"
Chapter V
"Let not Ambition mock their humble toil, Their vulgar crimes and villany obscure; Nor rich folks hear with a disdainful smile The low and petty knaveries of the poor.
"The titled villain and the thief of power, The greatest rogue that ever bore a name, Awaits alike the inevitable hour: The paths of wickedness but lead to shame."
Parody On Gray's Elegy.
Polycarpe's favorite dining-saloon, the gargote, or eating-house, of the Mère Crapaud, was situated in the Rue de la Huchette, one of the narrowest, darkest, and dirtiest of the old streets of Paris. It was a large, low room, opening from the street; the whole length of one side of it was taken up by four great furnaces which cooked the contents of the four great marmites, or boilers, that were constantly suspended over them. The contents of three of these marmites consisted of beef-soup, flavored with carrots, turnips, cabbage, onions, and garlic. The fourth generally contained stewed beans, a favorite accompaniment to the boiled beef. A kind of counter, on which stood baskets of cut bread and bowls of salad, separated the furnaces and marmites from the other part of the room, which was furnished with tables of six places each, and benches, all painted dark green. The place was smoky and grimy, and not rendered pleasanter by the presence of the Mère Crapaud herself, an enormously fat, blear-eyed old woman, possessed of a most abusive tongue. Indeed, she would have seemed better fitted to drive away than to attract customers. The Mère Crapaud, however, was very popular, and with good reason; for not only were her beef and soup the very best that could be bought for the money, but she also could be depended on in critical moments, when those whom she recognized as regular customers were in difficulties with the authorities.
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Fifteen or sixteen customers, of all ages and of both sexes, were seated at the tables when the two boys entered, and the Mère Crapaud, brandishing the great spoon with which she measured her soup, was busy behind the counter, assisted by two perspiring marmitons. [Footnote 117]
[Footnote 117: Scullions.]
"Bonjour, la mère," said Polycarpe, as he entered with the ease and swagger of a well-known and favored guest; "how goes it with you?"
"Bonjour, mauvais sujet," returned the hostess; "what brings you here, to-day?"
"Well, I followed my nose, good mother, which was attracted by the smell of your bouillon and beef, and brought me straight here. Permit me to present my friend M. Marcel, a young gentleman who is as yet unacquainted with the mysteries of your marmites."
"Mysteries! what do you mean by that, you little polisson? There are no mysteries in my soup-pots; good beef and good vegetables; find any better if you can."
"Why, I know I can't, Mother Crapaud, and that's why I've come."
"I don't intend running up a score for you, M. Polycarpe, I can tell you; so clear out, you and your friend, if you've nothing to pay with."
"But I have, Mother Crapaud. I'm a millionaire to-day, or very nearly so, and so I'm going to treat my friend and myself to two sous apiece of soup, and we'll see presently if you can give me change for this." And he tossed up into the air and caught again the silver piece he had extorted from poor Zozor's mistress.
The boys then seated themselves at one of the tables, and were presently served with a bowl of good bouillon and a hunk of bread.
"Now for a slice of fat beef, la mère," said Polycarpe, when the soup had disappeared; "six sous' worth will be enough for us two, and two sous each of stewed beans. What a cram! isn't it, Marcel?"
Marcel did indeed like his good hot dinner. Poor fellow! it was only when Polycarpe treated him that he knew what it was to eat his fill. No conscientious scruples prevented his full enjoyment of the present. Conscience, that mirror of the soul, which never flatters, never deceives, was veiled in him by the thick mists of ignorance, and the only kindnesses he ever received were from the hands of thieves.
They were finishing their beef and beans when two big, rough boys, dressed in dirty blue blouses and dirtier trousers of some nondescript color, rushed into the gargote and bellowed for something to eat. Throwing themselves on the bench opposite to that on which Polycarpe and Marcel were seated, they commenced a series of contortions, elbow nudges, whispers, and loud guffaws, which were only stopped by the arrival of their victuals. The elder of the two presently looked up, and, catching Polycarpe's fixed gaze, after a moment's hesitation exclaimed, "Well, yes! 'tis you, Polycarpe! I thought I remembered your face. I'm glad to meet you; you're a good one, I know."
Polycarpe was evidently much flattered by this recognition. "I thought I knew your face too, as soon as you sat down, Guguste, but you were so full of fun that I wouldn't interrupt you."
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"I'll make you laugh presently," replied Guguste, bursting out afresh, as did his companion also. "I'll tell you something that'll tickle you. Come now, stop your noise," he continued to his friend, who wriggled and choked in a convulsion of merriment, "or I'll punch you quiet. I'll tell you, Polycarpe, when I've put this plateful away. My eyes, what fun!"
So saying, he and his friend fell to again, and had soon finished both beef and beans. When the plates were empty, Guguste leaned his two elbows on the table and took breath. "That matter being happily finished," said he presently, "I'll tell you the other; it's a joke, a real good joke, in my opinion; what old Gorgibus the shoemaker calls it, is another thing. What do you think he calls it, eh! Touton? A riddle, perhaps. Ha, ha, a riddle!"
His friend Touton twisted and wriggled and giggled so heartily at this idea, that he fell off the bench in his ecstasy. "What a fellow you are for fun!" exclaimed Guguste, pulling him up; "but really I don't wonder at you, to-day! You must know, Poly, that I haven't had a shoe to my feet that was decent for an age, and you'll agree that that was uncomfortable and unpleasant, not to say inconvenient, especially for a man of business like myself--ha, ha! So when I got up, this morning, I said to myself--while I shaved, you know, ha, ha, ha!--that I really must find some kind of covering for my trotters. But where? That was the question. So, to settle it, Touton and I strolled about the streets until we found ourselves pretty far in the Rue St. Antoine. What should we come upon all at once but a shoe-shop, and there in the window the very kind of shoes that suited my taste. Gorgibus was the name over the door. I shall always remember it; sha'n't you, Touton?"
"Don't speak to me, Guguste; I shall burst with laughing," replied Touton. "Poor old Gorgibus, at the sign of holy Saint Crispin! Oh! don't we owe him a candle, Guguste?"
"That we do, Touton, and you shall go to the church of St. Severin, it's close by, and pay it to the good saint!"
"Not now, Guguste. Go on with the story, do; I want to know how you got your shoes," cried Polycarpe.
"Well, then," continued the young reprobate, "Touton and I consulted together for a minute, and then in we went. 'I want a good pair of shoes, monsieur,' said I very politely. 'I'm just going as clerk to a notary, and I must be well shod. What is the price of this pair?'
"Ten francs,' said he.
"So I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out my cash, and counted it over with him, and I had just nine francs. 'That's all I have,' said I, putting the money back again into my pocket; 'will you give them to me for nine francs, if they fit me?'
"'Well, yes, I will, my boy,' said the old fellow good-naturedly. Upon that I sat down and put on both shoes; they went on like gloves, so comfortable, you have no idea! Then said I, 'Now, let me see if nothing hurts when I walk;' so I walked up and down the shop, old Gorgibus standing by admiring the fit, when, just as I was passing near the door, this great vaurien of a Touton gave me a punch in the nose!"
"Ha, ha, ha!" screamed Touton, unable any longer to restrain himself, "how I cut up the street when I'd done it! and Guguste cried, 'Stop, you rascal, I'll make you pay for that!' And he ran and I ran, and old Gorgibus looked after us and laughed till he cried, and he's crying still very likely!--ha, ha, ha!--and waiting for Guguste to come back and pay for the shoes! Ha, ha, ha!"
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"Ha, ha, ha!" echoed the listeners.
"And then the neighbors," continued Guguste, wiping his eyes, "came to their doors, and kept calling out, 'He'll catch him, he'll catch him!' O Lord! what fun! And what a capital pair of shoes!" And the scamp put a foot on the table to show his prize, while the numerous customers around who had overheard the story applauded him with enthusiasm. Excited by the universal admiration, Guguste now invited the two boys to accompany him and his friend to the cabaret at the corner of the street to take a glass, an invitation most willingly accepted. The four unfortunate children accordingly, after paying for their dinners, adjourned to the wine-shop, where, in the society of bad men and worse women, they were initiated still deeper into the mysteries and the practice of crime.
Poor Marcel! poor little orphan!
To Be Continued.
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Treatise On Purgatory. [Footnote 118]
By Saint Catharine Of Genoa.
[Footnote 118: The month of November is usually set apart by pious Catholics for commemoration of the souls in purgatory, and for prayers and offerings in their behalf. As specially befitting the season, therefore, we republish anew the beautiful Treatise on Purgatory by St. Catharine of Genoa, with the above prefatory remarks by the translator. There have been several translations of the treatise heretofore published, and it might seem a needless work to give another. But besides its appropriateness to the season, and that many will read it in the pages of The Catholic World who might not elsewhere see it, the new translation we now give has special merits of its own which will justify its publication.--ED. C. W.]
When the gates of purgatory opened to Dante and his companion with awful thunderous roar, he heard mingling with the sound a chorus of voices--"We praise thee, O God!"--rising and fading away like a solemn chant and sound of the organ under the arches of some vast cathedral.
And afterward, while pursuing their journey, they felt the whole mountain of purgatory tremble. A shout arose--"Glory be to God in the Highest!"--swelled by the voice of every suffering soul in that vast realm. It was the expression of universal, unselfish joy over the deliverance of one soul from its bounds.
Such are the tones that ring all through the Treatise on Purgatory by St. Catharine of Genoa--full of praise, of holy joy, and of unselfish love. It ought to be read beneath the mild eyes of the Madonna in some old church, to the sound of solemn music. If you do not meet in it the dazzling angels of the great Florentine poet, you feel their presence, and you rejoice like him in the nooks of beauty where "spring sweet, pale flowers of penitence," refreshed by the fragrant dews of God's mercy.
The patient, silent suffering of the tried souls she describes, which are living on the glimpse they had of the divine Splendor at the moment of death, is full of eloquence. They suffer intensely, but peace and joy rise above pain, as in the beautiful bay of Spezia, we are told, the sweet water rises up out of the salt and bitter sea.
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While reading this production of genius and of inspiration, we no longer shrink from that dark region, lighted up, as it is, by rays of God's wonderful goodness. With St. Catharine, we regard it as a provision of great mercy which the soul gladly avails itself of as a means of purification, which will fit it for the awful presence of him in whose sight the very stars are not pure--a presence the soul could not endure till it had purged "the world's gross darkness off." As Faber says, "The moment that in his sight it perceives its own unfitness for heaven, it wings its voluntary flight to purgatory, like a dove to her proper nest in the shades of the forest." It cries:
"Take me away, and in the lowest deep There let me be, And there in hope the lone night-watches keep, Told out for me. There, motionless and happy in my pain, Lone, not forlorn, There will I sing my sad perpetual strain, Until the morn. There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast, Which ne'er can cease To throb, and pine, and languish, till possessed Of its sole peace. There will I sing my absent Lord and Love:-- Take me away, That sooner I may rise, and go above, And see him in the truth of everlasting day." [Footnote 119]
[Footnote 119: Dream of Gerontius, by Father Newman.]
M. le Vicomte de Bussierre, in writing of this treatise, says: "But is the state described by the saint that of all the souls detained by divine justice in this place of expiation?" The reply to this question requires some preliminary observations.
The dogma of the church respecting purgatory is very brief. The Holy Council of Trent is satisfied with declaring that there is a purgatory, and that the souls therein detained are helped by the suffrages of the faithful.
The church does not define the nature of the sufferings endured there, but this is our idea of them:
This world is a place of probation. In it are prepared the materials for the construction of the New Jerusalem. Not only stones are wanted for its walls, but jewels for its decoration. Diamonds are not cut in the same manner as common stones. Thence we can perceive the necessity of different ways of preparing the righteous for a higher state of existence. The place each one will occupy in heaven is irrevocably fixed at the moment of death, but, before taking possession of it, he must have the highest polish of which he is susceptible, and be without any defect or stain.
Take two persons who are entering purgatory. One has passed his life in gross sensual pleasures, but absolution with the necessary dispositions has restored him to the paths of righteousness; the other has always lived in innocence and in the closest union with God, but slight imperfections deprive him for a time of the beatific vision. Shall it be said that the manner of purifying these two souls is the same, and that their purgatory only differs in point of duration? It does not seem probable. We do not use the same means for removing a stain from a garment that we should for a particle of dust on a polished mirror.
This explanation will better enable us to understand St. Catharine's treatise. Most Christians believe there are sensible pains in purgatory. It is the view commonly taken of that state by our preachers. Our saint does not contradict this opinion. She speaks of a special purification for certain souls, but without excluding any. The soul in question in her treatise is a diamond already cut with wonderful exactness, and from which the Divine Artist is removing the last stain before placing it among his choicest jewels.
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Faber says there are two views of purgatory prevailing among Christians, indicative of the peculiar tone of the mind of those who have embraced them.
One is, that it is a place of sensible torture, where the least pain is greater than all the pains of earth put together--an intolerable prison-house, full of wailing and horror; visited by angels, indeed, but only as the instruments of God's awful justice. The spirit of this view is a horror of offending Almighty God, a habitual trembling before his judgments, and a great desire for bodily austerities.
The second view does not deny any of these features, but it gives more prominence to other considerations. "The spirit of this view is love, an extreme desire that God should not be offended, and a yearning for the interests of Jesus." It is not so much a question of selfish consideration with the soul, as of God's will and glory. "Its sweet prison, its holy sepulchre, is in the adorable will of its Heavenly Father, and there it abides the term of its purification with the most perfect contentment and the most unutterable love."
In short, this second view is that of St. Catharine of Genoa, which comes home to our hearts, as we read her treatise, with joyful conviction--giving new conceptions of that holy realm of pain.
This treatise is not the production of human vanity. St. Catharine only wrote by the express wish of her spiritual director, who fathomed her genius and knew her familiarity with the secrets of the Most High. It is, in the estimation of judges of the highest authority, one of the most astonishing and admirable productions of mystical theology, says M. de Bussierre. And it has been approved of by the Holy See, and by the Sacred Congregation of Rites.
It was one of the favorite books of St. Francis de Sales, with whose spirit it is so greatly in harmony, and he calls the authoress a seraph.
And Faber styles her, "The Great Doctress of Purgatory."
St. Catharine was contemporary with Christopher Columbus, being born a few years later in the same city. And she was the grand-niece of Pope Innocent IV., who first gave, authoritatively, the name of Purgatory to the Intermediate State, and who was, like her, of the noble house of the Fieschi.
The French author so often quoted says: "There are many expressions in this work to which a forced meaning is not to be given. St. Catharine represents a soul as strictly united to God as it can be without being absorbed in the divinity. But she does not annihilate individuality. She does not teach pantheism. She only expresses the doctrine of St. Paul, 'In ipso vivimus, et movemur, et sumus:' 'In him we live, and we move, and we are.'"
How she makes us long for that union, and welcome all that hastens it! We would join with all our earth-worn heart in that "liturgy of hallowed pain." "O world!" we cry with Faber--"O weary, clamorous, sinful world! who would not break away, if he could, like an uncaged dove, from thy perilous toils and unsafe pilgrimage, and fly with joy to the lowest place in that most pure, most safe, most holy land of suffering and of sinless love?"
(Hector Vernaccia, who first published the works of St. Catharine of Genoa, wrote the following preface to her Treatise on Purgatory:)
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"The soul of Catharine, still clad in the flesh, was plunged in the furnace of God's ardent love, which consumed and purified her from every imperfection, so that at the end of her life she was fitted to pass at once into the presence of God, the only object of her affection. This interior fire made her comprehend that the souls in purgatory are placed there to be purified from the rust and stain of the sins which they had not expiated on earth. Swallowed up in this divine and purging fire, she acquiesced in the will of God, rejoicing in all his love wrought in her; she clearly understood what must be the state of the souls in purgatory, and thus wrote thereof:"
Chapter I
State Of The Souls In Purgatory-- They Are Divested Of All Self-love.
The souls which are confined in purgatory, as it is given me to understand, can wish for no other dwelling-place than that wherein God hath justly placed them.
They have no longer the power of reviewing their past lives. Nor can they say: "I deserve to remain here for such and such sins. Would that I had not committed them! Then should I be participating in the joys of heaven." Neither can they compare the duration of their punishment with that of others. They have neither in good nor evil any remembrance which aggravates their pains, not even respecting others; but they feel a great satisfaction in being at the disposal of God, who doeth all that seemeth to him good, and as it pleaseth him, so that in their greatest sufferings they cannot think of themselves. They regard only the goodness of God, whose infinite mercy would draw all men to himself. They anticipate neither the pain nor the solace that may be their portion: if they could, they would not be in a state of pure love.
Nor do they see that they are suffering in punishment of their sins. They cannot retain such a view in their minds, for that would be an active imperfection, and impossible in a place where there is no actual sin.
Only once, at the moment of quitting this world, do they see the cause of purgatory which they have in themselves, but never afterward, or there would be some selfish consideration. Being in a state of pure love, from which they cannot deviate by actual fault, they can only will and desire what is conformable to that pure love. For in the flames of purgatory they are under the divine ordinance and will; that is to say, in that state of pure charity from which they can no longer be separated by any cause whatever, because it is as impossible for them to commit actual sin as it is to acquire actual merit.
Chapter II
Of The Joy Of The Souls In Purgatory-- Comparison Which Shows How These Souls Behold God More And More Clearly-- Difficulty Of Describing This State.
I do not believe that there can be any peace comparable to that felt by the souls in purgatory, unless that of the saints in paradise. And each day this peace increases by the influence which God exercises over the soul. It increases in proportion as the impediment to that influence is consumed.
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This impediment is nothing else than the rust of sin. The fire consuming the rust, the soul is more and more exposed to the divine influence. An object which is covered cannot correspond to the reverberation of the sun's rays; not by any fault of the sun, which ceases not to shine, but because of the covering on the object. If that be consumed, the object beneath is laid open to the sun; and the more completely the covering is consumed, the more perfect the reverberation.
So the fire of purgatory wears away the rust of sin which covers the soul, exposing it to God--the true sun--in proportion to its purity, and, in the same proportion, increasing its peace. So that its happiness goes on increasing and the rust wearing away till the time be fully accomplished.
The pain which results from the desire of beholding God does not diminish, but the time of its duration does. As to their will, these souls can never say their pains are pains, so satisfied are they with the will of God, with which their will is united in purest love.
On the other hand, nevertheless, they endure a torment so extreme that no tongue can depict it--no understanding grasp the least comprehension of it, unless by a special grace from God. He has given me some idea of it, but I cannot well express it. What the Lord has revealed to me has always remained imprinted on my mind. I will relate what I can of it. They will understand me to whom God giveth the intelligence.
Chapter III
Separation From God The Greatest Torment Of Purgatory-- Wherein Purgatory Differs From Hell.
All pain is the consequence of original or actual sin. God created the soul perfectly pure, and gave it a certain instinct for happiness which forces it toward him as its true centre.
Original sin enfeebles this instinct in the soul at the beginning. Actual sin diminishes it still more. The more this instinct diminishes the worse the soul becomes, because God's grace to the soul is withdrawn in proportion.
All goodness is only by participation in the goodness of God, which is constantly communicated, even to those creatures which are deprived of reason, according to his will and ordinance. As to the soul endowed with reason, he communicates his grace to it in proportion as he finds it freed from the obstacle of sin. Consequently, when a guilty soul recovers in a measure its primitive purity, its instinct for happiness also returns and increases with such impetuosity and so great an ardor of love, drawing it to its chief end, that every obstacle becomes to it an insupportable torment. And the more clearly it sees what detains it from union with God, the more excessive is its pain.
But the souls in purgatory being freed from the guilt of sin, there is no other impediment between God and them but this pain which prevents the complete satisfaction of their instinct for happiness; and they see in the clearest manner that the least impediment delays this satisfaction by a necessity of justice: thence springs up a devouring fire, like to that of hell, excepting the guilt.
This guilt constitutes the malignant will of the damned, which obliges God to withhold his goodness from them; so they remain in a fixed state of despair and malignity, with a will wholly opposed to the divine will.
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Chapter IV
State Of The Soul In Hell-- Difference Between It And That Of The Soul In Purgatory-- Reflections Upon Those Who Neglect The Affairs Of Salvation.
It is, then, clear that the perverse will of man in revolt against the will of God constitutes sin, and that the guilt of sin cannot be effaced from the soul while it is under the dominion of that evil will.
Now, the souls in hell departed this life with a perverse will; consequently, their guilt has not been washed away, and now cannot be, because death has rendered their will unchangeable. The soul is for ever fixed in a state of good or evil, according to the disposition of the will at the moment of death. Wherefore it is written: Ubi te invenero, that is to say, Wherever I find thee at the hour of death--with a will to sin or to repent of sin--ibi te judicabo, there will I judge thee; and from this judgment there is no appeal, because, all freedom of choice ceasing with life, the soul must remain unalterably fixed in the state in which death finds it.
The souls in hell are guilty to an infinite degree, being found with a sinful will at the moment of death. Their pain is not so great as they merit, but it will never end.
As for the souls in purgatory, they only endure pain. Guilt was effaced before death by a true sorrow for having offended the divine goodness. This pain is finite, and the time of its duration is constantly diminishing.
O misery transcending all other woes, and so much the greater because the blindness of man takes no precaution against it!
The torments of the damned, we have said, are not infinite in their rigor. The great goodness of God extends a ray of mercy even to hell. A man expiring in a state of deadly sin merits a punishment infinite in duration and in intensity. God, in his justice, could have inflicted on the damned torments far greater than they have to endure; but while he has rendered them infinite as to their duration, he has limited their intensity.
Oh! how dangerous is voluntary sin; for repentance is difficult, and, unrepented of, the guilt of sin remains, and will remain as long as man retains his affection for past sins or has the will to commit them anew.
V. Of The Peace And Joy In Purgatory
The souls in purgatory, being entirely freed from the guilt of sin, and thus far restored to their original purity, and their volition being entirely conformed to that of God, they are constantly participating in his goodness.
Their guilt is remitted because, before departing this life, they repented of their sins and confessed them with a firm purpose not to commit any more. They retain, then, only the rust of sin which is worn away by those penal fires.
Being thus cleansed from all sin and united to God by their will, they contemplate him clearly according to the degree of light which is given them. They comprehend how important it is that they should enjoy God, the end for which they were created. They feel so united to him by entire conformity of will, and are attracted so powerfully toward him by a natural instinct, that I find no comparison, or examples, or way by which I can express this impetuosity as I understand it. Nevertheless, I will give a comparison which has been suggested to my mind.
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Chapter VI
Comparison Illustrating The Ardent Love With Which The Souls In Purgatory Long For Union With God.
If in all the world there were but one loaf, the mere sight of which would satiate the hunger of all creatures, what would be the feelings of a man, with a natural instinct to eat when he is in health, if he were neither able to eat, nor yet to be ill or to die? His hunger would always be increasing with its undiminished instinct, and, knowing that he could be satiated by the very sight of this loaf of which he is deprived, he remains in unbearable torments. The nearer he approaches it, the more ravenous is his hunger, which draws him toward this food, the object of his desire.
If he were sure of never beholding this bread, he would endure a kind of hell, like that of the eternally lost, who are deprived of the Bread of Life and of the hope of ever beholding Christ our Redeemer.
The souls in purgatory, on the contrary, hope to behold this bread and to eat their fill thereof; but meanwhile they suffer the torments of a cruel hunger after it--that is to say, after Jesus Christ, the God of our salvation and our love.
Chapter VII
Of The Wonderful Wisdom Of God In The Creation Of Purgatory And Hell.
As the purified soul finds its repose only in God, for whom it was created, so the soul defiled by sin has no other place but hell assigned it for its destination.
The soul, at the moment of its separation from the body, naturally gravitates toward its true centre. If in a state of deadly sin, it goes to its appointed place, carried there by the very nature of sin. If it did not find this place provided for it by divine justice, it would remain in a worse hell; for it would no longer be under the ordinance of God, still participating in his mercy, and where the pain is less than the soul merits.
Not finding, then, any place better suited to it, or less fearful than hell, by divine appointment it gees thither as to its own place.
It is the same with purgatory. The soul, separated from the body, not finding in itself all its primitive purity, and seeing that this impediment to its union with God can only be removed by means of purgatory, voluntarily throws itself therein. If the place prepared for the removal of this impediment did not exist, there would instantaneously be generated in the soul a torture far worse than purgatory, for it would comprehend that this impediment would hinder it from union with God, its aim and its end.
This end is so ardently longed for, that the torments of purgatory seem as nothing, although, as we have said, they are like those of hell in some respects. But, I repeat, they seem as nothing compared with the soul's true end.
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Chapter VIII
Of The Necessity Of Purgatory And The Terrible Nature Of Its Torments.
Furthermore I will say: the gates of heaven, through the goodness of God, are closed against no one. Whoever wishes can enter, for the Lord is full of mercy, and his arms are constantly extended to receive us into glory.
But I see also that this divine essence is of such purity, surpassing all we can imagine, that the soul which perceives in itself the slightest mote of imperfection would cast itself into a thousand hells rather than remain with a single stain in the presence of infinite Majesty.
Therefore, seeing purgatory ordained for the removal of these stains, the soul plunges into it, esteeming it a provision of wonderful mercy by which it can be freed from the impediment it finds in itself.
No tongue can express, no mind conceive, the nature of purgatory. As to the severity of its torments, they equal those of hell. [Footnote 120] Nevertheless, the soul with the slightest stain endures them as a merciful dispensation, regarding them as nothing in comparison with what opposes their union with God.
[Footnote 120: Except that the souls in purgatory are not separated from the love and will of God, and have hope.]
I seem to understand that the sorrow of the souls in purgatory for having in themselves the cause of God's displeasure, resulting from their past offences against his great goodness--I seem to understand, I say, that this sorrow surpasses all the other torments which they endure in this place of purification. Being in a state of grace, they comprehend the force and seriousness of the obstacle which hinders their union with God.
Chapter IX
The Mutual Love Of God And The Souls In Purgatory-- Difficulty Of Finding Expressions On This Subject.
Everything which has been revealed to me upon this subject, and which I have comprehended according to the capacity of my mind, is of so much importance that, compared therewith, all the knowledge, all the sayings, all the opinions, all the reason, and all the wisdom of man in this life seem as vain trifles and as things of no account. I acknowledge, to my confusion, that I can find no other words to express my meaning.
I perceive so great a conformity between God and the soul in purgatory that, in order to restore the latter to its original purity, God inspires in the soul an ardent love which draws it toward him--a love forcible enough to annihilate it, were it not immortal. It transforms it to such a degree that the soul beholds nothing but God, who draws and inflames it continually, without ever abandoning it, till he has brought it back to the source whence it issued, that is to say, to the perfect purity in which it was created.
And when the soul, interiorly enlightened, feels itself thus attracted by the fire of God's great love, it melts completely in its ardor. It sees, by a supernatural light, that God never ceases to lead it on, with constant providential care, to its entire perfection; it sees that God is prompted only by pure love, and that the soul, impeded by the effects of sin, can only follow the divine impulse, that is to say, that attraction which draws it toward God; it comprehends also the greatness of the obstacle which hinders its admission to the presence of the divine light; finally, it is drawn by that powerful instinct which would have nothing hinder it from yielding to the divine attraction: it sees and feels all these things, I say, and therein is the source of the soul's torments in purgatory.
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But it does not regard its pain, however great: it regards infinitely more the obstacle the will of God finds in it, that will which it clearly sees is full of the purest and most ardent love for it.
This love and this unitive attraction act so continually and so powerfully upon the soul, that if it could find another purgatory more terrible than this, in which it could be sooner delivered from all that separates it from the Sovereign Good, it would speedily plunge therein, through the impetuosity of the love it bears to God.
Chapter X
How God Purifies The Soul In Purgatory-- The Soul Acquires Therein Such Perfect Purity That Were It To Remain There After Its Purification It Would Suffer No More.
I behold, also, the ardent rays of divine love toward the souls of men penetrating and potent enough to destroy, not only the body, but the soul even, if that were possible.
These rays produce two effects: they purify, and they annihilate.
Look at gold: the more you melt it the purer it becomes, and you could go on refining it till every impurity is destroyed. Such is the effect of fire upon material things. Though the soul cannot annihilate itself in God, it can in its own self; and the more it is purified, the more completely is it annihilated in itself, till at last it rests quite pure in God.
It is said that gold, when it is purified to a certain degree, no longer diminishes, whatever degree of heat it may be exposed to, because nothing but the dross can be consumed. The divine fire acts in like manner upon the soul. God holds it in the fire till every imperfection is consumed. He thus reduces all souls to a state of purity, each one according to its own degree of perfection.
And when the soul is thus purified it rests altogether in God, without retaining anything in itself. It has its being then in God. And when he has brought the soul to himself, thus purified, it becomes impassible, for there is nothing left in it to be consumed. And should it still remain in the fire after being thus purified, it would suffer no longer. That fire would be to it a flame of divine love itself eternal life, in which the soul could experience no more contradictions.
Chapter XI
The Souls In Purgatory Desire To Purified From Every Stain Of Sin-- Of The Wisdom Of God In Immediately Concealing From These Souls Their Faults.--
The soul was originally endowed with all the means of attaining its own degree of perfection, by living in conformity with the laws of God and keeping itself pure from all stain of sin. But, being contaminated by original sin, it loses its gifts and graces. It dies, and can only rise again by the assistance of God. And when he has raised it to life again by baptism, a bad inclination still remains in the soul, leading it, if unresisted, to actual sin, by which it dies anew. God raises it again by another special grace; nevertheless it remains so soiled, so fallen back upon itself, that, to be restored to the state of purity in which God created it, it has need of all the divine operations before mentioned to enable it to return to its primitive condition.
When the soul is on its way back to this state, its desire of being lost in God is so great as to become the purgatory of the soul.
Purgatory is nothing to it as purgatory. The burning instinct which forces it toward God, only to find an impediment, constitutes its real torture.
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By a last act of love, God, the author of this plan for the perfection of the soul, works without the concurrence of man; for there are in the soul so many hidden imperfections that if it saw them it would be in despair. But the state of which we have just spoken destroys them all. It is only when they are obliterated that God shows them to the soul, in order that it may comprehend the divine operation wrought by this fire of love consuming all its imperfections.
XII. How Joyfully Suffering Is Endured In Purgatory
Remember that what man considers perfect in itself, is full of defects in the eyes of God. Everything man does which has the appearance of perfection from the point of view in which he sees it, or feels, understands, wills, or recalls it, is soiled and infected if he does not attribute it to God.
Our deeds are perfect only when they are wrought by us, without considering ourselves the principal agents, and when they are referred to God, we being only his instruments.
Such are precisely the final operations of pure love wrought by God himself in the soul, without any merit on our part. These operations are so ardent and so penetrating in their effects upon the soul, that it seems as though the body which envelops it would be consumed as in a great fire where death alone could give relief.
It is true that the love of God which fills the soul in purgatory inspires it, according to my comprehension, with a joy that cannot be expressed. But this satisfaction does not take away one particle of the pain. Nay, it is the hindering of love from the possession of its object which causes the pain, and the pain is in proportion to the perfection of the love of which God has made the soul capable.
Thus it is that the souls in purgatory at once enjoy the greatest tranquillity and endure the greatest pain; and the one in no way hinders the other.
Chapter XIII
No Merit Is Acquired In Purgatory-- In What Manner The Souls In Purgatory Regard The Suffrages Made In Their Behalf On Earth.
If the stains of the souls in purgatory could be effaced by contrition, the divine justice might in an instant be satisfied, so profound and ardent is their sorrow in view of the great obstacle which opposes their union with God, their chief end and their love.
But, remember, God has decreed that the last farthing is to be demanded of these souls for the satisfaction of eternal justice. As to them, they have no choice; they can now see and wish only what God wishes. This is the unalterable state of their souls.
If some spiritual alms are given on earth to abridge the time of their sufferings, they cannot regard them with affection, only as they are weighed in the equitable scales of the divine will, leaving God to act according to his own pleasure, and to pay himself and his justice in the way his own infinite goodness chooses to select.
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If it were possible for them to regard these alms apart from the good pleasure of God, they would be guilty of an act of appropriation which would deprive them of the knowledge of the divine will, and thus making their abode a hell.
Thus they receive every appointment of God with tranquillity, and neither joy, nor satisfaction, nor sufferings can ever induce them to fall back upon themselves.
Chapter XIV
Of The Submission Of The Souls In Purgatory To The Will Of God.
These souls are so perfectly conformed to the will of God that they are always satisfied with his holy decrees.
If a soul were admitted to the vision of God, having still something left to be cleansed away, it would consider itself grievously injured and its sufferings worse than many purgatories, for it would be unable to endure that excessive goodness and that perfect justice.
What an incongruity it would be in the sight of God, as well as of the soul, for his justice not to be entirely satisfied! If this soul lacked a single moment of expiation, it would feel an insupportable torture, and would plunge into a thousand hells to remove this little rust rather than remain in the presence of God without being entirely purified.
XV. A Warning To People Of The World
Would that I could cry loud enough to frighten all the men who dwell upon the face of the earth, and say to them: O miserable men! why do you suffer yourselves to be so blinded by the world as not to make any provision for that imperious necessity in which you will find yourselves at the moment of death?
You all shelter yourselves under the hope of God's mercy, which you call so infinite. But do you not see that it is precisely this great goodness of God which will rise up in judgment against you, miserable men, for rebelling against the will of so good a Lord?
His goodness should incite you to the full accomplishment of his will, instead of encouraging you to sin with impunity; for, be fully assured, his justice can never fail, and it must, in some way, be entirely satisfied.
Do not reassure yourself by saying: I will confess all my sins, I will gain a plenary indulgence, and thus I shall be cleansed at once from all my iniquities; and so I shall be saved. Remember that contrition and confession are necessary to gain a plenary indulgence. And perfect contrition is so difficult to acquire that, if you knew how difficult it is, you would tremble for very fear, and would be much more certain of not gaining the indulgence than of obtaining such a grace.
Chapter XVI
In Which It Is Shown That The Torments Of Purgatory Do Not Affect The Peace And Joy Of The Souls Therein Detained.
I see that the souls suffering in purgatory are conscious of two operations of divine grace in them.
By the first of these operations they willingly endure their sufferings. Considering, on the one hand, what they have merited, and, on the other, the incomprehensible majesty of an offended God, they understand the extent of his mercy toward them. For a single sin merits a thousand hells eternal in duration; but the goodness of God tempers justice with mercy in accepting the precious blood of Jesus Christ in satisfaction for sin. So that these souls endure their torments so willingly that they would not have them diminish one iota. They see how fully they are merited, and how righteously they are ordained: and as to their will, it no more revolts against that of God than if they were participating in the joys of eternal life.
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The second operation of grace in these souls consists in the peace with which they are filled in view of the divine ordinances, and the love and mercy of God manifested in their behalf.
The knowledge of these two operations is imprinted by God on these souls in an instant, and, as they are in a state of grace, they comprehend them, every one according to his capacity. They feel a great joy, which, far from diminishing, goes on increasing in proportion as the time for their union with God approaches.
These souls do not view these things in themselves or as belonging to themselves; they view them in God, with whom they are far more occupied than with their own torments. For the least glimpse man has of God transcends every pain and every imaginable joy.
Nevertheless, their excessive joy does not in the least detract from their pain, nor their extreme pain in the least from their joy.
Chapter XVII
In Which St. Catharine Applies What She Has Written Of The Souls In Purgatory To What She Has Felt And Experienced In Her Own Soul.
My own soul has experienced the same state of purification as that of the souls in purgatory--especially within two years--and each day I see and feel this more clearly. My soul remains in the body as in a purgatory, but only in such a degree of suffering as the body can endure without dying. And this suffering will go on increasing by degrees till the body is no longer able to support it, and will really die.
My mind has become unused to all things, even spiritual, which could refresh it, such as joy, pleasure, or consolation. It is no longer able, by will, understanding, or memory, to relish anything, whether of a temporal or spiritual nature, so that I can say one thing pleases me more than another.
My soul has been so besieged, as it were, that by degrees it has been deprived of all that could refresh me spiritually or corporally. Even this privation makes me feel the power these things have of nourishing and refreshing me; but the soul, conscious of this power, loathes and abhors them to such a degree that they have ceased for ever to tempt me.
For it is an instinct of the soul to strive to overcome every obstacle to its perfection--an instinct so cruelly exacting that it would, as it were, allow itself to be cast into hell to achieve its object. It goes on then depriving itself of everything in which the inner man can delight, and this with so much subtlety that the slightest imperfection is noted and detested.
The outer man, being no longer sustained by the consolations of the soul, suffers to such a degree that, humanly speaking, it can find nothing on earth to sustain it. There remains for it no other consolation than God, who ordereth all these things in infinite mercy and love, for the satisfaction of his justice. This view inspires me with great peace and joy, which, nevertheless, do net diminish the violence of my sufferings; but no pain could be severe enough to induce me to deviate in the least from the order of things established by God. {278} Nor would I leave this prison till the Lord hath accomplished his designs upon me. My peace consists in satisfying the justice of God, and I could find no torment greater than in deviating from his ordinance, so perfectly just and good does it seem to me.
I see--I feel, as it were--all the things I have here related; but I find no words to express my meaning suitably as to what I have here written. I have felt its operation in my own soul, which has given me the necessary knowledge for writing about it.
The prison in which I seem to be is the world; the chain that binds me therein is the body. And the soul, illuminated by grace, recognizes the importance of the obstacles which hinder it from attaining its true end. This causes great grief to the soul, on account of its extreme sensibility. Nevertheless, it receives, through the pure grace of God, a certain impress of dignity, which not only assimilates it to God, but renders it in a manner one with him by a participation of his goodness. And, as it is impossible for God to suffer, so the soul which lives in union with him becomes impassible, and the more complete this union the more it shares in the divine attributes.
But the delay of this union causes an intolerable suffering in the soul. And this suffering and this delay make it different from what it was at its creation. God, by his grace, makes known to it its original condition. Without the power of returning to it, and yet feeling itself adapted to that condition, it remains in a state of suffering proportionate to its love for God. This love increases with the soul's knowledge of God, and its knowledge increases in the same ratio as the soul is purified from sin. Thus this delay becomes more and more intolerable, because the soul, entirely absorbed in God, has nothing more to hinder it from truly knowing him.
The man who prefers to suffer death rather than offend God is not the less fully alive to its pangs, but the divine grace inspires him with a fervor which makes him think more of the honor of God than the life of the body. It is the same with the soul that knows the will of God. It regards that as of infinitely more importance than all interior or exterior sufferings whatever, however terrible they may be; for the Lord who worketh in it surpasses all that can be felt or imagined. The result is that the slightest hold of God upon the soul keeps it so united to his supreme will that everything else is esteemed as nothing. The soul thus loses all consideration of self. It becomes so regardless of pain that it does not speak of it or even feel it. It is conscious of its real condition for one moment only--as has been said before--when passing from this life to the next.
I will only add, in conclusion: let us become thoroughly impressed with the fact that God, at once good and powerful, has created purgatory for the purification of man, wherein is consumed and annihilated all that he is by nature.
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The Charities of New York.
If we recur again to a subject on which we have two or three times already addressed the readers of The Catholic World, it is because we are so deeply impressed with its importance, and because we are persuaded that in any matter which so highly concerns the Catholic cause all our friends must be heartily interested. The generosity of Catholics toward their church is almost proverbial. They give more to religion than any other denomination; they give more liberally in proportion to their means; and they give spontaneously. And nowhere is their generosity more strikingly shown than in the great cities of America, where they have built so many scores of costly churches, and raised up convents and orphan asylums, and where they have given almost every parish its free school, though the law has compelled them likewise to pay taxes for the support of common-schools to which they cannot in conscience entrust their children. Here, in New York City, we have had a particularly heavy task to perform. As this is the landing-place of most of the Catholic immigrants, besides being the chief city and business centre of the country, the growth of the Catholic population has been especially rapid, and it has grown in principal measure by the influx of the poorer classes, who, while they stand in greatest need of the help of the Church, are able to do least for its support. It is a notorious fact that, while a large proportion of the more thrifty immigrants move out to the West, and help to build up Catholicism in our new States and territories, the destitute and shiftless almost invariably remain in the large cities. Hence, the growth in the material resources of the Church in New York does not keep pace with the growth in its numbers. The well-to-do immigrants who have settled here, and the American-born Catholics, children of the last generation of settlers, or else converts from Protestantism, have a task of peculiar difficulty, as they must provide not only for the natural increase in their own numbers, but for the spiritual wants of their poorer brethren, who have no means of providing for themselves. And it is a task which seems to grow harder and harder every year. The congregations increase much faster than the churches. Children multiply faster than the schools. With all the unremitting labors of our successive bishops and archbishops, and all the untiring exertions of our zealous priests, there are not yet churches enough in New York City.
We must remember this peculiar condition of our Church when we undertake to compare Catholic with Protestant charities. The noblest work of benevolence is that which assists our neighbor to save his soul; and Catholics understand perfectly well that they can make no better disposition of their alms than in contributing to supply the poor with opportunities of hearing Mass, receiving the sacraments, and learning the principles and precepts of their faith. Hence, their liberality has been directed first toward the building of churches and the education of priests, and next toward the support of Catholic schools. {280} While there was so much to be done in these directions, they felt comparatively little disposition to spare either money or attention in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, or nursing the sick. Of these corporal works of mercy they have, indeed, done much in proportion to their means; but they have, very rightly, thought more of feeding the hungry soul than the hungry stomach, more of curing the sick heart than the wounded body.
While Catholics have thus been so much occupied in looking after the things of God, that they have been unable to devote more than an ordinary amount of care to the physical wants of God's unfortunate children, the case with Protestants has been very different. They are in no want of churches; they have more already than they know how to fill. They need no free-schools, for the State system of education satisfies all their requirements. They have abundant wealth, and are willing to devote a share of it to benevolent purposes. In the majority of cases we believe that they give to such enterprises out of the best religious motives; for we have no patience with the narrowness of mind which suspects the disinterestedness of all Protestant charity, and seems to imagine that no man who is so unfortunate as to be a heretic can possibly do a good deed from a good impulse. Many Protestant benevolent institutions are maintained, no doubt, for the purpose of bribing poor destitute Catholics to abandon their faith; but all are not. Protestants are doing a great deal in the way of genuine beneficence; and it is more becoming, as well as more politic, for us to frankly recognize and imitate whatever praiseworthy actions they perform, than to inquire too closely and suspiciously into their ulterior motives.
A book which has recently been published in New York puts us in a position to compare, with very little trouble, the work accomplished by Protestants and Catholics in the way of organized charity in this city. Its title is, The Charities of New York, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, by Henry J. Cammann and Hugh N. Camp. (Octavo, pp. 597. Hurd & Houghton.) The authors have had much to do with various institutions of benevolence--principally, we believe, with those connected with the Protestant Episcopal denomination; and their purpose in preparing this volume was to give a brief history and description of all the organized private charities of New York and its suburbs, partly to show what has been done for the relief of suffering humanity, and partly to guide alms-givers in making an intelligent disposition of their liberality. They seem to have performed their task with care and impartiality, permitting each institution to speak for itself through one of its officers or special friends, or in an official report, and making no attempt to compare the number and efficiency of the establishments of different faiths. A conscientious desire to be just toward Catholic, Protestant, and Jew is apparent throughout. The record is not a complete one; but the deficiency, we have reason to believe, is the consequence, in chief measure, of the neglect or unwillingness of the proper persons to furnish the requisite information. We have supplied these omissions as far as possible, but the story is not yet told in full; though for purposes of comparison the table which we give below is probably sufficient. We have added several important societies and institutions which are not included in the book, namely, the New York Prison Association, St. Stephen's Home, St. Francis' German Hospital, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and some others; and we have omitted all which are supported entirely, or almost entirely, by appropriations from the city or State, such as Bellevue Hospital, the New York Blind Asylum, etc., as well as those which do not properly belong to New York City. {281} The figures represent the number of persons who have obtained aid of shelter from these various organizations during the past year. The admirable Mission-House in St. James' parish has gone into operation since last year, and therefore cannot be included in the table.
CATHOLIC.
1. St. Vincent's Hospital, 832 2. St. Francis's German Hospital, 592 3. St. Stephen's Home for Destitute Little Girls, 100 4. St. Patrick's Male Orphan Asylum, 550 5. St. Patrick's Female Orphan Asylum, 390 6. St. Joseph's Orphan Asylum, 150 7. St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum, 85 8. House of the Good Shepherd, 500 9. Institution of Mercy, 2845 10. St. Vincent de Paul Society, [Footnote 121] ---- Total 6044
[Footnote 121: Lack of information obliges us to leave several blanks in the above table, where figures should appear.]
PROTESTANT AND JEWISH.
1. St. Luke's Hospital 1027 2. Society for the Relief of the Ruptured and Crippled, 1684 3. Women's Hospital, 189 4. German Hospital and Dispensary, ---- 5. Eye and Ear Infirmary, 8038 6. Mount Sinai Hospital, 1028 7. Infirmary for Women and Children, 137 8. Nursery and Child's Hospital 572 9. Leake and Watts Orphan House, 100 10. St. Luke's Home for Indigent Christian Females, 31 11. American Female Guardian Society and Home for the Friendless, 5033 12. P. E. House of Mercy, 112 13. Orphan Asylum, 186 14. Colored Orphan Asylum, 254 15. Orphan Home and Asylum of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 158 16. Society for the Relief of Half-Orphan and Destitute Children 230 17. Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society 150 18. Five Points House of Industry, 1000 19. The Sheltering Arms, 157 20. Children's Aid Society, 8192 21. Five Points Mission ---- 22. Association for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females, 79 23. Magdalen Society, 37 24. Ladies' Union Aid Society, 65 25. Colored Home 800 26. Union Home and School for Children of Volunteer Soldiers and Sailors, 330 27. Asylum for Lying-in Women, 395 28. Women's Prison Association, 350 29. New-York Prison Association ---- 30. Presbyterian Home for Aged Women, 22 31. Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with small Children, ---- 32. Howard Mission and Home for Little Wanderers, 100 33. Working-Women's Protective Union, ---- 34. Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, ---- 35. The Home, in West-Houston street, 112 36. Samaritan Home for the Aged, ---- 37. Protestant Episcopal City Mission, ---- 38. Working-Woman's Home, 120 39. Ladies' Christian Union, 150 40. House and School of Industry, 102 Total, 31,860
This is not a pleasing comparison. Out of fifty institutions here enumerated, only ten belong to us. Out of 37,904 persons annually relieved by the fifty charities, our share is only 6044. The case is not so bad, however, as it appears on first inspection. Our Sisters of Charity and Mercy perform an immense amount of benevolent work outside of their own houses and asylums, nursing the sick, consoling the afflicted, watching in public hospitals, feeding the hungry, and visiting the prisoner; work which cannot be measured by figures, because there is no record of it except in heaven. Benevolent labor of the kind to which our sisterhoods devote themselves is undertaken by various of the non-Catholic organizations enumerated in the above table, and largely increases their apparent predominance over our own establishments, because they sum up in statistical form what is done, and we do not. Then again, several of the charities set down as Protestant are entirely unsectarian in their character, and we dare say draw a fair proportion of their support from Catholic sources. Not so bad as it seems, we say; yet surely bad enough. {282} Perhaps we ought not even to claim credit for what the sisterhoods do; for theirs are in reality labors of individual benevolence, and the Catholic community at large shares little or nothing of the expense, the trouble, or the merit of them. The Catholics of New York are supposed to number four hundred thousand--nearly half the population of the city--and it is notorious that they comprise a great deal more than half the pauper population. Are we doing a fair proportion of the work of taking care of our poor? Moreover, pauperism increases ten times as fast as the whole population. The growth of the entire number of inhabitants in thirty-four years has been ninety per cent; the increase in the number of those receiving charitable relief has been during the same period no less than nine hundred per cent. What provision are we making to meet the terrible responsibility which this state of society entails?
We can hardly question that the time has come when the physical wants of these unfortunate classes should awaken in us serious consideration. We have done well to look so carefully after the building of churches, and of course we must not relax our efforts or check our generosity in the slightest degree on account of these additional calls upon us. We must work also for our schools as we have never worked before. Systems of education all around us are daily improving, and Catholic schools must not be left behind. Perhaps it may be found possible to make some arrangement by which we can be relieved of the disadvantage under which we now rest. Catholics and Protestants should have but one and the same end in view in the education of the young; and we are not without hope that the love of fair play which belongs to the American people will enable us in time to compose the old school-quarrel, which has been such an injury to the community. How this may be done, it would lead us far from our present subject to consider. We trust it will be done some day, but meanwhile our church schools have a right to the most generous support. Churches and schools must come first; but when we have given them all they need, we are not to stop there. Protestants are fully awake to the danger which threatens the public welfare from this rapid increase of a destitute class, and are working hard to effect a reform. If we do not take care of our own poor, they will not only provide for their physical wants, but will soon acquire charge of their souls. Such institutions as the Five Points Mission, the Howard Mission, the Children's Aid Society, the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, however honestly they may be conducted, are powerful engines of proselytism. Their managers may be actuated by the most disinterested benevolence, they may use none but legitimate means of influence; but is it any wonder that they draw many Catholics, especially children, away from the faith, when we let them have the field so completely to themselves? Against the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, we can set off, indeed, our noble Society of St. Vincent de Paul, though its resources are far smaller than they should be; but to take the place of the three other important charities mentioned above, we Catholics can show little or nothing.
First, we ought to look after the children. The adult sick and suffering are in less spiritual danger; for in most of the hospitals, except those of a strictly denominational character, they can enjoy the visits of priests and sisters. For the destitute who are strong enough to work we can offer no better resource than that which the Citizens' Association is now striving to afford in the organization of a Labor Bureau, by which the superfluous hands of the city may be distributed among the farming regions, where labor is badly needed. {283} Sectarianism appears to have nothing to do with this enterprise, and it offers relief in the best possible way, by enabling the poor not to eat the bread of idleness, but to earn an honest living. For the aged and friendless, who are past work and have no provision for the sunset of life, we still have no asylums; but their claims must be postponed until those of the children are satisfied. We are told that our city contains no fewer than 40,000 vagrant and destitute children. What a fearful seed of crime and misery this sad multitude constitutes, growing up in every kind of ignorance and vice, and ripening for the prisons! What are we doing for them? We have orphan asylums; but most of these children are not orphans, and even if they were, the asylums have not room for a tithe of them. We have the Protectory, at Westchester; but that is only for young criminals, who must be committed on a magistrate's warrant, and must, moreover, be the children of Catholic parents. Now, thousands of these young vagrants have never yet fallen within the grasp of the law; thousands are the children of no faith whatever, and, if brought before a justice, would have to be sent to the Protestant instead of the Catholic asylum. And, even if all these children could be brought under the control of our Protectory Association, twenty such asylums as the excellent one at Westchester would not hold them. No! there is much for us yet to do; there are thousands of poor little children upon whom Catholic charity has not yet laid a finger.
We spoke, in a former number of The Catholic World, of the noble mission-school which the zeal and perseverance of one good priest has founded in St. James's parish in this city. If almost every church in New York were able to build an institution of a similar kind, we might rest satisfied; but what is one mission-school among 40,000 children? What can one over-worked clergyman do toward performing a task which is the duty of the entire Catholic community? It is a sad and humiliating thing to confess; but Protestants seem to appreciate the claim which these vagrant children have upon the public much better than we do. The Protestants are not idle: they have their Refuges, their Industrial Schools, their "Homes," their missionaries, right in the heart of the vagabond population; they spare neither trouble nor money to catch these souls; and we are ashamed to say they capture a great many who are rightfully our charges. If we let this continue, will not God have a terrible account to exact of us some day?
We are gratified to know that what we have heretofore said on this subject has not been without its effect. There are some good brethren who seem to believe that it is the duty of all Catholic writers to defend those of the faith from every aspersion, to cover up all their defects, to excuse all their wrong-doings, to hold them up as perfect models of the Christian life, and to ignore or decry every good work undertaken by heretics. Such as these were offended at the account we gave of the Howard Mission, and similar Protestant institutions. But others have listened to us in a more sensible frame of mind, have acknowledged the justice of our remarks, and have offered to contribute their purses whenever an effort is made to supply the want we have indicated. Made it will be and must be, before long. Now, who will make it?
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We had written thus far, when we received an unexpected answer to our question in the following letter from a charitable Catholic lady:
To The Editor Of The Catholic World:
Rev. Father: The thought of doing something for the neglected children of New York prompts me to write to you. Since the moment that I read the letter that you published in The Catholic World, they have scarcely been out of my mind. I have offered up all my prayers and communions for them, and I have prayed especially for them every day. I had no thought that I could do anything else, but sometimes I think that, if all should content themselves with praying, there would be nothing done. I am afraid I cannot do much, for I do not know how to begin, and I have so little confidence and I know so few people. But I felt as if I could not pray any more without trying to do something also. Perhaps the work could be begun by an appeal something like the following:
To Catholic Mothers.
"Of forty thousand vagrant children in New York we cannot doubt that far more than one half have inherited the Catholic faith."--Catholic World for Aug. 1868.
More than twenty thousand Catholic children in New York, homeless, uncared for, ignorant, and abandoned! Can we Catholic mothers think of this and sit quietly in our homes with our little ones around us? Can we shut from our ears their cries of sorrow, from our eyes their little forms trembling with cold and hunger, or from our hearts the thought of their desolation? No, we cannot, and we would not; for is it not most especially our right, our duty, and our privilege to do for them? Our priests are overworked, they cannot do everything; let us, then, beg their blessing and begin this noble undertaking. We have not much to do, only to prepare the way. The Sisters of Charity or Mercy are ready and longing to care for these little desolate ones. We have only to put the means in their hands. Already a Catholic lady of New York has given one thousand dollars for this end, and we have only to follow her as far as we are able. I think ten others can be found in our city to imitate her example. If we can, let us give largely, for it is but lending to the Lord; if we have but little, let us give of that, not forgetting that the widow's mite was more than all else cast into the treasury. Shall we let the snows of another winter find these little ones still unclothed and unsheltered; shall we let their souls perish here in the midst of churches and altars, while our priests and missionaries in distant lands are shedding their blood for the heathen? Let us Christian mothers begin our work earnestly, let us pray and labor for these little ones; they are here in our midst, and before God we are responsible for them.
Respectfully, ----
Our correspondent, we believe, has gone to work in the right way, and, unless we greatly misjudge the Catholic ladies of New York, her appeal will be heard. The best plan, we think, would be to establish, in the heart of the poorer quarters of the city, a mission-house under the charge of Sisters of Charity, or Sisters of Mercy, who should make it their whole business to visit the destitute in their homes, teach them how to lead decent lives, see that their children were brought into Sunday and day-schools, that the whole family went to mass and confession, and that the children received proper care at home. It is much better to persuade parents to train up their offspring properly than to take the children out of their hands and rear them in mission-houses and asylums. The family relation ought to be rigidly respected; for God's plan of education is a good deal better than anything we can invent in place of it. For homeless and orphan children, the Sisters might see that admission was procured into the Catholic establishments already provided for those classes; for the sick and the starving they would ask relief from the charitable throughout the city, and whatever we placed in their hands we might be sure would be judiciously distributed. {285} There are generous Catholic women enough in New York to the foundation of such a house, and provide for the support of a small community to take charge of it; and there are many who would highly value the privilege of co-operating with the Sisters in their holy work. Let them come forth, effect an organization under the sanction of the ecclesiastical authority of the diocese, begin at once to raise the money required, and a great undertaking, the parent of many others, will be effected. When we once get into the way of practical benevolence, we shall be surprised to see how easily one foundation will follow another, and how the habit of alms-deeds will become so fixed that it will seem easier and more natural to give than to refrain from giving.
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New Publications.
Symbolism; or, Exposition of the Doctrinal Differences between Catholics and Protestants, as evidenced by their Symbolical Writings. By John A. Moehler, D.D. Translated from the German, with a Memoir of the Author, preceded by an Historical Sketch of the state of Protestantism and Catholicism in Germany for the last hundred years. By J. B. Robertson. New edition, revised and annotated by the Translator. One vol. 8vo, pp. 504, New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1868.
The Symbolism of Dr. Möhler is, perhaps, the most remarkable polemical work which has appeared since the days of Bellarmine and Bossuet. Its influence in Germany has been extraordinary, and the translation by Mr. Robertson has exerted an influence of similar importance in Great Britain and the United States, as well as in every part of the world where English is spoken. The late illustrious convert from the Protestant Episcopal hierarchy, Dr. Ives, was greatly indebted to this book for the convictions which brought him into the Church, and many others might doubtless say the same of themselves. It may be well to say, for the benefit of non-professional readers, that "Symbolism" in German phraseology means the exposition of symbols of faith or authorized formularies of doctrines, and that this work is a thorough discussion of the dogmatic differences between the Catholic Church and the principal Protestant denominations. The present edition is a very convenient one, in one volume, neatly executed and well printed. We cannot too earnestly recommend to our intelligent readers, who desire thorough and solid information on the great topics of Catholic doctrine, to study carefully this great masterpiece of learning and thought.
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The Pope And The Church Considered In Their Mutual Relations With Reference To The Errors Of The High Church Party In England. By the Rev. Paul Bottalla, S.J., Professor of Theology in St. Beuno's College, North Wales. Part I. The Supreme Authority of the Pope. London: Burns, Gates & Co. 1868.
The Apostolical And Infallible Authority Of The Pope. By F. X. Weninger, D.D., S.J. New York: Sadlier. Cincinnati: John P. Walsh. 1868.
The first named of these two works is one of the very best and most learned treatises on the subject discussed which has appeared in the English language, and will prove an invaluable addition to every clergyman's or educated layman's library. It is, moreover, of very moderate size, and written with remarkable logical terseness and lucidness of style and order.
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The second work also contains a valuable and extensive collection of authorities and testimonies to the supreme teaching authority of the Holy See, and a résumé of the arguments usually given by theologians in support of the author's thesis. The moderate and gentle spirit in which the venerated author speaks of the adherents of another school of Catholic theologians is especially commendable and worthy of imitation, particularly as we are now awaiting the assembling of an Ecumenical Council, which will doubtless decide all questions heretofore in controversy in regard to which the good of the Church requires any clearer definitions than those which have been already made and universally accepted. There are some few corrections called for in the construction of the author's sentences, especially one which occurs in the note to page 206. The mechanical execution of the book cannot receive any high commendation.
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The Illustrated Catholic Sunday-school Library. Second Series. Twelve volumes, pp. 144 each. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau street. 1868.
The titles of the volumes in this series are as follows: _Nettlethorpe, the Miser; Tales of Naval and Military Life; Harry O'Brien, and Other Tales; The Hermit of Mount Atlas; Leo, or The Choice of a Friend; Antonio, or The Orphan of Florence; Tales of the South of France; Stories of Other Lands; Emma's Cross, and Other Tales; Uncle Edward's Stories; Joe Baker; The Two Painters._
These tales were evidently selected with good taste and sound judgment. All are interesting, of a high moral tone, and well adapted to carry out the praiseworthy object for which this "library" was intended: furnishing Catholic youth of both sexes with reading matter both useful and entertaining.
These volumes, in diversity of scene, variety of incident, etc., fully equal those which appeared in the "First Series;" while in external elegance, and in beauty of illustration, they are decidedly superior. We find one fault, however. Considering how far girls outnumber boys in our Sunday-schools, we think it hardly fair that but one volume should be devoted to the joys and sorrows, the temptations and triumphs, of girlhood. In our opinion, several volumes in each series should be, in an especial manner, set apart for their particular pleasure and benefit. We hope our suggestion will be, if possible, acted upon in the next series.
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Leaf And Flower Pictures, And How To Make Them. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph. 1868.
This pleasantly written and instructive little work is dedicated most affectionately to the authoress's "Two dear little 'Doppies,'" two little girls named respectively Nellie and Anna, who one day 'dopted her for their aunt. Hence their name. Whoever H. B. may be, (for this is all that is given us to know of this good "aunt,") we are sure that many persons who are interested in the delightful recreation of making leaf and flower pictures will thank her for the composition of this book. That our readers may understand its object, we quote from the preface: "I think even quite small children, both boys and girls, as well as older persons, will find it delightful to make themselves pictures, and have a collection 'of their own' of all sorts of leaves, mosses, grasses, flowers, and lichens. Will it not add greatly to the pleasure of being out of doors, if, in every walk you take, from May to October, you carry home some leaf, or flower, or spike of grass, to add to the treasures of your hortus siccus, or to lay aside until the long cold hours of winter come, when, in varnishing and arranging them as pictures and decorations, you can almost restore to yourself the delight of your summer rambles, and make into a permanent and abiding pleasure a portion of the beauty which then charmed and refreshed your soul? Therefore, dear reader, be you child or woman, boy or man, if you would open your eyes some frosty morning next January, and behold a lovely wreath of flowers blooming upon the walls of your chamber, with all the freshness of June--a wreath that Jack Frost cannot wither, even if he has sent the mercury out of sight below zero--read this little book; for you can have one by following its directions."
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Personal Sketches Of His Own Times. By Sir Jonah Barrington, Judge of the High Court of the Admiralty in Ireland, etc., etc. One vol. 12mo.
The Life Of The Right Honorable John Philpot Curran, Late Master Of The Rolls In Ireland. By his son, William Henry Curran. With additions and notes by R. Shelton Mackenzie, D.C.L. One vol. 12mo.
Sketches Of The Irish Bar. By the Right Hon. Richard Lalor Sheil, M.P. With Memoir and Notes by R. Shelton Mackenzie, D.C.L. Two volumes, pp. 388, 380. New York: W. J. Widdleton. 1868.
Above we give the titles of three works which have been out of print for some time, but new editions of which have just appeared. Sheil's "Sketches," commenced in 1822 and continued until 1829, embrace short, piquant biographies of the most prominent members of the Irish Bar--O'Connell, Plunket, Burke, O'Loghlin, Norbury, etc.; with incidental allusions to other celebrities--Lady Morgan, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Robert Emmet, etc., etc. There are, in addition, the author's personal recollections of the Catholic Association in 1823; of the visit of the Catholic deputation to London in 1825, and its reception in the House of Commons; and of the great Clare Election in 1828.
Barrington's Sketches are also racy and piquant, and give an insight into Irish manners and customs fifty years ago. The "Life of Curran" has been a standard work, and this new edition will bring it anew before the rising generation.
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The Works Of Rev. Arthur O'leary, O.S.F. Edited by a clergyman of Massachusetts. One vol. 8vo, pp. 596. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1868.
The reputation of F. O'Leary is universal among all who take an interest in Irish history and literature. His works, which abound with learning, humor, and passages of remarkably fine writing of the rich, ornate style of the old school, have been carefully edited by the learned clergyman whose name is modestly withheld on the title-page, and published in good style by Mr. Donahoe. We thank them both for this valuable service to Catholic literature, and have no suggestion to make, except that the small number of typographical errors which have escaped the vigilance of the proof-reader should be corrected in the second edition.
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The Lily Of The Valley; or, Margie and I, and other Poems. By Amy Gray. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet. 1868.
The gentle authoress of these poems, which have, at least, the merit of conveying a genuine expression of her sentiments, presents the volume to the public with this preface, which we copy entire:
"The object of the publication of the poems, and in view of which most of them were written, is to aid in the education of destitute little girls of the South, orphaned by the late war. The author cannot hope for more than a mite from so small a volume--the production, too, of an unknown writer; but the proceeds, whatever they may be, will be unreservedly appropriated to the object above named. To an intelligent and generous reading public the author confides this little work, feeling sure that their generosity will secure for it a patronage that its intrinsic merit cannot hope to obtain. It was of old the duty and privilege of the chosen people of God to offer the first-fruits of all their possessions to his service; and it is with gratitude for many mercies received, and with earnest prayers for the divine blessing, that the author would dedicate the first-fruits of her pen to an object which seems in accordance with the teachings of our blessed Lord, who has said: 'Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.'"
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Excelsior; or, Essays on Politeness, Education, and the Means of Attaining Success in Life. Part I. For young gentlemen. By T. E. Howard, A.M. Part II. For young ladies. By a lady, (R. V. R.) Baltimore: Kelly & Piet 1868.
A capital book, and one we would like to have placed in the hands of every student, boy or girl, in the country. It is not easy to write books of this character, at least books that young persons will read; but Mr. Howard and his gentle co-author have produced a volume as pleasantly written as it is solidly instructive. It is said that it requires a high degree of moral courage to purchase at the bookseller's a book "on politeness." We trust that few among our young friends will be wanting in this courage when the purchase of the present volume is concerned, and we will guarantee that not one will fail to peruse it with very great pleasure.
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Mac Carthy More; or, The Fortunes of an Irish Chief in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. By Mrs. J. Sadlier. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. Pp. 277. 1868.
This, the latest production of Mrs. Sadlier's prolific pen, is in no wise inferior to its predecessors. The incidents which form its groundwork are strictly historical, and can be found in The Life and Letters of Florence Mac Carthy Reagh, Tanist of Carberry, Mac Carthy Mor, compiled from unpublished documents in her Majesty's State Paper Office, by Daniel Mac Carthy, (Glas,) and published by Longman & Co., London. For those who cannot afford to purchase the more expensive English work, Mrs. Sadlier's condensation of the life and times of the great Irish chieftain will prove a very agreeable substitute. Besides being thus presented under the guise of a graceful little story, they will doubtless be more acceptable to most readers than the dry and prosaic details of mere historical narration.
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Plain Talk About The Protestantism Of To-day. From the French of Mgr. Segur. Boston: P. Donahoe. 1868.
The best word we can say about this little book is to copy the first few lines of the translator's note:
"You ask me, dear sir, 'What makes me so anxious to publish this work in America?' Well, I wish to have it published for the sake of Catholic children tending common schools--of Catholic girls living out in families--of Catholic boys serving their time--of all dear and poor friends so often wounded in the affections dearest to their hearts, and whose religion is so often attacked in rude words. I herewith hope to place in their hands such arms as they can easily use, and which will have a telling effect on the enemies of their faith."
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Mignon. A Tale. Translated from the French. New York: P. O'Shea. Pp. 202. 1868.
A charming little story, neatly got up; but the pleasure to be derived from its perusal would, however, be considerably increased if the thread of the narrative were not so often and so needlessly broken by whole pages devoted to sentimentalisms of the shallowest type.
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The Catholic World.
Vol. VIII., No. 45 December, 1868.
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Hypnotics.
The craving for opiates indicates either pain or restlessness. The wounded man longs for that which may dull the sensation of physical suffering and procure the temporary oblivion of sleep. One who is wearied by the morbid activity of his brain, and the lassitude which is caused by it, desires some artificial remedy to give him the repose which refuses to come naturally to his sleepless eyelids. A person in health has no need, and, consequently, no desire for opiates. His activity is healthful and pleasurable; his weariness is natural, making rest pleasant, and giving sound, recreative slumbers. In like manner, when one begins to talk about a craving for an intellectual or spiritual opiate, the presence of some malady making the soul restless is manifest. Its activity is morbid and irregular, preventing that repose which is the natural consequence of a perfectly sound and normal condition of the mental and spiritual faculties.
These remarks were suggested by reading, in an article written with much refinement of taste and delicacy of sentiment in one of our principal literary papers, [Footnote 122] the following passage on the hypnotic qualities of Catholicity:
[Footnote 122: The Nation, August 18th, 1868; Review of Mrs. Craven's Sister's Story.]
"Mrs. Craven certainly offers very abundant and convincing testimony on this point--a point which probably no one ever dreams of controverting. Given natures like these, in which the emotional element entirely predominates; to which the pursuit of truth, as an ultimate object, is totally incomprehensible; which crave happiness and repose with a passionate longing, and the Church certainly offers a satisfactory and comprehensive solution of all their difficulties. We should all be Catholics were it not that the Church sets too high a price upon her opiates. One generally pays for extreme wealth of emotional power by a corresponding poverty of judgment, and though, if we had our choice, we might all be willing to be born blind, that we might never feel afraid in the dark, the settlement of the matter is certainly not optional with us. It is a congenital impossibility for some people to conceive of their natural passions, of their judgment, will, and reason, as mere counters with which they can purchase eternal rest, and a tardy but complete gratification of the wants which are here unsupplied. Such people do not, in rejecting Catholicism, necessarily disavow the yearning for this rest, nor the belief that it will be attained. The craving is universal, the Church's answer only partial--it allows the claims of the emotions, but it disallows those of the intellect. There is no doubt that she does her legitimate work well and thoroughly, that she gives hope to the despairing, comfort to the sorrowing, and sometimes mends the morals of the vicious--we quarrel with her only because in virtue of doing this she claims the right to outrage or ignore wants yet profounder than those which she supplies."
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We have selected this passage as the theme of some brief discussion, without any reference to the particular topic of the article in which it is contained, or intention of raising any special controversy with the writer of it, whose personality is entirely unknown to us. It has struck our attention simply as a remarkably tangible and felicitous expression of a sentiment or opinion shared in common by a large class of minds, and well worthy of our most serious consideration. They think that those who have embraced the Catholic religion have been driven, by the unrest and weariness of the soul, to take a spiritual opiate--a metaphorical expression, but one whose meaning is so obvious that it needs no explanation. They acknowledge the existence of the same unrest in their own souls, but refuse to accept the remedy offered by the Catholic Church, because they imagine that it can only produce its effect of relieving the pain of the soul by superinducing an artificial sleep of the intellect. The mind must slumber, intelligence must cease its activity, in order that the heart may be made peaceful and happy in the practice of the Catholic religion. They are unwilling to purchase rest at such a price, and, it may be, would be unable to do it if they were willing. Therefore, they prefer to endure the pain of doubt, the restlessness of scepticism, the weariness of a yearning after an unknown good, in the vague expectation of finding it at some distant period, if not in this world, yet in some future sphere of existence. The objection of these persons to Catholicity is, that it does not acknowledge or adequately satisfy the just demands of the intellect. Those who embrace it, they say, cannot justify their conversion on rational grounds, or allege sufficient and conclusive evidence of the truth of its doctrines. They have either never sought for a religion which satisfies reason, or have abandoned their search in despair, and laid their intellect to sleep upon the soft pillow of an unreasoning submission to an authority that supersedes all exercise of thought, and quiets all action of intelligence. The correctness of this assumption is the precise topic of discussion we now propose. It is evidently altogether useless to frame an argument on the supposition that we have to deal with any form of Protestant orthodoxy, so-called. Persons who profess to believe in a definite system of doctrine as revealed truth cannot admit any such unsatisfied yearnings after truth as those are whose existence is denoted by the writer of the paragraphs we have cited. It is, therefore, useless to take as data any of the principles or doctrines of the common Protestant theology. It is with a sceptical state of mind we have to deal, which rejects every received version of Christianity as incomplete and unsatisfactory, however it may admit, in a general way, that Christianity itself is something divine. We think we may take it for granted that the very state of mind indicated by the language on which we are commenting has been produced by a revolt of the reason against Protestant theology. Probably those whose sentiments are represented by this language have been more or less strictly educated in the tenets of some one of the Protestant churches. {291} They have found these tenets to be absurd--incredible; based on no solid evidence; mere individual theories, contradicted by the facts of history and the dictates of mature reason. They have, consequently, abjured all allegiance to any sect or school of Protestant Christianity, and have fallen back upon their own reason as the exponent of the Christian religion, and of all other religions, as the only criterion of truth in all orders of thought, and the only guide which has been given to man amid the perplexities which beset his intellect on every side. The Catholic system of doctrines is supposed to be essentially the same with orthodox Protestantism, plus a few more dogmas, a system of elaborate ceremonial, and a peculiar hierarchical organization, which openly claims and enforces submission to its own doctrinal decisions and moral precepts as infallible and supreme. The same absurdities which exist in the Protestant system of theology are supposed to be contained also in the Catholic system. It does not occur to these persons that these absurdities maybe traced to exaggerated or distorted theories respecting the ancient dogmas of Christianity, which are rejected by the Catholic theology, and to the incompleteness of the Protestant systems, which are built up from fragments of the sublime edifice they have destroyed, without plan, order, or architectural harmony. This is, however, the fact; and when we speak of the unreasonableness of the orthodox Protestant form of Christianity as the occasion and temptation to scepticism, we must be understood to speak in accordance with this fact. We do not mean to say that the evidences of the divine revelation and truth of Christianity, and a vast body of true and reasonable doctrines, are not retained in the Protestant teaching, or that it makes scepticism justifiable. We merely intend to say that it does not satisfy reason or command assent as a system in all its essential parts, and therefore leaves the mind in a bewilderment by its partial truths and partial errors, which is the occasion of a kind of intellectual despair, resulting frequently in scepticism. The truly rational part would be to hold on to the conviction of the great facts of Christianity and its substantial truth, and to search for some more reasonable and satisfactory exposition of the true meaning of Christianity than that given by these self-constituted, unauthorized, and mutually conflicting expositors of divine revelation. Such a search would inevitably land the honest and persevering seeker in the Catholic Church, as it has done so many and will so many more in time to come. There is a divine philosophy in the Catholic religion which satisfies all the legitimate demands of reason--that same philosophy which attracted Dionysius of Athens, Sergius Paulus, Cornelius, Pudens, Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Clement, Pantaenus, St. Augustine, and a host of other noble intellects, to Christianity in the days of old, and in which they found that perennial source of truth from which Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Lao-Tseu and Confucius, had only drawn some rills.
It is not within the scope of our thesis to show positively the truth of the above affirmation. We merely intend to show that it is made; that the church does not "disallow the claims of the intellect," or "claim the right to outrage or ignore wants yet profounder than those which she supplies;" that "the pursuit of truth as an ultimate object" is not "totally incomprehensible" to those who yield the allegiance of their minds to the light of faith; that they do not "conceive of their judgment, will, and reason, as mere counters with which to purchase eternal rest." {292} Whether the Catholic solution of the problems of reason is objectively the true one is not the direct aim of our reasoning. The point is, whether Catholic theology and philosophy propose any solution at all; whether any class of minds who seek earnestly after such a solution find one which they hold and maintain to be completely satisfactory to reason in the Catholic Church. The writer whose language we have quoted denies it, and Dr. Bellows has recently denied it, asserting boldly that those who have embraced the Catholic faith have done so by a reaction from an extreme rationalism into superstition. What is gratuitously asserted may be gratuitously denied, and we deny it accordingly. Some few persons, perceiving that they were following principles which lead logically to Pantheism and Atheism, and that there is no real logical alternative of the denial of God except Catholicity, have been led to examine and embrace the Catholic faith. Neither Dr. Bellows nor any other person professing to be rational is entitled to call this act a superstitious one, unless it can be shown that the motives of it are reducible to an irrational credulity, or a voluntary submission to some claim of supernatural authority which is destitute of probability, on grounds which are incapable of convincing a prudent man. The remark of Dr. Bellows is, therefore, simply an intolerable impertinence. The statement which he makes is, moreover, false in point of fact, since a large proportion of modern converts to the Catholic Church have travelled the road of orthodox Protestantism, and not that of rationalism.
It is no less incorrect to state that it is only persons in whom the sentimental element predominates who find satisfaction for the wants of their souls in the Catholic religion. In the first place, it is absurd to suppose that the legitimate cravings or aspirations of any one part of human nature can be satisfied completely by that which is not real, and therefore not true. Truth, goodness, and beauty are identical in respect to their being or reality. The religion which is adapted to one class of minds is adapted to all. It is, moreover, incorrect to reduce all men to two classes--those who are led by the logical faculty, and those who are led by sensibility. The intelligence has its intuitions in an order of thought far superior to the mere understanding. The will has also a sublime range in an order far superior to the sphere of sensible emotions. Those who never occupy their minds in any metaphysical or theological speculations whatever may, therefore, in their spiritual nature, apprehend divine truth far more immediately and perfectly, and may possess the truest and highest wisdom in a much more eminent sense, than the most acute philosopher. The interior or spiritual life, moreover, of those persons who are rather seeking to perfect their souls in virtue than their intellects in knowledge, is by no means a life of indulgence in pleasurable emotions, the enjoyments of sensible devotion, or anything else which gives sensitive nature the pabulum or the opiates after which it hankers. This whole order of ideas belongs to sentimental Protestantism, and is totally alien from Catholic ascetics, as is well known to the youngest novice in any religious community.
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Of course we cannot expect literary gentlemen to understand these matters, and cannot wonder at the mistakes they make when they write about them. We can justly require of them nothing more than a supreme love of truth for its own sake, and a willingness to see it when it is presented to them. Any one who loves the truth on this point sufficiently to read Rodriguez on Christian Perfection, F. Baker's Sancta Sophia, or F. Faber's Growth in Holiness, can satisfy himself of the very low estimate in which sensible devotion is held by our spiritual writers. If he should wish for a more extensive course of reading, we would recommend Tauler's Sermons and the works of St. John of the Cross. He will there see that the pleasures of sensibility, imagination, taste, the affections, the romance and poetry of religion, are not condemned or rudely trampled on, but simply relegated to the lowest place, made use of as the waiting-maids of the divine wisdom and strong virtue which constitute solid perfection. The Catholic religion satisfies not merely the emotional nature of man, but his spiritual nature. It could not do this unless it were capable of placing the soul in its true relation to its proper object, to its final end, to its real destiny, and furnishing it with all the means of advancing continually toward the union with God in which beatitude consists. It could not be capable of doing this unless it came from God; and, coming from God, it must teach the truth which is necessary and adequate to the perfection of the reason, as well as the perfection of the will. We will take up the question, however, in a more historical and inductive manner, in order to show, as a matter of fact, that those minds in which the logical faculty and the taste for the cultivation of pure reason is more strongly developed and active, find an equal scope and satisfaction in Catholicity with the other class above mentioned.
One needs but a moderate acquaintance with the method and spirit which have always prevailed in the great Catholic schools to know how powerfully they stimulate the activity of the intellect, awaken the thirst for rational investigation, encourage the effort to penetrate as far as possible into the domain of ideal truth, and to trace the relations of all things in the world of thought to their first and final cause. The basis and foundation of the whole structure of the higher education, especially in the department of theology, is laid in a thorough training in logic and philosophy. The same logical and philosophical method pervades the entire system of theological instruction. Every dogma of faith, every opinion of the schools, every principle of philosophy, is subjected to a rigid and critical analysis, including an examination of all the difficulties and objections which have ever been raised by the adversaries of the Church, during all past ages and in the present. In the theses which the students of theology and philosophy are obliged to defend, covering the whole field of these higher sciences, sceptical, atheistical, pantheistic, infidel, and heretical arguments, stated with the utmost logical subtlety of which the objector is possessed, are presented without any restriction or reserve, not only by other pupils but by the professors and other learned theologians. In the universities, colleges, and religious houses, where bodies of men are collected possessing the means and requisites for a life of study and learned labor, there is every facility and inducement afforded for the most thorough prosecution of every branch of human knowledge which can possibly have any bearing on the advancement of the queen and mistress of all sciences, theology. {294} Moreover, in modern times there has sprung up among the educated laity, among the statesmen, professional men, scholars, and gentlemen of leisure and intellectual tastes, a school of students and authors in the same high department of thought, independent, so far as their private and temporal interests are concerned, of any ecclesiastical authority, and free to follow the dictates of their reason and conscience wherever these may lead them. It is the easiest thing in the world to make a catalogue of names, illustrious among the advocates and defenders of the Church, in whom the intellectual powers have been, through the force of native genius and acquired culture, brought to the highest grade of development. Bellarmine, Suarez, Canus, Cajetan, Sfondrati, Petavius, Molina, Gerdil, Thomassin, Mabillon, Muratori, Bossuet, Malebranche, Des Cartes, Galluppi, Rosmini, Gioberti, Mastrofini, Mai, Mezzofanti, Görres, Möhler, Theiner, Lacordaire, Ozanam, Donoso Cortes, Balmes, Wiseman, England, Montalembert, De Broglie, Cantù; are these the names of men of weak judgment and strong emotions, who were mastered by an unreasoning, pietistic sentiment? Or, are they the names of hypocrites and impostors, who prostituted their genius to the support of a cause which they knew to be based on falsehood, illusion, and deceit? Listen to the words written from his couch of pain by Montalembert, near the close of the last volume of his Monks of the West:
"The more I advance in my laborious and thankless task--that is to say, the nearer I approach to my grave--the more do I feel mastered and overpowered by an ardent and respectful love of truth, the more do I feel myself incapable of betraying truth, even for the benefit of what I most love here below. The mere idea of adding a shadow to those which already shroud it fills me with horror. To veil the truth, to hide it, to forsake it under the pretence of serving the cause of religion, which is nothing but supreme truth, would be, in my opinion, to aggravate a lie by a kind of sacrilege. Forgive me, all timid and scrupulous souls! But I hold that in history everything should be sacrificed to truth--that it must be always spoken, on every subject, and in its full integrity." [Footnote 123]
[Footnote 123: Monks of the West, vol. v. p. 305.]
Hear also the language used by the eminent historian Cesare Cantù:
"After having replaced Christianity face to face with history, with reason, with conscience; after having interpreted it with all liberty of mind, we feel ourselves confirmed in our respect for the Catholic tradition. We have drawn from our studies new motives for the conviction that the actual organization of the church is excellent, both for moderating in a suitable degree the sovereignty of the smaller number, while at the same time infusing a spirit of subordination into the masses, and also for procuring the largest possible dose of happiness for men; we mean by this that happiness which arises from the voluntary submission of their minds to a mild and persuasive moral power, and not to a mere coercive restraint." [Footnote 124]
[Footnote 124: La Réforme en Itilie, pref. p. xi.]
This is not the language of superstition or of unintelligent enthusiasm, but of calm, well-reasoned conviction, the language of men supremely devoted to the pursuit of truth for its own sake; and it is but a fair specimen of the language of all the great advocates of the Catholic religion. It would be utterly impossible for any system, destitute of solid foundations and unsupported by reasonable proofs, to endure the perpetual and thorough researches and investigations carried on by a vast body of learned men in the Catholic schools for ages, with the full approbation and encouragement of the highest authorities in the church. The theory that such a set of men could be made the dupes of an arbitrary authority administered with the intention of swaying the minds of men by a systematic violation of all the rights of reason, or made the partisans and upholders of what they knew to be an imposture, is too incredible for anything less than a boundless credulity to embrace.
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Let us turn our attention now to that class of minds nurtured in anti-Catholic opinions, over whom the Catholic Church has regained in part or completely an influence, bringing them to the recognition of her divine authority. What is the force which has made itself felt at the great distance to which the Protestant mind has been violently thrown by the revolution of the sixteenth century, and which has drawn back toward the Catholic centre a body of persons who cannot be either ignored or despised without the most stolid prejudice or the sheerest affectation? Is it a mere force which is capable of acting only on the emotions, the imagination, the sensible portion of the nature of individuals in whom reason does not exercise her just and rightful supremacy? Are there none who have been led by the philosophy of history, by metaphysics, by theological reasoning, by the investigation of Scripture, by the search for a supreme and universal science, by the deductions of logic, and the inductions of experience and observation, to a calm and rational conviction that the highest wisdom and the most perfect law are embodied in the Catholic Church? The statement of Lord Macaulay is familiar to all, that the doctrines of the Catholic Church have heretofore commanded the assent of the wisest and best of mankind, and may therefore command the assent of men similar to them in the future. A fair examination of the question will convince any one of the fact, which cannot be gainsaid by any one professing to love the truth supremely for its own sake, that numbers of men fully qualified to judge of evidence and to comprehend the most abstruse reasoning have given the homage of their minds to Catholic doctrine precisely because of the invincible logic both of facts and arguments by which its truth was demonstrated to their reason.
Leibnitz is one instance in point. Although he never joined the communion of the Catholic Church, yet the whole weight of his authority as a philosopher and a theologian is on the side of the Catholic principles and doctrines, which are the most obnoxious to our modern rationalists. The same is true of Baron Stark, the author of the Banquet of Theodulus. The celebrated Leo, one of the greatest historians of Germany, began his career as a Pantheist, and by his profound historical studies was brought to a full conviction of the divine authority of revelation, and of the necessity of a return to the communion of the Holy See on the part of all the dissentient and separated communions. His Universal History is an irrefutable argument for the truth of Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church. Although, therefore, none of these three distinguished men can be counted among the converts to the Catholic Church, yet their names can be cited in support of the position we have taken, since we are persuaded that our candid opponents will admit that strict logical consistency would require any one admitting their premises to draw the practical conclusion that it is obligatory on his conscience to become a member of the Catholic Church.
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Hurter, Phillipps, and Stolberg are instances of German scholars whom profound and learned studies brought to a full Catholic conviction. Mayne de Biran is an example of a philosopher, who reasoned himself out of infidelity into a firm conviction of the truth of the Catholic religion by a metaphysical process. Passing by those well-known persons in England and America whose education was ecclesiastical, we may cite an Englishman, Sir George Bowyer, and an American, Judge Burnett, first governor of California, as instances of men who applied the principles of law and jurisprudence to the evidence of the claims of the Catholic Church, and were led to submit to them by a process of legal argument, which the latter gentleman has developed at length in his able work, entitled The Path which led a Protestant Lawyer to the Catholic Church. The late Dr. Bellinger, of Charleston, S. C., a physician who stood at the head of the medical profession in his State, devoted thirteen years to a careful study of the Catholic doctrines, before he publicly embraced them.
Among those who have devoted their pens to the Catholic cause in our own country, whether they have been educated to the Catholic faith or have been converted to it from Protestantism, without doubt the man who surpasses all others in intellectual power is Dr. Brownson. No one would think of reckoning him among devotees or dilettanti. If Dr. Bellows were to express his opinion upon the motives which induced him to submit his masculine intelligence to the teaching of the church, he would probably acknowledge that he had him chiefly in view when he made the statement referred to in a former part of this article. That is, he would say that Dr. Brownson's conversion to Catholicity was an act of intellectual despair, a suicide committed by his reason because of its failure to attain by its own efforts that transcendental science after which it was aspiring. The reply to this is the same which AEschylus made before the judge at whose tribunal he was accused of having lost the use of his reason through old age. He recited a play which he had recently composed, as evidence that his intellect still remained in its pristine vigor. And so Dr. Brownson may with equal justice point to the unanswered and unanswerable works which his pen has produced since his conversion, and challenge those who pretend that he has yielded his mind to an irrational superstition to refute the arguments of his Essays and The Convert. The mere effort to read understandingly the latter book is the severest tax which any ordinary brain can submit to. The philosophical articles published in the Review, which Dr. Brownson conducted with such remarkable ability for a long period, surpass by far any specimens of metaphysical writing contained in the English language. The frivolity of the age, and various causes connected with temporary and personal controversies, have prevented the full recognition of the value and merit of these philosophical essays, which it is probable they will receive in the future time. The doctor has written a vast amount on a great number of topics both ecclesiastical and secular, since he devoted his labors to the Catholic cause, and no doubt there are many inconsistent and varying opinions to be found in his works, especially in regard to matters outside the domain of pure philosophy and theology. Nevertheless, in our judgment, which we believe posterity will ratify, the pure gold stands in a very large proportion to the ore, and will only become brightened and purified by the severest tests of the crucible which reduces every reputation to its just dimensions. {297} We believe that Dr. Brownson's writings contain the most complete refutation of the sceptical, pantheistic, sensist, and pseudo-inductive or positivist errors of the day, as well as of the chief heterodox systems of doctrine. In that noblest and most essential portion of philosophy which includes ontology and theodicy, he has laid down the metaphysical basis of natural theology with a Platonic depth and an Aristotelian precision of reasoning. Beside the massive structure of arguments respecting the positive evidences of the authority and infallibility of the church which he has erected, a work in which he has many able compeers, who though not more logical are more erudite than himself, he has thrown out some masterpieces in that more difficult and more rarely executed branch of labor, the exposition of the hidden, abstruse harmonies between rational truths and the mysteries of faith. Prescinding all question respecting the fact of his having presented the Catholic doctrine in such a light as to demonstrate its reasonableness, which is not the point at issue, he has at least attempted it. He has shown that a man can be a thorough-going, orthodox Catholic, and at the same time a philosopher in the highest and best sense of the word.
These instances are only examples and illustrations of a general rule. The two maxims of St. Augustine, intellectum valde ama, and fides quaerens intellectum have always been and are now maxims of the Catholic schools. The church has no fear of light, no dread of the progress of science; in point of fact, the greatest obstacles which advocates of the Catholic cause have to contend with are ignorance, disregard of the laws of logic, and the lack of belief in the reality and certainty of the affirmations or judgments of pure reason. It is only slowly and with great difficulty that we can get the public either of writers or readers to pay attention to the facts of history, and cast away the fables with which they have been duped themselves and duping others for so long. It is equally difficult to force the controversy respecting philosophical and theological principles to the true logical issues, to get attention to our arguments, or to extract from our opponents any clear and distinct answers to them, or definite and precise statements of their own positions. Bishop England scarcely did anything else in his masterly controversies than to point out the rules of logic violated by his opponents, and the misstatements of historical facts and Catholic doctrines made by them. The truth is, that our conflict is far less with any positive system of heterodoxy or rationalism than with a vague but universal scepticism. It is not so much that men disbelieve in the specific doctrines of revelation, as that they disbelieve in the existence of any truth. The power of reason, the capacity of the intellect to grasp the intelligible, the certainty of rational principles and logical deductions, the dignity of philosophy, are not exaggerated, they are depreciated. Those who revolt from the legitimate and supreme authority of God, divine revelation, and the infallible teaching of the church over the mind of man, are not the legitimate offspring of the ancient philosophers, or the true continuators of philosophy. The ancient philosophers of Greece and China recognized the need of a divine revelation, a supernatural light, a teacher sent from God. The whole civilized world of heathenism was gasping in agony for the advent of the divine Redeemer when he appeared on the earth. {298} Our modern self-styled rationalists have turned their backs on that light toward which Lao-Tseu, Confucius, Socrates, and Plato had their faces turned; and they have cut themselves loose from the traditional wisdom, not only of Christianity and Judaism, but of all the sages of heathendom and of the whole human race. Consequently, they are smitten with intellectual death, they cannot advance or construct; they can only go backward, destroy, doubt, deny, groan with despairing agony, and die. The modern literature of unbelief is either a sneer or a lament; as to philosophy, it has fallen into contempt, and is generally scouted. Those who profess to handle grave themes in earnest are usually inconsequent, vague, full of hypotheses and random statements; by their own confession mere wanderers in search of truth who have lost their way; rhetoricians, guessers, men who teach not as having authority, even the authority of reason, but as the Scribes. The few men who possess rare native philosophical genius, like Mill and Spencer, having no principles or data to begin with, imitate the great master of modern philosophical scepticism, Immanuel Kant, and pervert reason and logic into an instrument for destroying all true intellectual science. Mr. Mill denies that we know that it is a necessary and universal truth that two and two make four. It may be therefore that in some future state of existence he will have the same evidence that one is equal to two which he now has that one is only equal to one, and that he is therefore some one else as well as himself, and perhaps responsible for all the crimes committed by Caligula. Nevertheless, he assures us that the ideas of justice and right in God must be the same that they are in his own mind, and that if any punishment is inflicted on him hereafter, which does not accord with his present sense of justice, he will never admit the right of inflicting it. Yet, upon his own principles, he cannot be sure that his own ideas of right and justice will not be totally altered in the next world, and that his reason will not compel him to admit that what now seems to him unjust will then appear to be precisely the contrary. No matter, therefore, how absurd may be the doctrines which are professed as dogmas by any religious sect, no follower of Mr. Mill can have any right to reject them on purely rational grounds. Mr. Spencer laboriously argues to convince us that we are compelled by the principles of logic to admit the truth of a number of directly contradictory propositions, and that consequently all pure metaphysics are worthless, and all that is worth knowing is unknowable. When such laughable follies are seriously put forth and lauded to the skies as the sum of human wisdom in its most advanced stage of progress, and when the fanciful hypotheses of Darwin are vaunted as science by men who profess to follow the inductive philosophy, it is the turn of the advocates of revelation and the mysteries of the Catholic faith to cry out upon the outrage that is put upon reason, and to deride the credulity of those who can be duped by such crude absurdities. Human reason and the mind of man are indeed extremely weak and fallible if the estimate of them made by these sceptical writers is to be taken as correct. Weak and fallible as they are, and incapable of affirming anything in the order of pure reason and objective reality, according to this humiliating theory, yet nevertheless they can be forced to admit as much reality in the revealed truths of the Catholic faith as in anything else. {299} The capacity of the mind to take note of particular facts and phenomena, and by induction to reduce these particulars to general laws, and also the necessity of following practical reason as an actual guide, will be admitted even by the most extreme unbelievers. The facts and phenomena produced by the action of the Catholic Church on the human race, and by Jesus Christ himself in his life, death, and resurrection, as observed and attested by competent witnesses, just as much warrant us in making the induction that he is a superhuman intelligence, as all the observations of astronomy warrant us in accepting the heliocentric theory of Copernicus. Practical reason tells us that the religion of Jesus Christ as explained by the Catholic Church is good for mankind, and the safest rule we can follow. If, therefore, we find probable evidence of the fact that Jesus Christ has taught certain doctrines through the church regarding that sphere of the unknowable into which reason cannot penetrate, it would seem to be the dictate of good sense and of a right conscience that we should submit to that teaching. The power of objecting to any doctrine that does not satisfy reason or apparently contradicts it has been surrendered. Reason cannot judge of the unknowable. We have all the certainty that the case admits of that Jesus Christ possesses a reason of higher order to which that which is unknowable to us is clearly intelligible, and that he has declared to us the truth of these doctrines. We have, moreover, evidence of his benevolence and veracity, and therefore all the motives which we are capable of appreciating combine to induce us to give the same assent to his teaching that we do to any generally received truths. Even on this low level, Christianity and Catholicity can stand their ground far better than any other subject of analytical investigation. It is true that logically and philosophically we attain only to the apparent and the abstract truth of Christianity. But if the individual asserts for himself, or the Catholic Church asserts for herself, a supernatural light, an illumination of the intellect giving certainty, how can the allegation be refuted? How can any advocate of the ignoramus theory show that, if we are naturally in such a deep darkness of the unknowable, it is not probable that God would send a ray of supernatural light to enlighten us? The natural outcry of one in such a state would be, "O my God! if there be a God, send the light of truth, if there is any truth, to enlighten my soul, if I have a soul!"
We will leave, however, this soft and marshy ground to those who like the prospect of fighting the enemies of Christianity in such a region of swamps and sloughs. We retort the charge of ignoring or outraging reason upon our adversaries in a far different way. We accuse them not only of rejecting revelation but of denying reason, and in their assault upon the supernatural order of subverting the natural order upon which it is based. We affirm that the Catholic Church not only protects revelation and grace, but reason and nature, by the aegis of her authority against a universal doubt or denial. She affirms the existence of the spiritual, thinking, reasoning principle in man as a truth known with infallible certainty by the very light of reason itself, and therefore affirms the intrinsic infallibility of reason within its proper sphere. It is to reason that it appertains to judge of the evidences of revelation. And although reason does not furnish a positive criterion wherewith to judge the intrinsic credibility of mysteries transcending the grasp of reason, yet it is acknowledged by all theologians that it is competent to apply a negative criterion and to reject whatever is proposed as a revealed truth which is evidently or demonstrably contrary to the principles of reason or to certain facts. {300} Where now does the collision exist between reason and faith, science and revelation? Is the existence of God the point where reason is outraged? The advocates of the Catholic religion always profess to demonstrate that truth from reason, and it can hardly be pretended that their atheistical or pantheistical opponents have ever thoroughly refuted their arguments or demonstrated a contrary doctrine. The credibility of the divine revelation is also proved by evidence and argument, and it is certainly rather bold to say that this entire fabric of learning and thought is so palpably weak as to be an outrage on reason. The institution, authority, and infallibility of the Catholic Church are established in the same manner. And, although the mysteries of faith are not demonstrated by their nexus with necessary metaphysical truths, all the arguments brought from reason against them are repelled by similar arguments, and their harmony with rational truths is shown in so far as reason partially apprehends their relations. Wherein consists the palpable, open denial of the rights of reason? Is it denied that God can make a revelation of truths which surpass the grasp of reason, or that he has done it, or that the church has authority to proclaim it? At whatever point we are met by the accusation of professedly and openly denying the rights of reason and imposing on it a tyranny, or stupefying it by a soporific drug, that accusation must be specific and must be sustained by proofs. Vague assertions will not do. Where are the self-evident or demonstrated truths, where are the undeniable, indubitable facts, which are contradicted by any dogma of the Catholic faith, or any definition which the supreme authority in the church requires us to believe as an infallible expression of the truth? Where is the flaw in the whole structure of the Catholic argument? The advocates of the Catholic cause cannot desire anything more heartily than that the whole subject should be brought to the test of the most stringent logic, and that all the claims of the Catholic Church should be confronted with the whole array of truths that can be demonstrated by philosophy, and of facts that can be established by history or science.
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From The French Of Erckmann And Chatrian.
The Invasion; Or, Yegof The Fool.
Chapter IX
The farm-house presented a bustling scene when Jean-Claude, Doctor Lorquin, and the others arrived. The kitchen-fire had been blazing since day-break, and old Duchêne was drawing from the oven innumerable loaves of bread, the fresh, crisp odor of which filled the whole house. Annette piled them in heaps beside the hearth, Louise waited upon the guests, and Catherine saw to everything.
Hullin, from his seat, gazed at his old cousin.
"What a woman she is!" he muttered. "She forgets nothing. Comrades," he exclaimed, "to Catherine Lefevre's health!"
"To Catherine's health!" cried the others; and the glasses clinked in the midst of discussions on battles, attacks, defences, and retreats. Every one was full of cheerful confidence; every one declared that all would go well.
But heaven had still a joy reserved for that day--especially for Louise and Mother Lefevre. Toward noon, when the bright sunshine sparkled on the snow and melted the frost upon the window-panes, old Yohan, the toothless and almost blind watchdog, began to bay so joyously that all present stopped talking, and listened.
"What can it mean?" thought Catherine. "Since my boy's departure Yohan has not barked like that."
Swift steps were heard crossing the yard; Louise sprang to the door; a soldier appeared on the threshold--but a soldier so worn, thin, weary, and ragged--his old grey great-coat so torn, his canvas gaiters so tattered, that a murmur of pity ran from mouth to mouth.
He seemed unable to go a step further, and slowly placed the butt of his musket upon the ground; his face was the color of bronze, but his unkempt moustaches trembled, his cheeks grew pale beneath their brown skin, and his hollow eyes filled with tears when he gazed on the party within.
Without, the old dog barked, whined, and tugged at his chain; within, you could hear the fire crackle in the deep silence. But in a moment Catherine had rushed forward, and was hanging upon the soldier's neck.
"Gaspard! Gaspard! my boy!" she cried, while the tears burst from her eyes.
"Yes, mother!" he replied, in a voice choked by a sob.
Then Louise sobbed too, and then the whole kitchen was filled with voices. Gaspard's name was on every tongue, and every hand was stretched forth to clasp his.
But the mother would not yet give up her son; the woman, a moment before so strong, so brave, so resolute, still hung weeping upon his neck, his brown hair mingling with her grey locks, as he murmured:
"Mother! mother! how often have I thought of this meeting! But where is Louise?" he said. "I thought I saw her."
And then Louise ran forward, blushing, while she exclaimed:
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"I knew it was Gaspard! I knew him by his step!" And old Duchene, twirling his cotton cap in his hand, muttered:
"Great heaven Is that my poor child in such a plight?"
He had taken care of Gaspard from infancy, and, since his departure, had always imagined him fresh and stout, in a fine blue uniform with red facings. He struggled to collect his ideas so rudely scattered.
But his friends surrounded the young soldier; his musket, his shako, his knapsack, and his belts were merrily captured, and at last old Hullin cried, with moist eyes:
"Poor Gaspard! How glad I am to see you safe and sound! Ha! ha!" he continued, trying hard to laugh, "I would rather, though, see you as you are than with the fat, round cheeks you took away with you. You are a man now; you remind me of the old days of the Sambre and of Egypt. Ha! ha! ha! our noses were sharp enough then, my boy; and our teeth were long and sharp too."
"Yes, yes; I know what that means, Father Jean-Claude; but let us sit down and talk. What is going on? What brings you all to the farm?"
"Have you not heard? All the country is in arms, from La Houpe to Saint-Sauveur, and I am commander-in-chief."
"Hurrah! Then the Kaiserlik beggars sha'n't find a road here so easily. But pass me the knife. That ham is not yet finished. Sit by me, Louise, and help me to the bread. A few days like this would soon make my bones grow smaller. They wouldn't know me in the company."
All wondered at the speed with which the provisions disappeared. The soldier's eyes often turned to his mother and Louise, and he smiled sadly as he gazed upon them; but all this was without losing time in his attack. The poor fellow was well-nigh famished, and old Duchene muttered, as he looked at him:
"Great heaven! No wonder that so many die of want!"
"But tell us, Gaspard," said Hullin, "without interrupting your breakfast, how comes it that you are here? We thought you on the banks of the Rhine, near Strasbourg."
"Aha! I understand you," replied Gaspard, with a knowing wink of the eye; "you mean that there are a good many deserters running about, don't you?"
"Such an idea in regard to you never struck me, and yet--"
"You would not be sorry to know that I am all right. Well, Father Jean-Claude, you are right; for whoever runs from roll-call when the Kaiserliks are in France, deserves to be shot. But look here."
Hullin took a paper which the young man held out to him and read:
"Twenty-four hours' leave is given to the grenadier Gaspard Lefevre. January 3d, 1814. Gemeau, Chief of Battalion."
"Very good," said the old man; "put it in your knapsack; you might lose it. You see, my friends," he continued gayly, "I know all about this thing called love. It is very good and very bad, but particularly bad for young soldiers who happen to be near their village after a campaign. They sometimes forget themselves and return to camp with three or four gendarmes showing them the way. I have seen it once or twice. But, now, as everything is in order, let us drink a glass to Gaspard's health. What say you, Catherine? The men from the Sarre may be here any moment, so we have no time to lose."
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"You are right, Jean-Claude," replied the old woman sadly. "Annette, go to the cellar and bring three bottles here! But your leave, Gaspard," she asked; "how long does it last?"
"I received it last night at eight o'clock at Vasselonne. The regiment is retreating on Lorraine, and I must rejoin it this evening at Phalsbourg."
"Then you have yet seven hours before you; you will only need six to reach there, although there is much snow on Foxthal."
The good woman sat by her son; her heart beat painfully; she could not conceal her trouble. Louise leaned on Gaspard's worn-out epaulette and sobbed. Hullin bent his brows, but said nothing until the bottles arrived and the glasses were filled.
"Come, come, Louise!" he cried, "Courage! These wars cannot last for ever; they must end one way or the other; and then Gaspard will return, and we shall have a merry wedding of it."
He filled up the glasses, and Catherine dried her eyes, muttering, however, as she did so:
"And to think that those robbers are the cause of all this! But let them come! They will rue it."
The old wine, however, cheered all, and Gaspard told the story of Bautzen, Lutzen, Leipsic, and Hanau, where conscripts fought like veterans, winning victory after victory until treason ruined all.
Every one listened in silence. Jean-Claude's eyes flashed as he heard how rivers were forded and crossed amid storms of shells and bullets; how batteries were carried by the bayonet alone; and how hussars and cossacks were hurled back from the steady squares. The doctor inquired particularly about the positions of the field-hospitals; Materne and his sons bent forward with ears erect, and lips pressed tight together, fearing to lose a word; Catherine looked with pride upon a son who had borne a part in scenes over which ages will grieve or rejoice; and the ardor of all present mounted to the highest pitch as more than one muttered that the end was not yet.
At length the hour for Gaspard's departure arrived. He arose, but when Louise clung to his neck and with sobs implored him to stay, the color left his cheeks.
"I am a soldier," he said; "my name is Gaspard Lefevre; I love thee a thousand times better than my life; but I must not disgrace that name."
He unclasped her arms, and Hullin tore them apart.
"Well said!" cried the old sabot-maker; "and spoken as a man should speak."
Catherine buckled the knapsack on her son's back; she did so calmly, but her brows were knitted, and she tried hard to press her quivering lips tightly together, while two great tears rolled down her wrinkled cheeks.
"Go--go--my child," she sobbed, "and take your mother's blessing with you, and if it should be the will of God that--that--"
But the poor woman's stout heart could sustain her no longer; she burst into an agony of weeping. Gaspard seized his musket, and, covering his eyes with his hand, rushed from the house.
All this while the men from the Sarre with picks and their axes were making their way up along the Valtin path. The sounds of their voices could already be heard, as they laughed and jested as if on the way to a festival, and not to privation, danger, and death.
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Chapter X
But while Hullin and his mountaineers were thus preparing for battle, where was the tin-crowned King of Diamonds--Yegof the Fool? Wandering barefoot over the snow-covered paths, his breast open to the cutting winds, cold, hungry, and companionless, save for his grim friend the raven.
Night was approaching, the cold growing keener and keener; even the fox seemed to shiver as he pursued his unseen prey, and the famished birds of prey had hidden themselves in the rocky nooks of the mountains. But the fool, his raven upon his shoulder, kept on--on--talking to himself, gesticulating wildly, from Holderloch to Sonneberg, from Sonneberg to Blutfeld.
And that very night, Robin, the old herdsman of Bois-de-Chênes, saw a strange and fearful sight.
A few days before, having been surprised by the snows at the bottom of the gorge of Blutfeld, he left his wagon behind him and drove home the cattle, but finding upon his arrival that he had forgotten his sheep-skin cloak, he started at about four o'clock that evening to seek it.
Blutfeld is a narrow gorge between Schneeberg and Grosmann, bordered by pointed rocks. A thread of water winds its way through the valley, in summer and winter, and on its sides, among the grey rocks, spots of good pasturage are found: but the place is rarely visited; something weird and ghostly seems to hang over it, and the cold, white light of a winter's moon serves to intensify its sinister aspect. Tradition says that here was fought a great battle between the Triboci and the Germans, who, under a chief named Luitprandt, attempted to penetrate into Gaul. It tells how the Triboci from the peaks around flung huge stones upon their foes, crushing them by thousands, and that from the frightful carnage the defile derived its name--Blutfeld the field of blood. Rusted spearheads, broken helmets, and cross-handled swords two ells in length are yet found there.
At night, when the moonlight falls upon the snow-covered rocks, when the wind whistles through the bare bushes, the cries of the surprised Germans seem borne upon the air, mingled with the wailing of their women and the neighing of steeds, and the rattling of chariots through the defile. The Triboci ceased not from the slaughter for two entire days, and on the third they retired to their homes, every man bending beneath the weight of his booty.
Such was the legend of the gorge which Robin reached just as the moon was rising.
The good man had a hundred times descended to its depths, but never had it seemed so bright or so ghastly. His wagon, at the bottom, seemed one of those masses of rock under which the invaders were crushed. It stood at the entrance of the valley, behind a thick clump of bushes, and the little stream dashed along by it, flashing like a thousand swords. The old herdsman soon found his cloak and an old hatchet too, which he had regarded as lost; but, when he turned to depart, his blood ran cold.
A tall figure was advancing straight toward him. Behind it followed five grey wolves, two full-grown and three young. He recognized Yegof, and at first thought the wolves were dogs. They followed the fool step by step, but he seemed not to see them; his raven flew about, now in the clear moonlight, now in the dark shadows of the rocks; the wolves, with glittering eyes, sniffed the air as if scenting their prey. The fool lifted his sceptre.
{305}
Robin darted like a flash into his wagon unobserved. Yegof advanced down the valley as if walking some great castle-hall, and the raven with glittering black plumage flew to the branch of a dead tree near by, and there perched, and seemed to listen.
It was a strange scene, Robin thought. If the fool slipped, if he fell, there was an end of him; the wolves would instantly devour him.
But in the middle of the gorge, Yegof turned and sat down upon a stone, and the five wolves sat around him in the snow.
Then the fool, raising his sceptre, addressed them, calling each one by name, and they replied with mournful howlings.
"Ha, child, Bléed, Merweg, and you, my old Siramar," he cried, "here we are once more together! You have grown fat; you have had good cheer in Germany, have you not?"
Stretching his arm, after a moment's pause, over the moonlit valley, he continued:
"Remember ye not the great battle?"
One of the wolves howled plaintively as if in reply; then another, and at last all five together.
This lasted full ten minutes, the raven the while sitting motionless on its withered branch. Robin would have fled, but dared not.
Still the wolves howled, and the echoes of Blutfeld replied to their chorus, until at last the largest ceased, and the rest followed his example. Yegof spoke again:
"Ay; 'tis a sorrowful story. There runs the stream that overflowed with our blood; but others fell too, and for three days and three nights their women tore their hair. But how the accursed dogs triumphed in their victory!"
The fool seized his crown and dashed it upon the ground; then, sighing, stooped and placed it again upon his head. The wolves sat as if listening attentively, and the largest again howled mournfully.
"Thou art hungry, Siramar," said Yegof, as if replying to him; "but rejoice; flesh will soon be yours in plenty; the battle will again be fought. Our war-cry was long hushed, but the hour is near, and it will again shake these mountains, and you shall again be warriors; you shall again own these valleys. The air is full of the shrieks of women, of the flashing of swords, the creaking of wagons. They rushed down upon us and we were surrounded; your bones sleep here on every side, but your children are coming; rejoice!' sing, sing!"
And he himself began to howl like a wolf, and his hearers took up the savage strain.
These cries, growing every moment more horrible, the reverberating echoes, the motionless rocks, white and ghastly, or buried in blackness and gloom, the bare branches bending beneath their load of snow--all filled the old herdsman with speechless horror.
But the scene soon ended. Yegof spoke no more, but moved slowly with his strange train toward Hazlach, and the raven, uttering a hoarse cry, spread its sable wings and followed through the dark blue air.
All disappeared like a dream, but for a long time Robin could hear the howling growing fainter and further away. It had, however, ceased for nearly half an hour, and the silence of a winter night taken its place, before the good man dared leave his wagon, and make at his best speed for the farm-house.
{306}
Arriving at Bois-de-Chênes he found every one excited and busy. They were about killing an ox for the Donon men, and Hullin, Doctor Lorquin, and Louise had departed with those from the Sarre. Catherine was having her great four-horse wagon loaded with bread, meat, and brandy, and all were busy in the preparations.
Robin would not tell any one of his adventure. It seemed, even to himself, so incredible that he dared not speak of it. The whole affair puzzled him sorely, and it was not until he was lying in his crib in the stable that he concluded that Yegof had some time or other captured and tamed a litter of wolves, to whom he uttered his folly as men sometimes speak to their dogs; but the rencounter left a superstitious dread in his mind, and even years after, the honest old man could not speak of it without a shudder.
Chapter XI
All Hullin's orders had been carried out. The defiles of Zorn and of the Sarre were securely guarded, and that of Blanru, the extreme point of their position, had been placed in a state of defence by Jean-Claude himself and the three hundred men who formed his principal force.
Thither, on the eastern slope of Donon, near Grandfontaine, must we wend our way.
Above the main road, which winds up the mountain for two thirds of its height, might be seen a farm-house, surrounded by a few acres of cultivated land--a large flat-roofed building, belonging to Pelsly, the Anabaptist. The stables and barn were behind, toward the summit of the mountain.
Here was the camp of our partisans. Beneath them lay Grandfontaine and Framont, locked in a narrow ravine; further on, at a turn of the valley, was Shirmeck, with its piles of feudal ruins; still further La Bruche stretched onward into the grey mists of Alsace. To their left rose the sterile peak of Donon, covered with huge rocks and a few stunted firs. Before them lay the road, made impassable by the wearing away of the earth caused by the melting snow, and by huge trees, with all their branches on, thrown across it.
It was a scene of stern grandeur. Not a living thing appeared on all the long road; the country seemed a desert, and only a few scattered fires, sending their long wreaths of smoke toward the sky, showed the position of the bivouac.
For three days had the mountaineers been awaiting the enemy, and the delay had told not a little upon their ardor. When, therefore, at about eight in the morning, the sentinels descried a man coming toward them, waving his hat, expectation at once stood on tiptoe, and messengers were at once despatched for Hullin, who since one o'clock had been sleeping in the farm-house, on a wide mattress, side by side with Doctor Lorquin and his dog Pluto.
The cause of the commotion was Nickel Bentz, the old forester of La Houpe, and Hullin at once saluted him with--
"Well, Nickel, what tidings?"
"Nothing, master Jean-Claude, save that toward Phalsbourg there is a noise as of a storm. Labarbe says it is artillery; for all night long we saw flashes like lightning in the wood of Hildehouse, and this morning the plain is covered with grey clouds."
"The city is attacked!" exclaimed Hullin; "but from the Lutzelstein side. They are trying to cut it off. The allies are there; Alsace is overrun."
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Then turning to Materne, who stood behind him, he added,
"We can remain no longer in uncertainty. Make a reconnoissance with your two sons."
The old hunter's face lighted up.
"Good!" he cried. "We will have a chance to stretch our legs and bring down an Austrian or Cossack or two before we return."
"Steady, my friend," said Jean-Claude sternly; "you must not think of bringing down Cossacks, but only of observing what is going on. Frantz and Kasper will be armed, but you will leave your rifle, and powder-horn, and hunting-knife here."
"Leave my arms here, Jean-Claude! And why?"
"Because you must go into the villages; and if you are caught there armed, you would be shot at once."
"Shot?"
"Yes, shot. We are not regular troops; they will not make prisoners of us; we can expect no quarter. You will follow the Shirmeck road, and your sons will follow you in the copse, half a rifle-shot off. If any marauders should attack you, they will come to your aid; but if a detachment meet you, they will let you be taken."
"Let me be taken!" cried the old man indignantly. "I would like to see them do so."
"Obey orders, Materne. An unarmed man will be released; an armed one shot. I need not tell you not to let those Germans know you come as a spy."
"I understand, Jean-Claude, and although I never parted yet with my rifle, you may take it, and my horn and knife. Who will lend me a blouse and staff?"
Nickel Bentz pulled off his blue smock-frock and hat, and passed them to the old man; and when he had donned them, no one would imagine the old hunter to be other than a simple peasant of the mountains.
His two sons, proud to be selected for such an expedition, reprimed their pieces, fixed their long, straight, wild-boar bayonets, and tried their hunting-knives in the sheaths; then, assured that everything was in proper order, they turned to go, their eyes sparkling with pleasure.
"Do not forget Jean-Claude's words," said Doctor Lorquin; "a German more or less makes little difference among a hundred thousand, but we should find it difficult to replace you."
"Fear nothing, doctor," replied old Materne. "My boys are hunters, and know how to bide their time, and profit by any chance that offers. And now, forward; we must be back before night."
Chapter XII
Materne and his sons pursued their way for a long distance in silence. The weather was fine; the winter sun shone on the dazzling snow without thawing it, so that the path was firm and solid. Afar off, in the valley, the tall firs, pointed rocks, and the roofs of the houses, with their hanging icicles and little glittering windows and steep gables, were sharply outlined in the clear air, and in the street of Grandfontaine they could see a troop of young girls around the wash-house, and a few old men in cotton caps smoking their pipes at their cottage doors; but of all the busy life so plainly seen, not a sound reached their ears.
The old hunter halted at the edge of the wood, saying:
"I will go down to the village, to Dubreuil's, the keeper of the Pine-Cone."
He pointed with his staff to a long white building, with doors and windows surrounded by a yellow border, and a pine branch hanging from the wall by way of sign.
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"Wait for me here," said the old man, "unless I come to the door and raise my hat, when you may follow, and take a glass of wine with me."
He descended the snow-covered mountain-side, gained the plain, and crossed the village common, and his two boys, resting upon their pieces, saw him enter the inn. A few moments after, he reappeared on the threshold and raised his hat. Fifteen minutes after, they had rejoined their father in the large hall of the Pine-Cone--a long, low room, warmed by a huge stove on the sanded floor.
Except for the presence of the innkeeper, Dubreuil, the fattest and most apoplectic man in the Vosges, with little round eyes, a flat nose, and a triple chin falling upon his breast--except, I say, for the presence of this redoubtable personage, who was sitting in a large arm-chair near the fire, Materne found himself alone when he entered the inn. He ordered the glasses filled as the old clock struck nine, and the wooden cock upon it flapped his wings with a strange rusty noise.
"Good morning, Father Dubreuil!" said both the young men.
"Good morning, my boys, good morning!" replied the inn-keeper, in an oily voice, smiling an oily smile. "Any news?"
"No, faith," answered Kasper. "Winter is upon us, the season for boar-hunting."
Then both, placing their rifles in a corner of the window, at hand in case of need, sat down at a table opposite their father, and drank, saying. "To our health!" as they had been taught to be always careful to do.
"So," said Materne, turning to the innkeeper, and apparently resuming a conversation that had been interrupted, "you think, Father Dubreuil, that we may hunt without fear in the wood of Baronies?"
"Oh! as for that I can't say," replied mine host, shrugging his shoulders; "I only know that at present the Allies have not got beyond Mutzig. But they don't injure any one; but receive all well-disposed people--who wish to fight the usurper."
"The usurper? Who is that?"
"Eh? Why, Napoleon Bonaparte, the usurper, to be sure. Look on the wall there."
He pointed to a large placard hanging near the clock.
"Look there, and you will see that the Austrians are our true friends."
Old Materne's brows knitted, but he repressed his feelings, and said,
"But I cannot read, Monsieur Dubreuil, nor my boys. Explain the matter to us."
Then the old publican, raising himself with much difficulty from his armchair, and puffing like a porpoise with the unwonted exertion, placed himself before the placard, with his arms folded across his enormous breast, and in a majestic tone read a proclamation of the allied sovereigns setting forth that they, said sovereigns, were waging war against Napoleon and not against France, and that, consequently, it behoved all good people to remain at home and to mind their own business, under pain of having their houses, goods, and chattels pillaged and burnt, and themselves shot.
The three hunters listened to all this, and then looked at each other.
When Dubreuil had finished reading, he again took his seat, saying,
"Well, you see now, do you not?"
"Where did you get that?" asked Kasper.
"It is posted everywhere."
"We are glad to hear it," said Materne, pressing the arm of Frantz, who had risen with flaming eyes. "Do you want some fire, Frantz? Here is my steel."
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Frantz sat down, and the old man proceeded good-humoredly,
"And so, our good friends, the Austrians, will take nothing from us?"
"Well-disposed people have nothing to fear, but those who rise in arms are stripped of everything; which is only right, for it is not just that the good should suffer for the bad. Thus, for instance, you would be very well received at the allied headquarters; you know the country and could serve as guides, for which you would be well paid."
There was a moment of silence; again the three hunters gazed at each other; the father placed his hands upon the table, as if beseeching his sons to remain calm, but he himself was pale with rage.
The innkeeper, perceiving nothing of this, continued,
"You have more reason to fear in the woods of Baronies those villains of Dagsberg, of the Sarre, and of Blanru, who have revolted, and wish to commence '93 over again."
"Are you sure they have?" asked Materne, struggling hard to contain himself.
"Am I sure? You have only to look out the window and you will see them on the Donon road. They have captured the Anabaptist, Pelsly, and bound him to the foot of his bed; they are pillaging, stealing, destroying the roads; but let them beware! In a few days they will have their hands full, and it is not with a thousand, or ten thousand, men they will have to deal, but with hundreds of thousands. They will all be hung."
Materne arose.
"It is time for us to be on our way," said he shortly. "By two o'clock we must be in the woods. Farewell, Father Dubreuil."
All three rushed out, anger choking them.
"Reflect well upon what I told you," cried the innkeeper, from his arm-chair.
Once without, Materne turned with quivering lips, and cried,
"If I had not restrained myself, I would have broken the bottle over his head."
"And I," said Frantz, "would have thrust my bayonet through his body."
Kasper still stood at the threshold, hesitating. His fingers clutched the hilt of his hunting-knife, and his eyes were almost savage in their glare; but the old man seized him by the arm and dragged him away, saying:
"Away! We will meet the wretch again. To advise me to betray my country! Hullin said well when he told us to be on our guard."
They passed down the street gazing fiercely around.
At the end of the village, opposite the ancient cross, and near the church, they halted. Materne then, somewhat calmed, showed his sons the path which winds around Phrâmond, through the bushes, and said:
"You will take that foot-path. I will follow the road to Schirmeck, going slowly, so that you may get there as soon as I."
They separated, and the old hunter walked thoughtfully on, his head bowed, and his eyes fixed upon the ground, wondering all the while how he managed to restrain himself from breaking the inn-keeper's head. From time to time herds of cattle passed him, and flocks of sheep and goats, all on their way to the mountain. They came from Wisch, from Urmatt, and even from Mutzig, and the poor animals seemed scarcely able to move.
"Where are you going so fast?" cried the old hunter to the sad-looking herdsmen. "Have you not heard the proclamation of the Russians and Austrians?"
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But they seemed in no humor for jesting, and replied:
"It is easy for you to laugh at us. Proclamations indeed! We know what they are worth. Those Russians and Austrians are pillaging and stealing all they can lay hands on; laying forced contributions, carrying off horses, cows, cattle, wagons."
"Hold there; it cannot be possible!" returned Materne. "They are the saviours of France; her brave, good friends. I cannot believe it. Such a beautiful proclamation!" "Go down into Alsace and see!" The poor fellows went on, dragging themselves wearily along, while the old hunter laughed bitterly.
As he approached Schirmeck, things grew worse. Wagons, cattle, horses, even flocks of geese, thronged the road, mingled with women and children, carrying whatever of their household effects they could bear off, and often beating their breasts and tearing their hair. The air was filled with wailing and lamentation, while ever and anon a cry arose,
"We are lost! The Cossacks! the Cossacks!"
These words of fear passed like lightning through the mass; women fainted, children stood up in the wagons to see further along the road, and Materne blushed for the cowardice of people who might have made a stout defence against the enemy.
Just outside Schirmeck, Frantz and Kasper rejoined their father, and all three entered the tavern of the Golden Key, kept by the widow Faltaux.
The poor woman and her two daughters were standing at the window gazing at the flight, and wringing their hands; for indeed the tumult was increasing every moment, and now cattle, men, and wagons fairly blocked the street, and shouts, screams, and even curses, arose on all sides.
Materne pushing open the door and seeing the three women standing pale, groaning, more dead than alive, struck his staff angrily upon the floor, and cried:
"Are you becoming mad, Mother Faltaux! You, who should set your daughters a good example? It is shameful!"
The old woman turned round and replied in a heart-broken voice:
"Ah Materne! If you only knew--"
"Knew what? The enemy are coming, but they won't eat you."
"No, but they will devour all I have! Old Ursula, of Schlestadt, arrived here last night, and says they are never satisfied. Ah! those Russians and Austrians--"
"But where are they?" cried the old hunter. "I have not yet seen one."
"They are in Alsace, near Urmatt, on their way hither."
"Well," observed Kasper, "before they arrive you may give us a cup of wine; here is a crown for you; you can hide it more easily than your casks."
One of the daughters went to the cellar to bring the refreshment, and at the same time several strangers entered. One was a seller of almanacs, from Strasbourg; the others were a wagoner from Sarrebrück, and two or three people from Mutzig, Wisch, and Shirmeck, who were flying with their cattle: all seemed completely jaded.
They sat down at the same table, opposite the windows, so that they might look out upon the road, and, the wine served, each began to tell all he knew. One said that the Cossacks had fired a village in Alsace, because candles were refused them for dessert after dinner; another that the Calmucks ate soap for cheese, and that many of them drank brandy by the pint, after putting handfuls of pepper in it; that their filthiness was beyond description; and that everything had to be hidden from them, for that there was nothing they would not devour. The stories these good people told, of what they had seen with their own eyes, seemed almost incredible.
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Toward noon, the old hunter and his sons rose to depart, when suddenly a cry, louder than any they had yet heard, arose without,
"The Cossacks! The Cossacks!"
The entire party rushed to the door, except the three hunters, who contented themselves with opening a window and looking out. Every one was now fleeing across the fields; men, flocks, and wagons were scattering, like autumn leaves before the wind. In less than five minutes the road was clear, except in the village street, where the crowd was jammed and blocked by its mass. Materne gazed for a while and then shut the window.
"I see nothing," he said.
"Nor I," replied Kasper.
"I see how it is," cried the old hunter; "fear adds to the enemy's strength; and fear," he added, shrugging his shoulders disdainfully, "is a miserable thing. We have only one poor life to lose. Let us go."
They left the inn, the old man taking the road to the top of Hirschberg, his sons following. They soon reached the edge of the woods, and Materne sought the highest point, whence he might obtain a view of the plain; for he utterly despised the wild tales of the fugitives he had met.
When they reached the summit of the mountain--which forms a sort of promontory extending into the plain--they could see distinctly the enemy's position, three leagues away, between Urmatt and Lutzelhouse, like long black lines upon the snow; further on, the artillery and baggage appeared in dark masses. Other lines and masses were winding among the villages, and, notwithstanding the distance, the flashing of bayonets told that a column was on the march to Wisch.
After long gazing at the picture before him, the old hunter said thoughtfully:
"There are at least thirty thousand men yonder. They are advancing toward us, and we shall be assailed to-morrow, or the day after at the latest. It will be no holiday work to check them, my boys; but if they have numbers, we have a good position, and in such masses as those there will be no balls lost."
Having made these reflections, he measured the height of the sun, and added:
"It is now two o'clock, and we know all we want to know. Let us return to the bivouac."
The young men slung their rifles upon their backs, and, leaving the valley of the Broque to the left, they pushed up the steep ascent of Hengsbach and descended on the further side, without following any path through the snow, but guiding themselves solely by the peaks, to cut short their journey.
They had thus proceeded for about two hours; the winter sun was drooping to the horizon, and night was fast approaching, but calm and light. They had only to cross the solitary gorge of Riel, which forms a wide circular basin in the midst of the forest, enclosing a blue lake, often the resort of the roebuck.
Suddenly, as they left the cover of the trees, the old man stopped short behind a clump of bushes.
"Hist!"
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He pointed to the little lake, which was covered with a thin and transparent coating of ice. A strange spectacle greeted their eyes. Twenty Cossacks, with matted yellow beards, heads covered with old funnel-shaped caps of the skin of some animal, and long ragged cloaks hanging from their shoulders, were before them, seated on their little horses. Their stirrups were simply looped ropes, and the steeds, with long manes, thin tails, and flanks matted with yellow, black, and white, looked not unlike goats. Some of the riders were armed only with long lances, others with sabres, others with merely a hatchet hanging by a cord from their saddle, and a large horse-pistol in their belt. Some gazed with ecstasy upon the lines of green firs, and one tall, lean fellow was breaking the ice with the butt of his spear, while his horse drank. Others dismounted, and began to remove the snow preparatory to encamping.
They formed a singular picture--those men from afar, with their bronzed features, flat foreheads and noses, and grey fluttering rags, as they stood by the side of the lake under the tall tree-covered crags. It seemed a glimpse of another world than the one we live in, and as the three hunters gazed and caught the sounds of their uncouth speech, curiosity for a while mastered all other feelings. But Kasper and Frantz soon fixed their long bayonets on their rifles and retired once more into the cover of the woods. They reached a rock some twenty feet high, which Materne climbed; then, after a few words exchanged in a low voice, Kasper examined his priming, slowly brought his piece to his shoulder, and aimed, while his brother stood by ready to follow his example.
The Cossack whose horse was drinking was about two hundred paces from our little party. The report of the rifle rang through the forest and awoke the deep echoes of the gorge, and the horseman bent forward and disappeared beneath the ice of the lake.
It would be impossible to describe the stupefaction which seemed to seize the band. The echoes rolled like a volley of musketry; the dismounted barbarians bounded on their steeds, gazing wildly around, while a thick wreath of smoke rolled above the clump of trees behind which the hunters stood.
Kasper had in a moment reloaded, but at the same instant the Cossacks dashed toward the slope of Hartz, following in single file and shouting savagely, "Hurrah! Hurrah!"
They disappeared like a flash, and as Kasper aimed again the last horse disappeared in the woods.
The steed of the dead Cossack stood alone by the lake. His fallen master's foot yet remained in the stirrup, although the body was submerged in the water.
Materne listened on his rock, and then said joyfully:
"They are gone! Let us press on. Frantz, remain here for a while. If any should return--"
But despite this direction all three ran to where the horse yet stood, and Materne, seizing the animal's bridle, cried:
"Now, old fellow, we will teach thee to speak French. These Cossacks have famous horses, my boys," he continued, "and when I am too old to go afoot, I will keep this one to hunt with."
"Let us go," cried Kasper.
Toward six o'clock they heard the first challenge of their sentinels:
"Who goes there?"
"France!" answered Materne, advancing.
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He was soon recognized, and all rushed forth to meet the three hunters. Hullin himself, as curious as the rest, came out with Doctor Lorquin. The partisans stood around the horse, gazing with looks of wonder and admiration.
"It is a Cossack's," said Hullin, squeezing his old friend's hand.
"Yes, Jean-Claude; we captured it at the pond of Riel. Kasper shot its master."
Kasper, leaning upon his rifle, seemed well pleased with his prize, and old Materne, rubbing his hands, added:
"We were determined to bring something back with us, for my boys and I never return empty-handed."
Hullin took him aside, and they entered the farm-house together, while the young hunters gratified the curiosity of their comrades.