Chapter III
Tiberius, when all had disappeared along the road, suddenly stopped in his walk.
His companion, toward whom he had turned, did the same, and looked at him with an air of expectation.
"I leave all details to you," said the Cæsar; "but what has to be done is this--that youth who calls himself Paulus Lepidus Æmilius must be produced as a gladiator either in the Circus Maximus or the Statilian Amphitheatre,[22] as the number of victims may dictate. Men of noble birth have been seen ere now upon the sand. We will then make him show against the best swordsmen in the world--against Gauls, Britons, and Cappadocians--what that Greek fence is worth of which he seems a master. The girl, his sister, must be carried off, either beforehand or afterward, as your skill may dictate, and softly and safely lodged at Rome in that two-storied brick house of Cneius Piso and his precious wife, Plancina, which is not known to be mine; (I believe and hope, and am given to understand, that it is not known to be theirs neither.)"
Tiberius paused, and Sejanus, with an intent look, slightly inclined his head. He was a keen man, a subtle man, but not a very profound man. He observed,
"I have heard something of this Greek widow and of her son and daughter. They have (it seems to me as if I had heard this) friends near the person of Augustus, or, at least, in the court. I can easily cause the girl to be so carried off that no rumor about the place of her residence will ever more sound among men. But the very mystery of it will sound, and that loudly; and her mother and brother will never cease to pierce the ears of Augustus with their cries. But, before I say a word more, I wish to know two things--first, whether this youth Paulus is to be included in one of those great shows of gladiators which are rendering you, my Cæsar, so beloved by the Roman people?"
"Am I beloved, think you?" asked Tiberius.
"The master-passion of the people is for the shows, and, above all, the fights of the amphitheatre," answered Sejanus. "Whoever has, for a hundred years and more, obtained the mastery of the world, has thus won the Romans; each succeeding dictator of the globe, from Caius Marius, and Sylla, and Pompey, and the invincible Caius Julius, and Mark Antony, to our present happy Emperor Augustus, has surpassed his predecessors in the magnificence of these entertainments given to people, populace, common legionaries, and prætorians; and in exact proportion also, it is remarkable, has each surpassed his forerunners in permanent power, until that power has at last become nearly absolute, nearly unlimited."
"You say true," replied Tiberius; "and I excel all former examples in the extent, splendor, and novelty of my shows. Augustus has abandoned that department; but even when he was courting the Romans, he never edited like me. People would now smile at the old-fashioned meanness of the spectacles which he formerly made acceptable to them. He is breaking very fast in health too, I fear, my Sejanus."
"He is, I fear, drawing toward his end," replied the commander of the prætorians.
"As to your question concerning this youth," resumed Tiberius, "my object is partly to add a novel and curious feature to the fight--this strange sword-play. Yet, why should he not afterward be included in some great slaughter-match, three or four hundred a side, care being taken that he should be finished? We might first pit him fairly against six or a dozen single antagonists in succession. If he conquer them all, it will be unprecedentedly amusing; the people will be in ecstasies, and then the victor can be made to disappear in the general conflict. I shall thus have the undisturbed management of his sister's education."
Grave as a statue, Sejanus replied,
"He is a proud youth, an equestrian, a patrician, son of an eminent warrior, nephew of one who once shared in the government of the whole globe. Well, not being a slave, if he found himself in the arena by virtue of having been violently seized and trepanned, I firmly believe that, either before or after fighting, he would make a speech, appealing to the justice of the emperor and the sympathy of the people, not to say any thing about the soldiers.[23] The plan you propose, my Cæsar, seems like furnishing him with an immense audience and a gigantic tribunal, before which to tell that pathetic story about his father and the battle of Philippi, and those family estates which are now in the possession of the two beautiful ladies whose litters have just preceded us on the road to Formiæ."
Tiberius smiled, as with his head bent down he looked at the speaker, and thus he continued stooping, looking, and smiling for a moment or two, after which he said,
"The Tuscans are subtle, and you are the subtlest of Tuscans; what is best?"
Sejanus said, "Let the girl first be carried away; let the mother and brother break their hearts for her; then let the Lanista Thellus, who is not known to be one of your men, but is supposed to hire out his gladiators on his own account, invite the youth to join his familia,[24] or company, and when Paulus refuses, as he will refuse, let Thellus say that he knows money would not bribe Paulus, but that he has seen Paulus's sister; that he can guide him to her, if Paulus consents to fight in the next great forthcoming shows. And, in short, in order to make all this more specious, let Thellus have formed the acquaintance of the half-Greek family, mother, sister, brother, before the girl is abducted, in order that Paulus may think he speaks the truth when afterward saying that he has seen the sister and knows her, and can guide Paulus to where she is detained. If this plan be adopted, Paulus will fight in the arena of his own accord, and will make no speeches, no disturbance, but will disappear for ever in a decorous and legitimate manner."
"You are a man of immense merit, my Sejanus," replied the personage in gore-colored purple, "and I will some day reward you more than I can do while merely the Cæsar of an Augustus, whom may the gods protect. The mother perhaps we can let alone, or she could be put on board a corsair as an offering to some god, to procure me good fortune in other things. We shall see. Meanwhile, execute all the rest with as little delay as the order and priority of the several matters, one before the other, will allow, and report to me punctually at every step."
Beckoning to one of the troopers, who approached with the spare horse, Tiberius now mounted. The soldier immediately withdrew again, and Tiberius said to the prætorian commander, "Be upon your guard with Paterculus; he is doubtless devoted to me, but is a squeamish man; clever, indeed, too. Still there are clever fools, my Sejanus."
Then waving his hand, he rode slowly away, but came to a halt at a distance of twenty paces, and turned his horse's head round. Sejanus strode quickly toward his master.
"You know, of course, that the Germans, encouraged by the slaughter of Varus and his legions, are swarming over the Julian Alps into the north-east of Italy from Illyricum.[25] How many legions are there available to meet them?"
"We have within reach, at this moment, twelve," said Sejanus, "besides my prætorians."
"Half the present forces of the whole empire," replied the other. "Germanicus is to drive back the barbarians. He will become more popular than ever with the troops generally. But the prætorians do not care for him, I suppose?"
"Even the prætorians revere him," answered Sejanus.
"Why, how so? They have so little to do with him."
"They know a soldier--" began Sejanus.
"And am not I a soldier?" interrupted his master.
"They love you too, my Cæsar, and dearly."
"Peace! Tell me exactly; what think the prætorians of Germanicus?"
"They foolishly think that, since the day when Caius Julius was murdered, no such soldier--"
"Enough! Foolishly, say you? Remember my instructions. Vale!" And Tiberius galloped north, his face ablaze with a brick-red flush deeper than ordinary.
Chapter IV
Sejanus, when left alone, motioned to the two troopers. He who had brought Tiberius his horse rode furiously after the Cæsar; the other attended the general, who slowly mounted his own steed, and, pursuing the same direction, began to trot leisurely toward Formiæ. The sun had gone down; the short twilight had passed away; clouds had gathered, and the moon, not having yet risen, the night was very black. In a few minutes Sejanus slackened his horse's pace from a trot to a walk, and the orderly, as his military attendant would in modern times be called, nearly rode against him in the dark. The man made some natural excuse, and fell back again about thirty paces.
Sejanus hardly noticed him.
"At present," he muttered, when again alone, "Tiberius, though a Cæsar, needs me; Germanicus is Cæsar too, and may become emperor. If Germanicus wished it, right or wrong--if per fas et nefas--he would win. He has much of the genius of Caius Julius and his defect of overtrustfulness; but none of his many vices. I doubt if he will ever be emperor; he is too Athenian, and also too honorable, too disinterested. Somehow I feel, too, as if he were going to be assassinated; he believes readily in men. Tiberius has smaller abilities, worse qualities, and better chances. He will rule the world, and Ælius Sejanus will rule him."
As Sejanus said these things to himself in an indistinct murmur, of which none could have heard the precise words, a voice at his elbow astonished him. Said the voice,
"How far is it, illustrious general, to Formiæ?"
The prætorian chief turned with a start, and saw that the speaker was a mounted traveller, attended by two servants, also on horseback; but there was so little light that he could not distinguish the stranger's features, nor more of his dress and appointments than that they were not, as it seemed, Italian.
"About five thousand paces," he answered. "However, there is no inn at Formiæ. Some eight hundred paces from here is a good wayside tavern, (mansio.) But you call me general, for I wear the dress. You do not, however, know me."
"Not know the distinguished chief of the prætorians? Not know the happy and unhappy, the fortunate and unfortunate Sejanus?"
"Happy and unhappy," reëchoed the latter, "fortunate and unfortunate! What means this jargon? You could use that language of every mortal. What you say you unsay."
While thus replying, he endeavored to discern the dim features of his new companion.
"Think you so?" said the man. "Then, pray, would it be the same if I were to say, for example, unhappy and happy, unfortunate and fortunate?"
"Yes."
"Alas! no."
"What!" said Sejanus. "The happiness is present, the good fortune is present, but the misfortune and unhappiness are to come. Is this your meaning?"
"As I always say what I mean," rejoined the other, "so I never explain what I say."
"Then at least," observed Sejanus, with great haughtiness of tone and manner, "you will be good enough to say who you are. As the Prætor Peregrinus,[26] especially charged to look after foreigners, I demand your name. Remember, friend, that six lictors, as well as twenty thousand soldiers, obey Sejanus."
"I am the god Hermes," replied the other, riding suddenly ahead, followed by both his attendants.
The movement was so unexpected that the figure of the stranger had become almost indistinguishable in the obscurity, before Sejanus urged his fleet Numidian steed forward at a bound in pursuit.
"Take care," said a voice in his front, "that your horse do not throw you, impious man!"
At the same time, the prætorian leader heard something roll upon the paved road, and immediately a vivid flash blazed under his horse's eyes, and a sharp report followed. Nearly thrown, indeed, he was, as the voice had warned him. When he had recovered his balance and quieted the startled beast he was riding, he halted to listen; but the only sound he could now hear was that of the mounted trooper trotting after him along the Appian Way. He waited for this man to come up, and inquired what he had observed in the three strangers who had previously passed him on the road.
"No stranger," said the man, "had passed him; he had seen no one."
Then Sejanus remembered what he had not at the moment adverted to, that neither when first accosted by the stranger, nor afterward while this person with his two attendants rode by his side, nor finally when they all galloped forward and were lost in the darkness, had any clatter of hoofs been audible.
He resumed his journey in silent thought, and soon arrived, without further adventure, at the large and famous post-house, standing in those days four or five miles south of Formiæ.
Chapter V
The post house, or mansio,[27] to which allusion has been made, situated about four or five miles south of Formiæ, on the Appian road, was a large, rambling, two-storied brick house, capable of accommodating a vast number of travellers. It was not, therefore, merely one of the many relay-houses where the imperial couriers, as well as all who could produce a special warrant for the purpose, from a consul, or a prætor, or even a quæstor, were allowed to obtain a change of horses; still less was it one of the low canal-town taverns, whose keepers Horace abused; but it was a regular country inn, where man and beast found shelter for the apparently infinitesimal charge of one as, (or not quite a penny,) and good cheer at proportionably moderate cost. It was well supplied from its own farm-yards, olive-groves, orchards, vineyards, pastures, and tilled fields, with vegetables, beef, mutton, poultry, geese, ducks, attagens, and other meats; eggs, wine, butter, cheese, milk, honey, bread, and fruit; a delicious plate of fish occasionally, an equally delicious array of quail, produced upon table in a state aromatic and frothy with their own fat juices.
This excellent and celebrated house of entertainment for belated or way-worn travellers, as well as for all who desired a change from the monotony of their usual life, was kept by a remarkably worthy old couple, formerly slaves, a freedman and freedwoman of the illustrious Æmilian family. The reader will have noticed that the youth whom it is necessary, we suppose, to acknowledge in the capacity of our hero, has been called Paulus Æmilius Lepidus; that his father had borne the same style; and likewise that his father's brother, the former sovereign magistrate or triumvir in the second and great triumvirate, was named Marcus Æmilius Lepidus. In all these names, that of Æmilius occurs; and Æmilius was the noblest of the patronymics which once this great family boasted. Now, theirs had been the house in which Crispus and Crispina, the good innkeeper and his wife, at present free and prosperous, had been boy and girl slaves. The wife, indeed, had been nurse to a son of Marcus Lepidus, the triumvir.
That son, some years before the date of our narrative, had been engaged in a conspiracy against Augustus; and the conspiracy having been discovered by Mæcenas, the youth had been put to death. Marcus Æmilius Lepidus, the father, was exculpated from all knowledge of this attempt on the part of his son, but had ever since lived in profound retirement at a lonely sea-shore castle some twenty or thirty miles from Crispus's inn, near Monte Circello; a silent, brooding, timid man, no longer very wealthy, entirely without weight in the society which he had abandoned, and without any visible influence in the political world, from which he had fled in some terror and immense disgust.
As Sejanus rode slowly up to the inn-door, a centurion came out of the porch with the air of one who had been waiting for him. Saluting the general, this officer said that he had been left behind by Velleius Paterculus to say that the sister of the youth whom Tiberius had placed under the charge of Paterculus had fainted on the road; that being unable to proceed, she and her mother had taken a lodging in the inn; that the youth had at once begged Paterculus to allow him to remain instead of proceeding to Formiæ, in order that he might attend to his poor sister, for whose life he was alarmed, giving his promise that he would faithfully report himself, and not attempt to escape; that Paterculus considered himself justified, under the circumstances, in acceding to so natural a request; consequently, that the young man was now in the inn, along with his mother and sister; and that he, the centurion, had been ordered to await Sejanus's arrival, and inform him of what had occurred, so that he might either confirm his subordinate's decision, or repair the mistake, if it was one, and cause the youth to go forward at once to Formiæ according to the letter of Tiberius's original command.
"It is well," said Sejanus, after a moment's reflection. "This is not the sort of lad who will break his word. Carthaginians, and rubbish like them, knew long ago how to believe a Roman knight and patrician, and this lad seems to be of the Regulus breed. Does the Cæsar himself, however, know of this?"
"I had no orders to tell him," answered the centurion; "and if I had had, it would have been difficult; he passed at full gallop a quarter of an hour ago, his head down, not so much as looking aside."
Sejanus then put the following question with a sneer,
"Has a god, or a stranger, with two attendants on horseback, passed this way?"
"No god, unless he be a god, and he had no attendants," said the astonished centurion.
"You have not seen three figures on horseback, nor a flash of bluish light?"
"I certainly thought I saw three figures on horseback, but I could not be sure. It was on the farther side of the way, general, which is broad," continued the man apologetically, "and there was no sound of hoofs; my impression, too, was gone in a moment. As to a flash of bluish light, there are several flashes of red and white light inside the inn kitchen, and they make the road outside all the darker; but there has been no flash in the road."
"Good! now follow me."
And Sejanus rode on in the direction of Formiæ, the centurion and the soldier behind him.
Chapter VI
The inn, it is well ascertained, never became a common institution in classic antiquity. It was utterly unknown in any thing like its modern shape among the Greeks; one cause being that the literary Greeks gave less care to their roads and communications than the administrating, fighting, conquering, and colonizing Romans always did. Even among the Romans the army trusted to its city-like encampments from stage to stage. Centuries passed away, during which the private traveller found few indeed, and far between, any better public resting-houses along the magnificent and stupendous highways, whose remains we still behold indestructible, from England to Asia Minor, than the half-day relay-posts, or mutationes. At these the wayfarer, by producing[28] his diploma from the proper authorities, obtained a change of horses.
Travelling, in short, was a thousand-fold less practised than it is among us; and those who did travel, or who deemed it likely they ever should, trusted to that hospitality which necessity had made universal, and the poetry of daily life had raised by repute into one of the greatest virtues. Years before any member of your family, supposing you to belong to the age through which the events of this narrative are carrying and to carry us, years before any of your circle quitted your roof, you knew to what house, to what smoky hearth in each foreign land, to what threshold in Spain, Gaul, Syria, Egypt, Greece, the wanderer would eventually resort. A certain family in each of these and other lands was your hospes, and you were theirs; and very often you carried round your neck, attached to a gold or silver chain, a bit of elder or oak (robur) notched and marked by the natural breakage, the corresponding half of which hung day and night round the neck of some friend living thousands of miles away, beyond rivers, mountains, wild forests, and raging seas. These tokens were the cheap lodging-money of friendship. Very often they were interchanged and put on in boyhood, and not presented till advanced age. He who had thrown the sacred symbol round the curly head of his playmate on the banks of the Tiber, saw an old man with scanty white hair approach him, half a century afterward, at Alexandria, or Numantia, or Athens, and offer him a little bit of wood, the fracture? of which were found to fit into those of a similar piece worn upon his own bosom. Or the son brought the father's token; or a son received what a father had given. And the stranger was forthwith joyfully made welcome, and took rank among dear friends. Forthwith the bath and the supper introduced him to his remote home amid foreign faces. To be once unfaithful to these pledges, was to become irreparably infamous. The caitiff who thus sundered the lies of traditionary and necessity-caused and world-wide kindness, became an object of scorn and reprobation to all. It was enough to mention of him,[29] tesseram confregit hospitalem, ("that man has broken his token-word of hospitality;") with that all was said. Traces of this touching custom appear to survive in some of the ceremonials of rustic love, amid many a population ignorant that the ancient Romans ever reigned over Europe.
But if inns, in year eleven, were not what they have been in mediæval and modern Europe, nevertheless a few existed even then, (cauponæ;) and a more notable establishment of this kind never flourished in any part of the Roman empire than that to which our story has now brought us. It was the exception to manners then prevalent, and the presage of manners to come long afterward. It used to be commonly called the Post-House of the Hundredth Milestone, or, more briefly, Crispus's Inn.
The public room of this place of entertainment was not unlike the coffee-room of a good modern inn, except that it was necessarily far more full of incident and interest, because the ancients were beyond comparison more addicted to living in public than any modern nation has ever been.
An Englishman who makes a similar remark of the French, in comparison with his own countrymen, has only to remember that the modern French as much excel the ancient Romans in fondness for retirement and privacy and domestic life as the English believe themselves to excel the French in the same particular.
An inn did not trouble itself much with the triclinium, a chamber seldom used by its frequenters. Even the manners of the triclinium were out of vogue here.
In Crispus's public room, for instance, there was one and only one table arranged with couches around it, upon which some three or four customers, while eating and drinking, could recline according to the fashion adopted in the private houses of the rich and noble. All the other tables stood round the walls of the apartment, with benches and settees on each side, offering seats for the guests. The inner seats at these tables were generally preferred, for two reasons; the occupants saw all that passed in the room, and besides, had the wall, against which they could lean back.
When Velleius Paterculus, having left Tiberius and Sejanus in the meadows near the Liris, took charge of the prætorian squadrons and of Paulus, he directed a Batavian trooper to dismount and give his horse to the prisoner. Paulus willingly sprung upon the big Flemish beast, and rode by the side of the obliging officer who had given him that conveyance. Thus they proceeded at an easy amble until they reached the post-house, to the porch of which the noise of four thousand hoofs, suddenly approaching along the paved road, had brought a group of curious gazers. Among these was the landlord, Crispus himself.
A halt, as the reader must have inferred from a former incident, was occasioned at the door by the intimation conveyed to Paterculus that Paulus's sister had fainted, that she and her mother intended to seek a lodging at the inn, and that the mother and brother of the invalid would both feel grateful to the commanding officer if he could permit Paulus, upon pledging his word not to make any attempt to escape, to remain there with them.
"As to the ladies," said the urbane literary soldier, "I have neither the wish nor any orders to interfere with their movements. But you, young sir, what say you? Will you give me your word to regard yourself as being in my custody till I expressly release you? Will you promise not to abire, evadere, excedere, or erumpere, as our friend Tully said?"
"Tully! Who is that?" asked our hero.
"What, you a half Greek and not know who Tully was! Is this the manner in which Greek youths, or at least youths in Greece, are educated! Is it thus they are taught in Greece, to which we go ourselves for education! In that Greece which has forbidden gladiatorial shows, and diminished the training of the body to have more time for that of the intellect!"
Paulus blushed, seeing he must have betrayed some gross degree of rusticity, and answered,
"I know I am ignorant: I have been so much occupied in athletic sports. But I will give you the promise you ask, and keep it most truly and faithfully."
"I will trust you, then. Go a little, my friend, into the athletic sports of the mind, which are precisely those Greece most cultivates. You are of a great family now fallen down. The muscles of the arm, the strength of the body, a blow from a cestus, never yet raised that kind of burden off the ground. You fence astonishingly well--I noted your parry just now; but the fence of the mind is every thing, believe me. By the way, I see the excellent Piso, whom you hammered down after the parry, as one puts a full stop to a pretty sentence, is being carried into this same post-house."
"By your leave, illustrious sir," interposed the innkeeper, rather nervously, "it is scarcely the custom, is it, to drop guests at Crispus's door, without first asking Crispus has he room for them? The expected visit of the divine Augustus to the neighboring palace of the most excellent and valiant knight Mamurra, in Formiæ, has choked and strangled this poor house. There is no place where the multitude of guests can lodge in the town, so they come hither, as to a spot at a convenient distance. Troops of players, troops of gladiators, troops of fortune-tellers, troops of geese, pigs, beeves, attagens, alive and dead, night and day, for the last week, with mighty personages from a distance, make the road noisy, I assure you, even after my house is full. I believe they would wish me to put up the very oxen intended for sacrifice."
"Have you no chambers whatever vacant?" asked Velleius.
"I did not say that, most excellent sir; vacant is one thing, disengaged is another. I have received an express letter from Brundusium, to say that a certain queen out of the East, with her son and her train, are coming to pay their homage to the emperor: and here we have already the servants of that Jew king, as they say, one King Alexander, who wants his cause to be heard and his title settled by Augustus himself, and I am obliged to listen to loud outcries that he, too, must have apartments."
At this moment, the travelling carriage carrying poor Agatha and her mother had been drawn nearly opposite to the porch, but a little in rear of the tribune, so as not to intercept his conversation with the innkeeper. Paterculus threw a quick glance at the beautiful pallid face of the girl, and the anxious and frightened look of her mother.
"By what you tell me, worthy Crispus," he replied, "you are so far from having your justly celebrated house full, that you are keeping two sets of apartments still vacant, in expectation, first, of some queen from the east, with her son and train, and secondly, of this Jewish king, one Alexander. Worthy Libertinus,[30] the fair damsel whom you see so pale, is very sick, and has just swooned away from sheer fatigue. Will you turn such a daughter in such health, with her noble mother, from your door? A queen can take care of herself, it seems to me. But what will become of these excellent Roman ladies, (your own countrywomen,) if you now bid them begone from your threshold? You have assured me that they can obtain no shelter at all in Formiæ. Look at the child! She seems likely to faint again. Are you to let this daughter of a Roman knight die in the fields, in order that you may have room for a barbarian queen? You have a daughter of your own, I am told."
"Die!" groaned the innkeeper: "all this did not come into my mind, most illustrious tribune and quæstor. Come, little lady, let me help you down. This lady and her daughter, sir, shall have the queen's own apartments--may all the gods destroy me otherwise! Here, Crispina."
Velleius Paterculus smiled, and having whispered some order to a centurion, who remained behind in watch for Sejanus, the tribune waved his hand, crying out vale to whom it might concern, and rode forward with the prætorians at a much smarter pace than they had come.
Chapter VII
Meanwhile the innkeeper's wife, Crispina, had appeared, and had led Aglais and her daughter through the group in the porch into the house, and passing by a little zothecula,[31] behind the curtain of which they heard the sound of flutes,[32] as the carvers carved, and many voices, loud and low, denoting the apartment called dieta or public room of the inn, they soon arrived at the compluvium, an open space or small court, in the middle of which was a cistern, and in the middle of the cistern a splashing fountain. The cistern was railed by a circular wooden balustrade, against which some creeping plants grew. This cistern was supplied from the sky; for the whole space or court in which it lay was open and unroofed. Between the circular wooden balustrade and the walls of the house was, on every side, a large quadrangular walk, lightly gravelled, and flashing back under the lantern which Crispina carried, an almost metallic glint and sparkle. Of course this walk presented its quadrangular form on the outer edge, next the house only; the inside, next the cistern, was rounded away. This quadrangular walk was at one spot diminished in width by a staircase in the open air, (but under an awning,) which led up to the second story of the large brick building. Around the whole compluvium, or court, the four inner faces of the inn, which had four covered lights in sconces against the walls, were marked at irregular intervals by windows, some of which were mere holes, with trap-doors (in every case open at present;) others, lattice-work, like what, many centuries later, obtained the name of arabesque-work, having a curtain inside that could be drawn or undrawn. Others again with perforated slides; others stretched with linen which oil had rendered diaphanous; others fitted with thin scraped horn; one only, a tolerably large window, with some kind of mineral panes more translucent than transparent--a lapis laminata specularis.
At the back, or west of the inn, an irregular oblong wing extended, which of course could not open upon this court, but had its own means of light and ventilation north and south respectively.
Crispus had followed the group of women, and our friend Paulus had followed Crispus. In the compluvium, the innkeeper took the lantern from his wife, and begged Aglais and Agatha to follow him up the awning-covered staircase. As he began to ascend, it happened that Crispina, looking around, noticed Paulus, who had taken off his broad-rimmed hat, under one of the sconces. No sooner had her eyes rested on him than she started violently, and grasped the balustrade as if she would have fallen but for that support.
"Who are you?" said the woman.
"The brother of that young lady who is ill, and the son of the other lady."
"And you, too, must want lodgings?"
"Certainly."
The woman seized his arm with a vehement grip, and gazed at him.
"Are you ill?" said Paulus, "or--or--out of your mind? Why do you clutch my arm and look at me in that fashion?"
"Too young," said she, rather to herself than to him; "besides, I saw the last act with these eyes. Truly this is wonderful."
Then, like one waking from a dream, she added, "Well, if you want lodgings, you shall have them. You shall have the apartments of this king or pretender--the rooms prepared for the Jew Alexander. Come with me at once." And she unfastened the lamp in the nearest sconce, and led Paulus up the staircase.
Thus the wanderers, Aglais and her daughter, had the queen's room, with their Thracian slave Melana to wait upon them, while the prisoner Paulus had the king's, to which Crispina herself ordered old Philip, the freedman, to carry his luggage.
A few moments later, the innkeeper, who had returned to the more public parts of the house to attend to his usual duties, met Philip laden with parcels in one of the passages, and asked him what he was doing.
"Carrying young Master Paulus's things to his room."
"You can carry," said the innkeeper, "whatever the ladies require to their room; but your young master has no room at all, my man, in this house. And why? For the same reason that will compel you to sleep in one of the lofts over the stables. There is no space for him in the inn. You must make him as comfortable as you can in the hay, just like yourself."
"Humanity is something," muttered Crispus; "but to make a queen one's enemy on that score, without adding a king, where no humane consideration intervenes at all, is enough for a poor innkeeper in a single night. These tetrarchs and rich barbarians can do a poor man an ugly turn. Who knows but he might complain of my house to the emperor, or to one of the consuls, or the prætor, or even the quæstor, and presto! every thing is seized, and I am banished to the Tauric Chersonese, or to Tomos in Scythia, to drink mare's milk with the poet Ovid."[33]
"Go on, freedman, with your luggage," here said a peremptory voice, "and take it whither you have taken the rest."
"And in the name of all the gods, wife," cried Crispus, "whither may that be?"
"Go on, freedman," she repeated; and then taking her husband aside, she spoke to him in a low tone.
"Have you remarked this youth's face?" she asked; "and have you any idea who he is?"
"I know not who any of them are," replied Crispus.
"Look at him then; for here he comes."
Crispus looked, and as he looked his eyes grew bigger; and again he looked until Paulus noticed it, and smiled.
"Do you know me?" says he.
"No, illustrious sir."
"Alas! I am not illustrious, good landlord, (institor,) but hungry I am. And I believe we all are, except my poor sister, who is not very strong, and for whom, by and by, I should like to procure the advice of a physician."
"The poor young thing," said Crispina, "is only tired with her journey; it is nothing. She will be well to-morrow. Supper you shall have presently in the ante-chamber of your mother's apartments; and your freedman and the female slave shall be cared for after they have waited upon you."
"All this is easy and shall be seen to forthwith," added Crispus; "but the doctor for your dear sister, per omnes deos, where shall we find him?"
"Understand," said Paulus, "my sister is not in immediate danger, such as would justify calling in any empiric at once rather than nobody. She has been ailing for some time, and it is of no use to send for the first common stupid practitioner that may be in the way. Is there not some famous doctor procurable in Italy?"
"The most famous in Italy is a Greek physician not five thousand paces from here at this moment," said the landlord. "But he would not come to every body; he is Tiberius Cæsar's own doctor."
"You mean Charicles," replied Paulus; "I almost think he would come; my mother is a Greek lady, and he will surely be glad to oblige his countrywoman."
"Then write you a note to him," said Crispina, "and I will send it instantly."
Paulus thanked her, said he would, and withdrew.
When he proposed to his mother to dispatch this message to Charicles, she hesitated much. Agatha was better, he found her in comparatively good spirits. It would do to send for the doctor next day. An urgent summons conveyed at night to the palace or residence of the Cæsar, where Charicles would probably of necessity be, would cause Tiberius to inquire into the matter, and would again draw his attention, and draw it still more persistently to them. He had already intimated that he would order his physician to attend Agatha. They did not desire to establish very close relations with the man in black purple.
It is wonderful even how that very intimation from Tiberius had diminished both mother's and daughter's anxiety to consult the celebrated practitioner, to whose advice and assistance they had previously looked forward. There were parties in the court and cabals in the political world; and among them, as it happened, was the Greek faction, at the head of which his ill-wishers alleged Germanicus to be. Græculus, or Greek coxcomb, was one of the names flung at him as a reproach by his enemies. What the Scotch, and subsequently the Irish interest may have been at various times in modern England, that the Greek interest was then in Roman society. Of all men, he who most needed to be cautious and discreet in such a case was an adventurer who, being himself a Greek, owed to his personal merit and abilities the position of emolument and credit which he enjoyed; who was tolerated for his individual qualities as a foreigner, but who, if suspected of using professional opportunities as a political partisan, would be of no service to others, and would merely lose his own advantages.
"Let Tiberius send Charicles to us," continued Aglais; "and our countryman and friend may be of service to us, even in the suit which we have to urge at court. But were we now to show the Cæsar that we confide in Charicles, we should only injure our countryman and not benefit ourselves."
"How injure him?"
"Thus," replied the Greek lady. "If your claim for the restitution of your father's estates be not granted for justice sake, I must make interest in order that it may be granted for favor's sake. As a Greek I shall be likely to induce no powerful person to take our claims under his protection except Germanicus, the friend of Athenians. Now, it is a fact which I have learned for certain that Tiberius hates Germanicus, whom he regards as his rival; and that whoever is patronized by Germanicus, him Tiberius would gladly destroy. Behold us in a short while the clients and retainers of this same Germanicus, and let Tiberius then remember that his own physician has been, and continues to be, intimate and confidential with this brood of the Germanicus faction. Would not Charicles be damaged, perhaps endangered? But if we wait until the Cæsar himself sends us the doctor, as he said he would, we may then gain by it, and our friend not lose."
"Mother, you are indeed Greek," said Paulus, laughing; "and as Agatha is in no actual danger, be it as you say. Do you know, sister, there is nothing the matter with you but fatigue and fright? I am sure of it. You will recover rapidly now, with rest, peace, and safety."
"Mother," says Agatha, smiling, "we have forgotten, amid all this consultation about my health, to tell brother the curious discovery I have just made."
"True," said Aglais; "your sister has explored a very odd fact indeed."
"Why, brother," says Agatha, "we found you in this large sitting-room, when we entered, though we had left you below-stairs, near the cistern."
"Found me?" said Paulus.
"Yes," added his mother; "found you concealed in this room by Tiberius."
"Concealed by Tiberius?"
"I will not leave you in suspense any longer," said the young girl, laughing. "Look here." And she led him to a table behind the bench on which she had been sitting, and directed his attention to a bust, or rather a head of Tiberius, modelled or moulded in some sort of pottery.
"That," said she, "when I first sat down, stood upon yonder table opposite to us. I recognized the face of the man who had spoken to me under the chestnut-trees, just before you assisted me back to the carriage. I abhor the wicked countenance; and not choosing to let it stare at me like a dream where it was, I rose and went to remove it to the stand where you now see it, behind my bench. Well, only think! I took it, so, with my hands, one under each ear, and lifted it; when, lo! it came away, and left your own dear face looking at us, thus!"
As she spoke, she again lifted the terra cotta face, and beneath it a much smaller and more elegant piece of sculpture in white marble was disclosed, presenting the lineaments and image of Paulus himself. He started, and then his sister replaced the mask of Tiberius with a laugh.
"Was I not speaking true when I said that Tiberius had concealed you here?" said his mother.
"The Cæsar, very true, has me in his head, and well secured," said Paulus.
At that moment the door opened, and Crispina entered to ask whether the letter for the physician was ready. They told her they had changed their minds, and would not, at least that night, send any letter, Agatha felt and looked so much better.
"Then I will at once order your supper to be brought," said Crispina; "and as you are evidently people of distinction, would you like music while the meats are carved?"
"Certainly not," said the Greek lady.
"Not a carver neither, mother?" interposed Agatha; and, turning to the hostess, she begged that they might be treated as quietly and let alone as much as it was possible.
"That is indeed our desire," said the Greek lady.
"In that case," replied the hostess, "my own daughter, Benigna, shall attend to you. Nobody shall trouble you. You are in the rear or west wing of the house, far away from all the noise of our customers, who are sometimes, I confess, sufficiently uproarious. But Crispus is not afraid of them. When to-morrow's sun rises, you will be glad to find what a beautiful country extends beneath your windows, even to the waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. You will behold, first, a garden and bee-hive; beyond these are orchards; beyond them fields of husbandry and pleasant pasture lands, with not a human figure to be seen except knots and dots of work-people, a few shepherds, and perhaps an angler amusing himself on the banks of the Liris in the distance."
"Oh!" said Agatha, "I wish soon to go to sleep, that we may set out quickly toward that beautiful country to-morrow morning."
"Will you not like a little bit of something very nice for supper first, my precious little lady?" quoth the good hostess; "and that will make you sleep all the better, and from the moment when you close your pretty eyes in rest and comfort under poor Crispina's roof, to the moment when you open them upon those lovely scenes, you won't be able to count one, two, three--but just only one--and presto! there's to-morrow morning for you!"
Agatha declared that this was very nice; and that supper would be nice; and that every thing was comfortable; the rooms particularly so.
"Then a delicious little supper shall be got ready at once," said Crispina. "I'll call my brisk Benigna to help me."
Before quitting the room, however, the landlady, whose glance had rested chiefly upon Paulus during the conversation, threw up her hands a little way. She then composed herself, and addressing Aglais, asked,
"What names, lady, shall I put down in my book?"
"I will tell you when you return," replied Aglais; and the landlady retired.
TO BE CONTINUED.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] Suetonius, Aug. 39. The forum, where gladiators had often bled, was becoming less and less used for that purpose.
[23] It is well known that Trajan exhibited shows in which ten thousand gladiators fought, but this monstrous development of cruelty came long after our date.
[24] A school of gladiators. Suet Jul. 26; Aug. 42; Tacit. Hist. ii. 88.
[25] This German expedition took the same direction as that of the Austrian armies which endeavored to dislodge Bonaparte from the siege of Mantua, and came pouring down both sides of Lake Guarda.
[26] Cic. Fam. xiii. 59; Dion. iii. 22; Cæsar. Bell. Cir. iii. 20.
[27] The malignant innkeepers mentioned by Horace, "Sat. lib. 1, Sat. 5," kept a low class of houses in comparison with this notable hostelry.
[28] Pliny, Ep. x. 14, 121.
[29] Cic. Qu. Fr. ii. 14; Plautus, Pœn. v. 1, 22, 2, 92; Cist. 2, 1, 27.
[30] Libertus, freedman of such or such a family; libertinus, freedman in general, or son of one.
[31] Zothecula, a small apartment, one side of which was formed by a curtain. Pliny, Epis. ii. 17; v. 6. Suetonius, Claud. 10.
[32] Flutes, etc. Juvenal v. 121; xi. 137.
[33] Something in this language may seem out of keeping. I would therefore remind the reader that the most learned, accomplished, studious, and highly-cultivated minds among the Romans were very frequently found in the class of slaves and freedmen.
A MAY CAROL.
How many a lonely hermit maid Hath brightened like a dawn-touched isle When--on her breast in vision laid-- That Babe hath lit her with his smile!
How many an agèd saint hath felt, So graced, a second spring renew Her wintry breast; with Anna knelt, And trembled like the matin dew!
How oft the unbending monk, no thrall In youth of mortal smiles or tears, Hath felt that Infant's touch through all The armor of his hundred years!
But Mary's was no transient bliss; Nor hers a vision's phantom gleam; The hourly need, the voice, the kiss-- That child was hers! 'Twas not a dream!
At morning hers, and when the sheen Of moonrise crept the cliffs along; In silence hers, and hers between The pulses of the night-bird's song.
And as the Child, the love. Its growth Was, hour by hour, a growth in grace; That Child was God; and love for both Advanced perforce with equal pace.
AUBREY DE VERE.
SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE.
"Of Paradise I cannot speak properly, for I was not there. It is far beyond, and I repent not going there; but I was not worthy." So wrote, more than five hundred years ago, an honest English knight who had spent some ten years journeying through that "most worthy land, most excellent and lady and sovereign of all other lands," which was "blessed and hallowed with the most precious body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ;" visiting portions of Africa and Asia; and picking up from all accessible sources legends and marvels, and scraps of the geography and history of distant countries. For something like two centuries the travels of Sir John Maundeville enjoyed a tremendous popularity; and though time can hardly be said to have improved the good gentleman's reputation for veracity and judgment, it has perhaps heightened rather than diminished the interest of his narrative. Alas! we can never know such travellers again. Men who go to Palestine in a steamboat, and are whirled by locomotives into the very presence of the Sphinx, bring us back no wonderful stories of the mysterious East, with its dragons and enchanters, and its sacred places miraculously barred against profane footsteps. Travel has no mysteries now. What is the earthly paradise but a Turkish pashalic? What is Prester John but a petty negro chieftain? And for dragons and chimæras dire, has not any good museum of natural history specimens of them all, nicely stuffed and labelled, or bottled in alcohol? In the days of Sir John, however, wonders were plenty; and if he did not see very many himself, he heard of men who had seen no end of them, and he described them all the same. It was from hearsay, and not from personal observation, that he learned of the Lady of the Land, in the island of Cos, then called Lango. This wonderful lady was the daughter of Ypocras or Hippocrates, in form and likeness of a great dragon which is a hundred fathoms in length, "as they say," adds Sir John, "for I have not seen her." She lies in an old castle in a cave, appearing twice or thrice in a year, and condemned "by a goddess named Diana" to remain in that horrible shape until a knight shall come and kiss her on the mouth; then she shall resume her natural form, and the knight shall marry her and be lord of the isles. Many have tempted the adventure, but fled in affright when they have seen her. And every knight who once looks upon her and flees, must die anon.
At Ephesus the traveller beheld the tomb of St. John the Evangelist, and heard the familiar story that the apostle had entered the sepulchre alive, and was still living, in accordance with the saying of our Lord, "So I will have him to remain till I come, what is that to thee?" "And men may see there the earth of the tomb many times openly stir and move, as though there were living things under." To say nothing else of this story, it is not fully consistent with Sir John's other statement, that the tomb contains nothing but manna, "which is called angels' meat," for the body was translated to paradise. Quite as great are the wonders of Joppa, "which is one of the oldest towns in the world; for it was founded before Noah's flood." Strangely confusing the legend of Perseus and Andromeda, our traveller relates that in a rock near Joppa may still be seen marks of the iron chains "wherewith Andromeda, a great giant, was bound and put in prison before Noah's flood; a rib of whose side, which is forty feet long, is still shown." Sir John spent a long time in the service of the sultan of Egypt, where he seems to have anticipated modern researches into the source of the Nile; for he confidently assures us that it rises in the garden of Eden, and after descending upon earth, flows through many extensive countries under ground, coming out beneath a high hill called Alothe, between India and Ethiopia, and encircling the whole of Ethiopia and Mauritania, before it enters the land of Egypt. To the best of our belief, the travels of Dr. Livingstone have not fully confirmed this interesting geographical statement. The sultan dwells at a city called Babylon, which is not, however, the great Babylon where the diversity of languages was first made by the miracle of God. That Babylon is forty days' journey across the desert, in the territory of the king of Persia. The Tower of Babel was ten miles square, and included many mansions and dwellings; "but it is full long since any man dare approach to the tower, for it is all desert, and full of dragons and great serpents, and infested by divers venomous beasts." Sir John, therefore, is probably not responsible for the extraordinary measurement of its walls. Whether his account of the phoenix is based upon his personal observations, we are not told; but it is highly interesting. There is only one phoenix in the world. It is a very handsome and glorious bird, with a yellow neck, blue beak, purple wings, and a red and yellow tail, and may often be seen flying about the country. It lives five hundred years, and at the end of that time comes to burn itself on the altar of the temple of Heliopolis, where the priests prepare for the occasion a fire of spices and sulphur. The next day they find in the ashes a worm. On the second day the worm becomes a live and perfect bird; and the third day it flies away. A plenty of fine things, indeed, Egypt could boast of in those days, far before any thing she has now. There were gardens bearing fruit seven times a year. There were the apples of paradise, which, cut them how you would, or as often as you would, always showed in the middle the figure of the holy cross. There was the apple-tree of Adam, whose fruit invariably had a mouthful bitten out of one side. There is a field containing seven wells, which the child Jesus made with one of his feet while at play with his companions. There are the granaries in which Joseph stored corn for the season of famine, (probably the Pyramids.) And passing out of Egypt across the desert of Arabia, Sir John tells of the wonderful monastery on Mount Sinai, whither the ravens, crows, and choughs and other fowls of that country, assembling in great flocks, come every year on pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Catharine, each bringing a branch of bays or olive, so that from these offerings the monks have enough to keep themselves constantly supplied with oil. There are no such foul venomous beasts as flies, toads, lizards, lice, or fleas in this monastery; for once upon a time, when the vermin had become too thick there to be endured, the good brethren made preparations to move away, whereupon our Lady commanded them to remain and no pest of that sort should ever again come near them. On Mount Mamre, near Hebron, Sir John saw an oak-tree which had been standing since the creation of the world. Oaks nowadays don't live to such a great age. This tree had borne no leaves since the crucifixion, (when all the trees in the world withered away,) but it had still so much virtue that a scrap of it healed the falling-sickness, and prevented founder in horses.
Armed with a letter under the sultan's great seal, Sir John went to Jerusalem, and was admitted to all the holy shrines from which Christians and Jews were usually excluded. He saw, or believed he saw, the spots sanctified by almost all the great events narrated in the Gospel; and though his credulity, as may be inferred from what we have already seen of his narrative, often got the better of his judgment, his piety, at any rate, deserves our genuine respect. We pass over his legends of this holy city, some of them poetical, some merely grotesque, and some really sanctioned by the general voice of the church, and go with him eastward to the valley of Jordan and the Dead Sea. Of this mysterious body of water he mentions that it casts out every day "a thing that is called asphalt in pieces as large as a horse," and neither man, nor beast, nor any thing that hath life may die in that sea, which hath been proved many times by the experiment of criminals condemned to death who have been left therein three or four days, and yet taken out alive. If any man cast iron therein, it will float; but a feather will sink to the bottom; "and these things," truly remarks Sir John, "are contrary to nature." Not more so, perhaps, than an incident of which he speaks at the city of Tiberias. In that city an unbeliever hurled a burning dart at our Lord, "and the head smote into the earth, and waxed green, and it grew to a great tree; and it grows still, and the bark thereof is all like coals." Then, near Damascus there is a church, and behind the altar, in the wall, "a table of black wood on which was formerly painted an image of our Lady which turns into flesh; but now the image appears but little." As a compensation, however, for its loss, a certain wonderful oil, as Sir John assures us, drops continually from the wood and heals many kinds of sickness, and if any one keep it cleanly for a year, after that year it turns to flesh and blood. In this same region of marvels he tells us of a river which runs only on Saturday, and stands still all the rest of the week, and another which freezes wonderfully fast every night, and is clear of ice in the morning. These rivers are not known nowadays, or at any rate must have changed their habits.
After finishing the description of the Holy Land and Babylon, and reporting a conversation with the sultan, in which the vices of the Christians, such as drinking at taverns, and fighting, and perpetually changing the fashion of their clothes, were sharply satirized, and giving a synopsis of the Mohammedan creed, which we fear is not altogether authentic, our worthy traveller adds that now is the time, if it please us, to tell of the borders, and isles, and divers beasts, and of various peoples beyond these borders. Accepting his invitation, we bear him company first to the land of Lybia, which must have been a most uncomfortable region in those days, for the sea there was higher than the land, and the sun was so hot that the waters were always boiling. Why the country was not, therefore, soused in a steaming, hissing flood, we do not know; 'Sir John himself evidently thinks it strange. In Little Ermony which we take to be Armenia, he found something almost equally strange. That was the Castle of the Sparrow-hawk, where a sparrow-hawk perpetually sat upon a fair perch and a fair lady of fairie guarded it. Whoever will watch the bird seven days and seven nights without company and without sleep, shall be granted by the fairy the first earthly wish that he shall wish; but if sleep overcome him, he will never more be seen of men. This, adds the careful traveller, hath been proved oftentimes, and he mentions several persons who performed the long task and got their wishes. Mount Ararat is another marvellous feature in this wonderful region; for it is seven miles high, and Noah's ark still rests upon it, and in clear weather may be seen afar off. Some men say that they have been up and touched the ark, and even put their fingers in the parts where the devil went out when Noah said "Benedicite," (unfortunately we do not know the legend to which this refers;) but our traveller warns us not to believe such things, because they are not true! No man ever got up the mountain except one good monk; and he was miraculously favored, and brought down with him a plank which is still preserved in the monastery at the foot of the mountain. It is inexpressibly gratifying to observe that Sir John did not accept all the stories that were told him, but exercised a little judicious discrimination; and we shall therefore pay more respectful attention to the extraordinary things he tells us about the diamonds of India. They are found most commonly, he says, upon rocks of the sea, or else in connection with gold. They grow many together, male and female, and are nourished by the dew of heaven, so that they engender and bring forth small children that multiply and grow all the year. "I have oftentimes tried the experiment," he continues, "that if a man keep them with a little of the rock, and wet them with May-dew often, they shall grow every year, and the small will grow great.... And a man should carry the diamond on his left side, for it is of greater virtue than on the right side; for the strength of their growing is toward the north, that is the left side of the world; and the left part of man is, when he turns his face toward the east." Sir John was not by any means singular in his views of the nature of diamonds in his day, however much he may be at variance with modern authorities; and he is only repeating a popular superstition of the middle ages when he ascribes many wonderful virtues to this gem, which he says preserves the wearer from poison, and wild beasts, and the assaults of enemies, and the machinations of enchanters, gives courage to the heart and strength to the limbs, heals lunatics, and casts out devils. But it loses its virtue by sin.
From stories of eels thirty feet long, and people of an evil color, green and yellow, and the well of Perpetual Youth, from which Sir John avers that he drank, and rats as great as dogs, which they take with huge mastiffs, because the cats feel unable to manage them, we pass to a passage of a very different kind, which, considering the time when it was written, is certainly curious. One hundred and seventy years before the time of Columbus we find Sir John Maundeville arguing that "the land and sea are of round shape, because the part of the firmament appears in one country which is not seen in another country," and predicting that "if a man found passages by ships, he might go by ship all round the world, above and beneath." A rather elaborate essay is devoted to an estimate of the size of the world, and to the story of an Englishman--name unknown--who sailed around it once and never knew it; but coming to a country where the people spoke his own language, was so much amazed that he turned around and sailed all the way back again. After this, Sir John gets back without unnecessary delay to the rosy realms of eastern fable.
We next find him in Java and among the isles of the Indian Ocean, where he tells us of rich kings, and splendid palaces where all the steps are of gold and silver alternately, and the walls covered with plates of precious metals, and halls and chambers paved with the same; of trees which bear meal, and honey, and wine, and deadly poison wherewith the Jews once tried to poison all Christendom; of snails so big that many persons may lodge in their shells; of men who feed upon serpents, so that they speak naught, but hiss as serpents do; of men and women who have dogs' heads; and of a mountain in the island of Silha where Adam and Eve went and cried for one hundred years after they were driven out of paradise--cried so hard that their tears formed a deep lake, which may be seen there to this day, if any body doubts the story. He tells of giants having only one eye, which is in the middle of the forehead; people of foul stature and cursed nature who have no heads, but their eyes are in their shoulders; people who have neither noses nor mouths; people who have mouths so big that when they sleep in the sun they cover the whole face with the upper lip; people who have ears hanging down to their knees; people who have horses' feet; and feathered men who leap from tree to tree. Passing to India and China, Sir John describes the fair and fruitful land of Albany, where there are no poor people, and the men are of very pale complexion and have only about fifty hairs in their beards. He speaks of having personally visited these regions; but we are sorry to say that his narrative is palpably borrowed in many places from Pliny and Marco Polo. As the great town called Jamchay he seems to have found the prototype of Delmonico, and he gives an impressive account of the good custom that when a man will make a feast for his friends he goes to the host of a certain kind of inn, and says to him, "Array for me to-morrow a good dinner for so many people;" and says also, "Thus much will I spend, and no more." And Sir John adds, "Anon the host arrays for him, so fair, and so well, and so honestly that there shall lack nothing." Of the great Chan of Cathay, (Emperor of China,) and his wealth and magnificence, Sir John writes at considerable length, but with an evident expectation that men will not believe him. "My fellows and I," he says, "with our yeomen, served this emperor, and were his soldiers fifteen months against the King of Mancy, who was at war with him, because we had great desire to see his nobleness and the estate of his court, and all his government, to know if it were such as we heard say." How many his fellows were, or what route they followed in their eastern wanderings, we cannot tell. Sir John gives us no particulars; we only learn that he must have combined in curious perfection the characters of a pilgrim and a military adventurer; and how much of the world he saw, how much he described from hearsay, we can only determine from the internal evidence of his book. There is no reasonable doubt that he did spend some time in the dominions of the great chan; for his description of the country, the manners of the people, the magnificence of the sovereign and the ceremonies of the court, though exaggerated sometimes to the heights of the grotesque, if not of the sublime, keeps near enough to the probable truth. We cannot say that we are glad of it; for Sir John is vastly more entertaining when he does not know what he is talking about.
He skips about with the most charming vivacity from Tartary to Persia, to Asia Minor, and back again to India, and sometimes it is certain that he tells us of wonders which he did not see with his own eyes. In Georgia, for instance, there is a marvellous province called Hanyson, where once upon a time a cursed Persian king named Saures overtook a multitude of Christians fleeing from persecution. The fugitives prayed to God for deliverance, and lo! a great cloud arose, covering the king's host with darkness, out of which they could not pass, and so the whole province remains dark to this hour, and no light shall shine there and no man shall enter it till the day of judgment. Voices may sometimes be heard coming out of the darkness, and the neighing of horses and crowing of cocks, and a great river issues from it bearing tokens of human life. Somewhat similar to this story is the account of a region on the borders of the Caspian Sea, where "the Jews of ten lineages who are called Gog and Magog"--namely, the lost tribes--have been shut up for ages behind impassable mountains. The legend is that King Alexander drove them in there, and prevailed upon his gods to close the mountains with immense stone gates. In the days of Antichrist a fox shall burrow through where Alexander made the gates, and the imprisoned Jews, who have never seen a fox, shall hunt him, and following the burrow break down the gates and come out into the world. Then they shall make great slaughter of the Christians; wherefore Jews all over the world learn the Hebrew language, so that in that day the ten tribes may recognize them by their speech. Somewhere in this part of the world Sir John saw and tasted "a kind of fruit like gourds, which, when they are ripe, men cut in two, and find within a little beast, in flesh, bone, and blood, as though it were a little lamb without wool." Both the fruit and the beast are good to eat. Sir John confesses that this was a great marvel; but not to be outdone, he told his entertainers that in England there were trees bearing a fruit which becomes flying birds, right good for man's meat, whereat, he says, his listeners had also great marvel, and some even thought the thing impossible. Sir John, however, was not purposely cramming the Persians; he only repeated the popular fable of the barnacle-goose, which was anciently believed to be hatched from the barnacles growing on ships' bottoms and logs of wood, just as an ordinary goose is hatched from an egg.
The great mystery and marvel of the age in which Sir John Maundeville wrote was the Christian empire of Prester John, supposed to extend over central India, and to be in reality a vast island, separated from other countries by great branching rivers which flowed out of Paradise. Many a traveller went in search of this mythical and magnificent potentate; many a doubtful story of his power and designs was brought back to Europe; and even a pretended letter from his majesty to the pope was widely published in Latin, French, and other languages. Except the Chan of Cathay, there was no other monarch in the world so great and so rich. The chan, therefore, always married the daughter of Prester John, and Prester John always married the daughter of the chan, which naturally made confusion in the genealogical records of the reigning families. Of course, Sir John Maundeville was too gallant a traveller to go home without a full account of the empire of Prester John. He says he went to it, and the catalogue of things he saw and the history of things he did are wonderful enough to satisfy the most exacting reader. As it is quite certain that no potentate ever existed who bore even a resemblence to the Prester John of mediæval legend, it is more than usually difficult to estimate the honesty of Sir John in these particular portions of his narrative, wherein fable and superstition seem to reach their climax. The glories of the Indian court are almost beyond enumeration. The precious stones are so large that plates, dishes, and cups are made of them. There is a river, rising in paradise, whose waves are entirely of jewels, without a drop of water, and it runs only three days of the week, flowing to the Gravelly Sea, where it is lost from sight. The Gravelly Sea has billows of sand without a drop of water. It ebbs and flows in great waves, like other seas, and contains very good fish; but, adds Sir John, "men cannot pass it in ships." The emperor lives in unspeakably gorgeous state, in a palace of gems and gold, and upon the top of the highest tower of the palace are two huge carbuncles which give great light by night to all people. He is served by seven kings, seventy-two dukes, and three hundred and sixty earls. Every day he entertains at dinner twelve archbishops and twenty bishops; and all the archbishops, bishops, and abbots in the country are kings. There is a gorgeous artificial paradise in the dominions of Prester John, the legend of which seems to have been used by Tasso long after Sir John's time in his famous description of the enchanted gardens of Armida. In this false Paradise "a rich man named Gatholonabes, who was full of tricks and subtle deceits," had placed the fairest trees, and fruits, and flowers, constructed the most beautiful halls and palaces, all painted with gold and azure, with youths and fair damsels attired like angels, birds which "sung full delectably and moved by craft," and artificial rivers of milk, and wine, and honey. When he had brought good and noble knights into this place, they were so captivated by the charming sights and sounds, so deceived by the fair speeches of Gatholonabes, and so inflamed with a certain drink which he gave them to drink that they became his willing henchmen, and at his bidding went out from the mountain where this garden stood and slew whomsoever the impostor marked out for slaughter. To the knights who lost their lives in his service, he promised a still fairer Paradise and still more enticing pleasures. Our readers will not fail to trace the resemblance between this fable and the history of the Old Man of the Mountain, with whose extraordinary fanatical sect of Assassins the crusaders had recently made Europe acquainted. Sir John's story is probably founded upon exaggerated accounts of this famous personage.
To his description of the perilous Vale of Devils we fear no such respectable origin can be attributed. "This vale," he says, "is full of devils, and has been always;" and horrible noises are heard in it day and night, as though Satan and his crew were holding an infernal feast. Many daring men have entered in quest of the gold and silver which are known to abound therein; but few have come out again, for the devils strangle the misbelieving. We regret to say that Sir John assures us that he actually saw this vale and went through it with several of his company. They heard mass first and confessed their sins, and, trusting in God, fourteen men marched into the valley; but when they came out at the other end they were only nine. Whether the five were strangled by devils or turned back, Sir John did not know; he never saw them again. The vale was full of horrible sights and sounds. Corpses covered the ground, storms filled the air. The face and shoulders of an appalling devil terrified them, belching forth smoke and stench from beneath a huge rock, and several times the travellers were cast down to the ground and buffeted by tempests. Our author unfortunately was afraid to pick up any of the treasures which strewed the way; he did not know what they might really be; for the devils are very cunning in getting up imitation gems and metals; and besides, he adds, "I would not be put out of my devotion; for I was more devout then than ever I was before or after."
When one has passed through the Vale of Devils, other marvels are encountered beyond. There are giants twenty-eight or thirty feet in height, and Sir John heard of others whose stature was as much as fifty feet; but he candidly avows that he "had no lust to go into those parts," because when the giants see a ship sailing by the island on which they live, they wade out to seize it, and bring the men to land, two in each hand, eating them all alive and raw as they walk. In another island toward the north are people quite as dangerous, but not quite so shocking; these are women who have precious stones in their eyes, and when they are angry they slay a man with a look. Still more marvellous and incredible than any of these tales is the account of that country, unnamed and undescribed, where kings are chosen for their virtue and ability alone, and justice is done in every cause to rich and poor alike, and no evil-doer, be he the king, himself, ever escapes punishment. There is an isle besides, called Bragman, or the Land of Faith, where all men eschew vice, and care not for money; where there is neither wrath, envy, lechery, nor deceit; where no man lies, or steals, or deceives his neighbor; where never a murder has been done since the beginning of time; where there is no poverty, no drunkenness, no pestilence, tempest, or sickness, no war, and no oppression. All these fine countries are under the sway of the magnificent Prester John.
Here, on the borders of that Land of Perpetual Darkness, which stretches away to the Terrestrial Paradise, we take leave of our good knight, now near the end of his travels. "Rheumatic gouts" began to torture his wandering limbs and warn him to go home. He has, indeed, a few more stories to tell; but they are dull in comparison with the wonders we have already recounted. Much more, indeed, he might have written; but he gives a truly ingenuous reason for checking his pen:
"And therefore, now that I have devised you of certain countries which I have spoken of before, I beseech your worthy and excellent nobleness that it suffice to you at this time; for if I told you all that is beyond the sea, another man perhaps, who would labor to go into those parts to seek those countries, might be blamed by my words in rehearsing many strange things; for he might not say any thing new, in which the hearers might have either solace or pleasure."
HOME SCENES IN NEW ENGLAND.
I. MY AUNT AND THE CATECHISM
"There sister! I told you what would come of letting that dear child hear little Mary Ann recite the Romanist catechism. Here we have our little Kitty setting herself up as a judge in matters of religion, and quoting the answers she has learned by hearing them repeated! Not but that she is as good a child as her auntie or her mother could desire; but her brain is too thoroughly American, too much given to going to the bottom of any subject it is once interested in, to stop half-way in a matter of this kind. I knew all the time how it would end."
Here my maiden aunt paused, more in sorrow than in anger, and little Kitty remarked playfully,
"If truth lies at the bottom of a well, as you once told me, auntie, how could we ever reach it without going to the bottom?" While Kitty's mother replied to her sister in a half-apologizing manner,
"Why, Laura, I consented to let her hear Mary Ann's catechism, simply because Kitty told me that the poor mother was so much occupied in striving to earn a living for her little fatherless ones that she could not hear it herself; and then the priest was expected to come here soon, to prepare the children for confirmation, which is to be given shortly by the bishop. So there was no time to lose. I certainly did not think there could be any danger in a mere act of kindness."
"Danger!" exclaimed grandmamma, in defence of her little pet. "If there's danger in a little knowledge of the Catholic catechism, it must be because our house is built on a sandy foundation, and hence we fear it will be destroyed by a little outside religious information. For my part, I have no objection to full examination in these matters; nor have I any fear for the result."
A long-drawn sigh and an ejaculation of grief from the corner of the room called our attention to where grandmamma's sister--"Aunt Ruby," the widow of a Congregational minister--sat knitting, removed from the light of the evening lamps because of the weakness of her eyes.
"O sister! sister! how can you talk so. The old adversary goeth about everywhere like a roaring lion. He lies hid even in that dish of meal. If he can only get our folks to questioning and examining, then the mischief is done; and we shall have popish priests coming here, carrying on their crossings and their blessings, offering to sell pardons for our sins, and making us all bow the knee to Baal, and pray to their graven images. I shudder to think of it!"
"They do not pray to graven images, Aunt Ruby; the catechism expressly forbids it!" replied Kitty.
"There comes that old catechism again!" exclaimed Aunt Laura. "If Mary Ann's catechism forbids it, then the book was trumped up to deceive American children, and is entirely different from the catechisms used in Ireland or France."
"As for that, auntie, Mary Ann's mother has one she brought from Ireland many years ago, and it teaches just the same things. But there is one thing in both that you will acknowledge as binding--'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor;' and the catechism explains that it forbids 'all false testimonies, rash judgments, and lies.' It seems to me that good people should be careful not to accuse the Catholic Church--"
"Romanist, if you please!"
"Well, the Roman Catholic Church, of things they do not know to be true; and I see no harm in inquiring what is true, and what false, in all that is brought against it. Here is our neighbor across the road, a pious Methodist, will not let her little girl, who was my best friend, play with me any more, because I said I thought lies about Catholics were just as bad as lies about Methodists. But I shall always think so, if I lose the friendship of every body."
A sigh and a groan were heard from the dark corner, and a voice, "O poor child! the poison is beginning to work, and there's no knowing where it will end. If things are to go on in this way, it is just as likely as any thing in the world that we shall have the Pope of Rome and all his cardinals down among us before we know it, letting folks out of purgatory, selling indulgences to commit sin, and doing so many other awful things!"
"Ha! ha!" laughed Kitty's father, who had just come in. "Never mind, Aunt Ruby, the pope will never take you, so you need not stand in fear of him. You are too much in the dark, and I fear never could bear the light sufficiently to become one of the children of holy church."
Kitty's eldest brother, who had been educated in a Catholic college, had come in with his father, and now whispered slyly to grandmamma,
"I don't know about that; I have great hopes for Aunt Ruby yet. When she left the Episcopal Church, and was propounded for admission into the Congregational, before she married the minister, you remember how the old deacons groaned in spirit over her because they could not get her to say she was 'willing to be damned.'[34] They insisted that the 'old carnal heart' was still too strong in her, and they protested with one voice that it would never do for their minister to marry a woman who was not 'willing to be damned.' Perhaps the dear old lady remains yet of the same mind. If so, she may escape, after all."
II. WHAT OUR NEIGHBORS THOUGHT OF IT
"So you have all heard of this affair! Then I suppose it must be true. Well, for my part, I never could have thought it possible here in New England, and in the light of this nineteenth century!" exclaimed a grave-looking, elderly lady, who sat in the centre of a group of women who had met together to spend the afternoon in chatting and knitting. "I never could have believed that a woman so well-informed and so good as Mrs. S---- would allow her child to be ensnared and deceived by these wicked papists. I was perfectly astonished when I heard of it."
"And so was I," rejoined another and younger individual of the group. "I called to inquire of Mrs. S---- herself, to ask if the report was true. She said it was true; and, what do you think? she even went so far as to say that she hoped her Kitty would never read a worse book than that awful Romanist catechism! What is to become of us when good people and professing Christians talk in this way? I am afraid the poor woman is in great danger herself."
"Of course she is," said another; "but if she has a craving for error herself, she has no right to expose her child to the influence of it. I am told she openly maintains, and in Kitty's presence too, that good works are necessary to salvation, and even dares to talk about penance and all those popish abominations. Only the other day, Kitty told me she thought lies about Catholics were just as bad as lies about Methodists. I informed the young lady that I should have no more visiting between her and my daughter. I was sorry to grieve poor Kitty, she is such a good little girl; but I could not have the mind of my child poisoned by such dangerous doctrines."
A little woman, whose knitting-needles had been clicking with marvellous rapidity and energy, and whose countenance had indicated the most earnest attention and interest during this colloquy, here ventured to remark that she thought Kitty's opinion was very just, and she would really like to know what there was so very dangerous in the Catholic catechism. She had become acquainted with many Catholics while visiting her friends in Canada, and they seemed to be as good people as there are anywhere. She wished she could be informed as to the particular and alarming errors taught by this church.
All voices were raised at once in expressions of surprise at such astounding ignorance. "Is it possible there is any one who does not know that the Roman church is a mass of errors, corruptions, superstitious mummeries and idolatries? that Romanists pray to saints and graven images instead of praying to God? that the priests keep the people in darkness and ignorance in order to domineer over them at their pleasure. Errors, to be sure!"
The minute individual whose remarks had raised this storm of indignation, here interposed by saying emphatically, "I confess I do not know much about this church, except that in this country it is everywhere denounced in the strongest terms. But it is not necessarily as bad as its enemies represent it to be, any more than the primitive church was. I do not dare to condemn any body of Christians--"
"Christians!" interrupted an old lady with more acid than honey in her aspect and manner; "Christians!" with an unmistakable sneer.
"Yes, Christians!" resumed the other; "for I am told they believe in our Lord Jesus Christ; and, as I was saying, I would not dare to condemn them without knowing from themselves, instead of their enemies, what their doctrines are."
The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of Kitty's mother, who was received with a cold reserve that revealed to her at once what the subject of their discussion had been. Being of a frank and fearless disposition, and possessing much of that American candor of soul which insists on fair play in every contest, she opened the subject without hesitation, by saying,
"I have been informed, ladies, that my neighbors are greatly alarmed because I allowed my little girl to hear a Catholic child recite the catechism. I have examined the little book carefully, and cannot find any thing in it to justify such fears. I am not at all afraid it will hurt my child."
A solemn silence followed this declaration, when an excited individual inquired with much vehemence, "What does it say about priests pardoning sins, about praying to saints, and praying souls out of purgatory?"
"As to the power of the priests to pardon sins, it merely repeats the words of our Lord, 'Whose sins ye shall forgive, they are forgiven;' and I confess I never before noticed how very clear and decisive they were, especially when he added, 'And lo! I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.' As to praying to saints, it asserts that the saints in glory pray to God for us, and help us by their prayers, and that the souls in purgatory are assisted by our prayers for them."
"There's no such place as purgatory!" indignantly exclaimed an old lady. "I don't believe a word of it."
"Unfortunately for you, my dear friend," replied Kitty's mother, "your believing or disbelieving does not make the least difference in this matter. If there is a purgatory, as was always held by the Jewish church and has been by many Protestants, your opinion will not change the fact or abolish the institution. I really think the Catholic doctrine, that the church triumphant prays for the church militant, (for what is the true Christian but a soldier of Christ engaged in a life-long conflict with the world, the flesh, and the devil?) and that the church militant supplicates the mercy of God on behalf of the church suffering, is a beautiful and a consoling one. It is a golden chain that binds the souls of the redeemed in holy communion with each other. The grave that has closed over the precious form of a dear friend no longer places an inseparable barrier between us and the departed soul, but serves rather to bring us into closer and more tender sympathy with it. Whether true or not, I think it is a beautiful idea."
"And so do I," added the energetic little knitter; "and I would like to know more about this doctrine."
The gentleman of the house, an able lawyer of the place, who had entered during this conversation, here declared his intention of procuring from the priest on his next visit some books explaining Catholic doctrines.
"For," he remarked, "it certainly is not just to hear all the accusing party has to say, and then refuse to listen to the defence."
Countenances expressive of indignation and alarm, with sighs and groans from most of the party, were the only remonstrances offered to this bold proposition.
III. THE OPINION OF THE SEWING-CIRCLE
"I am sure I don't know what will happen next in our village! What would have been said thirty years ago of such outrageous performances?"
These were the words that greeted my ears as I entered the sewing society at Mrs. B----'s, on a fine afternoon in August, 18--. The speaker, who was an energetic middle-aged lady, continued, "First there was the S---- family, with their Romish catechism and their inquiring into forbidden things, all going on the broad road to destruction as rapidly as possible, with ever so many more fascinated and entangled in the same net; and now here Mr. W---- and his whole family have fairly rushed through the gate and joined those children of perdition, the Romanists. It is too bad; too much for human patience!"
"Nothing more than might be expected of those Episcopalians!" exclaimed a prim-looking young lady. "It is but a step from their church to Rome. I am not at all surprised."
"I am not so sure of that," remarked Mrs. J----. "I suspect the Episcopalians differ just as much from the Romanists, after all, as the Congregationalists or any other Protestant sect. They are Protestants, you know, as well as we. You remember Miss E----, who was the principal of our female seminary for some time, a lady of remarkable intelligence and rare culture, and a very dear friend of mine in Massachusetts, before she came here. She was always a devoted Congregationalist from the time she first experienced religion; but she has lately become, I am sorry to say, a Romanist; and, what is still worse, she is about to join their Sisters of Charity! I received from her, not long ago, a letter explaining her reasons, and speaking of what she calls our 'misapprehensions of Catholic doctrine.' She says she has not laid aside any part of her former belief; but has only made such additions as complete the system, and render portions which before were dubious, discordant, and perplexing fragments the clear, harmonious, distinct, and necessary members of a perfect whole. I assure you she has more to say for herself than you would believe possible, and she knows how to say it, too, in a most impressive manner. She told me, also, of many others of our persuasion who will probably join the Catholic Church. So the Episcopalians are not alone, you see, in this movement."
"True," said Mrs. G----; "for there is Mrs. H---- and her daughter, who were leading Methodists. They have joined this popish rabble, and are so very happy in their new home that it is past belief, and quite amusing to people of common sense. I don't believe it makes any difference what body of Protestant Christians folks belong to; if they once get to pondering on these things, they are almost sure to follow their noses into the Roman Church before they stop. When the mind gets fairly waked up, it does not seem possible to quiet it in any other way. And then, as you say, they are all so perfectly contented and joyous when they have once entered the 'fold,' as they call it, that it is a puzzle to sober-minded Christians! I think this new priest who has lately come among us is doing immense mischief already."
"Of course he is!" chimed in another lady with much asperity. "He is so very agreeable and polite, so gentle and easy to get acquainted with, that every one is attracted by him. Then he is an American, and knows so much better how to make himself acceptable to our people than the other one did, that he is a great deal more dangerous on that account. My son George, who would not speak to Kitty S----, Jennie H----, and the W----s, you know, after they began to patronize Romanism--though he thought every thing of them before--is already quite at home with this new priest; takes long walks with him, and even went to the church last Sunday, just to see how they get on over there."
"Oh! yes, he told me all about it," said Miss Mary B----. He said it was perfectly astonishing to see Mr. W---- singing and chanting with those shabby Canadians; and there were the W----s, the H----s, and the S----s, kneeling right in the midst of that rabble, and to all appearance as intent on their prayers, and as much absorbed in what was going on, as any one present. They seemed quite at home, and to understand every thing as well as if they had been accustomed to it all their lifetime. George said he placed himself where they couldn't help seeing him; but they were not disconcerted in the least. Even the girls never seemed to notice him at all. He said they doubtless understood the service, but he didn't. I think, Mrs. G----, that it will not be very safe for George to go there often; for he told me that there was a wonderful solemnity and fascination about the place--which is not much better than a mere shanty--and about the service, though he didn't understand a word of it. He never felt so solemn in all his life, he said; and that was a great deal for such a scatterbrain as George to say."
"I have heard others older and wiser than he say the same," remarked a thoughtful-looking widow with a sigh. "My brother, who is a deacon, and a man of very cool temperament and calm judgment, says he never was in a Catholic place of worship but once, and then he was almost frightened at the sensation of awe that came over him. He said it seemed to him that the impression it made was what one would naturally expect if their doctrine of the real presence were true, and the sight of the solemn assurance which a great many apparently devout and good people evidently possessed of their near approach to their Redeemer, really present in that place, affected him so sensibly that he could not shake the feeling off. It was a very plain little chapel, by no means equal to our churches; but he said it seemed as if something whispered to him that he was standing on holy ground. He has been very painfully exercised about these matters ever since, and he says that the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel, which never troubled him before, now appears to be all in favor of their doctrine."
"For my part, I don't see why Protestants want to go near them at all!" exclaimed another indignantly. "It only brings about mischief; and the only way to put down such things is to set our faces resolutely against every one that countenances any thing pertaining to Romanism. We must be determined that we will have nothing to do with such people in any way. We must keep entirely aloof from Romanists and from Romanizers."
"Well, I confess that I am very much puzzled about all these matters," quietly observed a lady of very gentle manners, in a low voice. "I cannot help having misgivings that a system which carries into its minutest circumstances and details such almost irresistible power may perhaps, after all, owe it to the force of truth. It is certainly sustained and animated by some principle not possessed or exerted by Protestantism in any of its branches."
"It is a principle of evil, then," cried the former austere speaker. "The Prince of Darkness knows how to appear as an 'angel of light'!"
"Ah!" resumed the other; "but you know our Lord said, 'If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more those of his household!' We ought to be careful how we bring such accusations against a church which certainly numbers some very good people among its members. One thing may be said of it, that the poor are tenderly cherished and cared for within its pale; and I can never believe that the evil one is the dispenser or instigator of so many charities as are instituted and supported by this church."
"All done for effect, and to lead poor Protestants astray! Take care, my dear friend; for these misgivings are the beginning of danger, and if you follow them, they will surely lead you into the Romish Church. That is the way all those who have lost the light of Protestantism have been ensnared."
"If it should prove that they gave up an ignis fatuus for the light of the star that guided the wise men of old to the crib of the Infant Redeemer, did they not do well rather than ill?" suggested the quiet speaker, and was answered only by a murmur of indignation at her bold conjecture, as the party withdrew to another room where the tea-table was spread for their refreshment.
IV. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE DONATION-PARTY
"Did you go to the donation party at our minister's last night, sister C----? I was so sorry that I couldn't go! My little girl had such a bad cold, I did not dare to leave her."
"Yes, I was there; and, don't you think! Mrs. H---- was there too, with her daughter. Would you have believed she would dare to show her face among the Methodists, after what has happened?"
"No, indeed, I should not! But wonders will never cease. How did she appear?"
"As pleasant and gentle as ever; and just as much at home as if she had never left us to join the Catholics. Sister J---- would not speak to her at first, or look at her; and our good old brother L----, who used to be her class-leader, you know, quite turned the cold shoulder upon her; but she was not to be put off so easily; and after a little while, her kind and winning ways had thawed all the ice, and we couldn't help being pleasant with her."
"Well, I always did love sister H----; hence I don't want to meet her now. I am glad I was not there! Did any one speak to her about her change?"
"Yes; brother L---- could not help telling her how sorry we were to lose her; and she said, 'You have not lost me, brother L----; I shall never forget my dear Methodist friends, and shall never cease to love and pray for them!' 'Pray for them!' brother L---- said with great contempt; 'we don't thank people for praying to the saints for us; we can pray to God for ourselves. Ah Sister H----! if you would only pray to him as you used to, when you were a warm-hearted Methodist, that would do!' Her answer to this was what puzzled me. I remember every word of it, she looked so grieved, and so sweetly earnest, while the tears fairly came to her eyes as she said, 'Pray to God as I used to, Brother L----! Why, I never knew the meaning of the word prayer until I was a Catholic! I then entered the very atmosphere of prayer! My life, my breath, my every thought, my every action, became one continual prayer to an ever-present God from that hour. The saints united with me, assisted me--at my request prayed for me--and for those for whom I desired their prayers in union with my own; and of that perfect union and communion with them, I can give you no idea. O brother L----! believe me, there is no home for a 'warm-hearted Methodist' but the Catholic Church! Don't you remember, in our class conferences, how I used to say I was happy, but not satisfied; I felt that I was still a seeker. I had been first a Congregationalist, then an Episcopalian, and at last a Methodist; but had not found all I was seeking for. You thought I never would until I reached heaven; but'--and how I wish, dear friend, you could have seen and heard her as she said it, for I cannot describe her impressive manner--'but brother, I have found it all in the Catholic Church! The blank is filled. The yearning of my soul is satisfied so entirely that there is nothing left to desire!'
"'All a delusion, sister H----!' exclaimed brother L----. 'You'll wake up some time and find it so, and then you'll come back!' She looked perfectly dismayed at the very thought, as she replied, 'Come back to what? To content myself with the shadow, when I have possessed the substance? to satisfy my hunger with the husks of the stranger, when I have feasted at the continual and overflowing banquet of my Father's table! O my Methodist friends! if you could but taste for once the sweetness and fulness of that banquet, you would never cast one backward look upon what you had left, except to mourn for those who remain contented there, when they might be feasting on the bread of angels!' I confess to you, Mrs. M----, that I could not help being moved by her earnestness to wish that I was even as she is! No one can doubt her entire sincerity who listens to her. Brother L---- asked her if it could be possible that she believed all the absurdities taught by the Romish Church? She replied that she believed no absurdities, and that he had not the slightest idea as to what the Catholic Church really did teach; a tissue of absurdities had been invented by its enemies, and palmed off upon the too credulous Protestants as its teachings, when they were entirely foreign to it, and baseless misrepresentations. 'But,' she added, 'I believe all that my church really does offer to my belief, as firmly as I believe that there is a sun in the firmament of heaven!'"
"Well, how strange it all is, to be sure! Now, I met Mrs. L---- the other day, and I was so provoked at the way they are going on, that I could not for my life help asking her why, in the name of common sense, if they wanted to be Romanists, they didn't all go together like sensible people, and not string along, one to-day, another to-morrow, and so on, as they do? And what do you think was her reply? 'Why, you know, Mrs. M----,' she said; 'that we read of the olden time that, "The Lord added daily unto the church of such as should be saved"!' There is one thing, as you say, that cannot be doubted or denied: right or wrong, they are solemnly in earnest, and heartily sincere. You know little Kitty S---- had a terrible fit of sickness before they became Catholics, (some think her sickness hastened that event,) and has been a great sufferer ever since. Sister W---- has taken care of her through it all, and I should not wonder if she should go off on the same road. She is all taken up with it now, and justifies their course; says all the evils we have been accustomed to hear of the Catholic religion are slanders, and that if the S----s, and especially little Kitty, are not Christians of the true stamp, she does not rightly understand the gospel of Christ."