The Poor Ploughman
A true worker and a good was he, Living in peace and perfect charity; God loved he, best, and that with alle his herte, At alle times, were it gain or smart; And then his neighbour right as himselve. He wolde thresh, and thereto dyke and delve For Christe’s sake, for every poor wight Withouten hire, if it lay in his might. His tithes paid he full fair and well, Both of his proper work, and his cattel.—S. Anselm.
A Dark Chapter In English History.(103)
One of the most gratifying features of the literature of the present, and one that in some measure compensates us for the evils produced by the many worthless books that are still allowed to issue from the press, is its tendency by close investigation and collation to vindicate the truth of modern history, and especially of that portion of it directly or indirectly relating to the XVIth century. Gradually, but most effectually, the inventions and gross calumnies of the post‐Reformation writers are being dissipated, and the meretricious grandeur with which the characters and acts of the anti‐Catholic sovereigns, statesmen, and generals of that eventful period were designedly clothed, has been stripped off, revealing to their descendants the deformity and impiety of the heroes of the Reformation. Whether we turn to England or Germany, Edinburgh or Geneva, we find the men and women who in our own school‐boy days we were urged to regard as patterns of patriotism and morality, become under the scrutiny of living historiographers the veriest counterfeits—the prey of passion and the untiring enemies of every principle of government and religion which we are bound to respect. Yet this is what, logically, we might have anticipated. A bad cause needs to be sustained by vicious instruments; but so closely and consistently has the web of falsehood been woven around the true designs and actions of the reformers that it required the labor of many skilful and patient hands to undo the meshes and reduce the fabric, so dexterously spun, to its original elements. This is peculiarly difficult with the works of English historians and biographers of the past three centuries, whose unanimity in magnifying the virtues and screening the crimes of their public men is so remarkable as to utterly destroy the value of their works as authorities among people of other nations. The beastly vices of the eighth Henry were, of course, so glaring that they could neither be denied nor extenuated; but who would expect to find that his worthy daughter Elizabeth, the “virgin queen” and Gloriana, before whose benign altar even Shakespeare offered the incense of his flattery, should at this remote period be discovered to be: as a woman ugly, ill‐ tempered, and unchaste, and as a ruler fickle, cruel, cold‐blooded, and thoroughly despotic. James I., the head of a long line of gallant princes, to whom his pliant prelates attributed “divine illumination,” and subsequent historians praised for his learning and wit, we at length know to have been a miser and a charlatan, as deformed in mind as he was uncouth in person. “His cowardice,” says his compatriot and co‐religionist Macaulay, “his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person and manners, his provincial accent, made him an object of derision” to his English subjects. The unscrupulous Northampton and the subtle Cecil, the trusted ministers of both sovereigns, who had long been regarded as the unswerving champions of English independence and the bulwark of Protestant ascendency, are now proved to have been all along the paid tools of Catholic Spain, with whose ill‐gotten gold their lofty palaces were built and their luxurious wants regularly supplied.(104) The chivalrous and romantic Raleigh of other days, examined by the inexorable scrutiny of the XIXth century, turns out a spy in the pay of a foreign and by no means friendly power; the philosophic Bacon, a common peculator; and Coke, the father of English common law, a falsifier of sworn evidence and a concocter of legal conspiracies against the liberties of his countrymen. Yet these were the leading personages, who, with many others equally corrupt, in their day and generation swayed the destinies of England, desolated the church of God, originated or abetted plots and schemes, at home and abroad, for the spoliation and extermination of the professors of the ancient faith.
This tardy measure of historical justice is partly due to the appearance in different parts of Europe of important public and private documents and correspondence, which have shamed British Protestant authors into something like truthfulness, but principally to the revival of Catholicity in England, which has been the means of drawing out a mass of original and reliable information, that had long been allowed to slumber in the dark closets of a few noble families or in inaccessible libraries during the gloomy era of persecution and proscription. Our readers are already familiar with the articles which formerly appeared in these columns on the long‐unsettled and vexed question of the character of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the justice or injustice of her treatment by Elizabeth—contributions to current literature which in their collective form have found their way among the literati of all nations, and, from their admirable cogency of argument and conscientious appeals to contemporary authorities, have at length cleared away from the character of that ill‐starred lady the foul aspersions and unexampled obloquy heaped on it by the minions of the English sovereign.
Some more recent publications have thrown additional light on the tragic incidents of her reign and of that of her successor James, which, as far as they relate to the Catholics of Great Britain, are full of freshness and interest. Chief among them is the Life of Father John Gerard, for many years a Jesuit missionary in England under both rulers, with his account of the celebrated Gunpowder Plot, written soon after the failure of that conspiracy. Many of the participants in the plot were personally known to him, and he himself was accused of having taken an active part in its formation; but, though his name has been frequently mentioned in connection with it and his manuscript narrative more or less correctly quoted, it remained for a member of his Order, the Rev. John Morris, the able editor of the book before us, to present to the world for the first time the only complete and accurate history of an event which has been the fruitful subject of misrepresentation and comment by every writer on English history for the last two hundred years.
Few incidents of modern times can be said to have provoked more hostility to the church and the Jesuit Order than the Gunpowder Plot, few have been so dexterously used by the enemies of Catholicity to poison the public mind against the priesthood, and none the details of which are so little understood even at the present day by friends and foes. The 5th of November, the anniversary of its discovery, has long been a gala‐day with the more ignorant of the British populace; Protestant writers, divines, and politicians of the lower sort are not yet tired of alluding to the time when, as they are wont to allege, the Catholics by one fell swoop attempted to destroy king, lords, and commons; and even Lingard and Tiernay, with the very best intentions and after considerable examination of authorities, give a partial assent to the old popular conviction that, in some way or another, the Jesuits were at the bottom of the diabolical scheme, which in reality was the creation of a handful of desperate laymen. In fact, the former, with a penetration totally at variance with his general character, alludes to the taking of the oath of secrecy by Catesby and his companions in terms that would lead any superficial reader to adopt this absurd hypothesis. “All five,” he says, “having previously sworn each other to secrecy, received in confirmation of their oath the sacrament at the hands of the Jesuit missionary Father Gerard.”(105) It is true that in a subsequent edition of his History he endeavored to explain away, but in a very unsatisfactory manner, the implication of guilty knowledge on the part of Gerard; but, whether from an imperfect acquaintance with the writings of that priest, then unpublished, or from that spirit of timidity which too often characterized the conduct of the English Catholics of the last generation, his refutation is not of that full and hearty nature which might be expected from so clear and critical a scholar.
What Dr. Lingard was unwilling or unable to undertake may now, in view of more complete evidence, be accomplished by persons of lesser erudition, who, untrammelled by national partiality, are not alarmed at popular clamor or unwilling to disturb time‐honored but unfounded historical fallacies. We design, therefore, in this article to prove:
1. That the Gunpowder Plot was formed and carried out to its disastrous end by not more than a dozen desperate men, the victims of unrelenting persecution for conscience’ sake.
2. That the Catholic body in England, lay and clerical, till its discovery, neither were aware of its existence, approved of its aims, nor rendered any assistance to its projectors.
3. That no priest, Jesuit or other, was concerned in its formation, or afforded it any encouragement at any time; and that of all the seculars and regulars in the kingdom but two were ever aware of its existence, and that to them the knowledge came under the seal of confession and could not be revealed.
4. That those two used every possible effort to dissuade the conspirators from their design, and denounced on every occasion all violent attempts to redress the wrongs under which the Catholics suffered.
The state of England at the beginning of the XVIIth century, when James of Scotland was called upon to ascend the throne of his mother’s murderer, was deplorable in the extreme. Less than half a century had sufficed to change entirely the whole face of the country socially and morally, and the once “merrie” people were divided into two hostile camps, one the army of plunder and persecution, the other the cowering, dissatisfied, and impoverished masses. Many were yet alive who recollected with sorrow the time when the cross gleamed on the spires of a thousand churches, when the solemn sacrifice was offered up on myriads of altars, when the poor and afflicted easily found food and shelter at the numerous convents and abbeys that dotted the land of S. Augustine, and the young and the aged, the weak woman and the strong man, together bowed their knees in reverence before the statues of the “blessed among women” and other saints. Now all was reformed away—changed not with the consent of the people nor by the argument or eloquence of the preacher, but by the brute force and cunning fraud of a corrupt sovereign, a dissolute and avaricious court, and, partially at least, by a venal and cowardly episcopate. The churches no longer resounded from morning till night with the solemn sacred chants, the monasteries were in ruins or the scenes of impious revelry, the festivals of the church were abolished, and the peasantry, formerly accustomed to look forward to them as days of rest from hard toil and occasions of innocent enjoyment, were sullen and discontented. Those who had shared in the ecclesiastical plunder spent their time in the metropolis in wild extravagance, while the gentry, most of whom still adhered secretly to the faith, remained at home, the prey of anxiety and the tax‐gatherer. The masses were fast degenerating into that state of stolid ignorance and unbelief from which all subsequent legislation has failed to raise them. The laws of Elizabeth aimed at the suppression of all outward manifestation of Catholicity and the ultimate protestantizing of the nation; those of James, at the utter extirpation of the Catholics themselves.
As early as A.D. 1559, the first year of Elizabeth’s reign, a law was passed compelling every person holding office, either temporal or spiritual, under the crown, to take an oath of allegiance declaring the queen the supreme head of the church. The penalty for refusing this oath was forfeiture of goods and imprisonment, and a persistence in such refusal, death. Whoever affirmed the spiritual supremacy of the pope was declared guilty of treason; penalty, confiscation and death. Attendance at Mass was to be punished by perpetual imprisonment, and non‐attendance at Protestant service by a weekly fine. In the fifth year of her reign, any aider or abettor of such offenders was for the first offence to be fined and imprisoned for life, for the second to suffer death. Any clergyman celebrating Mass or refusing to observe the regulations of the Book of Common Prayer forfeited offices, goods, and liberty. In the thirteenth year, introducing into the kingdom a bull or other instrument of the pope was treason, penalty death; abetting the same, death; acting under such authority, death; introducing, wearing, or having in his or her possession an Agnus Dei, cross, etc., confiscation and perpetual imprisonment; and for leaving the kingdom without permission, forfeiture of lands and personal estate. In the twenty‐third year, any person granting absolution from sin in the name of the “Roman Church,” or receiving the same, their aiders, etc., was declared guilty of treason, penalty death; and for not disclosing knowledge of such offenders, confiscation and imprisonment. In the twenty‐ninth year, the tax for non‐ attendance at Protestant service was increased to £20 per lunar month, or forfeiture of two‐thirds of all lands and goods; and for keeping a schoolmaster or tutor, other than a Protestant, a fine of £10 per month was imposed, together with imprisonment at pleasure. By the statutes of the 21st, 27th, and 28th Elizabeth, every priest, Jesuit, or other ecclesiastic ordained out of the realm was obliged forthwith to leave the kingdom, and in case of his return he was to suffer death; those who received or harbored him were subject to a like punishment. Those being educated abroad were required to return home, and after neglect to do so, upon their being found in the kingdom, were to be put to death. For contributing money for colleges abroad and for sending students there, fine and imprisonment for life were considered adequate punishments; but by the 25th chapter of Elizabeth, all who persisted in refusing attendance on Protestant worship were liable to be transported for life, and if they evaded the statute they were liable to suffer death.(106)
We see, therefore, by this comprehensive penal code that every office under the crown was reserved as a bribe to recreant Catholics; that private tutors were commanded to teach nothing but the new heresy in Catholic families, while those who objected to such method of instruction could neither send their children abroad nor contribute to the support of those already there. All priests were obliged to take the oath of supremacy and observe the Book of Common Prayer; such as did not were to be banished, and if they returned were to be executed forthwith. No priest could, of course, be ordained at home, and if ordained abroad he was to be hanged whenever caught, without delay. If one of the laity attended Mass or wore the image of his crucified Redeemer, he was to be imprisoned for life; if he did not attend Protestant service, he was to be fined enormously; if he had no money to pay the fine, he might be banished for ever from his home and country, and if he endeavored to conceal himself at home his career was to be ended by the hangman.
Nor must it to be supposed that these sanguinary statutes, affecting the rights and liberties of at least one‐half of the population, were nothing but the splenetic fits of a jealous and tyrannical bigot or mere idle threats to frighten a half‐civilized horde. On the contrary, we have abundant facts to prove that they were thoroughly and cruelly enforced, and that the sufferers were principally the better class of the community. In 1573, the Rev. Thomas Woodhouse was drawn, half‐hanged, and then quartered alive in the usual way at Tyburn, for having denied the queen’s supremacy. Two years later, Father Cuthbert Mayne was executed with similar barbarity in Cornwall for having in his possession a copy of a Jubilee and for saying Mass in the house of a Mr. Teagian; the latter, with fifteen others, for being present on the occasion, was imprisoned for life. In 1577, Mr. Jenks was tried and convicted at Oxford for exposing some Catholic books for sale, and about this time we are informed the prisons were so full of “recusants” that a pestilence broke out and large numbers of the inmates perished. Among the sufferers in 1578 we find the names of Father Nelson and a Mr. Sherwood, who were hanged and quartered solely for being recusants. In 1582, Fathers Campion (the celebrated Jesuit missionary), Sherwin, and Briant, after the mockery of a trial, were executed in London, and in May of the year following no less than seven other priests suffered death at Tyburn. Thus nearly every year supplied its quota to the martyrology of the church in England, not to speak of the nameless thousands who died in confinement by the quick but silent process of torture and pestilence, or abroad, broken‐hearted and neglected. During the fourteen years succeeding the dispersion of the Spanish Armada, when fanaticism was rampant and bigotry held full sway in the councils of Elizabeth, sixty‐one clergymen, forty‐seven laymen, and two gentlewomen expiated their offence of being Catholics by a horrible and ignominious public death; while, according to the records still extant, the total number of the “good Queen Bess’” ecclesiastical victims amounted to the handsome number of one hundred and twenty‐three, including one hundred and thirteen seculars, eight Jesuits, one friar, and one monk, besides innumerable laymen in whose veins flowed the best blood of the land.
The rack and the thumb‐screw almost invariably preceded the half‐hanging and disembowelling, so that many looked upon the gallows as a welcome relief from worse sufferings. Priests were tortured to compel them to disclose the names of their penitents, and laymen to force them into the betrayal of their pastors. Father Campion was four times racked, and then secretly brought before the queen to discuss theology with that model Supreme Head of the Church; while others like Nichols found it more convenient to swear to all their tormentors required, for, as that recreant shepherd naïvely says in his Apology, “it is not, I assure you, a pleasant thing to be stretched on the rack till the body becomes almost two feet longer than nature made it.” Father Gerard, who speaks from personal experience, has left us in his Memoirs the following account of this most effectual method of extorting confessions in the glorious reign of that queen to which so many of our modern writers refer with pride and congratulation:
“Then they led me to a great upright beam, or pillar of wood, which was one of the supports of this vast crypt. At the summit of this column were fixed certain iron staples for supporting weights. Here they placed on my wrists manacles of iron, and ordered me to mount upon two or three wicker steps; then raising my arms they inserted an iron bar through the rings of the manacles, and then through the staples in the pillar, putting a pin through the bar so that it could not slip. My arms being thus fixed above my head, they withdrew those wicker steps I spoke of, one by one, from my feet, so that I hung by my hands and arms. The tips of my toes, however, still touched the ground; so they dug away the ground beneath, as they could not raise me higher, for they had suspended me from the topmost staples in the pillar. Thus hanging by my wrists I began to pray, while those gentlemen standing around me asked again if I was willing to confess. I replied, ‘I neither can nor will.’ But so terrible a pain began to oppress me that I was scarcely able to speak the words. The worst pain was in my breast and belly, my arms and hands. It seemed to me that all the blood in my body rushed up my arms into my hands, and I was under the impression at the time that the blood actually burst forth from my fingers and the back of my hands. This was, however, a mistake, the sensation was caused by the swelling of the flesh over the iron that bound it.... I had hung this way till after one of the clock, as I think, when I fainted.”(107)
It must not be supposed, however, that the zeal of the queen’s ministers was satisfied with these harsh measures against the clergy and the more prominent delinquents. All Catholics were put beyond the pale of the law. The country swarmed with spies and informers. Lists were accurately made out and carefully preserved of the recusants who owned property of any sort, and every possible method of espionage was adopted to detect them in the slightest infraction of the bloody code. Domiciliary visits became the order of the day, or rather of the night, for that was the time usually chosen by the pursuivants. Doors were broken open, closets ransacked, bedrooms of women and invalids invaded without ceremony; and frequently, the previous movements having been properly concerted, whole families were simultaneously borne off to prison, there to be detained without the least warrant of law for months and years. The tax of £260 annually, equal to at least five thousand dollars at the present day, was not only vigorously enforced, but upon the faintest rumor of a foreign invasion or domestic broil, special imposts were laid on the remaining property of the Catholics, and the owners were carried to the nearest dungeon till the affair blew over, when they were as unceremoniously dismissed until the next occasion arose for plunder and personal revenge.
Thus was the work of reformation and evangelization urged briskly forward in free England, and she was fast becoming converted and enlightened. Torture, death, and confiscation dogged the steps of the unhappy recusant who dare to profess, even in the privacy of his house, the faith of his fathers for ten centuries—that religion which had raised his ancestors from barbarism, freed him from the thraldom of feudalism, and given him Magna Charta, trial by jury, and representative government. The crown lawyers, like Coke, Stanhope, and Bacon, laid the plans, pious bishops like those of London, Ely, and Winchester, leaving their flocks to the devouring Puritan wolves, constituted themselves a sort of episcopal sheriffalty, and vied with each other in their ardor for the spread of the Gospel and their love for the spoils of the Papists. Their leader in all this was a vulgar wretch named Topcliffe, whose audacity, profanity, and lewdness made him the terror of men and the abhorrence of women, but whose usefulness was so apparent that he was constantly the object of government favors and clerical eulogy.
But human hate and diabolical ingenuity, it was thought, could not last for ever. On the 24th of March, A.D. 1603, Elizabeth died, to the last the prey of vain desires and unsatisfied ambition. For weeks before her decease she was haunted by the phantoms of her innumerable crimes, and so terrified at the approach of death that she refused to lie in her bed or to receive any sustenance from her usual attendants. The courts of Europe, to which she had ever been an object of dislike and fear, could ill conceal their pleasure at the event, but millions of her subjects, the impoverished, the widowed, and the orphaned, made desolate by her despotic cruelty, in silence execrated her memory.
The Catholics generally found consolation in the thought of her successor, and, with that unqualified confidence in the house of Stuart, which now seems like fatality, they began to hope for better days under his sway. Was he not, they asked each other, the son of Elizabeth’s royal victim, and could he be unmindful of the affection with which the Catholics of the three kingdoms ever regarded his mother? Had he not before he ever put foot in England authorized Father Watson to promise in his name justice and protection, and did not Percy, the agent and kinsman of the great Duke of Northumberland, assure his friends, on the strength of the royal word solemnly pledged, that the days of persecution were at an end? Poor deluded people, they little knew how much deceit lay in the heart of him whom the Protestant lord primate rather blasphemously averred “the like had not been since the time of Christ.” He had scarcely put on the crown when the Catholics discovered that they had neither mercy nor justice to expect from him. Once secure in the support of the Protestant party, he turned a deaf ear to their complaints, and even had the mendacity to deny his own word of honor, giving as a reason “that, since Protestants had so generally received and proclaimed him king, he had now no need of Papists.” Being by nature intolerant, he oppressed the Puritans, by whom he had been trained, to please the Episcopalians, and to gratify both he ground the Catholics into dust; arrests for recusancy multiplied, illegal visitations became more frequent, and if possible more annoying, the arrears of the monthly tax which he at first pretended to remit were demanded, and the amount, already enormous, was even increased so as to satisfy the ever‐increasing rapacity of his pauper courtiers who had followed him into England. In place and out of it, he made the most violent attacks on the faith of his dead mother and of at least one‐half of his English subjects, and his remarks were taken up and repeated from every Protestant pulpit and in every conventicle throughout the length and breadth of the land, till the hopes of the Catholics grew fainter and fainter, and finally expired. Unlike Elizabeth, he was not only expected to live a long life, but his progeny would succeed him, the heirs of his authority and cruelty; and being constitutionally a coward and an intriguer, he was bent on making peace with foreign powers, and thus cutting off all sympathy which the Catholic sovereigns might have felt it their interest to express for their suffering co‐religionists in Great Britain.
Though the principles of reciprocal protection and allegiance were not as well defined at that period as, they have since been, the Catholics of England would have been more or less than human if they could have regarded James’ government with any feeling other than detestation, and the wonder is not that a plot was laid to destroy it, but that so very few of the persecuted multitude could be found to embark in it, notwithstanding the manifold reasons afforded by the king and parliament for their destruction. It was an age of conspiracies and counterplots, when the highest and most trusted in every land endeavored by force or fraud to accomplish political and personal ends, success being the only criterion of merit. The history of Europe from the middle of the preceding century is full of dark schemes and secret contrivances, in which nobles and princes figure alternately as the bribers or the bribed, the patrons or the victims of the assassin, now devoted patriots and anon double‐dyed traitors. The long civil wars, the vicious legacy of the Lutheran attempt to unsettle the faith of Christendom, had nearly ceased from sheer exhaustion, and unemployed soldiers of desperate fortunes but undoubted courage were to be easily had for any enterprise, no matter how dangerous.
Of this character was Guy or Guido Fawkes, whose name, though not himself the originator of the Gunpowder Plot, is most intimately associated with it in popular tradition. The real authors were Robert Catesby, Thomas Percy, Thomas Winter, and John Wright; all of whom were country gentlemen of good family and education, but, except Catesby, very much reduced in circumstances owing to the unjust and repeated exactions of the penal laws, which had not only robbed them of their property and shut them out from all public employment, but had branded them with the stigma of traitors to their country and enemies to their sovereign; for, having in the early part of their lives conformed to Protestantism, they had subsequently returned to the church into which they had been baptized—an offence in the eyes of the rulers of that day of the deepest dye.
In the early part of 1604, the five conspirators met in London, and, having taken a solemn oath of secrecy, determined on their future schemes for the total destruction of the government. Wishing, however, it seems, to exhaust all milder remedies, they sent agents to Spain and other foreign powers friendly to the Catholic cause, to induce them to use their good offices in mitigating the sufferings of the English recusants. The answers were generally favorable, but non‐committal, and the practical result nothing. They then determined to depend on themselves alone, and in the autumn rented a building adjoining the Palace of Westminster, the old House of Parliament, and commenced to undermine the dividing wall. This, some three yards thick of solid masonry, they found a work of difficulty, and from the paucity of their numbers and their inexperience in manual labor, advanced slowly. A circumstance soon occurred to modify their plans. A portion of the cellar immediately under the prince’s chamber, which had been used by a coal dealer, was vacated by the tenant, and Percy rented it, ostensibly for storage purposes. The mine was abandoned, and thirty‐two barrels of powder, which had been stored previously at Lambeth, were introduced in the night‐time, and covered from observation by wood, furniture, etc. All that was now required to complete the conspiracy was a proper moment for the application of the match. This work had brought them into the spring of 1605, and, as parliament was not to assemble for some months, they resolved to separate, some going into the country to see their relatives, and others to the Continent to enlist the assistance of such adventurers as could be found willing to take service under the anticipated new régime. Meanwhile eight more persons were admitted into the plot, the principal of whom were Rokewood, Grant, Tresham, and Sir Everard Digby, all young men of family and fortune, whose proud spirits chafed continually under the social and political ostracism to which all recusants of the period were doomed.
The opening of parliament, expected in September, was, however, postponed till the 5th of November, but, to the secret satisfaction of Catesby and his fellows, the penal laws continued to be rigidly enforced, and additional measures of persecution were devised by the king’s council for the adoption by the legislature when it should meet. As that time approached and everything augured success, the parts of the leading actors in the bloody drama were distributed. Fawkes was to fire the powder which was to blow the king, his oldest son Henry, and the lords and commons into eternity; Prince Charles, the next in succession, having been seized by Percy, was to be proclaimed king at Charing Cross by Catesby; while Tresham, Grant, and Digby were to gain possession of the person of the infant princess Elizabeth, at Lord Harrington’s country‐seat. After the explosion, Fawkes was to sail for Flanders to bring over reinforcements, and the others, a protector for the royal children having been appointed, were to rendezvous at Digby’s residence and raise the country in favor of the new government. There was a method in the madness of these men, and the first part of their programme would undoubtedly have been carried out but for one important fact upon which it seems they did not reckon: Cecil was fully cognizant of all their movements, and for his own good reasons, as we shall hereafter see, allowed them to proceed unchecked to the very last moment.
That moment expired soon after midnight on the night of the 4th‐5th of November, only a few hours before the expected catastrophe. As Fawkes was entering the cellar to assure himself that all was in readiness, he was seized by a body of soldiers under the command of Sir Thomas Knevett. His dress denoted that he was prepared for a journey, arms and matches were found upon his person, a dark‐lantern was discovered in a corner, and the removal of the débris that was piled in the vault revealed the powder arranged ready for explosion.
The scene that ensued was highly dramatic, and did great credit to the histrionic genius of the secretary. The lords of the council were hastily summoned to the king’s bed‐chamber, the prisoner was brought up for examination by torch‐light, and the royal pedant sat on the side of his couch in his night‐clothes for several hours, questioning and cross‐ questioning the would‐be murderer. But Guy was made of stern stuff, and, while he freely admitted that his intention had been “to blow the Scotch beggars back to their native mountains,” he obstinately refused to disclose the names of his associates. The news spread with rapidity, and London at daylight was in the wildest commotion. The other conspirators in the city, with the exception of Tresham, fled to Digby’s house near Dunchurch, where a hunting party had assembled, but upon the disclosure of the treason and its failure the guests rapidly dispersed, two or three only, from friendship or other causes, resolving to remain with the conspirators and share the fate which now seemed certain to overtake them. One of these was Stephen Littleton, who resided at Holbeach in Staffordshire, a strongly Catholic county, and thither the whole party, numbering between forty and fifty, including grooms and other servants, proceeded through Warwick and Worcester, vainly endeavoring on their road to excite the people to join them. At Holbeach they resolved to make a stand, but an accident destroyed whatever little chance might have remained of a successful resistance. Their ammunition, which had been wet during their hurried journey, exploded while being dried, and not only seriously injured Catesby and three others, but afforded an excuse for their handful of followers to forsake them. In this condition they were soon surrounded by the forces of Sir Richard Walsh, who, after summoning them to surrender and receiving a defiant negative, ordered his men to fire. The brothers Wright, Percy, and Catesby, fell mortally wounded; Rokewood, Winter, Morgan, and Grant were wounded and taken prisoners, and Digby and the two others were soon after captured. They were immediately taken to London, tried, and with Fawkes executed on the 30th of the following January.
Under ordinary circumstances, this insane conspiracy of a dozen desperate men would have ended here, and the plot itself have become lost in the thousand‐and‐one concerted crimes against authority which disfigure the annals of European monarchy in the middle ages; but the Puritan party in England, the more insatiable enemies of the Catholics, who saw in it an excellent opportunity for wholesale spoliation of what yet remained to the persecuted, endeavored to involve the millions in the treasonable guilt of the few, and Cecil, who had so long nursed the designs of the traitors, had his own deep schemes to subserve by endorsing this foul calumny. But James, bigot as he was, could not, in the face of such palpable facts to the contrary, go to this extreme length. “For though it cannot be denied,” he said in his speech to parliament recounting the discovery and origin of the plot, “that it was only the blind superstition of their errors in religion that led them to this desperate device, yet doth it not follow that all professing that Romish religion were guilty of the same.” Yet the Puritan party, who hungered for the spoils, by constant repetition succeeded in fastening the imputation of guilt on the entire Catholic body in England, and for a long time it was partially believed abroad, and re‐ echoed without hesitation by subsequent historians. The author of Her Majesty’s Tower, to whom Catholicity owes little else, has, we are happy to say, had the manhood to set the matter in its true light in his recent publication. He says:
“The news of this plot was heard by the old English Catholics with more astonishment than rage, though the expression of their anger was both loud and deep. The priests were still more prompt to denounce it than their flocks. The venerable Archpriest, George Blackwell, took up his pen before a single man had yet been killed or captured in the shires, and in a brief address to the Catholic clergy stigmatized the plot as a detestable contrivance in which no true Catholic could have a share—as an abominable thing, contrary to Holy Writ, to the councils, and to the instructions of the spiritual guides. Blackwell told his clergy to exhort their flocks to peace and obedience, and to avoid falling into snares.”
But it was necessary for the purpose of affording a decent pretext for further penal legislation, long since agreed upon in the council, as well as to destroy the sympathy still felt at foreign courts for the persecuted English, that the blame of the foul conspiracy should be laid not on the inhuman laws which had driven gallant and loyal men into deadly conflict with the government, but on the church. As it was impossible to implicate any considerable number of the laity or the secular clergy, it was resolved to single out the few Jesuits then in the country, and through them the entire Order, as fitting objects of national hatred and universal obloquy. The trick was not new even then, though since much practised and refined. Its execution was consonant also with the parliamentary design of exterminating Catholicity in the three kingdoms. The old clergy, or, as they were called, “Queen Mary’s priests,” were few, aged, and sure soon to die out in the course of nature, while the authorities had taken good care that they should leave no successors of native education. The Jesuits, on the contrary, were young men, generally scions of noble houses, gentle in breeding, and, from their continental training, thorough linguists, acute reasoners, and polished gentlemen. Their erudition made them feared by the half‐taught sophists of the reformed prelacy, their refined manners secured their admission into the best families, and their noble enthusiasm defied the utmost severity of the Puritan and Episcopal magistrates. Their knowledge of the country was accurate, and, though they were accused by such hired defamers as Coke of using many aliases, the odium was not theirs, but the law’s, that made their very presence in their native land treason. No religious community, it is well known, is the church, nor is she responsible for the conduct of each particular member, but the orders may be regarded as the vedettes of her grand army, and before it can be successfully attacked they must be driven in or captured.
Accordingly, one of the first steps taken by the king’s advisers after the trial of the conspirators was to issue a proclamation for the arrest of Fathers Gerard, Greenway, and Garnett, three of the four Jesuit missionaries then known to be in England. In this official document it was alleged “to be plain and evident from the examinations that all three had been peculiarly practisers in the plot.” Now, let us examine for a moment upon what those grave accusations were based. Simply on confessions of the prisoners, for it has never been alleged that the slightest proof, documentary or oral, other than those and the admission of Father Garnett, the provincial, were ever produced to connect the priests with the conspiracy. The examinations were conducted with the most exquisite tortures, taken down by the creatures of the government, and afterwards mutilated and altered by the attorney‐general to suit his own views. Fawkes, by special command of his majesty, was so frequently racked that he could not use a pen to sign his name, much less could he read what had been written for him, and Nicholas Owen, a lay‐brother, was so stretched that his bowels protruded and he expired in the hands of his tormentors. Of Father Gerard, mention was made by two of the original plotters, Fawkes and Winter, in allusion to the oath of secrecy. The latter said that “the five administered the oath to each other in a chamber in which no other body was,” which the latter confirms more in detail.
“The five,” he says, “did meet at a house in the field, beyond S. Clement’s Inn, where they did confer and agree upon the plot, and there they took a solemn oath and vows by all their force and power to execute the same, and of secrecy not to reveal it to any of their fellows, but to such as should be thought fit persons to enter into that action; and in the same house they did receive the sacrament of Gerard the Jesuit, to perform their vow and oath of secrecy aforesaid. But that Gerard was not acquainted with their purpose.”(108)
This last sentence was by order of Coke underlined with red, notated hucusque, and was carefully suppressed in the reading of the examination on the trial! The original document is still preserved in the Public Record Office, and how such an indefatigable student as Mr. Dixon could have overlooked this part of it is, to say the least, very suspicious. His version of the affair is as follows:
“An upper room of Widow Herbert’s house was turned into a chapel; and when the priest was ready for his part, Catesby, Percy, Tom Winter, Jack Wright, and Fawkes assembled in the house—a quaint old Tudor pile at the corner of Clement’s Lane—first in the lower room, where they swore each other upon the Primer, and then in the upper room, where they heard Father Gerard say Mass, and took from his hand the sacrament on that oath. Each of the five conspirators was sworn upon his knees, with his hand on the Primer, that he would keep the secret, that he would be true to his fellows, that he would be constant in the plot.”
Is this perversion of the facts of history accidental, or a piece of downright dishonesty? At first, overlooking the writer’s known hostility to the Jesuits, and his insinuation about the priest being “ready for his part,” we concluded that the sentence describing how the conspirators were sworn was intended to commence after the word “Primer,” to preserve the unity of the action, but by inadvertence was put after the mention of the taking of the sacrament, thus conveying the false idea that the conspirators swore also after or during Mass; but, having had occasion to refer to the index, we find that we had done Mr. Dixon’s dexterity injustice at the expense of his veracity. In seeking for the page of his book upon which this opaque statement appears, we find the following words in the index under the head “Gerard”—“administers the oath of secrecy to the Powder Plot conspirators in a house in Butcher’s Row, p. 95.” Thus the author of Her Majesty’s Tower, who, we presume, occupies a decent position among men of letters in his own country, not only cannot discover after the “occasional labor of twenty years” a most essential point of testimony bearing on the very subject to which his book is mainly devoted, but to make out a case against the much‐hated Jesuits actually falsifies and perverts facts already known and admitted; doing in the year of grace 1869 gratuitously, what Coke in 1606 did for hire. Can the force of malice go further? Digby, who, it will be remembered, was subsequently admitted into the plot, on his trial went even further than the originators of it; and, in exculpating the Jesuit Order, was most emphatic in denying any knowledge of the conspiracy on the part of Gerard, either in its progress or, as far as he knew, at its inception. So much for Father Gerard’s innocence as proved by others; the following is his own statement, made years after the occurrence when he was beyond the reach of English law, and subsequently affirmed in substance on his solemn oath:
“I have stated in the other treatise of which I spoke, that a proclamation was issued against those Jesuit fathers, of whom I am one; and, though the most unworthy, I was named first in the proclamation, whereas I was the subject of one and far inferior in all respects to the other. All this, however, I solemnly protest was utterly groundless; for I knew absolutely nothing of the plot from any one whatsoever, not even under the seal of confession, as the other two did; nor had I the slightest notion that any such scheme was entertained by any Catholic gentleman, until by public rumor news was brought us of its discovery, as it was to all others dwelling in that part of the country.”(109)
The treatise referred to in this extract is his Narrative, and in it Gerard takes frequent occasion to reiterate in the most positive manner, speaking in the third person, all knowledge of the conspiracy, even to saying Mass on the occasion alluded to by Fawkes. The house in Clement’s Inn, he fully acknowledges, was used by him and his friends, among whom there were at least two priests during his absence; and we can well believe that the two prisoners were mistaken in his identity, as we have no evidence that they were familiar with his appearance or personally acquainted with him. However, this does not signify. Some priest undoubtedly celebrated Mass, and the question is, Did he administer the oath, or knowingly administer the sacrament in confirmation of it? Winter and Fawkes declare he did not; Digby, who was most intimate with Father Gerard, denied in open court that that Jesuit knew anything about the plot; and Gerard himself repeatedly, under the strictest forms known in his Order, asserts his entire innocence, and it has never even been hinted that any other priest was concerned in the early stages of the conspiracy. This matter may therefore be considered closed.
Now, it is equally certain that Fathers Garnett and Tesimond, alias Greenway, did become acquainted with the plot during its progress; but the information came to them under the seal of confession, and could not be revealed. It is unnecessary to support this proposition by argument, as its wisdom is now generally recognized by the civil law even in Protestant countries. Confidential communications to priest, doctor, or lawyer are at last held sacred. What was the extent of their knowledge, and what was their conduct on receiving the same? In Thomas Winter’s public dying declaration, communicated by an eye‐witness to the author of the Narrative, he said: “That whereas divers of the fathers of the society were accused of counselling and furthering them in this treason, he could clear them all, and particularly Father Tesimond, from all fault and participation therein.” “And indeed Mr. Thomas Winter might best clear that good father, with whom he was best acquainted,” adds Father Gerard, “and knew very well how far he was from counselling or plotting that business. For himself, having first told the father of it (as I have heard) long after the thing was ready, and that in such secret as he might not utter it, but with his leave, unto his superior only, the father, both then and after, did so earnestly persuade him, and by him the rest, to leave off that course (as his duty was), that Mr. Winter might well find himself in conscience to clear this father from his wrongful accusation of being a counsellor and furtherer of the plot.”(110)
This statement was also repeatedly confirmed by Father Tesimond, both in his writings and in his account of the matter soon after his escape, published by Joannes in his Apologia.
Gerard and Tesimond having fled the country to avoid the popular tumult, “which,” says Mr. Dixon, “took no note of the difference between the children of S. Edward and the pupils of S. Ignatius,” the only remaining victim was the provincial Father Garnett. Him the government spies soon hunted down, and in company with Father Ouldcorne arrested at Hendlip House and lodged in the tower. This capture occurred on the 28th of February, and his trial took place on the 28th of March; the intervening month having been spent by the officers of the crown in procuring evidence of his guilt, but with so little success that an attempt was made to procure his condemnation by parliament, without the intervention of a jury, by inserting surreptitiously a clause in the bill of attainder introduced against the families of Digby and others. Cajolery was first resorted to, next torture, then the subterfuge of allowing him speech with his fellow‐prisoner Ouldcorne, overheard unknown to them by persons secretly hidden for the purpose, and again torture, but all to no effect. He at first refused to admit any knowledge of the conspiracy, but finally confessed that he had heard of it from Father Tesimond (Greenway) under the seal of confession, and that he had reprimanded that priest for ever so communicating it to him, and had admonished him to use all efforts to dissuade the conspirators from their rash designs. This was all that could be proved against him at his trial, but he was of course condemned, not however for treason, but for misprision of treason, and two months after executed, declaring his entire innocence most solemnly. Father Ouldcorne, who was also found guilty of knowledge after the fact, on no better evidence, suffered with him.
The provincial was examined no less than twenty‐three times before his trial, and much stress was laid during its progress and long afterwards on his equivocations in answer to the various searching queries touching the guilt of himself and others. The question of the morality of such evasion of the truth under the peculiar circumstances has, however, no practical value for us, as now by the well‐recognized policy of law in all civilized countries no person is bound to criminate himself either as a principal or a witness, and every individual is allowed to be the judge of his own case in this respect. No one has a right to entrap a prisoner into a confession of guilt, much less compel disclosures by foul means or torture.
Let us inquire for a moment how far Father Garnett’s statements in prison were borne out by his previous conduct. Several letters of his are still extant addressed to Father Persons, the English superior at Rome, on the state of the Catholics in England previous to the explosion of the plot, in which he intimates his suspicions that something desperate was about to be attempted against the government, and begs the superior to influence the Holy Father to interfere. On the 29th of August, 1604, he wrote: “If the affair of toleration go not well, Catholics will no more be quiet. What shall we do? Jesuits cannot hinder it. Let Pope forbid all Catholics to stir.” In May following he says: “All are desperate, divers Catholics are offended with Jesuits; they say that Jesuits do impugn and hinder all forcible enterprises.” On the 24th of July, after reviewing the threatening state of affairs in the kingdom, he repeats his request for pontifical assistance in keeping the people quiet. He then wrote:
“Wherefore, in my judgment, two things are necessary; first, that his holiness should prescribe what in any case is to be done; and then that he should forbid any force of arms to the Catholics under censures, and by brief publicly promulgated, an occasion for which can be taken from the disturbance lately raised in Wales, which has at length come to nothing.”(111)
His public acts were consistent with his views thus confidentially expressed. It is acknowledged that he was mainly instrumental in defeating the Grey conspiracy, in which Father Watson and many Catholics were involved, and, when Catesby and the other conspirators approached him on the subject of forcible resistance to James’ government, he denounced all such attempts in the most positive manner. “It is to you and such as you,” said that desperate plotter to the provincial, “that we owe our present calamities. This doctrine of non‐resistance makes us slaves. No authority of priest or pontiff can deprive a man of his right to repel injustice.” When it became apparent that such men as Catesby could not be stayed by ordinary means, he recommended that before any forcible measures were adopted an agent should be sent to Rome, and in the meantime took steps to procure the co‐operation of the sovereign pontiff himself to suppress all attempts at insurrection. In fact, his whole life was divided between his duty to God and his efforts to teach peace and longanimity to his persecuted countrymen, but the very fact that he was a Jesuit and a Catholic missionary was enough to condemn him in the eyes of the judges of that day. Let us hope that posterity will do him fuller justice.
The general accusation against the Order was grounded on the fact that many of the conspirators were converts and pupils of the Jesuits, and therefore they were their agents and instruments. This is plausible, and might be worthy of attention if true, but it lacks the essential element of reliability. Some were Catholics from their birth, others had only for the time being or during their minority outwardly conformed to Protestantism, and were simply reclaimed from their vicious habits by the Jesuits. But even if they had all been converts it would not strengthen their opponents’ position. So were many hundreds, nay, thousands of Englishmen who took no act or part in the conspiracy. Besides the Jesuits that had suffered in the preceding reign, the four fathers we have just mentioned had spent each over eighteen years in the country, laboring with a zeal and success seldom equalled, and it was this very success in gaining souls to Christ that furnished the greatest incentive for their destruction. Their intimacy with the conspirators was simply that of pastors with their penitents; the assertions of Bates, the servant of Catesby, to the contrary notwithstanding. That poor wretch was tortured and tampered with to induce him to make some accusation against the missionaries, and then hanged, but not before he retracted on the scaffold every sentence uttered by him when a hope of pardon had been held out as the reward of his perjury. Further, Mr. Dixon’s wild attempts to throw discredit on the English Jesuits abroad rest on no foundation whatever, nor has he a single impartial authority to support him in his broad assertions and elaborate reports of what are said to have been strictly private interviews and confidential correspondence between the plotters in England and the Jesuit colleges abroad. Owen and Baldwin, the alleged foreign correspondents, the parties most sought to be implicated, were never tried, but the latter was examined in England ten years after and discharged, nothing having been proved against him. So much for the bugbear of Catholics justifying wholesale assassination as a remedy for persecution, that has been such a sweet morsel under the tongues of Protestant divines and zealots for so many centuries.
The Progressionists.
From The German Of Conrad Von Bolanden.
VI. Continued
The tumult continued. As soon as the orator attempted to speak, his voice was drowned by cries and stamping.
“Commissary!” cried the chairman to that officer, “I demand that you extend to our assembly the protection of the law.”
“I am here simply to watch the proceedings of your meeting,” replied Parteiling with cool indifference. “Everybody is at liberty in meetings to signify his approval or disapproval by signs. No act forbidden by the law has been committed by your opponents, in my opinion.”
“Bravo! bravo! Three cheers for the commissary!”
All at once the noise was subdued to a whisper of astonishment. A miracle was taking place under the very eyes of progress. Banker Greifmann, the moneyed prince and liberal, made his appearance upon the platform. The rioters saw with amazement how the mighty man before whom the necks of all such as were in want of money bowed—even the necks of the puissant leaders—stepped before the president of the assembly, how he politely bowed and spoke a few words in an undertone. They observed how the chairman nodded assent, and then how the banker, as if to excite their wonder to the highest pitch, mounted to the speaker’s desk.
“Gentlemen,” began Carl Greifmann, “although I have not the honor of sharing your political views, I feel myself nevertheless urged to address a few words to you. In the name of true progress, I ask this honorable assembly’s pardon for the disturbance occasioned a moment ago by a band of uncultivated rioters, who dare to pretend that they are acting in the cause and with the sanction of progress. I solemnly protest against the assumption that their disgraceful and outrageous conduct is in accordance with the spirit of the party which they dishonor. Progress holds firmly to its principles, and defends them manfully in the struggle with its opposers, but it is far from making itself odious by rudely overstepping the bounds of decency set by humanity and civilization. In political contests, it may be perfectly lawful to employ earnest persuasion and even influences that partake of the rigor of compulsion, but rudeness, impertinence, is never justifiable in an age of civilization. Commissary Parteiling discovers no legally prohibited offence in the expression of vulgarity and lowness—may be. Nevertheless, a high misdemeanor has been perpetrated against decorum and against the deference which man owes to man. Should the slightest disturbance be again attempted, I shall use the whole weight of my influence in prosecuting the guilty parties, and convince them that even in the spirit of progress they are offenders and can be reached by punishment.”
He spoke, and retired to the other end of the hall, followed by loud applause from the ultramontanes. Nor were the threats of the mighty man uttered in vain. Spitzkopf hung his head abashed. The other revellers were tamed, they listened demurely to the speakers, ceased their contemptuous hootings, and stood on their good behavior. Greifmann’s proceeding had taken Seraphin also by surprise, and the power which the banker possessed over the rioters set him to speculating deeply. He saw plainly that Louise’s brother commanded an extraordinary degree of respect in the camp of the enemies of religion, and the only cause that could sufficiently account for the fact was a community of principles of which they were well aware. Hence the opinion he had formed of Greifmann was utterly erroneous, concluded Gerlach. The banker was not a mere secluded business man—he was not indifferent about the great questions of the age. Then there was another circumstance that perplexed the ruddy‐cheeked millionaire to no inconsiderable degree—Greifmann’s unaccountable way of taking things. The tyrannical mode of electioneering which they had witnessed at the sign of the “Green Hat” had not at all disgusted Greifmann. Spitzkopf’s threats had not excited his indignation. He had with a smiling countenance looked on whilst the most brutal species of terrorism was being enacted before him, he had not expressed a word of contempt at the constraint which they who held the power inhumanly placed on the political liberty of their dependents. On the other hand, his indignation was aroused by a mere breach of good behavior, an offence which in Gerlach’s estimation was as nothing compared with the other instances of progressionist violence. The banker seemed to him to have strained out a gnat after having swallowed a whole drove of camels. The youth’s suspicions being excited, he began to study the strainer of gnats and swallower of camels more closely, and soon the banker turned out in his estimation a hollow stickler for mere outward decency, devoid of all deeper merit. He now recollected also Greifmann’s dealings with the leaders of progress, and those transactions only confirmed his present views. What he had considered as an extraordinary degree of shrewdness in the man of business, which enabled him to take advantage of the peculiar convictions and manner of thinking of other men, was now to his mind a real affinity with their principles, and he could not help being shocked at the discovery.
He hung his head in a melancholy mood, and his heart protested earnestly against the inference which was irresistibly forcing itself upon his mind, that the sister shared her brother’s sentiments.
“This doubt must be cleared up, cost what it may,” thought he. “My God, what if Louise also turned out to be a progressionist, a woman without any faith, an infidel! No, that cannot be! Yet suppose it really were the case—suppose she actually held principles in common with such vile beings as Schwefel, Sand, Erdblatt, and Shund? Suppose her moral nature did not harmonize with the beauty of her person—what then?” He experienced a spasmodic contraction in his heart at the question, he hesitated with the answer, but, his better self finally getting the victory, he said: “Then all is over. The impressions of a dream, however delightful, must not influence a waking man. My father’s calculation was wrong, and I have wasted my kindness on an undeserving object.”
So completely wrapt up was he in his meditations that he heard not a word of the speeches, not even the concluding remarks of the president. Greifmann’s approach roused him, and they left the hall together.
“That was ruffianly conduct, of which progress would have for ever to be ashamed,” said the banker indignantly. “They bayed and yelped like a pack of hounds. At their first volley I was as embarrassed and confused as a modest girl would be at the impertinence of some young scapegrace. Fierce rage then hurried me to the platform, and my words have never done better service, for they vindicated civilization.”
“I cannot conceive how a trifle could thus exasperate you.”
Greifmann stood still and looked at his companion in astonishment.
“A trifle!” echoed he reproachfully. “Do you call a piece of wanton impudence, a ruffianly outrage against several hundreds of men entitled to respect, a trifle?”
“I do, compared with other crimes that you have suffered to pass unheeded and uncensured,” answered Gerlach. “You had not an indignant word for the unutterable meanness of those three leaders, who were immoral and unprincipled enough to invest a notorious villain with office and honors. Nor did you show any exasperation at the brutal terrorism practised by men of power in this town over their weak and unfortunate dependents.”
“Take my advice, and be on your guard against erroneous and narrow‐minded judgments. The leaders merely had a view to their own ends, but they in no manner sinned against propriety. The raising a man of Shund’s abilities to the office of mayor is an act of prudence—by no means an offence against humanity.”
“Yet it was an outrage to moral sentiment,” opposed Seraphin.
“See here, Gerlach, moral sentiment is a very elastic sort of thing. Sentiment goes for nothing in practical life, and such is the character of life in our century.”
“Well, then, the mere sense of propriety is not worth a whit more.”
“I ask your pardon! Propriety belongs to the realm of actualities or of practical experiences, and not to the shadowland of sentiment. Propriety is the rule that regulates the intercourse of men, it is therefore a necessity, nothing else will serve as a substitute for it, and it must continue to be so regarded as long as a difference is recognized between rational man and the irrational brute.”
“The same may be said with much more reason of morality, for it also is a rule, it regulates our actions, it determines the ethic worth or worthlessness of a man. Mere outward decorum does not necessarily argue any interior excellence. The most abandoned wretch may be distinguished for easy manners and elegant deportment, yet he is none the less a criminal. A dog may be trained to many little arts, but for all that it continues to be a dog.
“It is delightful to see you breaking through that uniform patience of yours for once and showing a little of the fire of indignation,” said the banker pleasantly. “I shall tell Louise of it, I know she will be glad to learn that Seraphin too is susceptible of a human passion. But this by the way. Now watch how I shall meet your arguments. That very moral sentiment of which you speak has caused and is still causing the most enormous crimes against humanity, and the laws of morality are as changeable as the wind. When an Indian who has not been raised from barbarism by civilization dies, the religious custom of the country requires that his wife should permit herself to be burned alive on the funeral pyre of her husband. Moral sentiment teaches the uncivilized woman that it is a horrible crime to refuse to devote herself to this cruel death. The pious Jews used to stone every woman to death who was taken in adultery—in our day, such a deed of blood would be revolting to moral sentiment, and would claim tears from the eyes of cultivated people. I could mention many other horrors that were practised more or less remotely in the past, and were sanctioned by the prevailing moral sentiment. Here is my last instance: according to laws of morality, the usurer was at one time a monster, an arch‐villain—at present, he is merely a man of great enterprise. Propriety, on the other hand, enlightenment, and polish are absolute and unalterable. Whilst rudeness and impertinence will ever be looked upon as disgusting, good manners and politeness will be considered as commendable and beautiful.”
Seraphin could not but admire the skill with which Greifmann jumbled together subjects of the most heterogeneous nature. But he could not, at the same time, divest himself of some alarm at the banker’s declarations, for they betrayed a soul‐life of little or absolutely no moral worth. Money, interest, and respectability constituted the only trinity in which the banker believed. Morality, binding the conscience of man, a true and only God, and divine revelation, were in his opinion so many worn‐out and useless notions, which the progress of mankind had successfully got beyond.
“When those who hold power take advantage of it at elections, they in no manner offend against propriety,” proceeded Carl. “Progress has convictions as well as ultramontanism. If the latter is active, why should not the former be so too? If, on the side of progress, the weak and dependent permit themselves to be cowed and driven, it is merely an advantage for the powerful, and for the others it is a weakness or cowardice. For this reason, the mode of electioneering pursued by Spitzkopf and his comrades amused but nowise shocked me, for they were not acting against propriety.”
Seraphin saw it plainly: for Carl Greifmann there existed no distinction between good and evil; he recognized only a cold and empty system of formalities.
The two young men issued from a narrow street upon the market‐place. This was occupied by a large public building. In the open space stood a group of men, among whom Flachsen appeared conspicuous. He was telling the others about Greifmann’s speech at the meeting of the ultramontanes. They all manifested great astonishment that the influential moneyed prince should have appeared in such company, and, above all, should have made a speech in their behalf.
“He declared it was vulgar, impudent, ruffianly, to disturb a respectable assembly,” reported Flachsen. “He said he knew some of us, and that he would have us put where the dogs would not bite us if we attempted to disturb them again. That’s what he said; and I actually rubbed my eyes to be quite sure it was banker Greifmann that was speaking, and really it was he, the banker Greifmann himself, bodily, and not a mere apparition.”
“I must say the banker was right, for it isn’t exactly good manners to howl, stamp, and whistle to annoy one’s neighbors,” owned another.
“But we were paid for doing it, and we only carried out the orders given by certain gentlemen.”
“To be sure! Men like us don’t know what good breeding is—it’s for gentlemen to understand that,” maintained a third. “We do what men of good breeding hire us to do, and if it isn’t proper, it matters nothing to us—let the gentlemen answer for it.” “Bravo, Stoffel, bravo!” applauded Flachsen. “Yours is the right sort of servility, Stoffel! You are a real human, servile, and genuine reactive kind of a fellow—so you are. I agree with you entirely. The gentlemen do the paying, and it is for them to answer for what happens. We are merely servants, we are hirelings, and what need a hireling care whether that which his master commands is right or not? The master is responsible, not the hireling. What I am telling you belongs to the exact sciences, and the exact sciences are at the pinnacle of modern acquisitions. Hence a hireling who without scruple carries out the orders of his master is up to the highest point of the age—such a fellow has taken his stand on servility. Hallo! the election has commenced. Be off, every man of you, to his post. But mind you don’t look too deep into the beer‐pots before the election is over. Keep your heads level, be cautious, do your best for the success of the green ticket. Once the election is carried, you may swill beer till you can no longer stand. The gentlemen will foot the bill, and assume all responsibilities.”
They dispersed themselves through the various drinking‐shops of the neighborhood.
Near the door of the building in which the voting was to take place stood a number of progressionist gentlemen. They all wore heavy beards, smoked cigars, and peered about restlessly. To those of their party who chanced to pass they nodded and smiled knowingly, upon doubtful voters they smiled still more blandly, added some pleasant words, and pressed the acceptance of the green ticket, but for ultramontane voters they had only jeers and coarse witticisms. As Greifmann approached they respectfully raised their hats. The banker drew Gerlach to one side, and stood to make observations.
“What swarms there are around the drinking‐shops,” remarked Greifmann. “It is there that the tickets are filled under the persuasive influence of beer. The committee provide the tickets which the voters have filled with the names of the candidates by clerks who sit round the tables at the beer‐shops. It is quite an ingenious arrangement, for beer will reconcile a voter to the most objectionable kind of a candidate.”
A crowd of drunken citizens coming out of the nearest tavern approached. Linked arm‐in‐arm, they swayed about and staggered along with an unsteady pace. Green tickets bearing the names of the candidates whom progress had chosen to watch over the common weal could be seen protruding from the pockets of their waistcoats. Gerlach, seeing the drunken mob and recollecting the solemn and important nature of the occasion, was seized with loathing and horror at the corruption of social life revealed in the low means to which the party of progress had recourse to secure for its ends the votes of these besotted and ignorant men.
Presently Schwefel stepped up and saluted the young men.
“Do you not belong to the committee in charge of the ballot‐box?” inquired Greifmann.
“No, sir, I wished to remain entirely untrammelled this morning,” answered the leader with a sly look and tone. “This is going to be an exciting election, the ultramontanes are astir, and it will be necessary for me to step in authoritatively now and then to decide a vote. Moreover, the committee is composed exclusively of men of our party. Not a single ultramontane holds a seat at the polls.”
“In that case there can be no question of failure,” said the banker. “Your office is closed to‐day, no doubt?”
“Of course!” assented the manufacturer of straw hats. “This day is celebrated as a free day by the offices of all respectable houses. Our clerks are dispersed through the taverns and election districts to use their pens in filling up tickets.”
“I am forced to return to my old assertion: an election is mere folly, useless jugglery,” said the banker, turning to Seraphin. “Holding elections is no longer a rational way of doing, it is no longer a business way of proceeding, it is yielding to stupid timidity. Mr. Schwefel, don’t you think elections are mere folly?”
“I confess I have never considered the subject from that point of view,” answered the leader cautiously. “But meanwhile—what do you understand by that?”
“Be good enough to attend to my reasoning for a moment. Progress is in a state of complete organization. What progress wills, must be. Another party having authority and power cannot subsist side by side with progress. Just see those men staggering and blundering over the square with green tickets in their hands! To speak without circumlocution, look at the slaves doing the behests of their masters. What need of this silly masquerade of an election? Why squander all this money, waste all this beer and time? Why does not progress settle this business summarily? Why not simply nominate candidates fit for the office, and then send them directly to the legislature? This mode would do away with all this nonsensical ado, and would give the matter a prompt and business cast, conformable to the spirit of the age.”
“This idea is a good one, but we have an election law that would stand in the way of carrying it out.”
“Bosh—election law!” sneered the banker. “Your election law is a mere scarecrow, an antiquated, meaningless instrument. Do away with the election law, and follow my suggestion.”
“That would occasion a charming row on the part of the ultramontanes,” observed the leader laughing.
“Was the lion ever known to heed the bleating of a sheep? When did progress ever pay any attention to a row gotten up by the ultramontanes?” rejoined Greifmann. “Was not the fuss made in Bavaria against the progressionist school‐law quite a prodigious one? Did not our own last legislature make heavy assaults on the church? Did not the entire episcopate protest against permitting Jews, Neo‐pagans, and Freemasons to legislate on matters of religion? But did progress suffer itself to be disconcerted by episcopal protests and the agonizing screams of the ultramontanes? Not at all. It calmly pursued the even tenor of its way. Be logical, Mr. Schwefel: progress reigns supreme and decrees with absolute authority—why should it not summarily relegate this election law among the things that were, but are no more?”
“You are right, Greifmann!” exclaimed Gerlach, in a feeling of utter disgust. “What need has the knout of Russian despotism of the sanction of constitutional forms? Progress is lord, the rest are slaves!”
“You have again misunderstood me, my good fellow. I am considering the actual state of things. Should ultramontanism at any time gain the ascendency, then it also will be justified in behaving in the same manner.”
Upon more mature consideration, Gerlach found himself forced to admit that Greifmann’s view, from the standpoint of modern culture, was entirely correct. Progress independently of God and of all positive religion could not logically be expected to recognize any moral obligations, for it had not a moral basis. Everything was determined by the force of circumstances; the autocracy of party rule made anything lawful. Laws proceeded not from the divine source of unalterable justice, but from the whim of a majority—fashioned and framed to suit peculiar interests and passions.
“We have yet considerable work to do to bring all to thinking as clearly and rationally as you, Mr. Greifmann,” said the leader with a winning smile.
Schwefel accompanied the millionaires into a lengthy hall, across the lower end of which stood a table. There sat the commissary of elections surrounded by the committee, animated gentlemen with great beards, who were occupied in distributing tickets to voters or receiving tickets filled up. The extraordinary good‐humor prevailing among these gentlemen was owing to the satisfactory course of the election, for rarely was any ultramontane paper seen mingling in the flood that poured in from the ranks of progress. The sides of the hall were hung with portraits of the sovereigns of the land, quite a goodly row. The last one of the series was youthful in appearance, and some audacious hand had scrawled on the broad gilt frame the following ominous words: “May he be the last in the succession of expensive bread‐eaters.” Down the middle of the hall ran a baize‐covered table, on which were numerous inkstands. Scattered over the table lay a profusion of green bills; the yellow color of the ultramontane bills was nowhere to be seen. The table was lined by gentlemen who were writing. They were not writing for themselves, but for others, who merely signed their names and then handed the tickets to the commissary. Several corpulent gentlemen also occupied seats at the table, but they were not engaged in writing. These gentlemen, apparently unoccupied, wore massive gold watch‐chains and sparkling rings, and they had a commanding and stern expression of countenance. They were observing all who entered, to see whether any man would be bold enough to vote the yellow ticket. People of the humbler sort, mechanics and laborers, were constantly coming in and going out. Bowing reverently to the portly gentlemen, they seated themselves and filled out green tickets with the names of the liberal candidates. Most of them did not even trouble themselves to this degree, but simply laid their tickets before the penman appointed for this special service. All went off in the best order. The process of the election resembled the smooth working of an ingenious piece of machinery. And there was no tongue there to denounce the infamous terrorism that had crushed the freedom of the election or had bought the votes of vile and venal men with beer.
Seraphin stood with Greifmann in the recess of a window looking on.
“Who are the fat men at the table?” inquired he.
“The one with the very black beard is house‐builder Sand, the second is Eisenhart, machine‐builder, the third is Erdfloh, a landowner, the fourth and fifth are tobacco merchants. All those gentlemen are chieftains of the party of progress.”
“They show it,” observed Gerlach. “Their looks, in a manner, command every man that comes in to take the green ticket, and I imagine I can read on their brows: ‘Woe to him who dares vote against us. He shall be under a ban, and shall have neither employment nor bread.’ It is unmitigated tyranny! I imagine I see in those fat fellows so many cotton‐planters voting their slaves.”
“That is a one‐sided conclusion, my most esteemed,” rejoined the banker. “In country villages, the position here assumed by the magnates of progress is filled by the lords of ultramontanism, clerical gentlemen in cassocks, who keep a sharp eye on the fingers of their parishioners. This, too, is influencing.”
“But not constraining,” opposed the millionaire promptly. “The clergy exert a legitimate influence by convincing, by advancing solid grounds for their political creed. They never have recourse to compulsory measures, nor dare they do so, because it would be opposed to the Gospel which they preach. The autocrats of progress, on the contrary, do not hesitate about using threats and violence. Should a man refuse to bow to their dictates, they cruelly deprive him of the means of subsistence. This is not only inhuman, but it is also an accursed scheme for making slaves of the people and robbing them of principle.”
“Ah! look yonder—there is Holt.”
The land cultivator had walked into the hall head erect. He looked along the table and stood undecided. One of the ministering spirits of progress soon fluttered about him, offering him a green ticket. Holt glanced at it, and a contemptuous smile spread over his face. He next tore it to pieces, which he threw on the floor.
“What are you about?” asked the angel of progress reproachfully.
“I have reduced Shund and his colleagues to fragments,” answered Holt dryly, then approaching the commissary he demanded a yellow ticket.
“Glorious!” applauded Gerlach. “I have half a mind to present this true German man with another thousand as a reward for his spirit.”
The fat men had observed with astonishment the action of the land cultivator. Their astonishment turned to rage when Holt, leisurely seating himself at the table, took a pen in his mighty fist and began filling out the ticket with the names of the ultramontane candidates. Whilst he wrote, whisperings could be heard all through the hall, and every eye was directed upon him. After no inconsiderable exertion, the task of filling out the ticket was successfully accomplished, and Holt arose, leaving the ticket lying upon the table. In the twinkling of an eye a hand reached forward to take it up.
“What do you mean, sir?” asked Holt sternly.
“That yellow paper defiles the table,” hissed the fellow viciously.
“Hand back that ticket,” commanded Holt roughly. “I want it to be here. The yellow ticket has as good a right on this table as the green one—do you hear me?”
“Slave of the priests!” sputtered his antagonist.
“If I am a slave of the priests, then you are a slave of that villain Shund,” retorted Holt. “I am not to be browbeaten—by such a fellow as you particularly—least of all by a vile slave of Shund’s.” He spoke, and then reached his ticket to the commissary.
“That is an impudent dog,” growled leader Sand. “Who is he?”
“He is a countryman of the name of Holt,” answered he to whom the query was addressed.
“We must spot the boor,” said Erdfloh. “His swaggering shall not avail him anything.”
Holt was not the only voter that proved refractory. Mr. Schwefel, also, had a disagreeable surprise. He was standing near the entrance, observing with great self‐complacency how the workmen in his employ submissively cast their votes for Shund and his associates. Schwefel regarded himself as of signal importance in the commonwealth, for he controlled not less than four hundred votes, and the side which it was his pleasure to favor could not fail of victory. The head of the great leader seemed in a manner encircled with the halo of progress: whilst his retainers passed and saluted him, he experienced something akin to the pride of a field‐marshal reviewing a column of his victorious army.
Just then a spare little man appeared in the door. His yellowish, sickly complexion gave evidence that he was employed in the sulphurating of straw. At sight of the commander the sulphur‐hued little man shrank back, but his startled look did not escape the restless eye of Mr. Schwefel. He beckoned to the laborer.
“Have you selected your ticket, Leicht?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me see the ticket.”
The man obeyed reluctantly. Scarcely had Schwefel got a glimpse of the paper when his brows gathered darkly.
“What means this? Have you selected the yellow ticket and not the green one?”
Leicht hung his head. He thought of the consequences of this detection, of his four small children, of want of employment, of hunger and bitter need—he was almost beside himself.
“If you vote for the priests, you may get your bread from the priests,” said Schwefel. “The moment you hand that ticket to the commissary, you may consider yourself discharged from my employ.” With this he angrily turned his back upon the man. Leicht did not reach in his ticket to the commissary. Staggering out of the hall, he stood bewildered near the railing of the steps, and stared vaguely upon the men who were coming and going. Spitzkopf slipped up to him.
“What were you thinking about, man?” asked he reproachfully. “Mr. Schwefel is furious—you are ruined. Sheer stupidity, nothing but stupidity in you to wish to vote in opposition to the pleasure of the man from whom you get your bread and meat! Not only that, but you have insulted the whole community, for you have chosen to vote against progress when all the town is in favor of progress. You will be put on the spotted list, and the upshot will be that you will not get employment in any factory in town. Do you want to die of hunger, man—do you want your children to die of hunger?”
“You are right—I am ruined,” said the laborer listlessly. “I couldn’t bring myself to write Shund’s name because he reduced my brother‐in‐law to beggary—this is what made me select the yellow ticket.”
“You are a fool. Were Mr. Schwefel to recommend the devil, your duty would be to vote for the devil. What need you care who is on the ticket? You have only to write the names on the ticket—nothing more than that. Do you think progress would nominate men that are unfit—men who would not promote the interests of the state, who would not further the cause of humanity, civilization, and liberty? You are a fool for not voting for what is best for yourself.”
“I am sorry now, but it’s too late.” sighed Leicht. “I wouldn’t have thought, either, that Mr. Schwefel would get angry because a man wanted to vote to the best of his judgment.”
“There you are prating sillily again. Best of your judgment!—you mustn’t have any judgment. Leave it to others to judge; they have more brains, more sense, more knowledge than you. Progress does the thinking: our place is to blindly follow its directions.”
“But, Mr. Spitzkopf, mine is only the vote of a poor man; and what matters such a vote?”
“There is your want of sense again. We are living in a state that enjoys liberty. We are living in an age of intelligence, of moral advancement, of civilization and knowledge, in a word, we are living in an age of progress; and in an age of this sort the vote of a poor man is worth as much as that of a rich man.”
“If only I had it to do over! I would give my right hand to have it to do over!”
“You can repair the mischief if you want.”
“Instruct me how, Mr. Spitzkopf; please tell me how!”
“Very well, I will do my best. As you acted from thoughtlessness and no bad intention, doubtless Mr. Schwefel will suffer himself to be propitiated. Go down into the court, and wait till I come. I shall get you another ticket; you will then vote for progress, and all will be satisfactory.”
“I am a thousand times obliged to you, Mr. Spitzkopf—a thousand times obliged!”
The agent went back to the hall. Leicht descended to the courtyard, where he found a ring of timid operators like himself surrounding the sturdy Holt. They were talking in an undertone. As often as a progressionist drew near, their conversation was hushed altogether. Holt’s voice alone resounded loudly through the court, and his huge strong hands were cutting the air in animated gesticulations.
“This is not a free election; it is one of compulsion and violence,” cried he. “Every factoryman is compelled to vote as his employer dictates, and should he refuse the employer discharges him from the work. Is not this most despicable tyranny! And these very tyrants of progress are perpetually prating about liberty, independence, civilization! That’s a precious sort of liberty indeed!”
“A man belonging to the ultramontane party cannot walk the streets to‐day without being hooted and insulted,” said another. “Even up yonder in the hall, those gentlemen who are considered so cultivated stick their heads together and laugh scornfully when one of us draws near.”
“That’s so—that’s so, I have myself seen it,” cried Holt. “Those well‐bred gentlemen show their teeth like ferocious dogs whenever they see a yellow ticket or an ultramontane. I say, Leicht, has anything happened you? You look wretched!” Leicht drew near and related what had occurred. The honest Holt’s eyes gleamed like coals of fire.
“There’s another piece of tyranny for you,” cried he. “Leicht, my poor fellow, I fancy I see in you a slave of Schwefel’s. From dawn till late you are compelled to toil for the curmudgeon, Sundays not excepted. Your church is the factory, your religion working in straw, and your God is your sovereign master Schwefel. You are ruining your health amid the stench of brimstone, and not so much as the liberty of voting as you think fit is allowed you. It’s just as I tell you—you factorymen are slaves. How strangely things go on in the world! In America slavery has been abolished; but lo! here in Europe it is blooming as freshly as trees in the month of May. But mark my word, friends, the fruit is deadly; and when once it will have ripened, the great God of heaven will shake it from the trees, and the generation that planted the trees will have to eat the bitter fruit.”
Leicht shunned the society of the ultramontanes and stole away. Presently Spitzkopf appeared with the ticket.
“Your ticket is filled out. Come and sign your name to it.” Schwefel was again standing near the entrance, and he again beckoned the laborer to approach. “I am pacified. You may now continue working for me.”
Carl and Seraphin returned to the Palais Greifmann. Louise received them with numerous questions. The banker related what had passed; Gerlach strode restlessly through the apartment.
“The most curious spectacle must have been yourself,” said the young lady. “Just fancy you on the rostrum at the ‘Key of Heaven’! And very likely the ungrateful ultramontanes would not so much as applaud.”
“Beg pardon, they did, miss!” assured Seraphin. “They applauded and cried bravo.”
“Really? Then I am proud of a brother whose maiden speech produced such marvellous effects. May be we shall read of it in the daily paper. Everybody will be surprised to hear of the banker Greifmann making a speech at the ‘Key of Heaven.’ ” Carl perceived the irony and stroked his forehead.
“But what can you be pondering over, Mr. Seraphin?” cried she to him. “Since returning from the turmoil of the election, you seem unable to keep quiet.” He seated himself at her side, and was soon under the spell of her magical attractions.
“My head is dizzy and my brain confused,” said he. “On every hand I see nothing but revolt against moral obligation, sacrilegious disregard of the most sacred rights of man. The hubbub still resounds in my ears, and my imagination still sees those fat men at the table with their slaveholder look—the white slaves doing their masters’ bidding—the completest subjugation in an age of enlightenment—all this presents itself to me in the most repulsive and lamentable guise.”
“You must drive those horrible phantoms from your mind,” replied Louise.
“They are not phantoms, but the most fearful reality.”
“They are phantoms, Mr. Seraphin, so far as your feelings exaggerate the evils. Those factory serfs have no reason to complain. There is nothing to be done but to put up with a situation that has spontaneously developed itself. It is useless to grow impatient because difference of rank between masters and servants is an unavoidable evil upon earth.” A servant entered to call them to dinner.
At her side he gradually became more cheerful. The brightness of her eyes dispelled his depression, and her delicate arts put a spell upon his young, inexperienced heart. And when, at the end of the meal, they were sipping delicious wine, and her beautiful lips lisped the customary health, the subdued tenderness he had been feeling suddenly expanded into a strong passion.
“After you will have done justice to your diary,” said she at parting, “we shall take a drive, and then go to the opera.”
Instead of going to his room, Seraphin went into the garden. He almost forgot the occurrences of the day in musing on the inexplicable behavior of Louise. Again she had not uttered a word of condemnation of the execrable doings of progress, and it grieved him deeply. A suspicion flitted across his mind that perhaps Louise was infected with the frivolous and pernicious spirit of the age, but he immediately stifled the terrible suggestion as he would have hastened to crush a viper that he might have seen on the path of the beautiful lady. He preferred to believe that she suppressed her feelings of disgust out of regard for his presence, that she wisely avoided pouring oil upon the flames of his own indignation. Had she not exerted herself to dispel his sombre reflections? He was thus espousing the side of passion against the appalling truth that was beginning faintly to dawn upon his anxious mind.
But soon the spell was to be broken, and duty was to confront him with the alternative of either giving up Louise, or defying the stern demands of his conscience.
The brother and sister, thinking their guest engaged with his diary, walked into the garden. They directed their steps towards the arbor where Gerlach had seated himself.
He was only roused to consciousness of their proximity by the unusually loud and excited tone in which Louise spoke. He could not be mistaken; it was the young lady’s voice—but oh! the import of her words. He looked through an opening in the foliage, and sat thunderstruck.
“You have been attempting to guide Gerlach’s overexalted spirit into a more rational way of thinking, but the very opposite seems to be the result. Intercourse with the son of a strait‐laced mother is infecting you with sympathy for ultramontanism. Your speech to‐day,” continued she caustically, “in yon obscure meeting is the subject of the talk of the town. I am afraid you have made yourself ridiculous in the minds of all cultivated people. The respectability of our family has suffered.”
“Of our family?” echoed he, perplexed.
“We are compromitted,” continued she with excitement. “You have given our enemies occasion to set us down for members of a party who stupidly oppose the onward march of civilization.”
“Cease your philippic,” broke in the brother angrily. “Bitterness is an unmerited return for my efforts to serve you.”
“To serve me?”
“Yes, to serve you. The disturbing of that meeting made a very unfavorable impression on your intended. He scorned the noisy mob, and was roused by what, from his point of view, could not pass for anything better than unpardonable impudence. To me it might have been a matter of indifference whether your intended was pleased or displeased with the fearless conduct of progress. But as I knew both you and the family felt disposed to base the happiness of your life on his couple of millions, as moreover I feared my silence might be interpreted by the shortsighted young gentleman for complicity in progressionist ideas, I was forced to disown the disorderly proceeding. In so doing I have not derogated one iota from the spirit of the times; on the contrary, I have bound a heavy wreath about the brow of glorious humanity.”
“But you have pardoned yourself too easily,” proceeded she, unappeased. “The very first word uttered by a Greifmann in that benighted assembly was a stain on the fair fame of our family. We shall be an object of contempt in every circle. ‘The Greifmanns have turned ultramontanes because Gerlach would have refused the young lady’s hand had they not changed their creed,’ is what will be prated in society. A flood of derision and sarcasm will be let loose upon us. I an ultramontane?” cried she, growing more fierce; “I caught in the meshes of religious fanaticism? I accept the Syllabus—believe in the Prophet of Nazareth? Oh! I could sink into the earth on account of this disgrace! Did I for an instant doubt that Seraphin may be redeemed from superstition and fanaticism, I would renounce my union with him—I would spurn the tempting enjoyments of wealth, so much do I hate silly credulity.”
Seraphin glanced at her through the gap in the foliage. Not six paces from him, with her face turned in his direction, stood the infuriate beauty. How changed her countenance! The features, habitually so delicate and bright, now looked absolutely hideous, the brows were fiercely knit, and hatred poured like streams of fire from her eyes. Sentiments hitherto skilfully concealed had taken visible shape, ugly and repulsive to the view of the innocent youth. His noble spirit revolted at so much hypocrisy and falsehood. What occurred before him was at once so monstrous and so overwhelming that he did not for an instant consider that in case they entered the arbor he would be discovered. He was not discovered, however. Louise and Carl retraced their steps. For a short while the voice of Louise was still audible, then silence reigned in the garden.
Seraphin rose from his seat. There was a sad earnestness in his face, and the vanishing traces of deep pain, which however were soon superseded by a noble indignation.
“I have beheld the genuine Louise, and I thank God for it. It is as I feared, Louise is a progressionist, an infidel that considers it disgraceful to believe in the Redeemer. Out upon such degeneracy! She hates light, and how hideous this hatred makes her. Not a feature was left of the charming, smiling, winning Louise. Good God! how horrible had her real character remained unknown until after we were married! Chained for life to the bitter enemy of everything that I hold dear and venerate as holy—think of it! With eyes bandaged, I was but two paces from an abyss that resembles hell—thank God! the bandage has fallen—I see the abyss, and shudder.
“ ‘The ultramontane Seraphin’—‘the fanatical Gerlach’—‘the shortsighted Gerlach,’ whose fortune the young lady covets that she may pass her life in enjoyment—a heartless girl, in whom there is not a spark of love for her intended husband—how base!
“ ‘Ultramontane’?—‘fanatical’?—yes! ‘Shortsighted?’ by no means. One would need the suspicious eyes of progress to see through the hypocrisy of this lady and her brother—a simple, trusting spirit like mine cannot penetrate such darkness. At any rate, they shall not find me weak. The little flame that was beginning to burn within my heart has been for ever extinguished by her unhallowed lips. She might now present herself in the garb of an angel, and muster up every seductive art of womanhood, ’twould not avail; I have had an insight into her real character, and giving her up costs me not a pang. It is not hollow appearances that determine the worth of woman, but moral excellence, beautiful virtues springing from a heart vivified by faith. No, giving her up shall not cost me one regretful throb.”
He hastened from the garden to his room and rang the bell.
“Pack my trunks this very day, John,” said he to his servant. “Tomorrow we shall be off.”
He then entered in his diary a circumstantial account of the unmasked beauty. He also dwelt at length upon the painful shock his heart experienced when the bright and beautiful creature he had considered Louise to be suddenly vanished before his soul. As he was finishing the last line, John reappeared with a telegraphic despatch. He read it, and was stunned.
“Meet your father at the train this evening.” He looked at the concise despatch, and fancied he saw his father’s stern and threatening countenance.
The contemplated match had for several years been regarded by the families of Gerlach and Greifmann as a fixed fact. Seraphin was aware how stubbornly his father adhered to a project that he had once set his mind upon. Here now, just as the union had became impossible and as the youth was about to free himself for ever from an engagement that was destructive of his happiness, the uncompromising sire had to appear to enforce unconditional obedience to his will. A fearful contest awaited Seraphin, unequal and painful; for a son, accustomed from childhood to revere and obey his parents, was to maintain this contest against his own father. Seraphin paced the room and wrung his hands in anguish.
To Be Continued.
The Virgin
Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost With the least shade of thought to sin allied: Woman! above all women glorified, Our tainted nature’s solitary boast; Purer than foam on central ocean tost, Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon Before her vane begins on heaven’s blue coast, Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween, Not unforgiven, the suppliant knee might bend, As to a visible power, in which did blend All that was mixed and reconciled in thee Of mother’s love with maiden purity, Of high and low, celestial with terrene.—Wordsworth.
The Homeless Poor Of New York City
In this class, the homeless poor, we embrace all those who have no fixed habitation—who have no idea in the morning where they will obtain shelter for their weary bodies during the coming night. We find here every age represented—from the infant in the mother’s arms, through the rapid stages of development (as it is well known that pain and hunger have a wonderful effect in maturing infant humanity), to the aged, tottering towards the grave, only waiting for their summons to cross over the river of time; looking with yearning eyes towards the Home prepared for them on the shore of eternity.
It is impossible to estimate the number of this class, as we have no statistics to guide us, but it is supposed that there are about forty thousand vagrant children alone in this metropolis. From this frightful number of infant waifs we may judge of the amount of misery and destitution in our midst—hidden from view behind our imposing marble warehouses and stately brownstone mansions.
We have been informed by a reliable police official that there are a large number of poor widows, whose husbands died in the service of our country during the late war, in a most destitute condition in this city, and that they frequently bring their children with them and apply for shelter at the station‐houses. They attempt to eke out a miserable livelihood by sewing, and when this fails them they are obliged to go (in this Christian city) to the abodes of crime, to avoid the inclemency of the winter nights. Few persons can form an idea of the struggles, the privations, and the daily sufferings of lone women who earn their daily bread by the use of the needle. If the fine ladies who adorn themselves in costly robes could go behind the scenes after they have left their orders at the elegant shops of the dressmakers; could they see their delicate fabrics taken home by the poor sewing‐women; see the weary forms bent over their work in the cheerless tenement‐houses, each stitch accompanied by a painful throb of heart and brain as the night wears on and the solitary candle burns low; the famishing child as he tosses and turns on his bundle of rags, murmuring, “Bread, mother, bread!”—ay! if the beaming eyes of the votaries of fashion could by some magic power see on their rustling silks, their costly linen, their beautiful lace, the imprint of the gaunt, lean fingers of the poor sewing‐women; could the tears that trickled down the worn cheeks crystallize where they have fallen; could the sighs which welled up from the overburdened heart strike with their low wailing sound on the ears of these worldlings—they would be filled with a larger sense of duty to their fellow‐creatures, a greater desire to follow the golden motto, “Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you.”
There is an official apathy to the condition of the extreme poor which, with the ballot placed in the hands of every man, has already produced baneful results to the well‐being of the Republic, and must eventually, if not remedied, act detrimentally to its safety. If an unfortunate wretch, clad in tattered garments, pass through our streets or loiter near our homes, he is at once eyed suspiciously—to wear the habiliments of poverty is evidence sufficient that the black heart of a criminal is enclosed within. It is true that promiscuous charity may do great harm, but it is surely the correct policy for a government, while it judiciously supplies the immediate wants of its poor classes with one hand, to open the avenues to employment with the other; thus teaching them the lesson impressed upon our first parents as they were banished from the Garden of Eden—that man must earn his daily bread by the sweat of his brow.
We have already said that it is computed by well‐informed persons that we have in our midst some forty thousand vagrant children. Let us glance for a moment at their condition, and what is being done for them. It is difficult for any one to conceive the deplorable condition of these homeless children without personal observation. They tread the paths leading to moral destruction with such rapidity that hundreds of them are confirmed thieves and drunkards before they reach the age of twelve years. The day is passed in pilfering, and at night they sleep in some out‐of‐ the‐way place—under door‐steps, in wagons, or wherever they can store their diminutive forms. Some time since, a regularly organized band of boys were discovered to have constructed a shelter under one of the piers; and here they congregated at night, each bringing in his booty stolen during the day. A few days since, during a visit to one of the mission‐ houses of this city, the lady in charge pointed out to us a little girl, not more than nine years old, telling us that she never came to the house without being more or less under the influence of liquor, and a glance at the bloated features and nervous, trembling hands showed conclusively that it was her habitual condition. We understand that there are fiends in the shape of men and women in this city who will sell such children a penny’s worth of rum. Some persons have argued that these children are from bad parents, and under any circumstances, no matter how favorable, would be corrupt. Such an opinion is a libel on God and human nature. A certain proclivity to vice may be transmitted in the blood, but free‐will remains in the most degenerate, and is sufficient, with the aid of a good education and the grace of God, to overcome this obstacle to virtue. We know well the plastic nature of childhood, and, if educated from the first to honesty, morality, and sobriety, it will indeed be found a rare exception in which the developed man will not possess these virtues, and prove an honor to himself and society. But if the first lisp of the infant repeats an oath which is used more frequently than any other word by the debased mother, or if, as is the case with many, as soon as the babe can walk alone it is taught the art of begging and stealing, what can we look for in the same child simply developed to manhood? Are you surprised that he makes a thief? He has never been taught anything else, and he naturally looks upon the law as something that interferes with the right to take anything he desires, if he can only do so without being detected. Would you look for pure water from a stream whose bed is covered with filthy slime, and whose banks are the receptacle of disgusting, decomposed offal? Surely you would not drink of such, no matter how pure you knew the gurgling springs to be high up on the mountain‐side from whence it received its supply. Look at a babe as it is blessed with the first gleam of reason—its ability to notice things about it. Is there anything in the bright black eye to indicate the future cunning of the burglar? Do the rosy lips, wreathed in angel smiles, look as if they were fashioned to utter foul oaths and blasphemies? And the little chubby hands clasped in baby glee around the mother’s neck, could they, by a natural instinct, ever be turned in brutal wrath against that self‐same mother? Reason answers No to all these questions; and we argue that such vices are developed principally by education and example. Take this for granted, and, if we do nothing to save the child from such education, what right have we to imprison the developed man for acting upon the only doctrine he has ever been taught? Or a better view of the subject is: Would it not be the dictate of a sound political economy to take these children from the streets, and teach them some useful trade or pursuit, giving them, at the same time, the fundamental principles of Christianity, without which society is a tottering fabric, minus its very foundation? Do this, and we make producers out of the very men and women who will otherwise become consumers upon the state in the common prisons.
In several parishes of this city benevolent efforts are being made to rescue these children, but, so far as we can learn, the only institutions established where they are regularly taken care of and kept permanently are the following: “The Five Points House of Industry,” “The Five Points Mission‐House,” “The Howard Mission”; and last, but we hope soon to be first in its wide‐spread influence over these little creatures, is the one established some two years ago, and now located in East Thirteenth Street. This is managed by certain charitable Catholic ladies, and called “An Association for Befriending Children.” As most of the poor children on the Island are, or should be, Catholics, it is but just that the last‐ mentioned should receive support and countenance from every Catholic in the city able to assist it, and thus enable the lady managers in a short time to erect branch homes in every parish on the Island.
But come with us, dear reader, and let us look for ourselves at the condition of those who take advantage of the hospitality of the station‐ houses. Think for a moment that in 1862 there were seventy thousand nine hundred and thirty‐eight lodgers, while 1871 presents the fearfully increased number of one hundred and forty‐one thousand seven hundred and eighty who sought this shelter. Oh! that this number (equal nearly to one‐ sixth of the population of this vast metropolis), with its fearful weight of destitution and misery, suffering and despair, could be placed in burning letters upon the minds of those able, even without discommoding themselves, to relieve it!
Let us go back to midwinter. A blinding snow‐storm is wrapping the earth in a white mantle, and it is after midnight, but these are only better reasons for our undertaking, as they secure us increased opportunity to see the phase of suffering we seek; for surely in a night like this the shelter of any roof is a luxury compared to the exposure of the street.
Let us stop first at the Fifteenth Precinct: we ask the sergeant at the desk for the presiding officer, and we are at once shown to the captain’s room. He reads the note from headquarters giving us the entrée, and informs us that he will give us any information we desire. We request him to show us the quarters of the night lodgers. He leads us through a rear door into the yard, and here we find a second building, two stories high, built of brick and stone. The lower story is cut up into cells, with iron cross‐barred doors, for prisoners; and the upper is divided into two rooms—one devoted to the female, and the other to male, lodgers. The heavy granite stone forming a roof to the cells is also the floor of the upper rooms. As we make an inspection of the prison, we ask the captain what he thinks of this connection of homeless vagrants with prisoners? He promptly replies that it is most unfortunate, and should not be allowed, and with great kindness of heart says he would be willing to take care of a house in his precinct for any number of lodgers, if allowed to do so. He tells us that he does everything to alleviate the condition of these paupers he can; that, if a particularly distressing case presents itself, he allows the doorman to give the party a cell in the prison, that this is far more comfortable than the rooms above.
Think of this, you who at night rest your heads on pillows of down and wrap your bodies in fine rose blankets; think of beings so unfortunate that a prisoner’s cell, with the clanking iron‐barred door, is looked upon as a special favor! But let us ascend to the upper story. The door to the male apartment is opened, and the picture is before us. The ceiling is lofty, and a large ventilator opens to the roof from its centre, but where is the stone floor? It cannot be seen, so densely is it packed with outcast humanity. We can think of no other comparison but the way we have seen sardines packed in little tin boxes. Glance at this first row: here is an old German, next what looks to be a countryman, then three negroes, so black that they might have just arrived from the burning climate of Africa, then three Arabs, and in the distant corner more white men. The other rows are but copies of this, differing only in color or nationality, and such a heterogeneous mass of humanity, made common bed‐fellows by want, it would be impossible to find. Around the wall are placed iron frames, about one foot high, and in these fit plain boards, painted black; but here, again, none of this can be seen, the human flooring covers all. Think of this apartment, with seventy‐four men, of every description, from the octogenarian leaning over the brink of the grave, to the young boy seventeen or eighteen years old. Every clime has a representative; and in the vast group every variety of shade and color possessed by the human family can be seen. Opening the door to the female apartment, we find it occupied by a much smaller number; and we can see better the arrangement of the floor. The iron frames with their board covering extend from each wall towards the centre about six feet, leaving a space in the middle of the room as a passway. The same variety in color, age, and nationality is visible. Look at the different expressions of countenance—how replete with sadness, misfortune, degradation, and misery! These lodgers are divided into three classes: the first are officially known as bummers; they are generally inebriates and worthless idlers, the drones of the hive, who make the station‐houses their permanent lodging‐places, going night after night to different ones, thus distributing their patronage to a large number; but in spite of this the wary eye of the policeman soon recognizes them as belonging to this class. The second are those who by misfortune are obliged to seek this temporary shelter. Here are poor women, with their young children, forced out of their homes at night by drunken husbands; single persons, temporarily unable to obtain employment; here also you find those whose lives have been failures, whose every effort to succeed has proved abortive, who have been held down to the world’s hard grindstone by the iron grasp of poverty. The third class embraces those who have homes in the rural districts, and other poor strangers, who are by accident left in the city for the night.
Having completed our survey here, let us look in for a few moments at the Eighth Precinct. We find the captain obliging in his politeness, and we ask at once to be permitted to see the night lodgers. About the centre of the building a door opens, leading by a common stairway to the basement below. A fearful and sickening odor greets us as we pass down, and this, the captain informs us, permeates every part of the building, to the great detriment of his officers. He also tells us that his accommodations for wayfarers are very poor; that he is obliged to put them in two small rooms in the basement, which are close and unhealthy. We find this statement correct, the floor upon which the lodgers rest being about four feet below the street level; the ceiling is also very low, and the ventilation extremely imperfect. The only light in the apartment is from a small oil‐ lamp, and its sickly flame seems to add intensity to the aspect of the miserable surroundings. Look at that old man with long white beard and tattered garments, the first in the row near the entrance. There lingers still a look of dignity about his fine face, but his whole appearance denotes the victim of intemperance. See that young boy with his chest exposed, the third from the old man. He has never known his parents. Picked up in the streets when a babe by an old crone, he has been tossed about ever since with the vilest scum of metropolitan society. He is sixteen, but can count for you the number of dinners he has had in all those years, the number of times he has slept in a comfortable bed, ay, even the number of kind words that have been spoken to him! What can be expected from the future of such children, cradled in a den for the punishment of crime while yet the snowy innocence of babyhood is untarnished, the only lullaby the coarse jest, rude repartee, and foul oaths of the outcasts who surround them? The curses and impotent railings against a fate for which generally each is individually to blame, and the bitter invective against their more fortunate fellow‐beings, form a sad school in which to nurture pliable minds. But enough; the foul air of this basement oppresses us, and we gladly make our way to the outer world.
In the large cities of Europe, there are refuges established for this class on the following simple plan: An airy, comfortable, and well‐ ventilated room is procured, and fitted up with plain bedsteads and bedding, the latter of such materials as are easily washed. The next thing of importance is to provide means for bathing, and to require every person admitted to make use of these means before retiring to rest. It is also the custom to give the lodgers when they come in, and again in the morning when they leave, a large basin of gruel and a half‐pound of bread. The cost of such hospitality here would not exceed fifteen cents per night, and not as much as this if these houses were under the care of a religious community, saving by this the salaries of matrons and other employees, and at the same time ensuring the order always produced by the presence of disciplined authority. There should be separate houses for males and females, and each could be cared for by persons of their own sex; but all such institutions would require supervision by the police, as some unruly characters must be expected in a promiscuous crowd of vagrants. The night refuges of London for women and children, established by Catholics, are under the care of the Sisters of Mercy, and are most admirably conducted. The order and docility of the lodgers is said to be remarkable under the gentle sway of these ladies. Those in Montreal and Quebec are in charge of the Gray Nuns. It would not require a large number of these lodging‐houses for the relief of our city, but they should be located with regard to the density of population in given districts. Four or five for each sex, with proper accommodations, would be amply sufficient, as the total number of lodgers in the most inclement nights would hardly reach one thousand.
It is difficult to estimate the advantage to society as well as to the poor these homes would prove. In erecting them we should strike at the very foundation of the great social evil, and save hundreds of young women—strangers and unfortunates out of employment—from the snares set for their ruin in their lonely wanderings at night in search of shelter.
“There is near another river flowing, Black with guilt, and deep as hell and sin; On its brink even sinners stand and shudder, Cold and hunger goad the homeless in.” —Procter.
As the station lodgings now are, they form an incentive to the class known as bummers to avoid work. These people know there are thirty station‐ houses, and by frequent changes they manage to pass the year through without drawing marked attention at any one place. This class is composed of low thieves, drunkards, and beggars. If but few lodging‐places existed, they would soon become well known, and could then be committed to the workhouse. A sojourn for them on the “island of penance” in the East River would result in a marked decrease in the thieving constantly carried on about our wharves and private dwellings.
In erecting these night homes, either by charity or legislative enactments, we should save our city from a burning disgrace, and give hopes of respectability to many a weary soul beaten down to the dust by the undeserved humiliations which link misfortune with crime.
As a charitable investment, these homes would prove a wise economy, as they would permit the truly unfortunate to be properly cared for, which is impossible at present. They would throw a safeguard around the morals of homeless young women by giving them shelter with persons of their own sex, who could protect, sympathize with, and advise them. They would assist in detecting those who live by swindling their hardworking neighbors. Lastly and most important, they would separate the children of poverty from the abodes of crime.
[NOTE.—The foregoing article is the substance of a lecture delivered by Dr. Raborg before the Catholic Institute connected with the parish of S. Paul the Apostle in this city. Its suggestions are so apropos to the present season that we have deemed them worthy of reproduction in this permanent form. We desire also to state that the lecture had the effect of inducing several philanthropic ladies and gentlemen to visit the station‐ houses and make a personal examination themselves, the result of which was a rather extended article in Frank Leslie’s Newspaper of March 2, 1872, embracing some passages from the lecture, and accompanied by a clever illustration.
The sectarian institutions for vagrant children having been alluded to, and certain former allusions to the same in this magazine having been misunderstood, we think it necessary to make a remark here in explanation. We must admit and praise the philanthropic motive which sustains these institutions. At the same time, we regard them as really nuisances of the worst kind, so far as Catholic children are concerned, on account of their proselytizing character. Moreover, in their actual working they violate the rights both of parents and children, and we have evidence that these poor children are actually sold at the West, both by private sale and by auction. The horrible abuses existing in some state institutions are partly known to the public, and we have the means of disclosing even worse things than those which have recently been exposed in the daily papers. We trust, therefore, that the eloquent appeal of the author of the article will produce its effect upon all our Catholic readers, and stimulate them to greater efforts in behalf of these poor children.—ED. C. W.]
The House That Jack Built.
By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”
In Two Parts.
Part I
It stood in one of the wildest spots in New England, surrounded by woods, a “frame house” in a region of log‐houses, and, as such, in spite of defects, a touch beyond the most complete edifice that could be shaped of logs.
The defects were not few. The walls were slightly out of the perpendicular, there were strips of board instead of clapboards and shingles, the immense stone chimney in the centre gave the house the appearance of being an afterthought, and the two windows that looked down toward the road squinted.
Yes, a most absurd little house, with all sorts of blunders in the making of it, but, for all that, a house with a worth of its own. For Jack Maynard had put the frame together with his own unassisted hands, had raised it with but two men to help him, and had finished it off alone. And round about the work, and through and over it, while his hands built visibly, his fancy also built airy habitations, fair and plumb, and changed all the landscape. Before this fairy wand, the forest sank, broad roads unwound, there was a sprinkle of white houses through the green country, like a sprinkle of snow in June; and in place of this rustic nest rose a fair mansion‐house, with a comely matron standing in the door, and rosy children playing about.
At this climax of his castle‐building Jack Maynard caught breath, and, coming back to the present, found himself halfway up a ladder, with a hammer suspended in his hand, the wild forest swarming with game all about him, and the matron of his vision still Miss Bessie Ware, spinster.
Jack laughed. “So much the better!” he exclaimed, and brought his hammer down with such force, laughing as he struck, that the nail under it bent up double and broke in two, the head half falling to the ground, the point half flattened lengthwise into the board, making a fragment of rustic buhl‐work.
“There’s a nail driven into the future,” said the builder, and selected another, and struck with better aim this time, so that the little spike went straight through the board, and pierced an oaken timber, and held the two firmly together, and thus did its work in the present.
“Well done!” said Jack; “you have gone through fifty summers in less than a minute.”
The startled woods rang to every blow, the fox and the deer fled at that tocsin of civilization, and the snake slid away, and set the green grass crawling with its hidden windings. Only one living creature, besides the builder, seemed happy and unafraid, and that was a brown‐and‐white spaniel that dozed in the shadow of the rising walls, stirring only when his master whistled or spoke to him.
“Wake up, Bruno, and tell me how this suits your eyes,” Jack would call out. Whereat Bruno would lift his lids lazily, show a narrow line of his bright brown eyes, give his tail a slow, laborious wag, and subside to his dreams again, and Jack would go on with his work. It seemed to be his heart, rather than the hammer, that drove the nails in; and every timber, board, latch, and hinge caught a momentary life from his hands, and learned his story from some telegraphing pulse. The very stones of the chimney knew that John Maynard and Bessie Ware were to be married as soon as the house should be ready for them.
There was not a dwelling in sight; but half a mile further down the road toward the nearest town, there was an odd, double log‐house, wherein lived Dennis Moran and his Norah, three little girls, and Bessie Ware, Dennis Moran’s sister’s child.
Jack paused in his work, took off his straw hat to wipe away the perspiration from his face and toss his hair back, first hanging on a round of the ladder just above him the hammer that had driven a nail through fifty summers. As he put his hat on again, he glanced downward, and there, at the foot of the ladder, stood twenty summers, looking up at him out of a face as fair as summers ever formed. The apple‐blooms had given it their pink and white, the June heavens were not bluer than those eyes, so oddly full of laughter and languor. The deepest nook under a low‐ growing spruce, nor shadow in vine‐draped cave, nor hollow in a thunder‐ cloud, ever held richer darkness than that hidden in the loose curls and waves of hair that fell about Bessie Ware’s shoulders. No part of the charm of her presence was due to her dress, save an air of fresh neatness. A large apron, gathered up by the corners, was full of fragrant arbor‐vitæ boughs, gathered to make a broom of. The large parasol, tilted back that she might look upward, allowed a sunbeam to fall on her forehead.
“Oh! what a tall pink has grown up since I came here!” exclaimed the builder, as he saw her.
“And what a great bear has climbed on to my ladder,” retorted the girl.
He came down from the ladder and began to tell her his plans.
“Bessie, I mean this shall be yet one of the best farms in the state. On that hill I will have corn and clover; there shall be an orchard in the hollow next to it, with peach‐trees on the south side of the little rise; and I will plant cranberries in the swamp beyond. In ten years from now, if a man should leave here to‐day, he wouldn’t know the place.”
Bessie smiled at the magician who was to work such wonders—never doubting but he would—then glanced about at the scene of his exploits. Sombre, blue‐green pines brooded over the hill that was one day to be pink with clover, or rustling with corn; oaks, elms, maples, birches, and a great tangle of undergrowth, with rocks and moss, cumbered the ground where peaches were to ripen their dusky cheeks, when Jack should bid them grow, and large, green, and red‐streaked and yellow apples were to drop through the still, bright, autumn air; and she knew that the future cranberry‐ swamp now stood thick and dark with beautiful arborvitæ trees, whose high‐ piled, flaky boughs, tapering to a point far up in the sunshine, kept cool and dim the little pools of water below, and the black mould in which their strong roots stretched out and interwove. But Jack could do anything when he set out, and her faith in him was so great that she could shut her eyes now and see the open swamp matted over with cranberry‐vines, and hear the corn‐stalks clash their green swords in the fretting breeze, and the muffled bump of the ripe apple as it fell on the grass.
After a while, Bessie started to go, but came back again.
“I forgot,” she said, and gave her lover a book that had been hidden under the boughs in her apron. “A book‐pedlar stopped at our house last night, and he left this. Uncle Dennis doesn’t want it, and I do not. Perhaps you can make some sense out of it.”
It was a second‐hand copy of Comstock’s Natural Philosophy, for schools, and was scribbled through and through by the student who had used it, years before.
Jack took the book.
“And that reminds me of your white‐faced boarder,” he said, with a slight laugh. “Is he up yet?”
“Oh! he gets up earlier than any of us,” she answered lightly. “He doesn’t act cityfied at all. And you know, Jack, the reason why he is white is because he has been sick. Good‐bye! Aunt Norah will want her broom before she gets it.”
Bessie struck into the woods instead of going down to the road, and was soon lost to view. Standing beside her little house, she had looked a tall, fairly‐formed lassie; but with the great trunks of primeval forest‐ trees standing about her, and lifting their green pyramids and cones far into the air, she appeared slim and small enough for a fairy. Even the birds, chippering about full of business, seemed to flout her, as if she were of small consequence—not worth flying from.
She laughed at them, and whispered what she did not dare to say aloud: “Other people besides you can build nests!” then looked quickly around to see if any listener were in sight.
There was a slight, rustling sound, and an eavesdropping squirrel scampered up a tree and peered down with twinkling eyes from a safe height. She was just throwing one of the green twigs in her apron at him, when she heard her name spoken, and turned quickly to meet a pleasant‐ faced young man, who approached from an opposite direction. This was the white‐faced boarder who had left the city to find health in this wild place.
The two walked on together, Bessie as shy as any creature of the woods, and her companion both pleased and amused at her shyness, and trying to draw her out. To his questioning, she told her little story. Her mother was Dennis Moran’s youngest sister, her father had been a color‐sergeant in the English army. There had been other children, all younger than she, but all had died, some in one country, some in another. For Sergeant Ware’s family had followed the army, and seen many lands.
“I am an East Indian,” Bessie said naïvely. “I was born at Calcutta. The others were born in Malta, in England, and in Ireland. It didn’t agree with them travelling about from hot to cold. My father died at Gibraltar, and my mother died while she was bringing me to Uncle Dennis Moran’s. May God be merciful to them all!”
Mr. James Keene had heard this pious ejaculation many a time before from the lips of humble Catholics, and had found nothing in it to admire. But now, the thought struck him that this constant prayer for mercy on the dead, whenever their names were mentioned, was a beautiful superstition. Of course he thought it a superstition, for he was a New England Protestant of the most liberal sort—that is, he protested against being obliged to believe anything.
They reached the house, near which Dennis Moran and his wife stood watching complacently a brood of new chickens taking their first airing. The young gentleman joined them, and listened with interest to the farm talk of his host.
What had set Dennis Moran, one of the most rigid of Catholics, in a solitude where he saw none of his own country nor faith, and where no priest ever came, he professed himself unable to explain.
“I’m like a fly caught in a spider’s web, sir,” he said. “When Norah and I came over, and I didn’t just know what to do, except that I wanted to have a farm of my own some day, I hired out to do haying for John Smith’s wife—John had died the very week he began to cut his grass, and Norah she helped Mrs. Smith make butter. Then they wanted me to get in the crops, and after that I had a chance to go into the woods logging. When I came out of the woods, Mrs. Smith wanted me to plough and plant for her. And one thing led to another, and there was always something to keep me. Norah had a young one, and Bessie came—a young witch, ten years old,” said Dennis, pulling his niece’s hair, as she stood beside him. “So I had to take a house. And the long and short of the matter is, that I’ve been here going on ten years, when I didn’t mean to stay ten weeks. But I shall pull up stakes pretty soon, sir,” says Dennis, straightening up. “I don’t mean to stay where I have to go twenty miles to attend to my Easter duties, and where my children are growing up little better than Protestants (he called it Prodestant). I’m pretty sure to move next fall, sir.”
At this announcement, Mrs. Norah tossed up her head and uttered an unspellable, guttural “Oh!” brought from the old land, and preserved unadulterated among the nasal‐speaking Yankees. “We hear ducks!”
Whatever might be the meaning and derivation of this remark, the drift of it was evidently depreciatory, and it had the effect of putting an end to her husband’s eloquence. Doubtless, Mrs. Moran had heard such announcements made before.
Bessie stole a little hand under her uncle’s arm, and smiled into his face, and told him that she had given Jack the book, and soon made him forget his mortification. She knew that he was sometimes boastful, and that the great things he was constantly prophesying of himself never came to pass; but she knew also that he had a kind heart, and it hurt her to see him hurt.
That same book, which the girl mentioned merely to divert attention, was to be a matter of more consequence to her than she dreamed. It was more important than the wedding‐dress and the wedding‐cake, which occupied so much of her thoughts—more important than the jealous interference of Jack’s mother, who did not like Bessie’s foreign blood and religion, though she did like Bessie—more important than even her Uncle Dennis’ actual flitting, when fall came—all which we pass by. Only one thing in her life then was of more consequence than that old school‐book, which the pedler left because no one would buy it, and that was the earnest and sorrowing advice of good old Father Conners when, against his will, he united her to a Protestant.
John Maynard said later, that before he read that book he was like a beet before it is pulled out of the ground, when it doesn’t know but it is a turnip, and firmly believes that it is growing upward instead of downward, and that those waving leaves of its own, which it feels, but sees not, exist in some outer void where nothing is, and that angle‐worms are the largest of locomotive creatures.
It is doubtful if the artistic faculty is any more a special gift in the fine than in the useful arts, or if he who creates ideal forms, in order to breathe into them the breath of such life as is in him, is more enthusiastic in his work, or more fascinated by it, than he who, taking captive the powers of nature, binds them to do his will.
This enthusiastic recognition of the work to which nature had appointed him, John Maynard felt from the moment when he first knew that a crowbar is a lever. He read that book that Bessie gave him with interest, then with avidity, and, having read, all the power latent in that wide brow of his waked up, and demanded knowledge. He got other and more complete works on mechanics and studied them in his leisure hours, he made experiments, he examined every piece of mechanism that came in his way.
Coming home one Sunday from a meeting which she had walked six miles to attend, Mrs. Maynard, senior, was horrified to find that her son had paid her a visit during her absence for the sole purpose of picking in pieces her precious Connecticut clock. There lay its speechless fragments spread out on the table, while the yawning frame leaned against the wall. Bessie sat near, looking rather frightened, and Jack, in his shirt‐sleeves, sat before the table, an open book at his elbow. He was studying the page intently, his earnest, sunburnt face showing an utter unconsciousness of guilt.
“Land sakes, Jack!” screamed his mother. “You’ve been and ruined my clock!”
A clock was of value in that region, where half the inhabitants told the hour by sun‐marks, by the stars, or by instinct.
He put his hand out to keep her back, but did not look up. “Don’t worry, mother,” he said, “and don’t touch anything. I’ll put the machine together in a few minutes.”
Mrs. Maynard sank into a chair, and gazed distressfully at the ruins. That the pendulum, now lying prone and dismembered, would ever tick again, that those two little hands would ever again tell the time of day, that the weights would run down and have to be wound up every Saturday night, or that she should ever again on any June day hear the faithful little gong strike four o’clock in the morning—her signal for jumping out of bed with the unvarying ejaculation: “Land sakes! it’s four o’clock!”—seemed to her impossible.
“And to think that you should do such work on the Sabbath‐day!” she groaned out, casting an accusing glance on her daughter‐in‐law. “You seem to have lost all the religion you ever had since you got married.”
Bessie’s blue eyes lighted up: “I think it just as pious for Jack to study, and find out how useful things are made, as to wear out a pair of shoes going to hear Parson Bates talk through his nose, or sit at home and spoil his eyes reading over and over about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
“Come, come!” interposed Jack; “if you two women quarrel, and bother me, I shall spoil the clock.”
This procured silence.
Had he been a little more thoughtful and tender, he would have told his mother that Bessie had tried to dissuade him from touching the clock, and had urged the impropriety of his doing such work on Sunday; but he did not think. She shielded him, and he allowed her to, scarcely aware that she had, indeed.
The young man’s prediction was fulfilled. Before sunset, the clock was ticking soberly on the mantelpiece, the minute‐hand hitching round its circle, and showing the reluctant hour‐hand the way, and Jack was marching homeward through the woods, with his rifle on one arm and his wife on the other.
They were both so silent—that dark‐browed man and bright faced woman—that they might almost be taken as kindred of the long shadows and sunstreaks over which they walked. He was building up a visionary entanglement of pulleys in the air, through which power should run with ever‐increasing force, and studying how he should dispense with an idle‐wheel that belonged in that maze; and she was thinking of him. He was thinking that this forest, that once had bounded his hopes and aspirations, now pressed on his very breathing, and hemmed his steps in, and wishing that he had wings, like that bird flitting before him; and she was watching his eyes till she, too, saw the bird.
Jack stopped, raised his rifle, took a hasty aim, and fired. Bessie ran to pick up the robin:
“How could you, Jack!” she exclaimed reproachfully, as she felt the fluttering heart stop in her hand.
He looked at it without the slightest compunction. “I wanted to see, as it stood on that twig, which way the centre of gravity would fall,” he said. “Don’t fret, Bessie! There are birds enough in the world.”
The young wife looked earnestly into her husband’s face, as they walked on together. “Jack,” she said, “you might kill me, and then say that there are women enough in the world.”
He laughed, but looked at her kindly, as he made answer: “What would all the women in the world be to me, Bessie, if my woman were out of it?”
Could she ask more?
“Jack, where do you suppose the song has gone to?” she asked, presently.
“Bessie, where does a candle go when it goes out?” was the counter‐ question.
There had been a season in this man’s life, during the brief bud and blossom of his love for Bessie Ware, when his mind had been as full of fancies as a spring maple of blossoms. But he was not by nature fanciful, and, that brief season past, he settled down to facts. Questions which could not be answered he cared not to ask nor ponder on and all speculations, save those which built toward an assured though unseen result, he scouted. The sole impression the bird had made on him was that it was a nice little flying‐machine, which he would like to improve on some day. Meantime, he had much to learn.
The extent of his ignorance did not discourage John Maynard, perhaps because it opened out gradually before him, over a new, unknown path starting from the known one. He was strong, fresh, and healthy, and the very novelty of his work, and his coming to it so late, was an assistance to him. “I have a head for all I want to get into it,” he said to his wife. “When my brain gets hold of an idea, it doesn’t let go.”
It seemed so, indeed; and sometimes when he sat studying, or thinking, utterly unconscious of all about him, his eyes fixed, yet glimmering, his mouth close shut, his breathing half lost, his whole frame, while the brain worked, so still that his hands and feet grew cold, Bessie became almost afraid of him, and was ready to fancy that some strange and perhaps malign spirit had entered into and taken possession of her husband’s soul.
And thus it happened that, after two years, the house that Jack built was abandoned to one of his relatives, and the young couple, with their baby boy, left the forest for the city.
Of course, no one is to suppose that John Maynard failed.
It was summer again, and lavish rains had kept to July the fresh luxuriance of June. The frame house stood nearly as it was when its builder finished it. The walls had changed their bright yellow tint for gray, and a few stones had fallen from the top of the chimney—that was all. The forest still gathered close about, and only a few patches of cultivated land had displaced the stumps and stones. A hop‐vine draped the porch at the back of the house, and a group of tall sunflowers grew near one of the open curtainless windows.
Civilization had passed by on the other side, and, though not really so remote, was still invisible. Twice a day, with a low rumble, as of distant thunder, a train of cars passed by through the valley beyond the woods.
There was no sound of childish voices, no glimpse of a child anywhere about. The air bore no more intelligent burden than the low colloquial dropping of a brook over its pebbly bed, the buzzing of bees about a hive, and a rustling of leaves in the faint stir of air that was more a respiration than a breath. The only sign of human life to be seen without was a frail thread of blue smoke that rose from the chimney, and disappeared in the sky.
Inside, on the white floor of the kitchen, the shadows of the sunflowers lay as if painted there, only now and then stirring slightly, as the air breathed on the wide, golden‐rayed shields outside. In the chimney‐corner, almost as silent as a shadow, an old woman sat in a rocking‐chair, knitting, and thinking. The two small windows, with crossing light, made one corner of the room bright; but where this woman sat, her face could be seen plainly only by firelight.
It was a rudely‐featured face—one seldom sees finely moulded features in the backwoods—but it showed fortitude, good sense, and that unconscious integrity which is so far nobler than the conscious. The gray hair was drawn tightly back, and fastened high on the head with a yellow horn comb; the tall, spare figure was clad in a gown of dark‐blue calico covered with little white dots, and a checked blue‐and‐white apron tied on with white tape strings, and the hands that held the knitting were bony, large‐ jointed, and large‐veined.
The stick of wood that had been smouldering on the andirons bent in the middle, where a little flickering flame had been gnawing industriously for some time. The flame brightened, and made a dive into this break, where it found a splinter. The stick bent yet more, then suddenly snapped in two, one end dropping into the coals, the other end standing upright in the corner.
“Bless me!” muttered the old woman, dropping her work with a start. “There’s a stranger! I wonder who it is.”
She sat gazing dreamily at the brand a moment, and, as her face half settled again, it became evident that the expression was one of profound melancholy as well as thoughtfulness. The lifted eyelids, and the start that roused without brightening, showed that.
After a moment’s reverie, she drew a long sigh, and, before resuming her work, took the long iron tongs that leaned in the corner, and most inhospitably tossed the figurative stranger into the coals.
“I wonder why my thoughts run so on Jack and Bessie to‐day,” she soliloquized, fixing the end of the knitting‐needle into the leather sheath at her side. “I wish I knew how they are. It’s my opinion they’d have done as well to stay here. I don’t think much of that machinery business.”
The coming event which had thus cast its shadow before, was already at the gate, or, more literally, at the bars. Bessie Maynard had walked alone up the road she had not trodden for years, and now stood leaning there, and looking about with eyes that were at once eager and shrinking. Her face was pale, her mouth tightly closed; she had grown taller, and her appearance disclosed in some indefinable way a capacity for sternness which would scarcely have been suspected, or even credited, in the girl of twenty we left her. A glance would show that she had suffered deeply.
Presently, as she gazed, tears began to dim her eyes. She brushed them away, let down the slim cedar pole that barred her passage, stepped through, replaced the bar, and walked up the path to the house.
The knitter in the chimney‐corner heard the sound of advancing steps, and sat still, with her face turned over her shoulder, to watch the door. The steps reached the threshold and paused there, and for a moment the two women gazed at each other—the one silent from astonishment, the other struggling to repress some emotion that rose again to the surface.
The visitor was the first to recover her self‐possession. She came in smiling, and held out her hands.
“Haven’t you a word of welcome for me, Aunt Nancy?” she asked.
Her voice broke the spell, and the old woman started up with a true country welcome, hearty, and rather rough. It was many a year since Bessie Maynard’s hands had felt such a grasp, or her arms such a shake.
“But where is Jack?” asked his aunt, looking toward the door over Bessie’s shoulder.
“Oh! he’s at home,” was the reply, rather negligently given. “But how are you, Aunt Nancy? Have you room for me to stay awhile? I took a fancy to be quiet a little while this summer. The city is so hot and noisy.”
The old lady repeated her welcomes, mingled with many apologies for the kind of accommodations she had to offer, all the while helping to remove her visitor’s bonnet and shawl, drawing up the rocking‐chair for her, and pressing her into it.
“Do sit down and rest,” she said. “But where is the baby? Why on earth didn’t you bring her?”
Bessie clasped her hands tightly in her lap, and looked steadily at the questioner before answering. “The baby is at home!” she said then, in a low voice.
Aunt Nancy was just turning away for some hospitable purpose, but the look and tone arrested her.
“You don’t mean—” she began, but went no further.
“Yes,” replied Bessie quietly; “there is only James left.”
James was the eldest child.
Mrs. Nancy Maynard was not much given to expressions of tenderness—New England people of the old sort seldom were—but she laid her hand softly on her niece’s shoulder, and said unsteadily:
“You poor dear, how tried you have been!”
“We have all our trials,” responded the other, with a sort of coldness.
The old woman knew not what to say. She turned away, mending the fire. If Bessie had wept, she would have known how to comfort her; but this strange calmness was embarrassing. Scarcely less embarrassing was the light, indifferent talk that followed, the questions concerning crops, and weather, and little household affairs, evidently put to set aside more serious topics.
This baby was the fourth child that Bessie Maynard had lost. After the first, no child of hers had lived to reach its third year. Each one had been carried away by a sudden distemper. The first death had been announced to John Maynard’s aunt in a long letter from Bessie, full of a healthy sorrow, every line stained with tears. John had written the next time, his wife being too much worn out with watching and grief to write. At the third death, there came a line from Bessie: “My little boy is gone, Aunt Nancy. What do you suppose God means?”
Aunt Nancy had wondered somewhat over this strange missive, but had decided that, whatever God meant, Bessie meant resignation.
But now, as she marked her niece’s changed face and manner, and recollected that laconic note, she was forced to give up the comforting thought. There might be endurance, but there was no resignation in that face.
The sense of distance and strangeness grew on her, though Bessie began to help her get supper ready, drawing out and laying the table as though she had done it every day of her life, and even remembering the cup that had been hers, and the little iron rack on which she used to set the teapot. “Jack found the brass‐headed nail this hangs on miles back in the woods,” she said. “It’s a wonder how it got there.”
“Why didn’t Jack come with you?” asked Aunt Nancy, catching at the opportunity to say something personal.
A deep blush ran up Bessie’s face at being so caught, but her hesitation was only momentary.
“He is too busy,” she answered briefly.
“But I should think he might take a rest now and then,” persisted her aunt.
Bessie gave a short laugh that was not without bitterness.
“What rest can a man take when he has a steam‐engine spouting carbonic acid in one side of his brain, a flying‐machine in the other side, and a wheel in perpetual motion between them? John is given over to metals and motions. I might as well have a locomotive for a husband. Shall I take up the applesauce in this bowl?”
“Yes. I should think that James might have come.” Aunt Nancy held desperately to the thread she had caught.
“James is a little John,” replied Bessie, pouring the hot, green applesauce into a straight, white bowl with a band of narrow blue stripes around the middle of it. “Never mind my coming alone, Aunt Nancy. I got along very well, and they will do very well without me.”
They sat down to the table, and Bessie made a great pretence of eating, but ate nothing. Then they went out and looked at the garden, talking all the while about nothing, and soon, to the relief of both, it was bed‐time.
To Be Continued.
Where Are You Going?
We happened, the other day, to notice in the columns of a ribald infidel newspaper an advertisement in which a young lady gave notice of her desire to find “board in an infidel or atheist family.” There are many persons nowadays who are looking for a lodging‐place and for food which will give rest and refreshment to their minds and hearts, in the bosom of the infidel and atheistic family circle. They may not, in most cases, distinctly perceive and expressly avow that they are going over to dwell in the tents of atheism, but they have turned their faces and steps in that direction, and into the path leading thitherward, and those who keep on their way must arrive, sooner or later, at that destination. It is to these that we address the question: Where are you going? We would like to have them reflect a little on the kind of entertainment which they may reasonably expect to find in the private family of the household, and in the larger family of human society, when these are constituted on atheistic principles.
Before going any further, we will designate more precisely what class of persons we intend by the above description. In general, all who do not believe in a law made known to the mind and conscience by Almighty God, and, in particular, those who, having been brought up in the Catholic faith, no longer believe in that law as made known by the authority of the church. We class these last individuals, for whose benefit chiefly though not exclusively we are writing, with those first mentioned advisedly and for a reason; and warn them that they are included in the number of those whose faces are set toward atheism. Nevertheless, we do not say this on the ground that every one who is not a Catholic is either incapable of knowing God and his law, or logically bound to deny their existence. A Theist, a Jew, or a Protestant has a rational ground for holding against the atheist or infidel all that portion of Catholic truth which his religion includes. Therefore, we have not included any of these in the number of the atheistical.
Those only who do not believe in any law of God over the conscience we have charged with this tendency to positive atheism. Against such, the justice of the charge is manifest. For they are practically atheists already, and by denying an essential attribute of the Creator, and a relation which the creature must have toward him on account of this attribute, the way is opened to a denial of his existence. As for those who have been instructed in the Catholic faith and have thrown off its authority over their conscience, we say that they have turned towards atheism, because we are convinced that, as a matter of fact, the motives and reasonings which have induced them to this fatal apostasy are practically and theoretically atheistical, even if they themselves are not distinctly aware of their ultimate tendency. We do not deny that a Catholic may lapse into some imperfect form of Christianity or natural religion. The first Protestants had been originally Catholics, and so have been some of the so‐called philosophers professing natural religion. But the present tendency of unbelief is toward atheism, and those believers in positive, revealed religion, whether Catholics, Protestants, or Jews, who are swept by this current, are carried toward the abyss whither it is rushing. Those who reject the law of God which is proclaimed and enjoined by the authority of the church, do so because its moral or intellectual restraints are irksome, and they wish to be at liberty. In plain words, they wish to be free to sin, to follow the proclivity of our fallen nature to indulge in pride and concupiscence, without any fear of God before their eyes to disturb their peace. Therefore, they deny the authority of the church to bind their conscience to believe the doctrines and obey the moral precepts which she promulgates in the name of God. Their revolt is against the law itself and the sovereign authority of God. They sin against faith and against reason also; against the natural as well as the revealed law. They sin with the understanding as well as with the will, and their sin is one which goes to the root of all moral obligation and responsibility in the creature toward the Creator. It is an assertion of perfect individual liberty of thought and action, of independence and self‐sovereignty; and as such an independence is completely incompatible with the existence of God, it is but a step to deny that he exists, or at least that we have any knowledge of his existence. Moreover, modern unbelief proceeds by the way of objections, difficulties, and doubts. It is sceptical in its principle; and one who rejects the authority of the church and of divine revelation on the principle of scepticism, easily rejects all philosophy and natural religion on the same principle, and runs down into pure materialism and atheism.
There are many persons in Europe, and some in this country, who have sunk into a state of avowed impiety and violent hostility to all religion which places them beyond the reach of every appeal to reason, conscience, or right feeling. We do not attempt to argue with such as these; but we suppose in those whom we address a condition of the mind and heart much less degenerate and hopeless. We suppose them to recognize the excellence and necessity of the private and social virtues, and to retain some intellectual and moral ideal in their minds which they cherish and venerate. They believe in truthfulness, honor, fidelity, honesty, true love, friendship, in the cultivation of knowledge and the fine arts, in all that can give decorum, refinement, and charm to domestic and social life, power, dignity, and splendor to political society. But all this is looked on as a spontaneous, natural growth, which finds its perfection and its end from and on this earth, and in this life, without any direct relation to God and an immortal life in another sphere of existence. Now, that such persons are intellectually and morally on a height which elevates them far above those who are wholly degraded in mind and character, we readily admit. But they are on the verge of a precipice. It is the black and awful abyss of atheism which yawns beneath them. And we invite them to look over the brink, and down into those dark depths, that they may consider deliberately whither their steps are leading them, before it is too late to retreat to a safer position.
In what consists the reality of truth, let us ask of one who professes to love truth, or the obligation of respecting it, if Christianity is a falsehood, and its Founder a deceiver of mankind? One who knows the evidence on which Christianity rests, and rejects it as a delusion, has adopted a principle of scepticism which destroys all the evidence on which any truth can rest. The principles of reason are denied or called in question, unbelief or doubt extends to everything. The existence of God is doubted, the distinct and immortal existence of the soul is questioned, nothing remains but the senses and the phenomena which are called sensible facts. Take away God, the Essential Truth, who can neither be deceived nor deceive us, and who has manifested to us the truth by the lights of reason and revelation, and there is no such thing as truth. The descendants of apes, whose whole existence is merely one of sensation, who have sprung from material forces and are resolved into them by dissolution, can have no more obligation of speaking the truth than their cousins the monkeys. If lying, calumny, or perjury will increase the means of your sensible enjoyment, why not employ them against your brother‐apes, as well as entrap a monkey and cage him for your amusement? Whence comes the excellence and obligation of honor, that principle which impels a man rather to die than to betray a trust or abandon the post of duty? On what is based honesty? Why should one choose to pass his life, and to make his family pass their lives, in poverty and privation, rather than take the gold of another, when he can steal it with impunity? Where lies the detestable baseness of bribery and swindling? Why does the heart revolt against the conduct of the man or woman who is faithless to conjugal, parental, or filial love, who is a false friend, ungrateful for kindness, a traitor to his country? It is all very well to say that our natural instincts impel us to love certain qualities and detest others, as we spontaneously admire beauty and are displeased with ugliness. This is certainly true. And it is very well to say that happiness and well‐being are, on the whole, promoted by virtuous sentiments and actions, and hindered by those which are vicious. But if mere selfish, sensitive enjoyment of the good of this life be the end of life itself, all virtue is resolved at last into the quest of this enjoyment by the most sure and suitable means. When virtue requires the sacrifice of this enjoyment, it is no longer virtue. Why should a wife sacrifice her happiness to a cruel, sickly, or disagreeable husband, a husband preserve fidelity to a wife who is hopelessly deranged or who has violated her marriage vows? Why should a soldier expose his life in obedience to the order of a stupid or reckless commander, or shed his blood in an unnecessary war brought on by the folly or ambition of incompetent or unscrupulous rulers? Why should a seaman die for the sake of saving passengers who are nothing to him, and many of whom are perhaps worthless persons, leaving his widow and children without a protector? Why trouble ourselves about taking care of the poor, ruined wrecks of humanity, who can never more be capable of enjoying life or contributing to the enjoyment of others? If we are not the offspring of God, but of the earth, mere sensitive and mortal animals, existing for the pleasure of a day, all the virtues which demand self‐sacrifice are absurd; and the sentiments which we feel about these virtues are illusions. It is very well to appeal to these sentiments; but those who do so must admit that these sentiments must be capable of being justified by reason. An atheist or a sceptic cannot do this. If a man is essentially the same with a pig, there cannot be any reason for treating him otherwise than as a pig. Our natural sentiments, which revolt against the practical consequences of the degrading doctrine of atheism, prove that it is contrary to nature, and therefore false. It is because our nature is rational and immortal that we owe to ourselves and our fellows those obligations and charities which are not due to the brutes; that life, chastity, property, honor, love and friendship, promises and engagements, political, social, and personal rights of all kinds, are to be respected and held sacred. Our rational and immortal nature cannot exist except by participation from God, and its constitutive principle is the capacity to know God and recognize his law as our supreme rule. The obligation of doing that which is just and honorable is derived from that law. Our own rights and the rights of our neighbor are inviolable, because God has given them. They are the rights of God, as that great philosopher Dr. Brownson has so frequently and conclusively proved. God, as our lawgiver, must necessarily give us a law which is plain and certain. It can be no other than the Christian law. And every one who has been instructed in the Catholic faith must see that Christianity and the Christian law are guaranteed, defined, proclaimed, and enforced on the conscience by the authority of the church.
Let him reject that authority, and he has disowned God; and by so doing has taken away the basis of virtue. Self‐interest, sentiment, and human instincts are no sufficient support for it. For, although our temporal interests coincide in great part with the claims of virtue, and natural sentiments and instincts are radically good, we are subject to inordinate and even violent passions. Take away the fear of God, and the passions will sweep away all slighter barriers. Pride and concupiscence will assert their sway, make a wreck of virtue, and eventually destroy even our earthly and temporal happiness.
Even with all the power and influence which religion can exercise over men under the most favorable circumstances, there is enough of sin and misery in the world; but what are we to expect if atheism should prevail? The practical atheism, or, to speak Saxon, the ungodliness of the age, has produced enough of bitter and deadly fruit to give us a taste of the entertainment which is awaiting us if the time ever comes when the power which religion still retains is altogether taken away. We do not need to refer to the pages of professed moralists, or to quote sermons on this topic. It is enough to take what we find in the works of those masterly novelists who describe and satirize the crimes and follies of modern society and depict its tragic miseries, and what we read every day in the newspapers. The intrigues, villanies, swindlings, divorces, murders, and suicides which blacken the record of each passing month, and the hidden, untold tragedies going on perpetually in private life, give us proof enough of the ravages which the passions of fallen, weak human nature will make when all fear of God is removed, and they are left uncontrolled by anything stronger than self‐interest, and physical coercion in the hands of the civil power. No one who casts off all faith in God, allegiance to his authority, and fear of his just retribution, can foresee what he himself may become, or what he may do before his life is ended. The natural virtues, the intellectual gifts, the education, refinement, elevated sentiments, and pure affections which such a person may possess in youth, whether it be a young man or a young woman, are no sure guarantee or safeguard, even in a religious and moral community. Much less are they in one which is wholly irreligious. No one knows, therefore, how wicked he may become, or how miserable he may make himself. Still less can any one foresee what treachery, cruelty, and ingratitude, what bitter sufferings, and what ruin, may await him at the hands of others, if he is to be a member of a great infidel or atheist family which he has helped to form. He will be like the unhappy Alpine tourist who fell down from the Matterhorn, dragging with him and dragged by his companions from his dangerous foothold, and all dashed in pieces in the abyss beneath.
Let any one who has been brought up in the enjoyment of those advantages which give decorum, charm, and refined pleasure to life—and who wishes and expects to possess the same in the future which he looks forward to in this world, with a zest and freedom increased by the riddance of all fear of God—think for a moment about one very important question. To what is he indebted for the blessings he has already enjoyed, and to what can he look for those he is expecting? In order that he should have a happy home, his parents must fulfil all the obligations of the conjugal and parental relations. If he is born to wealth, his father has had to work for him, or at least to take care of his property. If he has had a good mother, it is needless to expatiate on all that a woman must be, must do, and must suffer, to give a child such a blessing as that which is expressed by the tender and holy name of mother. For his education, how many noble and disinterested men have toiled, how many generous sacrifices of time, and labor, and money have been required! To create the nation which gives him the advantages of political order, the civilization which gives him a society to live in, the arts which minister to his higher tastes and personal comforts, how many causes have concurred together, what a multitude of the most noble, self‐sacrificing, heroic exertions of genius, philanthropy, patriotism, fructified by a plentiful besprinkling of the blood of just and faithful men, have been necessary through long ages of time! In his ideal of a happy life, which he hopes for in this world, what a multitude of things he requires which presuppose the fidelity of thousands of persons to those obligations and relations of life on which he is dependent as an individual. His bride must bring to the nuptial feast her virgin purity, and keep her wedding‐ring unbroken and undimmed. His children must be such as a father’s heart can regard with pride and joy. Those with whom he has relations of business must act with honesty and integrity. He must have good servants to work for him, and hundreds of skilful and industrious hands must minister to his wants or caprices. Society must be kept in order, the machinery of the world must be kept going, the law must protect his life and property, and the majority of his fellow‐men must remain content with a lot of hard work and poverty, that he may enjoy his dignity, leisure, splendor, and comfort in peace and security.
Now it is a simple fact, that the principles and laws which have wrought out whatever is high and excellent in modern civilization, have been derived from the Christian religion. The public, social, and private virtues which alone preserve society from corruption and extinction, are the fruit either of religious conscientiousness, or of the influence of religion on the natural conscience of those who live in the atmosphere which it has purified and irradiated. There has never been such a thing as human society founded on atheism; and when atheism, practical or theoretical, has begun to prevail in any community, it has begun to perish. Whoever tampers with that poison is preparing suicide for himself, and death for all around him that is living. A large dose will kill at once all that is capable of death in a soul which is, in spite of itself, immortal. The slow sipping of small doses will gradually produce the same effect. The general distribution of the poison will destroy more or less rapidly the vital principle of the family, of society, of the state, of human civilization. Human beings cannot live together in peace and order, in love and friendship, in mutual truth and fidelity, in happiness and prosperity, if they believe that they are mere animals, whose only good is the brief pleasure which can be snatched from the present life. Even the imperfect amity and good‐fellowship, the lower grade of society, the inferior well‐being and enjoyment, the faint dim similitude of the rational order which exists among the irrational animals, cannot be attained by the human race when it strives to degenerate itself to the level of the brute creation. The irrepressible, inextinguishable, violent appetite for a satisfying good, when it is defrauded of its true object and turned away from its legitimate end, becomes a devastating tornado of passion. There is too much suffering, and too small a supply of sensible enjoyment in human life, to allow mankind to be quiet, and to agree together amicably in the relations of civilized society, in the common pursuit of temporal happiness. Pride and concupiscence are as insatiable as the grave and as cruel as death. The fear of God can alone restrain them. Take that away from the individual, and he will be faithless to the duties of life, friendship, honesty, patriotism, philanthropy, to his nobler instincts, his higher sentiments, his ideal standard of good, in proportion as his passions gain power over him. Take it away from the family and the social order, and mutual faithlessness, breeding mutual hatred and warfare, will be the result. Take it away from the masses of men, and the commune will come, the maddened rabble will rush for the coveted possessions of the smaller number who appear to have exclusive possession of the real good, and at last all will be resolved into a state of barbarism in which the race will become extinct.
This will never take place; for the church and religion of Jesus Christ are imperishable, and God will bring the world to a sudden end before the human race has had time to destroy itself. But such is the tendency of the infidelity and atheism of the age. Whoever turns his back on Christianity is a partaker in this tendency, and a companion of that band of conspirators against religion and society whose end is more infernal and whose means are more cruel than those of the Thugs of India.
Number Thirteen. An Episode Of The Commune. Concluded
There was music enough chiming at No. 13 to keep a choir of angels busy. Mme. de Chanoir, with the petulance of weakness, grumbled unceasingly, lamenting the miseries of her own position, altogether ignoring the fact that it was no worse, but in some ways better, than that of those around her, whinging and whining from morning till night, pouring out futile invectives against the Prussians, the Emperor, the Republic, General Trochu, and everybody and everything remotely conducive to her sufferings. She threatened to let herself die of hunger rather than touch horse‐flesh, and for some days she so perseveringly held to her determination that Aline was terrified, and believed she would hold it to the end. The only thing that remained to the younger sister of any value was her mother’s watch, a costly little gem, with the cipher set in brilliants; it had been her grandfather’s wedding present to his daughter‐in‐law. Aline took it to the jeweller who had made it, and sold it for one hundred and fifty francs. With this she bought a ham and a few other delicacies that tempted Mme. de Chanoir out of her suicidal abstinence; she ate heartily, neither asking nor guessing at what price the dainties had been bought; and Aline, only too glad to have had the sacrifice to make, said nothing of what it had cost her. Gradually everything went that could be sold or exchanged for food. Aline would have lived on the siege bread, and never repined, had she been alone, but it went to her heart to hear the never‐ending complaints of Mme. de Chanoir, to see her childish indignation at the great public disasters which her egotism contracted into direct personal grievances. Fortunately for herself, Mlle. de Lemaque was not a constant witness of the irritating scene. From nine in the morning till late in the evening she was away at the Ambulance, active and helpful, and cheering many a heavy heart and aching head by her bright and gentle ministry, and forgetting her own sufferings in the effort to alleviate greater ones.
“If you only could come with me, Félicité, and see something of the miseries our poor soldiers are enduring, it would make your own seem light,” she often said to Mme. de Chanoir, when, on coming home from her labor of love, she was met by the unreasonable grumbling of the invalid; “it is such a delight to feel one’s self a comfort and a help to them. I don’t know how I am ever to settle down to the make‐believe work of teaching after this long spell of real work.”
She enjoyed the work so much, in fact, that, if it had not been for the sufferings, real and imaginary, of her sister, this would have been the happiest time she had known since her school days. The make‐believe work, as Aline called it, which had hitherto filled her time had never filled her heart. It was a means of living that kept her brains and her hands at work, nothing more; and it had often been a source of wonder to her in her busiest days to feel herself sometimes seized with ennui. That trivial, hackneyed word hardly, perhaps, expresses the void, the sort of hunger‐ pang, that more and more frequently of late years had made her soul ache and yearn, but now the light seemed to break upon her, and she understood why it had been so. The work itself was too superficial, too external. It had overrun her life without satisfying it; it had not penetrated the surface, and brought out the best and deepest resources of her mind and heart—it had only broken the crust, and left the soil below untilled. She had flitted like a butterfly from one study to another; history, and literature, and music had attracted her by turns; she had gone into them enthusiastically, mastered their difficulties, and appropriated their beauties; but after a time the spell waned, and she glided imperceptibly into the dry mechanism of the thing, and went on giving her lesson because it brought her so much a cachet. But this work of a Sister of Mercy was a different sort of life altogether. The enthusiasm, instead of waning, grew as she went on. At first, the prosaic details, the foul air, the physical fatigue and moral strain of the sick‐nurse’s life were unspeakably repugnant to her; her natural fastidiousness turned from them in disgust, and she would have thrown it all up after the first week but for sheer human respect; she persevered, however, and at the end of a fortnight she had grown interested in her patients; by degrees she got reconciled to the obnoxious duties their state demanded of her; and before a month had passed it had become a ministry of love, and her whole soul had thrown itself into the perfect performance of her duties. She was often tired and faint on leaving the Ambulance, but she always left it with regret, and the evident zest and gladness of heart with which she set out each morning became at last a grievance in the eyes of her sister. Mme. de Chanoir vented her discontent by harping all the time of breakfast on the hard‐heartedness of some people who could look at wounds and all sorts of horrors without flinching; whereas the very sight of a drop of blood made her almost faint; but then she was so constituted as to feel other people’s wounds as if they were her own; it was a great misfortune; she envied people who had hard hearts; it certainly enabled them to do more, while she could only weep and pity. Aline bore the querulous reproaches as cheerfully as if she had been blessed with one of those hearts of stone that Mme. de Chanoir so envied. She had the indulgence of a happy heart, and she had found the secret of making her life a poem. But the nurse’s courage was greater than her strength. After the first three months, material privations, added to arduous attendance on the sick and wounded, began to tell; her health showed signs of rebellion.
M. Dalibouze was the first to notice it. He came regularly on the Saturday evenings as of old; his age exempted him from the terrible outpost work on the ramparts; and he profited by the circumstance to keep up, as far as possible, his ordinary habits and enjoyments, “afin de soutenir le morale,” as he said. When he noticed this change in Aline, he immediately used his privilege of friend of the family to interfere; he begged her to modify her zeal for the poor sufferers at the Ambulance, and to consider how precious her life was to her sister and her friends.
Aline took the advice very kindly, but assured him that, far from wearing out her strength as he supposed, her work was the only thing that sustained it. The tone in which she said this convinced him it was the truth. It then occurred to him that her pallor and languid step must be caused by the unhealthy diet of the siege. Everybody suffered in a more or less degree; but, as it always happens, those who suffered most said least about it. The gros rentier, who fared sumptuously on kangaroo, and Chinese puppies, and elephant at a hundred francs a pound, talked loud about the miseries of starvation which he underwent for the sake of his country; but the petit rentier, whose modest meal had long since been replaced by a scanty ration of horse‐flesh, and that only to be had by “making tail,” as they call it, for hours at the butchers shop—the petit rentier said very little. He was perishing slowly off the face of the earth; but, with the pride of poverty strong in death, he gathered his rags around him, and made ready to die in silence.
It was on such people as Mme. de Chanoir and her sister that the siege pressed hardest; their concierge was far better off than they; she could claim her bons, and fight for her rations; and she had fifteen sous a day as the wife of a National Guard.
As to Mme. Cléry, she proved herself equal to the occasion. She had no National Guard to fall back upon, but she was sustained by the thought that she was suffering for her country; she, too, was a good patriot. Patriotism, however, has its limits of endurance, and hay bread was the border line that Mme. Cléry’s patriotism refused to pass. When the good bread was rationed, she showed signs of mutiny; but when it degenerated into that hideous compound, of which we have all seen specimens, her indignation declared itself in open rage. “What is this?” she cried, when the first loaf was handed to her after three hours’ waiting. “Are we cattle, to eat hay?” And, breaking the tawny, spongy lumps in two, she pulled out a long bit of the offensive weed, and held it up to the scorn of the queue.
As to Mme. de Chanoir, when she saw it she went into hysterics for the rest of the day. But Providence was mindful of No. 13. Just at this crisis, when Aline’s altered looks aroused her sister from the selfish contemplation of her own ailments and wants, M. Dalibouze arrived early one morning soon after Mme. de Lemaque had started for the Ambulance, and announced that he had received the opportune present of a number of hams, tins of preserved meat, condensed milk, and an indefinite number of pots of jam. It was three times as much as he could consume before the siege was raised—for raised it infallibly would be, and, if he were not greatly mistaken, within forty‐eight hours—so he begged Mme. la Générale to do him the favor of accepting the surplus.
Mme. de Chanoir, with infantine simplicity, believed this credible story, and did M. Dalibouze the favor he requested. So, thanks to his generous friend, the professor in turn became the benefactor of the two sisters, and had the delight of seeing Aline revive on the substantial fare that arrived so apropos. Well, it came at last, the end of the blocus; not, indeed, as M. Dalibouze had prognosticated. But that was not his fault. He had not reckoned with treachery. He could not suspect what a brood of traitors the glorious capital of civilization was nourishing in her patriotic bosom. But wait a little! It would be made square yet. Europe would see France rise by‐and‐by, like the Phœnix from her ashes, and spread her wings, and take a flight that would astonish the world. As to the Prussians, those vile vandals, whose greasy moustaches were not fit to brush the boots of Paris, let them bide a while, and they shall see what they should see!
Thus did M. Dalibouze resumer la situation, while Paris on her knees waited humbly the terms that Prussia might dictate as the price of a loaf of bread for her starving patriots.
But the worst was to come yet. Hardly had the little ménage at No. 13 drawn a long breath of relief after the prolonged miseries and terrors of the siege, than that saturnalia, the like of which assuredly the world never saw before, and let us hope never will again, the Commune, began. Like a fiery flood it rose in Paris, and rose and rose till the red wave swept from end to end of the city, spreading desolation and terror everywhere, and making the respectable party of order long to call back the Prussians, and help them out of the mess. How it began, and grew, and ended we have heard till we know the miserable story by heart. I am not going to tell it here. The Commune is only the last episode in the history of No. 13.
There was work to do and plenty in binding the wounds and smoothing the pillows of dying men, and words to be spoken that dying ears are open to when spoken in Christian love. Aline de Lemaque’s courage did not fail her in this last and fearful ordeal. She resumed her duties as Sister of Mercy, asked no questions as to the politics of the wounded men, but did the best she could for them. Mme. de Chanoir could not understand how her sister spent her time and service on Red Republicans; the sooner the race died out, the better, and it was not the work of a Christian to preserve the lives of such snakes and fiends.
“There are dupes and victims as well as fiends among them,” Aline assured her; “and those who are guilty are the most to be pitied.” After a time, however, the dangers attendant on going into the streets became so great that Aline was forced to remain indoors. Barricades were thrown up in every direction, and made the circulation a dangerous and almost impracticable feat to members of the party of order. The Rue Royale, which had been safe during the first siege, was now a threatened centre of accumulated danger. It was armed to the teeth. The Faubourg end of it was barred by a stone barricade that might have passed for a fortress—a wall of heavy masonry weighted with cannon, two black giants that lay couched like monster slugs peeping through a hedge. But after those terrible weeks there came at last the final tug, the troops came in, and Greek met Greek. Shell and shot rained on the city like hailstones. The great black slugs gave tongue, bellowing with unintermitting fury; all round them came responsive roars from barricades and batteries; it was the discord of hell broke upward through the earth, and echoing through the streets of Paris.
Aline de Lemaque and her sister sat in the little saloon at No. 13, listening to the war‐dogs without, and straining their ears to catch every sound that shot up with any significant distinctness from the chaos of noise. Mme. Cléry was with them; she stayed altogether at No. 13 now, sleeping on the sofa at night. It would have been impossible for her to come and go twice a day while the city was in this state of commotion. To‐ day the old woman could not keep quiet; she was constantly up and down to the concierge’s lodge to pick up any stray report that came through the chinks of the porte‐cochère. Once she went down and remained so long that the sisters were uneasy. An explosion had reverberated through the street, shaking the house from cellar to garret, and, like an electric shock, flinging both the sisters on their knees simultaneously. Mme. de Chanoir’s spine had recovered itself within the last week as if by magic. She had abandoned her usual recumbent position, and came and went about the house like the rest of them. If the Commune did nothing else, it did this. We must give the devil his due.
“Félicité, I must go and see what it is. I hear groans close under the window; perhaps a shell has fallen in the court and killed her,” said Aline. And, rising, she turned to go.
“Don’t leave me! For the love of heaven, don’t leave me alone, Aline!” implored her sister. “I’ll die with terror if that comes again while I’m here by myself.”
“Come with me, then,” said Aline. And, taking her sister’s hand, they went down together.
Mme. Cléry was not killed. This fact was made clear to them at once by the spectacle of the old woman standing in the porte‐cochère, and shaking her fist vehemently at somebody or something at the further end of it.
“Stay here,” said Aline to Mme. de Chanoir, motioning her back into the house. “I will see what it is; and if you can do anything I’ll call you.”
It was the concierge that Mme. Cléry was apostrophizing. And this was why: a shell had burst, not in the yard, as the sisters fancied, but in the street just outside, and the explosion was followed by a shriek and a loud blow at the door, while something like a body fell heavily against it.
“Cordon!” cried Mme. Cléry; “it is some unfortunate hit by the shell.”
“More likely a communist coming to pillage and burn. I’ll cordon to none of ’em!” declared the concierge. “The door is locked; if they want to get in, they may blow it open.” But Mme. Cléry flew at her throat, and swore, if she didn’t give up the key, she, Mme. Cléry, would know the reason why. The concierge groaned, and felt, in bitterness of spirit, what a difficult task the cordon was. But she opened the door; under it lay two wounded men, both of them young; one was evidently dying; he had been mortally struck by a fragment of the shell that had burst over the thick oaken door and dealt death around and in front of it. The other was wounded, too, but much less seriously; he had been flung down by his companion, and the shock of the fall, more than his wound, had stunned him. Mme. Cléry dragged them in under the shelter of the porte‐cochère, and proposed laying them on the floor of the lodge. But the concierge had no mind to take in a dead and a dying man, and vowed she would not have her lodge turned into a coffin. The dispute was waxing warm, Mme. Cléry threatening muscular argument, when Aline made her appearance. Her training in the Ambulance stood her in good stead now.
“Poor fellow! He will give no more trouble to any one,” she said, after feeling the pulse of the first, and laying her hand for a moment on his heart; “bring a cloth, and cover his face; he must lie here till he can be removed.”
The concierge obeyed her. They composed the features, and laid the body under cover of the gateway.
Aline then examined the other. His arm was badly wounded. While she was still probing the wound, the man opened his eyes, stared round him for a moment with a speculative gaze of returning consciousness, made a spasmodic effort to rise, but fell back at once. “You are wounded—not severely, I hope,” said Aline; “but you must not attempt to move till we have dressed your arm.”
She despatched Mme. Cléry for the box containing her ambulance appliances, lint, bandages, etc., and then, with an expertness that would have done credit to a medical student, she washed and dressed the shattered limb, while Mme. de Chanoir watched the operation in shuddering excitement through the glass door at the foot of the stairs. What to do next was the puzzle. The concierge resolutely refused to let him into her lodge; there was no knowing who or what he was, and she was a lone woman, and had no mind to compromise herself by taking in bad characters. The poor fellow was so much exhausted from loss of blood that he certainly could not help himself, and it would have been cruel to leave him down in the courtyard, where his unfortunate comrade was lying dead within sight of him. Aline saw there was nothing for it but to take him up to their own apartment. How to get him there was the difficulty. He looked about six feet long, and might have weighed any number of stone. She and Mme. Cléry could never succeed in carrying him. He had not spoken while she was dressing his arm, but lay so still with his eyes closed that they thought he had fainted.
“We must carry him,” said Aline in a determined voice, and beckoned the concierge to come and help.
But before proceeding to the gigantic enterprise, Mme. Cléry poured out a tumbler of wine, which she had had the wit to bring down with the lint‐ box, and held it to the sufferer’s lips, while Aline supported his head against her knee. He drank it with avidity, and the draught seemed to revive him instantaneously; he sat up leaning on his right arm.
“We are going to carry you up‐stairs, mon petit,” said Mme. Cléry, patting him on the shoulder with the patronizing manner an amazon might have assumed towards a dwarf.
“You carry me!” said the young man, measuring the short, trim figure of the charwoman with a sceptical twinkle in his eyes: they were dark‐gray eyes, particularly clear, and piercing.
“Me and Mlle. Aline,” said Mme. Cléry, in a tone that testified against the supercilious way in which her measure was being taken.
Aline was behind him. He turned to look at her with a jest on his lips, but, changing his mind apparently, he bowed; then, with a resolute effort, he bent forward, and, before either she or Mme. Cléry could interfere, he was on his feet. It was well, however, they were both within reach of him, for he staggered, and must have fallen but for their prompt assistance.
“La!” said Mme. Cléry, “what it is to be proud! Lean on Mlle. Aline and me, and try and get up‐stairs without breaking your neck.”
“It is the fortune of war,” said the gentleman laughing, and accepting the shoulder that Aline turned towards him.
They accomplished the ascent in safety, and then, in spite of his assertion that he was all right now, Mme. de Chanoir insisted on their guest lying down on her sofa while the charwoman prepared some food for him. But safety, in truth, was nowhere. The fighting grew brisker from minute to minute. The troops were in possession of the neighboring streets; they had taken the Federals in the rear, and were mowing them down like corn. The struggle could not last much longer, but it was desperate, and the loss of life, already appalling, must be still greater before it ended. The stranger who had introduced himself so unexpectedly to No. 13 had formed one of the party of order, he told his good Samaritans, who had gone unarmed, with a flag of truce, to the Federals in the Rue de la Paix; he had seen the ghastly butchery that followed, and only escaped as if by miracle himself; he had fought as a mobile against the Prussians, and received a sabre‐cut in the head, which had kept him in the hospital for weeks; he had, of course, refused to join the Federals, and it was at the risk of his life that he showed himself abroad in Paris; just now he had been making an attempt to join the troops, when that shell burst, and stopped him in his venturesome career. All day and all night the four inmates of the little entresol waited and watched in breathless anxiety for the close of the battle that was raging around them. It never flagged for an instant, and as it went on the noise grew louder and more bewildering, the tocsin rang from every belfry in the city, the drum beat to arms in every direction, the chassepots hissed, the cannon boomed, and yells and shrieks of fratricidal murder filled the air, mingling with the smell and smoke of blood and powder. It was a night that drove hundreds mad who lived through it. Yet the worst was still to come. Late the next afternoon, Aline, who was constantly at the window, peeping from behind the mattress stuffed into it to protect them from the shells, thought she discovered something in the atmosphere indicative of a change of some sort. She said nothing, but slipped out of the room, and ran up to a bull’s‐eye at the top of the house that served as a sort of observatory to those who had the courage of their curiosity, as the French put it, and ventured their heads for a moment to the mercy of the missiles flying amongst the chimney‐pots. It was an awful sight that met her. A fire was raging close to the house. Where it began and ended it was impossible to say, but clearly it was of immense magnitude, and blazed with a fury that threatened to spread the flames far and wide. She stood rooted to the spot, literally paralyzed with horror. Were they to be burnt to death, after living through such miseries, and escaping death in so many shapes? Yet how could they escape it? There were barricades on every side of them; if they were not shot down like dogs, which was the most likely event, they would never be allowed to pass. All this rushed through her mind as she gazed in blank despair out of the little bull’s‐eye, that embraced the whole area of the Rue Royale and the adjacent streets. As yet, there was a space between the fire and No. 13. Mercifully, there was no wind, and she saw by the swaying of the flames that they drew rather towards the Madeleine than in the direction of the Rue de Rivoli. Flight was a forlorn hope, but still they must try it. She turned abruptly from the window, and was crossing the room, when a loud crash made her heart leap. She looked back. The roof of another house, one nearer to No. 13, had fallen in, and the flames, leaping through like rattlesnakes out of a bag, sprang at the sky, writhing and hissing as they licked it with their long red tongues.
“O God, have pity on us!”
Aline fell on her knees for one moment, and then hurried down to the salon.
“We must leave this at once,” she said, speaking calmly, but with white lips; “the street is on fire.”
M. Varlay, citoyen Varlay, as he gave his name, started to his feet, and, pulling the mattress from the window, looked out. He saw the flames above the house‐top.
“Let us go, with the help of God!” he exclaimed. “We must make for the Rue de Rivoli!”
Mme. de Chanoir and the charwoman, as soon as they caught sight of the fire, shrieked in chorus, and made a headlong rush at the stairs.
“You must be quiet, madame!” cried M. Varlay in a tone that arrested both the women; “if we lose our presence of mind, we had better stay where we are. Have you any valuables, papers or money, that you can take in your pocket?” he said, turning to Aline. She alone had not lost her head.
Yes; there were a few letters of her parents, and some trinkets, valuable only as souvenirs, which she had had the forethought to put together. She took them quickly, and the four went down the stairs. There was no one in the lodge. The concierge had taken refuge in her cellar, and her husband was supposed to be saving France somewhere else. Mme. Cléry pulled the string, and the little band sallied forth into the street. The air was so thick they could hardly see their way, except for the fiery forks of flame that shot up successively through the fog, illuminating dark spots with a momentary lurid brightness, while now and then the crash of a roof or a heavy beam was followed by a pillar of sparks that went rattling up into the sky like a fountain of rockets. The Babel of drums, and bells, and artillery added to the confusion of the scene as the fugitives hurried on singly under the shadow of the houses. They fared safely out of the Rue Royale and turned to the left. The Tuileries was enveloped in smoke, but the flames were nearly spent, only here and there a tongue of fire crept out of a crevice, licked the wall, twisted and twirled, and drew in again. A crowd was gathered under the portico of the Rue de Rivoli, watching the last throes of the conflagration, and discussing many questions in excited tones. Our travellers pushed on, and came unmolested to the corner of the Rue St. Florentine, where a sentry levelled his bayonet before them, and cried “Halt!” Mme. de Chanoir, who walked first, answered by a scream. Citoyen Varlay, laying his hand on her shoulder, drew her quickly behind him. “Stand here while I speak to him,” he said, and he advanced to parley with the Federal, at the same time putting his hand into his pocket. They had not exchanged half a dozen words when the sentinel shouldered his chassepot, and said:
“Quick, then, pass along!”
Varlay stood for the women to pass first. Mme. de Chanoir and the charwoman rushed on, but no sooner had they stepped into the street than, clasping their hands, they fell upon their knees with a cry of agonized terror. The sight that met them was indeed enough to make a brave heart quail. To the left, extending right across the street, rose a barricade, a fortress rather, surmounted at either end by two warriors of the Commune, bending over a cannon as if in the very act of firing; in the centre two amazon pétroleuses stood with chassepots slung en baudelière and red rags in their hands that they waved aloft proudly like women who felt that the eyes of Europe were upon them; the intermediate space on either side of them was filled up with soldiers planted singly or in groups, and poséd in the attitudes of men whom forty centuries look down upon. Just as Mme. de Chanoir and her bonne came in front of the terrible mise‐en‐ scêne, and before they could go backward or forward, the word Fire! rang out from the fortress, two matches flashed in the hands of the gunners, and the women dropped to the ground with a shriek that would have waked the dead.
“What’s the matter now?” cried the sentinel.
“They are going to fire!”
“Imbeciles! No, they are going to be photographed!”(112)
And so they were. A photographic battery was set up against the railings opposite. Aline and citoyen Varlay seized the two half‐fainting women by the arm, and dragged them across and out of the range of the formidable tableau vivant. Meanwhile, the fire was gaining on No. 13. The house three doors down from it was flambée. It had been deserted the day before by all its occupants, save one family composed of a husband and wife, who had obstinately refused to believe in the danger till it was too late to evade it. They were friends of M. Dalibouze’s and the professor turned in to see them this morning on his way to No. 13. “The situation was a difficult one,” he said; “it were foolhardy to defy it, and the time was come when good citizens should save themselves.” He convinced M. and Mme. X—— that this was the only reasonable thing to do. So casting a last look at their belongings, they sallied forth from their home accompanied by their servant, an ex‐sapeur, too old for military service, but as hale and hearty as a youth of twenty. The professor had got in by a backway from the Faubourg St. Honoré, and thither he led his friends now; but, though less than fifteen minutes had elapsed since he had entered, the passage was already blocked: part of the wall had fallen and stopped it up. There was nothing for it but to go boldly out by the front door, and trust to Providence. But they reckoned without the pétroleuses. Those zealous daughters of the Commune, braving the shot, and the shell, and the vengeful flames of their own creation, sped from door to door, pouring the terrible fluid into holes and corners, through the gratings of cellars, under the doors, through the chinks of the windows, everywhere, dancing, and singing, and laughing all the time like tigers in human shape—tigers gone mad with fire and blood. When the sapeur opened the door, he beheld a group of them on the trottoir; one was rolling a barrel of petroleum on to the next house, another was steeping rags in a barrel already half empty, and handing them as fast as she could to others, who stuffed them into appropriate places, and set a light to them; every flame that rose was hailed by a shout of demoniacal exultation. The sapeur banged the door in their faces.
“We must set to work, and cut a hole through the wall,” he said; “it’s the last chance left us.”
No sooner said than done. He knew where to lay his hands on a couple of crowbars and a pickaxe; the professor fired the contents of his chassepot at the wall, and then the three men went at it, and worked as men do when death is behind them and life before. It was an old house, built chiefly of stone and mortar, very little iron, and it yielded quickly to the hammering blows of the workmen. A breach was made—a small one, but big enough to let a man crawl through. M. X—— passed out first, and then helped out his wife. M. Dalibouze and the sapeur followed. They hurried through the next apartment. M. Dalibouze reloaded his gun; whiz! whiz! went the bullets; bang! bang! went the crowbars; down rattled the stones; another breach was made, and again they were saved. Three times they fought their way through the walls, while the fire like a lava torrent rolled after them, and then they found themselves at No. 13. M. Dalibouze’s first thought was for the little apartment on the entresol at the other side. They made for it; but as they were crossing the court a blow, or rather a succession of blows, struck the great oak door; it opened like a nut, and fell in with a crash like thunder. The burglars beheld M. Dalibouze in his National Guard costume scudding across the yard, and greeted him with howls like a troop of jackals. Whiz! went the grape‐shot. M. Dalibouze fell.
Mme. X—— and her husband had fallen back before the door gave way, and thus escaped observation. No one was left but the old sapeur.
“What sort of work is this?” he said, walking defiantly up to the men—there were five of them—“what do you mean by breaking into the houses of honest citizens?”
“You had better break out of this one if you don’t want to grill,” answered one of the ruffians; “we are going to fire it, par ordre de le Commune.”
The women had disappeared, and left their implements in the hands of the men.
“Oh! par ordre de le Commune!” echoed the sapeur; “then I’ve nothing to say; I hope they pay you well for the work?”
“Not over and above for such work as it is,” said one of the incendiaries, rolling a barrel into the concierge’s lodge.
“How much?”
“Ten francs apiece.”
“Ten francs for burning a house down! Pshaw! you’re fools for your pains!”
The sapeur shrugged his shoulders, and, turning on his heels, walked off. Suddenly, as if a bright thought struck him, he turned back, and faced them with his hands in his pockets.
“Suppose you got twenty for leaving it alone?”
“Twenty apiece?”
“Twenty apiece, every man of you!”
They stopped their work, and looked from one to another.
“Ma foi, I’d take it, and leave it alone!” said one.
“Pardie! we’ve had enough of it, and, as the citoyen says, it’s beggarly pay for the work,” said another.
“Done!” said the sapeur.(113)
He pulled out a leathern purse from his breast‐pocket, and counted out one hundred francs in five gold pieces to the five communists.
“Une poignée de main, citoyen!” said the first spokesmen. The others followed suit, and the sapeur, after heartily wringing the five rascally hands, sent them on their way rejoicing to the cabaret round the corner. This is how No. 13 was saved. No. 11 was burnt to the ground, and then the fire stopped.
But to return to Aline and her friends. They got on well till they came to the Rue d’Alger, where they were caught in a panic, men, and women, and children struggling to get out of reach of the flames, and threatening to crush each other to death in their terror. Our friends got clear of it, but, on coming out of the mélée at separate points, the sisters found they had lost each other. Mme. de Chanoir had held fast by Mme. Cléry, and was satisfied that Aline was safe under the wing of citoyen Varlay. But she was mistaken. He had indeed lifted her off the ground, holding her like a child above the heads of the crowd, and so saved her from being trampled under foot, most likely; but when he set her down, and Aline turned to speak to him, he was gone. It would have been madness to attempt to look for him in the mélée, so she determined to wait at the nearest point of shelter, and then when the crowd dispersed they would be sure to meet. She made for the door‐way of a mourning house at the corner of the Rue St. Honoré. But she had not been many minutes there when she heard a hue and cry from the Tuileries end of the street, and a troop of men and women came flying along, driving some people before them, and firing at random as they went. The sensible thing for Aline to do was, of course, to flatten herself against the wall, and stay where she was, and of course she did not do it. She saw a flock of people running, and she started from her hiding‐place, and turned and ran with them. They tore along the Rue St. Honoré till they came to the Rue Rohan; here the band broke up, and many disappeared at opposite points; but one little group unluckily kept together, and, though diminished to a third its size at the starting point, it still held in view, and gave chase to the pursuers. Mlle. de Lemaque kept with this. On they flew like hares before the hounds, till, turning the corner of the Place du Palais Royal, they were stopped by two Federals, who levelled their chassepots and bade them stand. The fugitives turned, not like hares at bay to face the hunters and die, but to rush into an open shop, and fall on their knees, and cry, “Mercy!”
The Federals were after them in a second. Instead of shooting them right off, however, they set to discussing the propriety of taking them out and standing them in regulation order, with their backs to the wall, and doing the thing in a proper business‐like manner. While this parley was going on, Aline de Lemaque cast a glance round her, and saw that her fellow‐ victims were two young lads and half a dozen women, all of them of the lower class apparently; most of them wore caps. The men who were making ready to shoot them without rhyme or reason, as if they were so many rats, were evidently of the very dregs of the Commune, and looked half‐drunk with blood or wine, or both—it was hard to say—but there was no trace of manhood left upon the faces that gave a hope that mercy had still a lurking‐place in their hearts. One of the women suddenly started to her feet. “What!” she cried, “you call yourselves men, and you are going in cold blood to shoot unarmed women and boys? Shame on you for cowards! There is not a man amongst you!”
She snapped her fingers right into their faces with an impudence that was positively sublime. The cowards were taken aback. They looked at each other, and burst out laughing.
“Sapristi! She’s right,” exclaimed one of them; “they’re not worth wasting our powder on!”
Like lightning, the women were on their feet, fraternizing with the men, embracing, shaking hands, and swearing fraternity in true communistic fashion. Mlle. de Lemaque alone stood aloof, a silent, terror‐stricken spectator of the scene.
“What have we here? Une canaille d’aristocrate, I’ll be bound! It’s written on her face,” said one of the ruffians, seizing her by the arm; “let us make away with her, comrades! It will be a good job for the Republic to rid it of one more of the lazy aristos that live by the ouvrier’s meat.” There was a lull in the kissing and hand‐shaking, and they turned to stare at Aline. Her life hung by a thread. A timid word, a guilty look, and she was lost. But the soldier’s blood rose up in her; she bethought her of her abus, and lancéd it.
“Lazy!” she cried; “I am a soldier’s daughter; my father fought for France, and left his children nothing but his sword; I work for my bread as hard as any of you!”
The effect was galvanic; they gathered around her, shouting, “Bravo! Give us your hand, citoyenne!”
And Aline gave it, and, like the statesman who thanked God he had a country to sell, she blessed him that she had a hand to give.
—Blood ran like water in the sewers of Paris for a few days, and then the troops were masters of the field, and order was restored—restored so far as to enable honest men to sleep in their beds at night.
Mme. de Chanoir was back again in the little saloon at No. 13, and diligently reading the newspaper aloud to a gentleman who was lying on the sofa near her; the générale’s spine complaint had been radically cured by the Commune, and she sat erect in a chair now like other people. The invalid’s face and head were so elaborately bandaged that it was impossible to see what either were like, while his bodily proportions disappeared altogether under a voluminous travelling‐rug. He listened for some time without comment to the political tirade which Mme. de Chanoir was reading to him, an invective against France, and her soldiers, and her generals, and the nation at large—a sweeping anathema, in fact, of everything and everybody, till he could bear it no longer, and, sitting bolt upright, he exclaimed:
“Madame, the man who wrote that article is a traitor. France is greater to‐day in her unmerited misfortunes than she was in the apotheosis of her glory; she is more sublime in her widowed grief than her ignoble foe in his barbarous successes! She is, in fact, still France. The situation is compromised for a moment, but—”
“Lâ, lâ, voyons!” broke in Mme. Cléry, putting her head in at the door, and shaking the lid of a sauce‐pan at the invalid. “How is the tisane to take effect if you will talk politics and put yourself into a rage about la situation! Mme. la Générale, make ’um keep still!”
The générale thus adjured laid down the newspaper, and gently insisted on M. Dalibouze’s resuming his horizontal position on the couch. Aline was not there; she was off at her old work at the Ambulance again. The hospitals had been replenished to overflowing by the street‐fighting of the last week of the Commune, la dénouement de la situation, as M. Dalibouze called it, and nurses were in great demand. Citoyen Varlay had not turned up since the night they had lost him in the crowd. The excitement and confusion which had reigned in the city ever since had made it difficult to set effective inquiries on foot, even if the sisters had been accurately informed regarding their quondam guest’s identity and circumstances, which they were not. All they knew of him was his appearance, his name, and his wound. This was too vague to assist much in the search. Mme. de Chanoir was sincerely sorry for it; she had been attracted at once by the frank bearing and courteous manners of the young citoyen; but his cool courage, his forgetfulness of himself for others, and the stoical contempt for bodily pain which he had displayed on the occasion of their flight, had kindled sympathy into admiration, and she spoke of him now as a hero. She spoke of him constantly at first, loudly lamenting his loss; for lost she believed him. He had, no doubt, been overpowered by the crowd; his disabled arm deprived him of half his strength, and, exhausted as he was by previous pain, and the violent effort to protect Aline in the struggle, he had probably fainted and been suffocated or crushed to death. This was the conclusion Mme. de Chanoir arrived at; but when she mentioned it to Aline, the deadly paleness that suddenly overspread the young girl’s features made her wish to recall her words, and from that out the name of the young soldier was never pronounced between the sisters.
Mme. Cléry had formed on her side an enthusiastic affection for him, and sincerely regretted his fate, but with a woman’s instinct she guessed that the one who regretted it most said least about it. She never mentioned citoyen Varlay to Aline, but made up for the self‐denial by pouring out his praises and her own grief into the sympathizing ear of the générale.
“What a pretty couple they would have made!” said the old woman one morning, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron; “he was such a fine fellow, and so merry; he only wanted the particule to make him perfect; but, after all, who knows? He may not have been as good as he looked. One can never trust those parvenus.”
A month passed. Mme. de Chanoir was alone one afternoon, when Mme. Cléry rushed into the room in a state of breathless excitement, her eyes literally dancing out of her head.
“Madame! madame! I guessed it! I was sure of it! I’m not that woman not to know a gentleman when I see him. I told madame he was! Let madame never say but I did!”
And having explained herself thus coherently between laughing and crying, she held out a card to her mistress.
Mme. de Chanoir read aloud:
LE BARON DE VARLAY, Avocat à la Cour de Cassation.
Another month elapsed, and the great door of the Madeleine was opened for a double marriage. The first bridegroom was a tall, slight man, on whose face and figure the word distingué was unmistakably stamped. The second was a plump, dapper little man, who, as he walked up the carpeted aisle of the church, seemed hardly to touch the ground, so elastic was his step; his countenance beamed, he was radiant, and it is hardly a figure of speech to say that he was buoyant with satisfaction. If he could have given utterance to his feelings, he would have said that “the situation was perfect, and absolutely nothing more could be desired.”
Mme. Cléry was present in her monumental cap, trimmed with Valenciennes lace brand‐new for the occasion, and a chintz gown with a peacock pattern on a pea‐green ground that would have lighted up a room without candles. She, too, looked the very personification of content. The first couple was all her heart could wish, and more than her wildest ambition had ever dreamed of for her favorite Aline. The second she had grown philosophically reconciled to. The marriage had one drawback, a grievous one, but the charwoman consoled herself with the reflection that Mme. de Chanoir might condone the bourgeoisie of her new name, by signing herself:
FELICITE DALIBOUZE, Née de Lemaque.