Signs Of The Times…

Signs Of The Times

In Europe, of late, meetings have been the order of the day. There have been meetings of emperors and Internationalists; of “Old Catholics” and Catholics; of church congresses and congresses to disestablish the church; of “Home‐Rulers” and Dilkites. The voluntary expatriation of the Alsace‐ Lorraine population has followed close on the heels of the violent expulsion of the Jesuits, both influenced by the same motive power; trades‐unions have called together a society of German professors, who, by dint of powerful speeches of an explosive nature, succeeded finally in showing, in a very conclusive manner, that they knew little or nothing of what they were talking about. Gambetta has found his voice again; Russia has mildly but decidedly objected to its inflammable utterances, and in the midst of all the hubbub the eyes of the world have been attracted to the strange spectacle in these days of a nation, by a sudden and spontaneous movement, turning its steps to an humble shrine of the Blessed Virgin.

As for the meeting of the emperors, we were not present at the council, and had no secret emissary concealed in the cup‐board. What was effected, or what was intended to be effected, is an utter mystery to us. We very much doubt if anything were effected at all; that is, anything real, lasting, and permanent. The composing elements were in themselves as incapable of mingling as oil and water. If people looked to permanent peace or peace for any length of time from it, we fear they will be sadly mistaken in view of what we have since seen. The effective forces of Austria are fixed at 800,000 men. The government, actuated doubtless by peaceful motives; finds it necessary to keep on hand a peace effective of 250,000; and, that this force may be in fighting order at any moment, the recruits must be kept for three years under colors. To supply this contingency, 30,000 more men are required, which draws a sum of $1,850,000 out of the national chest, a chest neither very deep nor very safe. The measure was objected to, whereupon Count Andrássy spurred them up by informing the astonished members that, notwithstanding the imperial exhibition of brotherly love at Berlin, the speeches, manœuvrings, fireworks, and the rest, he would not venture to answer for the continuance of peace even to the end of the present year. As an echo of the truth of this, Prussia has just given an order for 3,000,000 rifles of a new pattern, on the strength, doubtless, of the discharge of the French debt. Russia is increasing her already vast army steadily and surely, while France hopes by her new scheme of raising forces to show at the end of five years an active army of 715,000, and a territorial force of 720,000 men. So much for the effects of the imperial conference as regards peace.

The Internationale, true to the discordant elements of which it was composed, adjourned without effecting anything or coming to any conclusion. This was only to be expected; but we should not judge from this that it is dead, as has been too hastily done by many journals. Its life is disorder, and, if it can catch the trades‐unions, its influence would be paramount.

As for the meeting of the “Old Catholics”—we presume they call themselves “Old” Catholics as the Greeks called the furies Eumenides—it will soon have passed out of memory. We rejoice that it did occur, in order to show the “movement” in its true light. Luther himself had not half the chance which Döllinger and the rest enjoyed. The strongest of governments at their back, the whole anti‐Catholic world looking with eager eyes on this mountain in travail—parturiet; and not even the ridiculus mus is born in recompense for all this labor, storm, fuss, and anxiety. We forget; there issued a long string of resolutions, which one or two newspapers published, the generality very sensibly finding them of too great length and of too little importance to burden their leaders with them. The whole affair was utterly ridiculous even to the ménu, which, as became a solid dinner, composed for the most part of German professors with a few Episcopal waifs and strays from England and America, was in Latin, and commenced thus:

Symposium. Gustatio: Pisciculi oleo perfusi et salmones fumo siccati ad cibi appetentiam excitandam. Mensa prima, etc.

And this is the way in which the “Old Catholics” meet to found or reform a church! The effect of it all is shown in the comments of the secular press. The cleverest journals in England and America, those who expected much from it, generally express themselves to the effect that, though far from saying that the meeting was without significance, it did not succeed in erecting a platform whereon a body could stand. The fact is this: We are far from denying to the majority of the men there assembled abundance of intellect and that sort of talent that can make a fine speech or perhaps compose a readable book, but the world, if it must be changed, wants something more solid than this.

Prince Bismarck’s measures are what Strafford would call “thorough”; and he is carrying out this “thorough” policy with far greater effect than the vacillating Stuart. The latter lost his head for too much heart; the German chancellor is not likely to imitate him in that. The Jesuits had small respite. We presume they are all out of Germany by this time. How much the country at large will gain in peace, solidity, and security by their expulsion it is impossible for us to say. Oddly enough, in Prince Bismarck’s stronghold, Prussia itself, we find that the new order is not destined to run quite smoothly. The diet is dissolved because the Upper House refused to pass the country reform bill in the face of the emperor and an official intimation from the minister of the interior that if the measure were defeated the government would dissolve the diet and convoke a new one. Whether the members of the Upper House will continue the fight, and come into direct collision with the power which they so helped to make supreme, we do not know yet, but we expect not.

Meanwhile, the Jesuits have not gone out of their fatherland alone. The sympathy of the whole Catholic world has gone out with them, and its expression is gaining volume daily. Addresses of condolence and protestations against the legal violence which expelled them are rising up day after day from the hearth‐stones of the land they have quitted, as well as from lands and multitudes to whom they as individuals are utterly unknown. Perhaps the most noticeable of the many which are continually appearing in their own land is that of the society of German Catholics recently assembled at Cologne, which passed a series of resolutions protesting strongly:

1. Against the assertion that the Catholic population is indifferent to the interests of fatherland, and hostile to the empire. 2. Against the laic laws which would control the affairs of the churches. 3. Against the state direction of the schools. 4. Against the expulsion of the Jesuits. 5. Against the encroachment of the state on the jurisdiction of the bishops. 6. Against the suppression of the temporal power of the Pope.

Such is the Catholic voice all the world over. If rulers can respect this voice, they will have no more faithful, earnest, or devoted children than the children of the Catholic Church. If they cannot respect it, they have only to expect an unfailing legal opposition until they are compelled to respect it, as Ireland, speaking in O’Connell, compelled England to do; as Germany, by lawful agitation and peaceful though unceasing and determined protest, will compel Prince Bismarck to do, until we see again restored to the country which they love and which loves them the sons who, by peaceful counsel and wise guidance, and religious instruction, will bring more glory, solid prosperity, enlightenment, and peace to the nation than a cycle of Bismarcks.

The Bishop of Ermeland still survives the terrible threats of the chancellor which have been gathering over his head in deepening thunder this long while for excommunicating heretic priests; the bolt has not yet fallen. Perhaps Jove finds himself a little puzzled how to fulminate it to a nicety. To show the justice of the Bismarck government, and how equally it deals with all classes, the Consistory of Magdeburg has quite recently decreed the excommunication of all Protestants who by mixed marriages shall educate their children as Catholics; the decree has been carried into execution at Lippspring; the case brought before the civil courts, and of course the pastor, one Schneider, who wrought the excommunication publicly and openly in the church, was supported by the just weight of the law. Now, excommunication is excommunication whether you call it Catholic or Protestant. Why, then, threaten with impeachment? Why stop the salary which the government for the country bestows in the one case, and let the other go entirely free? And yet this is all according to law!

Another anomaly according to law is displayed in the seizing of the schools by the government. We have not space here to go into the whole question, instructive though it would be, as showing the determination of this government to uproot the Catholic faith by every means in its power. But we will mention one instance. A ministerial circular accompanied the notice of the new arrangements, informing the teachers that it was desirable that their scholars should belong to no religious confraternities—of the Rosary, Blessed Virgin, and such like—and that if they persisted in belonging to them they should be dismissed. We find it necessary to endorse this statement by informing our readers that it is plain, unvarnished fact. Civil marriage is now in full sway; that is to say, it is no longer a sacrament according to law. What wonder that the German bishops assembled at Fulda gave utterance to their solemn protest, an extract of which we cull? It reads as though it had been penned in the days of Diocletian, or Julian the Apostate, or Henry VIII. But in these days, when mere human society has come to know its power, and dream that it possesses freedom, the protest jars on our ears as something out of tune, out of time, out of date altogether:

“We demand, as a right which no one can dispute to us, that the bishops, the parish priests of the cathedral churches, and the directors of souls, be only appointed in accordance with the laws of the church and the agreement existing between the church and state.

“In accordance with these laws and agreements, the Catholic people and ourselves cannot consider as legal a director of souls or a teacher of religion one who has not been so named by his bishop; and we, the Catholic people and ourselves, cannot consider as legally recognized a bishop who has not been named by the Pope.

“We claim equally for ourselves and for all Catholics the right of professing throughout Germany our holy Catholic faith in all its integrity, at all times and in all freedom, and to rest upon the principle that we are in no wise constrained to suffer within the bosom of our religious community those who do not profess the Catholic faith, and who do not submit entirely to the authority of the church.

“We consider as a violation of our church and of the rights which are guaranteed to it every attack made against the liberty of religious orders. We regard and vindicate, also, as an essential and inalienable right of the Catholic Church, the full and entire liberty which it possesses of elevating its servants in accordance with ecclesiastical laws, and we demand not only that the church exercise over the Catholic schools (primary, secondary, and higher) the influence which alone can guarantee to the Catholic people that its children shall receive in the schools a Catholic education and instruction, but we claim also for the church the freedom to found and direct in an independent manner, certain private establishments ordained for the teaching of the sciences in accordance with Catholic principles. In fine, we maintain and defend the sacred character of Christian marriage as that of a sacrament of the Catholic Church, as well as the right which the divine will has given to the church in connection with this sacrament.”

The signatures of the bishops are affixed to this document, which is addressed to all the German governments, and produced a commotion and irritation among all the national liberal journals which were unexampled. We have given this extract here in order to bring home to the minds of our readers how hard the church is driven in Germany. When the bishops and the laity combined feel themselves called upon to protest in this style, the government which for no reason whatever can give rise to such a protest—signed by the saintly chiefs of a body of 14,000,000, and endorsed in meeting after meeting by those 14,000,000 and the countless numbers of their co‐religionists outside of Germany scattered through the broad world—must be one which does not govern, but tyrannizes.

The same “thorough” policy prevailed in Alsace and Lorraine. On the very day, October 1, when the option of declaring for France or Germany arrived, all the men who remained in the countries named were enrolled in the Prussian service from that date. This, beyond what Mr. Disraeli would call a “sentimental grievance,” drove them from the country, as it must have been intended to do. Service under the power that annexed them, which they but yesterday fought against, and a service the most rigorous and exacting that exists, as it must be in order to retain its supremacy, was something that seems to have been ingeniously invented in order to drive the people out. The provinces are more than decimated; the Prussian army, if increased at all, is increased in the event of a renewed war by untrustworthy men, and a new drop of gall is thrown into the already overbitter cup which France is compelled to swallow. And yet the Provinzial Correspondenz (official) of Berlin, in view of October 1, said: “The government has not hesitated an instant in calling without delay on the inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine to serve in the German army, as the best and surest means to evoke and develop speedily among the population newly reunited to Germany the sentiment of an intimate community with the German people.”

This smacks of excess of credibility. If Bismarck wanted really to annex the provinces in heart and soul, he adopted the very surest means of emptying them in the speediest manner, and letting in the Germans, who now, sick of war and of the rumors of war, wish to emigrate in such formidable numbers. Probably the chancellor proposes using the deserted provinces as a safety‐valve for these recreant spirits. One of the most significant signs of the instability of the new empire is the desire of so many earnest workers to leave it just when it has been established in all its glory and power. But glory and power do not last long in the eyes of men who look to a peaceful life and to which side, in a popular phrase, their bread is buttered. Instead of peace, they find the service more rigorous than ever; the money which was won by the blood of their kin and countrymen going to the pockets of the generals, to carry out emperors’ fêtes, and purchase millions of rifles of a new pattern. Evidently the business of the German Empire wears a very martial look. But the artisan and clerk have fought well, and find no returns. Your German is of a logical bent, so he determines on going elsewhere, where he may live at peace, and let Bismarck look after his own empire.

In France, we have had and are having the pilgrimages to Lourdes. Not alone to Lourdes, and not alone in France, but in Belgium and Germany also there have been numerous pilgrimages to various shrines. Of course the wits of the secular journals, with a few honorable exceptions, have had a fine time of it, and have twisted the stories of the miracles of Lourdes and La Salette into every possible shape in which they might squeeze a laugh out of it. They are at great pains to show what we were long ago convinced of—that they do not know what faith means.

Mgr. Mermillod, after a residence of seven years in full enjoyment and exercise of his ecclesiastical functions, has suddenly come to be non‐ recognized by the Swiss government, or, more properly, by the Grand Council of Geneva, and his pension stopped. The Grand Council of Geneva had already expelled the Sisters of Charity and the Christian Brothers. It essays the rôle of Bismarck, and where it purposes stopping we do not yet see. But as the population of Geneva is composed of 47,000 Catholics against 43,000 Protestants, we may presume that the Grand Council of Geneva will very speedily be brought to its senses. Its miserable pension of 10,000 francs was raised to 23,000 in two days by a voluntary contribution set on foot by M. Veuillot of the Univers. The Grand Council has incurred the contempt of all rational minds, while Mgr. Mermillod is supported in his action by all his fellow‐bishops, by his Holiness, and by the Catholic world. It may be as well to remember that the Protestant party in the Swiss cantons voted, but were happily outvoted, for union with Prussia. It is not difficult to see whence the persecution of Mgr. Mermillod starts.

Gentlemen who have visited the Alhambra in London, or any one almost of the Parisian theatres, or Niblo’s in New York, are not apt to be squeamish on the score of the decent and moral in theatrical representations. Things must therefore be at a very bad pass when we find the correspondents of the London Times and the other English newspapers, in common with those of our own and the Parisian press, uniting in condemning in the most unsparing terms the pieces which are now in vogue on the boards of the Roman theatres. Cardinal Patrizi addressed an official letter to Minister Lanza on the subject. That gentleman, who is extremely active in suppressing a Catholic paper which dares to caricature his majesty’s government, sends back an answer which, divested of its diplomatic wool, is cowardly, stupid, and insulting. We have been astonished to find “religious” newspapers in this city gleeful over these representations which the good sense, if nothing more, of the secular correspondents of all journals in all countries condemns as odious, detestable, and utterly unfit to be presented in any civilized, or for that matter uncivilized, community. These journals which are religious see in them “a new means of evangelizing Italy.” Another feature in “united Italy” is the utter insecurity of life and property in Rome, Naples, and Ravenna principally, though, in fact, through the length and breadth of the land. Victor Emanuel has held the country long enough now to give some account of his stewardship. The government of the Pope and of the Bourbons, we were told, favored brigandage and every other atrocity; yet the correspondents of the London Times, the London Spectator, and by this time most of the other anti‐Catholic journals, are furnishing articles which must rather astonish the upholders of the blessings which were to flow from “Italy united.” They picture scenes of rapine and blood before which the graphic Arkansas letters of the Herald pale, while the doers of these deeds, the thieves and murderers, are “well known to the police,” in fact, on excellent terms with them, and walk about in the open day with any man’s life in their hands who dares frown on them. The government is simply afraid of them, afraid to use the only remedy now in its hands by proclaiming martial law, a proceeding which the English journals strongly advise. If such a state of things continues much longer, we fear the inevitable verdict must come to Victor Emanuel, “Now thou shalt be steward no longer.” Of his ill‐ gotten power, indeed, it may be said, “blood hath bought blood, and blows have answered blows.” People are apt to be logical; if a government robs and kills and calls it law, why should not they do the same? Italy will continue in a state of chronic anarchy until religion is restored to it; then order will follow as it is following in France to‐day.

In England, though Parliament has not been sitting, questions of moment have been rife. Mr. Miall has again raised the war‐cry against the Established Church, ably seconded by Mr. Jacob Bright. The Times and Saturday Review and other journals affect to laugh at Mr. Miall, as they and such as they laughed at the Reform Bill, the Act of Catholic Emancipation, and the disestablishment of the Irish Church. We believe Mr. Miall’s measure to be the logical sequence of the last of these measures, a fact which Mr. Disraeli in opposing it foretold. It is an anomaly—a church supported by a majority which does not believe in it. Mr. Miall’s measure is only a growth of time; in fact, it only requires the conversion of such organs as the Times and Saturday Review to bring it to pass to‐day.

As a corollary to Mr. Miall’s movement comes the annual Church Congress held this year at Leeds under the presidency of the Bishop of Ripon. This annual congress is a curious thing; it is a meeting of everybody, high and low, church and lay, to compare notes and see how the church is getting on—a very useful proceeding, no doubt, if there were only something faintly approaching unanimity among its members. As it happened, unanimity was the one thing wanting, and certain stages of the proceedings were as warm as those of the “Old Catholics” at Cologne. In fact, the account of the whole proceedings reads like an extract from The Comedy of Convocation.

New Publications.

THE HISTORY OF THE SACRED PASSION. From the Spanish of Father Luis de la Palma, of the Society of Jesus. The Translation revised and edited by Henry James Coleridge, of the same Society. London: Burns & Oates. 1872. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This is the third volume of the Quarterly Series which the Jesuit Fathers are bringing out in London. The series is beautifully got up, and we wish it every success.

The present work on the Passion has a prologue by the author, in which he sets forth the end he has had in view. The prologue is followed by a brief treatise on the method of meditation on the Passion, together with four sections suggestive of aids to the memory, the understanding, the will, and the colloquy. The whole is prefaced by the editor, from whose remarks we transcribe the following: “That he (the author) was a man of sound and deep theological learning is sufficiently proved by the work which is now presented to the English reader.... Everything he has written is of the most sterling value, and has always been very highly esteemed, especially by those who have labored in illustrating and explaining the Spiritual Exercises of S. Ignatius.... He tells us (in the prologue) that the book is designed both for simple reading and also for the purpose of furnishing matter to those who are in the habit of practising meditation and of preparing their meditation for themselves. Those who use the book for the first‐named purpose will hardly discover that it is intended also to serve the other; while those who practise meditation, and refer to these pages for matter pregnant with such considerations and suggestive of copious affections and practical resolutions, will not find it easy to exhaust the stores which are here so unostentatiously collected. It may be worth while to point out that the design of the author, that his book should thus serve the purpose of a storehouse for meditation on the Passion, accounts for the only kind of amplification which he has allowed himself. This is the paraphrastic commentary which he generally substitutes for or subjoins to the words of our blessed Lord in the various scenes of the Passion. The meaning of these sacred words is often very fully and lovingly brought out, although the narrative form in which the whole work is cast might less naturally suggest this method of treatment, so valuable to those who desire to feed on the sayings of our blessed Saviour in all their rich fertility and meaning.”

The editor expresses a fear “that the translation will be found to be, at least in parts, rugged and unpolished”; but says he has “tried, on the other hand, to make it as faithful as possible; and to that object has been well content to sacrifice smoothness of style, though the original deserves the most careful rendering in matter and in form.” “Palma belongs,” he adds, “to what I believe is the best age of Spanish religious literature—the age of Louis of Grenada, John of Avila, Louis of Leon, S. Teresa; S. John of the Cross, Louis da Ponte, and other famous writers. In point of style he is, perhaps, not equal to them; but he shares with many of these writers the characteristic of masculine common sense, theological culture alike exquisite and solid, and the tenderest and simplest piety. Happily, these are qualities which do not easily evaporate in a translation.”

He then goes on to say that he has “thought it better not to attempt in any way to edit Father Palma as to points on which he would perhaps write differently were he living in the present century.” We quite agree with his decision; and shall here close our notice of the book, since, after what we have borrowed from the preface, any comments of our own would be superfluous.

ALL‐HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY, AND OTHER STORIES. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.

This book, containing three tales, All‐Hallow Eve, Unconvicted, and Jenifer’s Prayer, while it will doubtless afford much amusement to many readers during the long winter evenings, will, we trust, have other and more decided effects. By contrast, it shows that fiction of the very highest order may be successfully written without the extraneous aid of bad taste and more than doubtful morality, and by example it will encourage our aspiring writers who, now overawed by the shadow of departed genius, are unwilling or afraid to risk their reputations in endeavoring to rival the efforts of those who formerly delighted and instructed us by their compositions. When the Star of the North, Scott, set, it was feared that this species of literature had suffered an irreparable loss; but soon a host of writers sprang up in England, Ireland, and, we may say, America, who not only compensated for the loss, but more than repaid us for the decadence of the historico‐romantic school. When those in turn disappeared, it was confidently predicted that the present generation, barren of imagination and powers of observation and description, could not produce anything equal to what adorned the pages of men like Griffin, Dickens, and Hawthorne. Daily experience teaches us that this was a fallacy. New buds of promise are constantly springing up around us which need but the encouraging voice of the press and the smiles of a discriminating public patronage to warm into full‐blown vigor and loveliness.

The three tales before us are an earnest of this. The story entitled All‐ Hallow Eve, the first in this collection, as it is, we think, the first in merit, is a tale of singular beauty, power and truthfulness. In construction artistic without the appearance of art, in verisimilitude it is all that would be required by the most orthodox French dramatist. The characters are few and clearly defined, the plot simple, the scene scarcely changes, the time from beginning to end is short, and the dénoûment, though tragic, offends neither our sensibilities nor our sense of justice. Ned Cavana and Michael Murdock are two aged well‐to‐do Ulster farmers whose lands lie contiguous. The former has a daughter Winifred or Winny, and the latter a son Thomas; and the natural desire of the fond parents is to form a matrimonial alliance between their children, and thus unite the families and the farms. Tom Murdock is handsome, attractive, cunning, mercenary, and unscrupulous, while Winny, who is limned with more than a painter’s art, adds to her natural graces a noble heart and keen perception. Edmond Lennon, a young peasant rich in everything but money, falls in love with her, and, besides encountering the secret or open hostility of the Murdocks, he finds an almost insurmountable barrier in the caste pride of the father of his lady‐love. Aided, however, by the gentle and astute Winny, he partially succeeds in overcoming this difficulty, when the machinations of his rival are employed against him, and the result is—but we will not destroy the pleasure of our fair and necessarily curious readers by unfolding the catastrophe. The contrasts of character of the two old men, each in his way aiming at the best, and also between the suitors, are excellently drawn; the interludes, such as the All‐Hallow Eve festival and the “hurling” match, are accurate and lifelike, and the bits of pathos which here and there dot the course of the story are so touching in their very simplicity that we venture to say many an eye unused to the melting mood will be none the less moistened on their perusal. The style adopted by the author is easy and familiar, a little too much so, we imagine, to suit the tastes of the more exacting reader; and herein lies the only defect, if it can be called one, that we can perceive in this story.

Unconvicted; or, Old Thorneley’s Heirs, is a tale of an altogether different character, illustrating what may be called a more advanced state of civilization. The scene is laid in London, and the principal personages occupy a high social position. It is a story of suffering and affection, of deep, dark, and unruly passion, and undying love and friendship. It would be vain to attempt to epitomize the plot, which is woven so closely and so dexterously that our interest in the actors is kept constantly on the qui vive, and it is only at the very last chapter that we are relieved from all anxiety on their account. The tale opens with the death of old Gilbert Thorneley, it is supposed by poison, and the discovery of his murderer forms the principal theme of the entire narrative. This involves a great deal of legal discussion and analysis, and, for the first time in the history of fiction, as far as our knowledge goes, we have a clear and accurate description of the niceties, quibbles, and profundity of English law. Though more curious and instructive than amusing, this does not, however detract from the interest of the novel as such, but rather acts as an offset to the numerous scenes of connubial and filial affection with which it is replete. The moral is of course unexceptionable and easily drawn.

Jennifer’s Prayer, a shorter but no less meritorious story of English life, completes the volume, which, appearing at this season when good books become more a necessity than a luxury in the household, will no doubt be warmly welcomed by those who, from taste or inclination, prefer the attractions of the novel to the more serious study of science and history.

THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY ALMANAC FOR THE UNITED STATES, FOR THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1873, calculated for different parallels of latitude, and adapted for use throughout the country. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

There are something over five million Catholics in the United States, representing over five hundred thousand families. This little Catholic Family Almanac, then, should have a circulation of five hundred thousand. If it has not, the fault is not with the Publication Society, but in the Catholics themselves neglecting to diffuse it each in his own circle. A few years ago such a little annual would have been regarded as an impossibility. Beautiful in typography, with woodcut illustrations which in design and execution rival those of any work issued in the country, it is something that a Catholic can view with pride, and can never blush to open before any one. This is merely taking it at its mechanical value. Its scope is to give the yearly calendar of the church with what is locally interesting to us as Catholics in America, or associated with the trials and triumphs of the church in that Old World to which by some degrees more or less we must all trace our origin.

In this year’s little volume, we find portraits of various ages, with original sketches, telling us of great prelates among ourselves, Archbishop Spalding and Bishop McGill, representative men who knew the necessity of diffusing information among our people; bishops of the last generation like Milner, whose works are familiar to all, yet whose counterfeit presentment few have ever met; or Bishop Doyle, J.K.L., whom Ireland can never forget; or like De Haro, who extended his kindness to American Catholics in their early struggles; or like the illustrious Hughes, whose large mind gave us a national life and position. The Venerable Gregory Lopez will be new to many, great as was his fame in Mexico. Crespel represents the French pioneer clergy at the frontiers in colonial times—a man who saw rough life by sea and land in his missionary career. Father Mathew needs no comment. The likeness is speaking and fine. What part Catholics bore in the days of the Revolution we see in the sketch of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, illustrated with a portrait and a view of the old mansion. With his cousin, a priest, he was laboring to make our cause continental before the Declaration of Independence was debated in Congress.

Mrs. Seton, as the lady of wealth and influence in New York society, while Washington as President resided there, shows the wonderful hand of Providence. Who that saw that young wife then could have said that she would be the foundress of a Catholic sisterhood, and not be deemed insane? Mother Julia, foundress of the Sisters of Notre Dame, whom some people may have heard of, and whose schools in this country alone contain sixty thousand pupils.

Next comes the Venerable de la Salle, founder of the Christian Brothers, whose pupils in our land, one might say, “no man can number for multitude.” The portrait and sketch of this servant of God will be read in thousands of American families which owe the Christian training of their boys to his devoted community of Brothers; and, happily in the same work, we have a portrait and sketch of the brilliant Gerald Griffin, who closed his days as a Christian Brother.

The view of old S. Mary’s, the cradle of Maryland, the Catholic settlement founded by the Ark and Dove, is alone worth all the Almanac costs. And this is but a portion of its contents. We have a stirring incident of the early missions, the Rock of Cashel, the Church of Icolmkill, the Cathedrals of Sienna and Chartres.

Every Catholic of means should feel it a bounden duty to order a number of copies of this Almanac, and distribute them among the families less likely to hear of its merits. In this way much is yet to be done in the diffusion of popular Catholic literature. Our laity have to feel that there is an apostolate incumbent upon them. Fas est et ab hoste doceri.

TRADITION. Principally with reference to Mythology and the Law of Nations. By Lord Arundell of Wardour. London: Burns, Oates & Co. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This is a work in which the chronologies, mythologies, and fragmentary traditions of many nations are gathered together and made to do service in the cause of Revelation.

The opponents of revealed truth not unfrequently assume this department of knowledge to be their exclusive possession—they have been foremost in working this mine, all it contains is theirs, and must be made to sustain their theories. Lord Arundell’s book shows how utterly groundless is this assumption. Here we have facts and figures, arguments and inferences, taken from their own writings, which go to establish the truthfulness of the sacred Scriptures from the very standpoint whence it has been sought to convict them of falsehood. The first chapter in Genesis is a key to every cosmogony. The rudest code of barbaric laws bears some impress of the Almighty Finger of Sinai. Traditions, however distant and vague, point in one general direction. These facts have long since been established. Lord Arundell proves them anew, and brings forth much new matter in his proofs. Indeed, while in many books we often have occasion to note the absence of data and ideas, this, we may say, is crowded with both.

We doubt not that this book will forward greatly the interests of truth, and thus the zeal and devotion of its noble author will be fully requited.

GOD AND MAN. Conferences delivered at Notre Dame in Paris. By the Rev. Père Lacordaire, of the Order of Friar‐Preachers. Translated from the French by a Tertiary of the same Order. London: Rivingtons. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

The translator has already given us two volumes of the great Dominican’s Conferences, and promises more in the same readable form. Persons as yet unacquainted with Lacordaire will find his papers kindle their enthusiasm beyond, perhaps, those of any other author—that is, if they can at all appreciate the originality of his argument, together with his giant grasp of thought and diction. And especially do we commend these conferences to earnest thinkers outside the church, with whom the supernatural is the question of questions.

Indebted as we are to the translator, he must not think us hypercritical if we complain of bad punctuation, a comma being sometimes found where a colon or even a full stop ought to be; or if we take leave to remind him that, to render French idiomatically, it will not do to preserve the sudden changes of tense which are forcible in that language, as in Latin, but sound very strangely in English.

THE HYMNARY, WITH TUNES: A Collection of Music for Sunday‐Schools. By S. Lasar. New York and Chicago: Biglow & Main.

We could recommend this hymn‐book to Catholic schools, and, on account of its intrinsic worth, would have been glad to do so, if the compiler had excluded the few hymns, of no special merit in themselves or in the tunes adapted to them, which are anti‐Catholic in doctrine. Poison is dangerous, and we cannot offer it even in the smallest quantities to our children.

THE ISSUES OF AMERICAN POLITICS. By Orrin Skinner, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1873.

Attracted by the title of this book, the fact of its dedication to a distinguished citizen of New York, and by its comprehensive table of contents, we took it up and read it from cover to cover. In all candor, we must say a more confused, ungrammatical, and shallower book it has seldom fallen to our lot to peruse; and why any respectable publishing house should have been induced to bring it out in such good style, or in any form at all, passes our comprehension. To grapple with the great issues of our American politics, to state each leading question clearly and fairly, and to draw deductions therefrom that will stand the test of justice and reason is a task requiring infinitely more experience, judicial ability, and knowledge of our language than the author displays or evidently ever will possess. Judging from this production, Mr. Skinner has not the faintest conception of the principles upon which rests the framework of our government. Though a lawyer, he is sadly ignorant of law as a science; and, though ambitious of authorship, he seems unable to write a paragraph intelligibly. For instance, take the following, snatched at random:

“The deduction from this criticism constitutes, of course, an advocacy of intelligent suffrage. The plea is here urged that an unrestricted suffrage is its own incentive to the education of those who exercise it. The assertion betrays an unpardonable ignorance of one of the most prominent characteristics of human nature. Frail humanity is so constituted that, when it has presented to it two ways of effecting its purposes, one with effort and the other without, it invariably chooses the latter. Equality as a fundamental element of republican institutions is also urged, Let such a sciolist read his conviction in the quotations from Burke already cited.”

It were, however, useless to further attempt to criticise this most pretentious and least readable of books, and the best wish we can afford the author, and one that we have no doubt will be gratified, is that it will be read by few and soon forgotten.

A MANUAL OF AMERICAN LITERATURE: A Text‐Book for Schools and Colleges. By John S. Hart, LL.D. Philadelphia: Eldridge & Bro. 1873.

Mr. Hart has gathered considerable fresh material on American literature in this volume. There is still much which he has omitted. With the same industry and care which he has already bestowed on this manual, he may render it complete. There is a personality in some of his remarks which is uncalled for. In spite of these defects, this is the best work of the kind with which we are acquainted.

THE MARBLE PROPHECY, AND OTHER POEMS. By J. G. Holland. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

When our holy church, with its venerated head, its divine sacraments and sacred ceremonies, is chosen by a writer of merit as the object upon which he feels himself moved to pour forth his scathing abuse or stinging ridicule, we bear his ponderous strokes or parry his keen thrusts as best we may, confessing to the pardonable weakness of feeling complimented at being called to the lists by an adversary of some strength of arm or sharpness of weapon; but, when one from the common crowd of chance‐ assembled knights, like our quondam Timothy Titcomb, presumes unchallenged to invite the attention of that respectable audience—the American public—to his little tilt against the giant of centuries, and, in his overeagerness to take a share in the fray, disports himself upon such a sorry steed as the “Marble Prophecy,” laden with “other poems” as a makeweight, we at once look about us to see if we have not a serviceable cane at hand for the use of the same discriminating public, et voila!

ROUNDABOUT RAMBLES IN LANDS OF FACT AND FANCY. By Frank R. Stockton. 1 vol. small 4to. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

This is an instructive work, compiled with much judgment and good taste from various authors, and is beautifully illustrated, making it a very desirable holiday present for the young folk.

NIAGARA: Its History and Geology, Incidents and Poetry. With illustrations. By George W. Holley. New York: Sheldon & Co. 1872.

This is something more than a mere Murray, or guide‐book, at the same time that it serves as a valuable reference to the intelligent tourist. Besides some historical and topographical descriptions, for which he draws on the works of Shea, Parkman, Marshall, the Relations of the Early Jesuit Missionaries, and State Documents, in addition to his own observations, he indulges in some geological speculations which will attract the attention of scientific readers. The whole is interspersed with anecdotes, incidents, and poetical scraps which will serve to relieve the tedium of travel, and hotel life.

A HIDDEN LIFE, AND OTHER POEMS. By George Macdonald, LL.D., Author of “Within and Without,” “Wilfred Cumbermede,” etc. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1872.

There is true poetry in this volume. The author possesses, in our judgment, powers of a high order. His mind, too, is of a deeply religious cast; and we wonder how he can remain a Protestant after his struggles with doubt on the one hand, as shown in the poem of “The Disciple,” and his attractions to Catholicity on the other, as evinced especially in his poem on “The Gospel Woman,” and most in the opening one, “The Mother Mary.” But then he has a laudatory sonnet “To Garibaldi.”

The “Catholic Publication Society” has in press, and will publish simultaneously with its appearance in England, from advance sheets furnished by the author, a new work, entitled, My Clerical Friends, by the author of The Comedy of Convocation. This will be the only authorized edition published in this country.

Books and Pamphlets Received.

From KREUZER BROTHERS, Baltimore: The Catholic Priest. By Michael Müller, C.SS.R. 18mo, pp. 163.—The “Our Father.” By the same. 18mo, pp. 221.

From J. A. MCGEE, New York: Sister Mary Francis’ (the Nun of Kenmare) Advice to Irish Girls in America. 12mo, pp. 201.

From BURNS, OATES & CO., London: Reflections and Prayers for Holy Communion. From the French. With a preface by Archbishop Manning. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.) 18mo, pp. xii., 498.

From R. WASHBURNE, London: A Dogmatic Catechism. From the Italian of Frassinetti. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.) 18mo, pp. xix., 244.

From JAMES DUFFY, Dublin: Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects. By Henry Edward Manning, D.D. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.) pp. viii., 456.

From GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, New York: The Moral of Accidents, and other Discourses. By the late Thomas T. Lynch. 12mo, pp. xviii., 415.

From T. & T. CLARK, Edinburgh, and SCRIBNER, WELFORD & ARMSTRONG, New York: Biblical Commentary on the Books of the Kings. By C. F. Keil. 8vo, pp. viii., 523—Sermons from 1828 to 1860. By the late Wm. Cunningham, D.D. 8vo, pp. xxxvi, 416.—The Old Catholic Church. By W. D. Killen, D.D. 8vo, pp. xx., 411.—Biblical Commentary on the Book of Psalms. By F. Deleutzsch, D.D. Vol. III. 8vo, pp. 420.

From HOLT & WILLIAMS, New York: Fly Leaves by C. S. C. 12mo, pp. vi., 233.

From the AUTHOR: Key to the Massoretic Notes, Titles, and Index generally found in the margin of the Hebrew Bible. Translated from the Latin of A. Hahn. With many additions and corrections. By Alex. Merowitz, A.M., Professor of the Hebrew language and literature in the University of New York. New York: J. Wiley & Son. 8vo, paper, pp. 22.

From ELDREDGE & BROTHER, Philadelphia: A French Verb Book. By E. Lagarde, A.M. 12mo, pp. 130.

From P. O’SHEA, New York: Month of the Holy Rosary. By Rev. P. M. Chery, O.P. 18mo, pp. iv., 200—The Scapular of Mount Carmel. By Rev. P. Tissot, S.J. 24mo, pp. 105.

From the AUTHOR: The Irish Republic. A Historical Memoir of Ireland and her Oppressors. By P. Cudmore, Counsellor‐at‐Law. St. Paul: Pioneer Printing Company, 1871.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XVI., NO. 94.—JANUARY, 1873

A Son Of The Crusaders.

... “On his breast a bloodie crosse he bore, The deare remembrance of his dying Lord, For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore, And dead, as living, ever him ador’d: Upon his shield the like was also scor’d. For soveraine hope which in his helpe he had, Right faithful true he was in deede and word.”—SPENSER.

One day in the month of November, 1833, a stranger descended from the lumbering Schnellpost at the little town of Marburg (Electoral Hesse), on the pleasant banks of the Lahn. Looking around him, he discovered but a single object of interest—the old cathedral of the place, a noble Gothic edifice, which, although stripped and cold in its modern dedication to the Lutheran service, still preserved the salient features of its inalienable beauty and majesty of form.

The traveller, a young man of twenty‐three, a Catholic, and an enthusiast in his intelligent and cultivated admiration of the grand architecture of his church, recognized in the building a monument celebrated at once for its pure and perfect beauty, and the first in Germany in which the pointed arch prevailed over the round in the great renovation of art in the XIIIth century.

Contrary to Lutheran observance, the church happened on that day to be open, in compliance with a traditional custom, for the cathedral bore the name of S. Elizabeth, and this was S. Elizabeth’s Day. The stranger entered. There was no religious service. There were no worshippers, and children were at play among the old tombs. He wandered through the vast and desolate aisles, which not even the devastation and neglect of centuries had robbed of their marvellous elegance. Naked altars from which no ministering hand now wiped the dust, pillars, defaced statues, nearly obliterated paintings, broken and defaced wood carvings, successively struck his eye and attracted his attention. All these remains of Christian art, even in their ruin telling the story of their origin in days of fresh and fervent faith, appeared also to picture in a certain sequence the events of some devout life. Here was the statue of a young woman in the dress of a widow; further on, in painting, a frightened girl showing to a crowned warrior her robe filled with roses; yet further, these two, the young woman and the warrior, tearing themselves in anguish from a parting embrace. Again, the lady is seen stretched on her bed of death amidst weeping attendants, and, later, an emperor lays his crown on her freshly exhumed coffin.

It was explained to the traveller that these pictured incidents were events in the life of S. Elizabeth, queen of that country, who, that very day six hundred years ago, had died in Marburg and lay buried in the church. A silver shrine, richly sculptured, was shown to him. It had once enclosed the relics of the saint, but one of her descendants, turned Protestant, had torn them from it, and scattered them to the winds. The stone steps approaching the shrine were deeply hollowed by the countless pilgrims who, more than three centuries agone, had come here to kneel in prayer. “Alas!” thought the stranger, “the faith which left its impress on the cold stone has left none upon human hearts!”

He desired to know more of the saintly patroness of Marburg’s cathedral, and leaving the church sought out a bookseller, and asked for a life of S. Elizabeth. The man stared at him, bethought himself a moment, and then went up into a garret, from which he presently emerged with a dust‐covered pamphlet. “Here it is,” he said, “the only copy I have: no one ever asked for it before.”

The traveller resumed his journey, reading his pamphlet to beguile the tedium of his way. Although written by a Protestant in a cold, unsympathizing, matter‐of‐fact way, the essential charm of its mere record of youthful self‐devotion laid a powerful spell upon him. His artistic enthusiasm, his heart, his piety, were all touched and aroused. Just emerging in sorrow from one of the most trying ordeals of the battle of life, with repelled longings and disappointed hopes, his pent‐up youthful energies were now seeking some outlet for escape, some fresh field of action. Uncertain what this field, this outlet, might be, he had vowed that, with the choice before him of several different objects to pursue, he would decide for that which was the most Catholic. He had found it. “To S. Elizabeth he would,” in his own words, “sacrifice his fatigue and his hopes.” He would write her life, and strive to place on record its touching story—at once a tender love‐legend, a page of mediæval romance, and the hallowed tradition of a saintly career. At the first stopping‐ place he left the diligence, and, taking a return carriage, went immediately back to Marburg.

This traveller, this young stranger, was Charles, Count de Montalembert, peer of France. His sudden impulse, his enthusiastic vow, were not as words written in water. To what would at this day seem to many an inconsiderate, quixotic rashness, succeeded the deliberate realization of an undertaking full of labor and difficulty. He ransacked libraries, sought out chronicles, legends, and popular traditions, read old books and long‐forgotten manuscripts, and travelled far and wide throughout Germany, wherever a locality offered the attraction of the slightest association with the name of S. Elizabeth. The charm and fascination of his theme grew upon him with every additional fact he learned regarding her. Beginning at the famous old castle of Wartburg, where Elizabeth came a child, the daughter of a race of kings, from distant Hungary, he made a veritable pilgrimage, taking for his route the itinerary of his heroine’s life—to Kreuzburg; to Reinhartsbrünn, where, a young wife and mother of twenty, she parted in anguish from her husband, a crusader setting out for Palestine; to Bamberg, where she was driven by persecution; to Andechs, to Erfurth, and finally to Marburg, “whither,” as he says, “he returned to pray by her desecrated tomb, and to gather with pain and difficulty some remembrance of her from the mouths of a people who have renounced with the faith of their fathers the regard due to their benefactress.”

Bow down your heads, O generation of stockbrokers and speculators in provisions and railway shares, to the memory of this Montalembert, who, in the flower of his youthful manhood, for years went up and down the world with an idea in his head and heart!

But this book, this life of S. Elizabeth. you object, was, after all, a mere pious legend of dubious trustworthiness? On the contrary, it was a work of the highest value, even judged by the severest canons of historical criticism. Its introduction alone is sufficient to make the work classic. Sainte‐Beuve, high academic and critical authority, calls it majestic,(186) and reviewers of all nations have contributed their verdicts of approval.

This was Montalembert’s first literary production—a success, as it deserved to be, worthy forerunner of his yet greater work, The Monks of the West, and the first‐fruit of a splendid literary and oratorical career, whose main inspiration was always drawn from the sources of Catholic truth and Catholic faith.

Montalembert died in March, 1870, leaving a name and a reputation which for all time to come will remain one of the proudest illustrations of France.

We are fortunate in already having an admirable memoir of his life,(187) written by one of the most distinguished women of England. It cannot but be gratifying to all who cherish the memory of Montalembert that the task should have fallen into the hands of one so eminently capable as Mrs. Oliphant. Personally intimate with his family and on terms of friendship with his wife (née Comtesse de Merode), thoroughly familiar with the language, modern history, and politics of France, and the successful translator of The Monks of the West, it would have been difficult to find a writer better fitted, in knowledge and in sympathy, to record the life of Charles de Montalembert. Let us add here that, for reasons which the intelligent reader may easily divine, we are glad that the biography has been written by a Protestant. Although to a Catholic reader it would be more pleasant to read a life in which nothing could be found which is not in perfect harmony with the spirit of faith and loyalty toward the church, yet, for the public generally, the testimony of a fair and candid Protestant in respect to certain very important events in the career of Montalembert will be more free from the suspicion of bias, and therefore of more value in establishing the fact of his essential devotion to the Holy See to the end of his life.

We trust that the ladies of Sorosis and of the various wings and vanguards of the grand army of “The Rights of Women” will not take offence if we endeavor to compliment Mrs. Oliphant by saying that we especially admire the style in which her memoir is written, for a tone and quality which—turn whither we may—we cannot otherwise describe than as “manly.” Making due allowance for the almost inevitable partiality of the biographer for his hero, there is a directness, a solidity, a sound common‐sense view of practical questions, and an absence of mere sentimentality, all eminently to her credit and in admirable keeping with the dignity of her subject. Mrs. Oliphant’s modesty, too, equals her ability. Referring to her translation of The Monks of the West, she tells us: “We are sorry to add, to our personal humiliation, that Montalembert was by no means so much satisfied with at least the first part of the translation. He acknowledged that the meaning was faithfully rendered; ‘but,’ he wrote, ‘I cannot admire the constant use of French or Latin words instead of your own vernacular. My Anglo‐Saxon feelings are wounded to the quick by the useless admission of the article the or a; and by such words as chagrin instead of grief, malediction instead of curse, etc.’ The proofs of the translation came back from him laden with corrections in red ink—a circumstance which communicated to them a certain additional sharpness, at least to the troubled imagination of the translator; and the present writer may be perhaps allowed here to avow in her own person that up to this present moment, when she happens to have the smallest French phrase to translate, she pauses with instinctive alarm, hastily substituting freedom for liberty when the word occurs; and will cast about in her mind, with a certain sensation of fright, how to find words for authority, corruption, intelligence, etc., in other than the French form.”

Charles Forbes René de Montalembert was born in London on the 15th of May, 1810. His father was a noble French emigré; his mother, the daughter of James Forbes, an Englishman of distinction. The first nine years of his life were spent principally in England under the immediate care and in the personal companionship of his maternal grandfather, and, dating from this period, the English language was always to him a second mother tongue. At the age of fourteen we find him at the college of S. Barbe in Paris. The fact may be discouraging to many young gentlemen of the present day now at school and in sad possession of a class of ideas too generally accepted, to the effect that men become useful and distinguished by reason of the possession of some unaided special gift rather than by study and the laborious acquisition of knowledge—we say the fact may be discouraging to them, but nevertheless it remains a fact that the young Montalembert laid the foundation of his future distinction as a man of letters, an archæologist, a great orator, a great writer, an eminent political leader, and the ornament of the Chamber of Peers, in close, unremitting, laborious application to his studies while at school. After he had completed his college course and entered society, we find him writing to a friend: “It is usual to say that youth is the time for the pleasures of society. I look upon this opinion as a complete paradox. It seems to me, on the contrary, that youth should be given up with ardor to study, or to preparation for a profession. When a young man has paid his tribute to his country; when he can appear in society crowned with the laurels of debate or of the battle‐field, or at least of universal esteem; when he feels entitled to command respect, if not admiration—then is the time to enter society with satisfaction.”

Soon there came for him the period of illusions perdues, which, commencing with the entrance into life of every intelligent and ambitious young man, accompanies him with more or less persistence to the edge of the grave. Young Montalembert spent some time in Sweden, at whose court his father was the ambassador of Charles X. On his return to France, he wrote an article upon that country which M. Guizot, the editor of the Revue Française, advised him to cut down to half its length. He complied, sent in his abbreviated article, and the editor suppressed the best portion of what remained!

About this time he met Lamartine, became intimate with Victor Hugo, “then the poet of all sweet and virtuous things,” and numbered among his friends Sainte‐Beuve, who then shared Montalembert’s religious enthusiasm and his belief that Europe was to be regenerated by the church. Ireland, too, came in for a full share of his sympathy. He wrote an article on that country which Guizot allowed to go in entire. A friend tells him that his article on Sweden is dull, and that on Ireland commonplace. “Disappointing,” writes the young author in his diary, “but better than if my friend had praised me insincerely.” O’Connell, then in the fulness of his powers and his popularity, greatly attracted him. He would go all the way to Ireland to see him. And he did. Crossing the two channels, and traversing England, he made the journey over the mountains of Kerry on horseback, with a little Irish boy for his guide. He visited O’Connell at Derrynane, prepared and anxious to discuss with him the great subjects which filled his mind. The Liberator received him kindly, and after dinner—looking at the ingenuous face of twenty before him—did what he thought precisely the proper thing to do—ushered him at once into the drawing‐room, where the young count was thrown on the tender mercies of a crowd of pretty and gay young Irish women. Encore une illusion perdue! He had crossed seas and mountains to discuss freedom, the church, English rule and Irish emancipation, with Ireland’s greatest man, who, without listening to a word from him, thrust him into another room amid a bevy of laughing girls!

After Montalembert’s return from Ireland came his intimacy with Lacordaire and Lamennais, and the joint literary enterprise of the three in the establishment of the Avenir, whose motto was “God and Liberty.” Its first number was issued Oct. 15, 1830. We will not dwell on its history, so familiar to all Catholics, except to refer to the holy war waged by it and its friends against the monopoly of education by the government. Under the law, every private school, every educational institution not licensed and regulated by the University of Paris, was absolutely forbidden. Utter irreligiousness then pervaded the colleges and schools of France. The generation which passed through those schools bears witness to their evil influences, and confirms Lacordaire’s own record, who says that he left college “with religion destroyed in his soul,” and that he, like almost all the youths of his period, “lost his faith at school.”

Montalembert’s picture of these evil influences was everywhere recognized as truthful. “Is there a single establishment of the university where a Christian child can live in the exercise of faith? Does not a contagious doubt, a cold and tenacious impiety, reign over all these young souls whom she pretends to instruct? Are they not too often either polluted, or petrified, or frozen? Is not the most flagrant, the most monstrous, the most unnatural immorality inscribed in the records of every college, and in the recollections of every child who has passed as much as eight days there?”

To test the law forbidding freedom in education, Lacordaire and Montalembert opened a free school for poor children at Paris in the Rue des Arts. They were indicted for the offence, and tried at the bar of the Chamber of Peers. The audience, as may well be imagined, was made up from the nobility and intelligence of the land. The prisoners defended their cause in person. Lacordaire, who spoke first, referred to the fact that the government had lately impeached the previous ministers by virtue of power in the charter not reduced to a special law. “If they could do it, so could I,” said the brave priest, “with this difference, that they asked blood, while I desired to give a free education to the children of the poor.” He ended by recalling to his judges the example of Socrates “in the first struggle for freedom to preach.” “In that cause célèbre by which Socrates fell,” said Lacordaire, “he was evidently culpable against the gods, and in consequence against the laws of his country. Nevertheless, posterity, both pagan and Christian, has stigmatized his judges and accusers; and of all concerned have absolved only the culprit and the executioner—the culprit, because he had failed to keep the laws of Athens only in obedience to a higher law; and the executioner, because he presented the cup to the victim with tears.”

With this proud and plain warning ringing in their ears, the judges next heard Montalembert. He was just twenty‐one, and by the recent death of his father but a few weeks in his place as a peer of France. Sainte‐Beuve saw that his youth, his ease and grace, the elegant precision of his style and diction, veiled the fact that it was a prisoner—not a peer—who spoke, and his judges were the first to forget it.

“The entire chamber listened with a surprise which was not without pleasure to the young man’s bold self‐justification. From that day M. de Montalembert, though formally condemned, was borne in the very heart of the peerage—he was its Benjamin.” The sentence was a gentle reprimand and a mild fine of a hundred francs.

The Avenir, it will be remembered, had incurred no censure from Rome. Nevertheless, it had not prospered, and it was resolved by its founders that they would appeal to the head of the church for his explicit approval. Accordingly, the publication of the paper was suspended, and its last number announced “with pomp,” as Lacordaire says, that “the purpose of its editors was to suspend it until they had gone to Rome to seek sanction and authority for its continuation.” The biographer well remarks that “neither from primitive Ireland nor romantic Poland had such an expedition set forth.” They asked the head of the church “to commit himself, to sanction a new and revolutionary movement, to bless the very banners of revolt, and acknowledge as pioneers of his army the ecclesiastical Ishmaels who had carried fire and flame everywhere during their brief career.” There could, of course, be but one result—failure. The Avenir was condemned. Lacordaire and Montalembert at once submitted to the decision. Poor de Lamennais did not, and unhappily persisted in his sad mistake. In connection with this subject, we cannot here refrain from repeating at length some reflections which, coming as they do from an intelligent Protestant, have a peculiar force and value.

They are from the pen of Montalembert’s biographer, and present so admirable, so eloquent a résumé of the question of apostasy, that we have not the heart to curtail the passage containing them by so much as the omission of a single word:

“Except at the Reformation, when the great overflow of spiritual rebellion was favored by such a combination of circumstances as has never occurred since, no man or group of men have succeeded in rebelling against Rome, and yet continued to keep up a religious character and influence. No man has been able to do it, whatever the excellence of his beginning might be, or the purity of the motives with which he started. Even in the Church of England the career of a man who separates himself from her communion is generally a painful one. He makes a commotion and excitement in the world for a time before he has fully made up his mind; and at the moment of his withdrawal he is sure of remark and notice, at all events, from certain classes. But after that brief moment he sinks flat as the spirits do in the Inferno, and the dark wave pours over him, and he is heard of no more. All that sustained and strengthened and gave him a fictitious importance as the member of a great corporation has fallen away from him. He has dropped like a stone into the water—like a foundered ship into the sea. In England, however, after all has been done, there is a sea of dissent to drop into, and though his new surroundings may please him little, yet he will come out of the giddiness of his downfall to take some comfort in them—will accustom himself by degrees to the lower social level, the different spiritual atmosphere. But he who dissents from the Church of Rome has no such refuge. The moment he steps outside her fold he finds himself in outer darkness, through which awful salutations are shrieked to him by the enemies of religion, by those whom he has avoided and condemned all his life, and with whom he can agree only on the one sole article of rebellion. If he ventures to hold up his head at all after what all his friends will call his apostasy, the best that he can hope for is to be courted by heretics, professed enemies of the church which he has been born in, and which probably he loves most dearly still, notwithstanding his disobedience. To quarrel with your home is one thing—to find its domestic laws hard, and its prejudices insupportable; but to plunge into the midst of the enemies of that home, and to hear it assailed with the virulence of ignorance—to join in gibes against your mother, and mockery of her life and motives—is a totally different matter. Yet this is almost all that a contumacious priest has to look forward to. A recent and striking example, to which we need not refer more plainly, will occur to every one who has watched the contemporary history of the Roman Catholic Church. In this case a brilliant and remarkable preacher—a man supposed the other day to be one of the most eminent and promising sons of Rome—after wavering and falling away in some points from ecclesiastical obedience, suddenly appeared in an admiring circle of gentle Anglicanism, surrounded by a fair crowd of worshipping Protestants, ready to extend to him all that broad and universal sympathy which he had no doubt been trained to regard as vilest latitudinarianism, or the readiness of Pilate to make friends with Herod. This prospect must chill the very soul of a man who has received the true priestly training, and who has been educated in that love of his church which is of itself a noble and generous sentiment. The best thing that can happen to him is to fall among heretics; the other alternative, and the only one, so far as events have yet made it apparent, to fall among infidels: and as his education has taught him to make but small distinction between them, and the infidels are nearer at hand, and his own countrymen, what wonder if it is into their hands that the miserable man, torn from all his ancient foundations, ejected from his natural place, heart‐weary with the madness which is wrought by anger against those we love, should fall—what wonder if he should rush to the furthest extremity, hiding what he feels to be his shame, and endeavoring to take some dismal comfort in utter negation of that past from which he has been torn! Whether there are new developments in the future for the new Protesters whom a recent decision has raised up, we cannot tell. But such has been the case in the past. Life is over for the rebellious priest who breaks with his church; his possibility of service in his vocation has come to an end; even the most careless peasant in his parish will turn from him. He is a deserter from his regiment in the face of the enemy, false to his colors, a man no longer of any human use.”

It was during Montalembert’s sojourn in Italy, on his remarkable Avenir pilgrimage, that he became the intimate friend of Albert de la Ferronays, the hero of Mrs. Craven’s beautiful Récit d’une Sœur. He appears in the book designated under the name of Montal. From the same period, also, dates his intimacy with Rio, the future historian of Christian art. The young peer’s taste for art, always strong, and his enthusiastic admiration of the glorious remains of mediæval architecture, were both developed and strengthened under the teaching and influence of Rio. In March, 1833, he published an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, in which he energetically denounced the desecration and ruin of the grand old architectural monuments of France. It was addressed in the form of a letter to Victor Hugo, then leader of the Romantic school, who strongly sympathized with him on this subject, and whose Notre Dame de Paris had been reviewed in the Avenir by Montalembert with enthusiastic praise for the grand historical framework of the story. During the autumn of that year, Montalembert went to Germany, and, as we have seen, accidentally stopped at Marburg. Travel, research, and the collection of materials for the life of Elizabeth now engrossed all his time, until, attaining the legal age, twenty‐five, he took his seat in the Chamber of Peers. His first appearance at the bar of this chamber had been in defence of the liberty of teaching, and his first speech was in defence of the liberty of the press. These two discourses prefigured his parliamentary career. He was always the ardent advocate of liberty; rarely heard on the side of the government; and generally the leader of a conscientious and loyal opposition: which, well considered, would have been found the most prudent adviser of the administration in power.

Strongly imbued with English ideas, he fully appreciated the conservative power of an energetic opposition, ever ready to criticise, to question, to challenge, or to expose whatever might seem arbitrary or unconstitutional in the acts of the government. But this idea of an opposition at once loyal and law‐loving, was unfamiliar to his countrymen. To them, as a general thing, opposition meant revolution, and to many the spectacle of a peer of France, a Catholic, and a proprietaire, who was at once the friend of the proletaire, the dissenter, the oppressor, and the slave, was a paradox. And yet paradox there was none, for his declaration of principles was always clear and bold. Thus, in striving to cull from the Chamber of Peers a public expression of sympathy for the Poles, he insisted that it was their right and their duty to make an avowal of national sentiments, an expression of national opinion, that it was an obligation imposed by humanity and required by wise policy. “What is it,” he asked, “that has raised the British parliament to so high a degree of popularity and moral influence in Europe? Is it not because for more than a century no grave event has happened in any country without finding an echo there? Is it not because no right has been oppressed, no treaty broken anywhere, without a discussion on both sides of the question before the peers and commons of England, whose assemblies have thus become, in the silence of the world, a sort of tribunal where all the great causes of humanity are pleaded, and where opinion pronounces those formidable judgments which, sooner or later, are always executed?”

And his independence was that of the man as well as of the orator. He was committed to no policy, sought no party ends, but always, and at all cost, maintained the good, the just, the honorable. A lost or desperate cause, if equitable, was always sure of his support. The three oppressed nations of the earth, Poland under Russia, Ireland under England, and Greece under Turkey, were his most cherished clients. The weaker side ever strongly attracted him. “Penetrated by the conviction that just causes are everlasting,” says M. Cochin, “and that every protest against injustice ends by moving heaven and convincing men, he sought out, so to speak, every oppressed cause when at its last breath, to take its burden upon himself, and to become its champion. There is a suffering race, a race lost in distant isles, the race of black slaves, which has been oppressed for centuries. He took its cause in hand, and from the year 1837 labored for its emancipation. There are in all manufacturing places a crowd of hollow‐cheeked children, with pale faces and worn eyes, and the sight of them made a profound impression upon him; he took their cause also in hand. If you run over the mere index of his speeches, you will find all generous efforts contained in it.”

The year 1836 brought two notable events in the life of Montalembert—the publication of his first work, his Life of S. Elizabeth, and his marriage to a daughter of the noble house of de Merode in Belgium. Meantime, he continued his attacks on vandalism in art and his parliamentary labors, and was mainly instrumental in the creation of the committee of historical art and the commission on historical monuments, from both of which he was excluded under the Empire, which no more sympathized with his pure conceptions of Christian art than it did with his conception of Christian morals.

Rio has recorded the result of the impression made by Montalembert upon the English poet Rogers, which admirably illustrates the fact that Montalembert’s religion was not a sort of moral “Sunday suit” to be put off and on as occasion might require, and at the same time reveals to us the old poet in an entirely new aspect. The Montalemberts had spent the evening with Rogers, “and after their departure,” Rio relates, “when I found myself alone with Rogers, the expression of his countenance, which up to that moment had been smiling and animated, changed so suddenly that I feared I had offended him by some word of doubtful meaning which I might not altogether have understood. He paced about the room without saying anything, and I did not know whether I might venture to break this incomprehensible silence. At last he broke it himself, and said to me that, if he had the power of putting himself in the place of another, he would choose that of Montalembert, not on account of his youth and his beautiful wife, but because he possessed that immovable and cloudless faith that seemed to himself the most enviable of all gifts.”

Mr. Neale advised Montalembert that he had been elected an honorary member of the Cambridge Camden Society. On receipt of the news of this “unsolicited and unmerited honor,” Montalembert replied in a letter protesting against the usurpation of the title “Catholic” by the Camden Society. Here are some of its trenchant passages:

“The attempt to steal away from us, and appropriate to the use of a fraction of the Church of England, the glorious title of Catholic, is proved to be an usurpation by every monument of the past and present, by the coronation oath of your sovereigns, by all the laws that have established your church. The name itself is spurned with indignation by the greater half at least of those who belong to the Church of England, just as the Church of England itself is rejected with scorn and detestation by the greater half of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. The judgment of the whole indifferent world, the common sense of humanity, agrees with the judgment of the Church of Rome, and with the sense of her 150 millions of children, to dispossess you of this name. The Church of England, who has denied her mother, is rightly without a sister. She has chosen to break the bonds of unity and obedience. Let her therefore stand alone before the judgment‐seat of God and man. Even the debased Russian Church—that church where lay‐ despotism has closed the church’s mouth and turned her into a slave—disdains to recognize the Anglicans as Catholics. Even the Eastern heretics, although so sweetly courted by Puseyite missionaries, sneer at this new and fictitious Catholicism. That the so‐called Anglo‐Catholics, whose very name betrays their usurpation and their contradiction, whose doctrinal articles, whose liturgy, whose whole history, are such as to disconnect them from all mankind except those who are born English and speak English—that they should pretend on the strength of their private judgment alone to be what the rest of mankind deny them to be, will assuredly be ranked among the first follies of the XIXth century.... You may turn aside for three hundred years to come, as you have done for three hundred years past, from the fountain of living waters; but to dig out a small channel of your own, for your own private insular use, wherein the living truth will run apart from its own docile and ever obedient children—that will no more be granted to you than it has been to the Arians, the Nestorians, the Donatists, or any other triumphant heresy. I protest, therefore, against the usurpation of a sacred name by the Camden Society as iniquitous; and I next protest against the object of this society, and all such efforts in the Anglican Church, as absurd.”

We now have before us a period of seven years in the life of Montalembert, the record of which may be said to be the history of the great public questions which then agitated France; so intimately was his entire parliamentary career bound up with their development. The first and most important of these questions was that of education. Then, as now, the examination for the degree of A.B. (baccalaureat) was the key to all public occupations.

But at that time, from 1830 to 1848, no one had a right to present himself for this examination unless he had been educated in one of the public lycées, or some school licensed by the university, into whose hands the government had placed the monopoly of education. A wealthy parent might educate a boy under his own supervision in the best universities of England or Germany, or by private tutors, yet the youth would not be permitted to present himself for examination, although able to pass it with ease. And the degree resulting from this examination was the essential condition upon which the possibility of a public career was opened to every young Frenchman. Without it he could by no possibility be admitted to any public employment, the bench or the bar. Ability, accomplishments, acquirements, had nothing to do with the question. The young man must pass through a state school, or he was for ever debarred from a public career in his own country. But to pass through a state school, as all Christian parents, both Catholic and Protestant, then well knew in France, was to leave it with the loss of his religious principles. The biographer may well find it “equally incredible that such restrictions should have been borne by any people, and that a government founded upon liberal principles and erected by revolution should have dared to maintain them; but so it was.”

The parliamentary campaign on the educational question opened in 1844. Discussion soon reached a point of warmth. “There is one result given under the auspices of the university,” said Montalembert, “which governs every other, and which is as clear as daylight. It is that children who leave their family with the seed of faith in them, to enter the university, come out of it infidels.” The contradictions and mouvement incited by this statement pushed the orator to more emphatic statement. “I appeal,” he said, “to the testimony of all fathers and mothers. Let us take any ten children out of the schools regulated by the university, at the end of their studies, and find one Christian among them if you can. One in ten! and that would be a prodigy. I address myself not to such or such a religious belief, but to all. Catholics, Protestants, Jews, all who believe humbly and sincerely in the religion which they possess, it is to them I appeal, whom I recognize as my brethren. And all those who have a sincere belief, and practise it, will confirm what I have said of the religious results of the education of the university. Let us hear the testimony of the young and eloquent defender of French Protestantism, the son of our colleague M. Agenor de Gasparin.... ‘Religious education,’ he says, ‘has no existence in the colleges.... I bethink myself with terror what I was when I issued forth from this national education. I recollect what all my companions were. Were we very good citizens? I know not, but certainly we were not Christians; we did not possess even the weakest beginnings of evangelical faith.’ ”

The results of the French compulsory anti‐Christian education may be read in current history. “The men it has brought up are the men who allowed France to be bound for eighteen years in the humiliating bondage of the Second Empire; who have furnished excuses to all the world for calling her the most socially depraved of nations; who have filled her light literature with abominations, and her graver works with blasphemy; and who have finally procured for her national downfall and humiliation.”

Montalembert planted his little band in battle array against the compact and overwhelming forces of the government, under the inspiration and trumpet‐tongued tones of his admirable fils des croisés speech in the Chamber of Peers. Here, with its memorable termination, are a few passages from it. We regret we cannot give it entire. “Allow me to tell you, gentlemen, a generation has arisen among you of men whom you know not. Let them call us Neo‐Catholics, sacristans, ultramontanes, as you will; the name is nothing; the thing exists. We take for our motto that with which the generous Poles in the last century headed their manifesto of resistance to the Empress Catherine: ‘We, who love freedom more than all the world, and the Catholic religion more than freedom,’ ... are we to acknowledge ourselves so degenerated from the condition of our fathers, that we must give up our reason to rationalism, deliver our conscience to the university, our dignity and our freedom into the hands of law‐makers whose hatred for the freedom of the church is equalled only by their profound ignorance of her rights and her doctrines?... You are told to be implacable. Be so; do all that you will and can against us. The church will answer you by the mouth of Tertullian and the gentle Fénelon. ‘You have nothing to fear from us; but we do not fear you.’ And I add in the name of Catholic laymen like myself, Catholics of the XIXth century: We will not be helots in the midst of a free people. WE ARE THE SUCCESSORS OF THE MARTYRS, AND WE DO NOT TREMBLE BEFORE THE SUCCESSORS OF JULIAN THE APOSTATE. WE ARE THE SONS OF THE CRUSADERS, AND WE WILL NEVER YIELD TO THE PROGENY OF VOLTAIRE!”

“Mouvements divers” might well—according to the reported proceedings of the day—follow this burst of indignant eloquence. The words made the very air of France tingle; they defined at once the two sides with one of those happy strokes which make the fortune of a party, and which are doubly dear to all who speak the language of epigram—the most brilliantly clear, incisive, and distinct of tongues. Henceforward the fils des croisés were a recognized power, but they were only known and heard by and through Montalembert, and, so far as the public struggle was concerned, might be said to exist in him alone. Montalembert fought almost single‐handed. “The attitude of this one man between that phalanx of resolute opponents and the shifty mass of irresolute followers, is as curious and interesting as any political position ever was. He stands before us turning from one to the other, never wearied, never flagging, maintaining an endless brilliant debate, now with one set of objectors, now with another, prompt with his answers to every man’s argument, rapid as lightning in his sweep upon every man’s fallacy: now proclaiming himself the representative of the Catholics in France, and pouring forth his claim for them as warm, as urgent, as vehement as though a million of men were at his back: and now turning upon these very Catholics with keen reproaches, with fiery ridicule, with stinging darts of contempt for their weakness. Thus he fought single‐handed, confronting the entire world. Nothing daunted him, neither failure nor abuse, neither the resentment of his enemies, nor the languor of his friends, ... not always parliamentary in his language, bold enough to say everything, as his adversaries reproached him, yet never making a false accusation or imputing a mean motive. No one hotter in assault, none more tremendous in the onslaught; but he did not know what it was to strike a stealthy or back‐handed blow.”

Time has strange revenges. In April, 1849, came up the important question of the inamovibilité de la magistrature—the appointment for life of magistrates. His old enemies were delighted to find that Montalembert declared himself unreservedly in the affirmative, and none more than M. Dupin, the very man who uttered the memorable “Soyez implacables.” Again he had the government to contend with, for under the law magistrates were no longer irremovable. Montalembert proposed, as an amendment, that all magistrates in office should be reappointed, and that all new appointments should be made for life. He pointed out the evils of a system which made judgeships tenable only from one revolution to another, and made a noble office the object of a “hunt” for promotion dishonoring to all parties. He spoke of the magistracy as the priesthood (sacerdoce) of justice, and added: “Allow me to pause a moment upon the word priesthood, which I have just employed. Of all the weaknesses and follies of the times in which we live, there is none more hateful to me than the conjunction of expressions and images borrowed from religion with the most profane facts and ideas. But I acknowledge that our old and beautiful French language, the immortal and intelligent interpreter of the national good sense, has, by a marvellous instinct, assimilated religion and justice. It has always said: The temples of the law, the sanctuary of justice, the priesthood of the magistracy.” The cause was won by his eloquence, and thus the first political success he ever gained was not for himself or his friends, but for his enemies. Truly a fitting triumph for a son of the crusaders.

The peerage now being abolished, Montalembert was returned as deputy to the National Assembly by the Department of Doubs. Here his career was, if possible, yet more brilliant than in the Chamber of Peers. It would require a volume fitly to record them. Soon came the presidency of Louis Bonaparte. Himself the soul of honor, with an eye single to the welfare of France, deceived by solemn assurances which he unfortunately credited, unsuspicious of a depth of treachery which he could not conceive, and alarmed by the horrible spectre of socialism, just arising from its native blood and mire, Montalembert became the dupe and the victim of Louis Napoleon. When power had been fully secured, the new president offered him the position of senator, along with the dotation of 30,000 francs, which was refused without hesitation. A second and a third time the offer was renewed, the last offer being urged by De Morny in person. The only position he held under the government of Louis Napoleon was the nominal one of a member of the Consultative Commission, which he resigned on the publication of the decree for the confiscation of the property of the House of Orleans. He had already begun to suffer from the attacks of the disease to which he finally succumbed; and it was from his sick‐bed that he went to receive at the hands of the French Academy the highest and most dearly prized reward of French talent and genius. Montalembert was elected to the seat in the Academy vacated by the death of M. Droz, and his reception was an event. Being now freed from the absorbing engagements of life, he made several journeys to England, and travelled into Hungary, Poland, and Spain. His work entitled L’Avenir Politique de l’Angleterre was the fruit of his English visits; and was well received both in France and England. In October, 1858, the Paris Correspondant published a remarkable letter from Montalembert, describing a debate in the English Parliament. Its every paragraph was so full of a subtle and powerful contrast between political liberty in England and the absence of it in France that the Imperial government and its adherents were stung to the quick. He speaks of leaving “an atmosphere foul with servile and corrupting miasma (chargée de miasmes serviles et corrupteurs) to breathe a purer air and to take a bath of free life in England.” Referring to a former French colony, he says: “In Canada, a noble race of Frenchmen and Catholics, unhappily torn from our country, but remaining French in heart and habits, owes to England the privilege of having retained or acquired, along with perfect religious freedom, all the political and municipal liberties which France herself has repudiated.” A criminal prosecution was immediately begun against the count for this letter. Four separate accusations were brought. Among them were “exciting the people to hate and despise the government of the emperor, and of attempting to disturb the public peace.” The legal penalties were imprisonment from three months to five years, fine from 500 to 6,000 francs, and expulsion from France. According to French custom, the prisoner on trial was interrogated concerning the obnoxious passages, and, when Montalembert answered, it was discovered that the emperor and his government, not the prisoner at the bar, was on trial. With calm gravity he acknowledged each damning implication as an historical fact not to be denied, “enjoying, there can be no doubt,” says his biographer, “to the bottom of his heart, this unlooked‐for chance of adding a double point to every arrow he had launched, and planting his darts deliberately and effectually in the joints of his adversaries’ armor.”

The foundation of Montalembert’s great work, The Monks of the West, was laid in his studies for the life of S. Elizabeth, and the remainder of his active life was now devoted to its completion. It is sufficient to refer to it. We need not dwell upon this greatest production of his literary genius. Besides this, two other remarkable productions came from his pen toward the close of his career. These were the long and eloquent addresses, L’Eglise libre dans l’Etat libre, delivered before the Congress of Malines, and his Victoire du Nord aux Etats‐Unis, which, says his biographer, “is little else than a hymn of triumph in honor of that success which to him was a pure success of right over wrong, of freedom over slavery.”

It is well known that Montalembert was one of those who opposed the proclamation of the dogma of infallibility. On this point, his biographer gives us this interesting information.

One of his visitors said to him, while lying on what proved to be his death‐bed: “If the Infallibility is proclaimed, what will you do?” “I will struggle against it as long as I can,” he said; but when the question was repeated, the sufferer raised himself quickly, with something of his old animation, and turned to his questioner. “What should I do?” he said. “We are always told that the pope is a father. Eh bien!—there are many fathers who demand our adherence to things very far from our inclination, and contrary to our ideas. In such a case, the son struggles while he can; he tries hard to persuade his father; discusses and talks the matter over with him; but when all is done, when he sees no possibility of succeeding, but receives a distinct refusal, he submits. I shall do the same.”

“You will submit so far as form goes,” said the visitor. “You will submit externally. But how will you reconcile that submission with your ideas and convictions?”

Still more distinctly and clearly he replied: “I will make no attempt to reconcile them. I will submit my will, as has to be done in respect to all the other questions of faith. I am not a theologian; it is not my part to decide on such matters. And God does not ask me to understand. He asks me to submit my will and intelligence, and I will do so.” “After having made this solemn though abrupt confession of faith,” says the witness whom we have quoted, “he added, with a smile, ‘It is simple enough; there is nothing extraordinary in it.’ ”

The last years of the life of this distinguished man were one long protracted agony of physical suffering. The symptoms of disease that first manifested themselves in 1852 had gone on increasing in severity until in 1869, more than a year before his death, he speaks of himself as vivens sepulcrum. “I am fully warranted in saying that the death of M. de Montalembert was part of his glory,” writes M. Cochin, in describing his constancy and resignation. He died on the 13th of March, 1870.

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At The Shrine

I.

The sunset’s dying radiance falls On chancel‐gloom and sculptured shrine, A splendor wraps the pictured walls, Where painted saints in glory shine! And blent with sweet‐tongued vesper‐bells, Through echoing aisles and arches dim The organ’s solemn music swells, The sweetly chanted evening hymn.

II.

Low at Our Lady’s spotless feet A white‐robed woman kneels in prayer: The Deus Meus murmurs sweet, While Glorias throb on perfumed air; Before the circling altar‐rail She breathes her Aves soft and low— The golden hair beneath her veil Wreathed like a glory on her brow.

III.

The sunset’s purple splendors fade, The dark’ning shades of twilight fall, The moonbeam’s silver touch is laid On sculptur’d saint and pictur’d wall; And while the weeping watcher kneels, And silence weaves her magic spells, The gray dawn thro’ the oriel steals, And morning wakes the matin‐bells.

ADVENT, 1872.

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A Christmas Recognition

We were old‐fashioned people at Aldred, and Christmas was our special holiday. The house was always filled with guests, not such as many of our grander neighbors asked to their houses, but such as cared for good old‐ fashioned cheer and antiquated habits. Not all were relations, for we never asked relations merely on account of their kinship, according to the regulation mixing of a conventional Christmas party, but among our own people were many whose presence at our Christmas gatherings was as certain as the recurrence of the festival itself. Among them was a great‐aunt, a soft, mild old lady, always dressed in widow’s weeds, but with a face as fresh as a girl’s, and hair white as the snowy cap she wore to conceal it. She had not come alone, for her adopted son was with her, the promised husband of her only child, dead years ago. He had left his own home and people, like Ruth, for the lonely, childless woman whom he was to have called mother, and remained her inseparable companion through her beautiful and resigned old age. There were, besides these, a young girl whose aspect was peculiar and attractive, and whose manner had in its mixture of modesty and self‐reliance a piquancy that added to the fascination of her person. She had come with a distant cousin of hers, a widow of a different type from our dear old relative, and whose object in chaperoning Miss Houghton must have been mixed. She was small, blonde, coquettish, and thirty‐two, though no one would have taken her for more than twenty‐five. She looked soft, pliable, irresolute, and tender, and men often found in her a repose which was a soothing contrast to her cousin’s energetic, peculiar, somewhat eccentric ways; only it was the repose yielded by a downy cushion, and people wearied of it after a while. The secret of the apparent partnership between these two opposite natures was perhaps this: the widow had a rich jointure, and was an excellent parti, while her cousin was portionless. Miss Houghton was thus doubly a foil to Mrs. Burtleigh.

I shall not speak of the other guests in detail, with the exception of one whom it would be impossible to overlook. He was a man nearer forty than thirty‐five, good‐humored and careless to all appearance, a hard worker in the battle of life, a cosmopolitan philosopher, and one of those handy, useful men who can sew on a button, cook an omelet, and kiss a bride as easily and unconcernedly as they gallop across country or horsewhip a villain. He had been in Mexico, surveying and engineering for an English railroad company, and he had spent some years in the East as the land‐ agent of a progress‐loving pacha. Europe he knew as well as we knew Aldred, while the year he had been absent from us had been filled by new and stirring experiences in Upper Egypt. But I forget; we have yet to speak of many little details of Christmas‐tide which preceded the gathering in of the whole party.

The kitchen department was, of course, conspicuous on this occasion. This included the village poor, who were regularly assembled every day for soup until Christmas eve, when each household received a joint of beef and a fine plum‐pudding. Some of us went round the village in a sleigh, and distributed tea and sugar as supplementary items. It was a traditional Yule‐tide, for the snow lay soft, even, and thick over the roads, as it but seldom does in England; then, the school was visited and solidly provisioned, the children were invited to a monster tea with accompaniment of a magic‐lantern show, after which the prizes were to be distributed, as well as warm clothing for the winter season. Nothing was said of the Christmas‐tree, as that was kept as a surprise.

The decoration of house and chapel was a wonderful and prolonged business, and afforded great amusement. Holly grew in profusion at Aldred, and a cart‐load of the bright‐berried evergreen was brought to the house the day preceding Christmas eve. The people we have made acquaintance with were already with us, and vigorously helped us on with the preparations. Such fun as there was when Miss Houghton insisted upon crowning the marble bust of the Indian grandee, Rammohun Roy, with a holly wreath, and when Mrs. Burtleigh gave a pretty, ladylike little cry as she pricked her fingers with the glossy leaves! The children of the house and those of another house in the neighborhood (orphan children whose gloomy home made them a perpetual source of pity to us) were helping as unhelpfully as ever, but what of that? It was a joyous, animated scene, and, still more, a romantic one; for the traveller, who had claimed a former acquaintance with Miss Houghton, now seemed to become her very shadow—or knight, let us say; it is more appropriate to the spirit of a festival so highly honored in mediæval times. The chapel, a beautiful Gothic building, small but perfect, was decorated with mottoes wrought in leaves, such as “Unto us a Son is born, unto us a Child is given,” and Gloria in excelsis Deo, etc., while festoons of evergreens hung from pillar to pillar, and draped the stone‐carved tribune at the western end with a living tapestry. Round the altar were heaped in rows, placed one higher than another, evergreens of every size and kind, mingled with islands of bright camellias, the pride of the renowned hothouses of Aldred. White, red, and streaked, the flowers seemed like stars among dark masses of clouds; and, when we lit a few of the tall candles to see the effect, it was so solemn that we longed for the time to pass quickly, till the midnight Mass should call forth all the beauty of which we had seen but a part.

These decorations had been mainly the work of the traveller (whom, in our traditional familiarity, we called “Cousin Jim”) and of our other friend, the adopted son of our old aunt; but, though their brains had conceived, it was Miss Houghton’s deft fingers that executed the work best. The last touch had just been put to an immense cross of holly which was to be swung from the ceiling, to supply the place of the rood that in old times guarded the choir‐screen. A star of snow‐white camellias was to be poised just above it, and a tall ladder had been put in readiness to facilitate the delicate task. Miss Houghton stood at the foot, one arm leaning on the ladder, the other holding aloft the white star. Her friend was halfway up, bearing the great cross, when he suddenly heard a low voice, swelling gradually, intoning the words of the Christmas hymn:

Adeste fideles, Læti triumphantes; Venite, venite in Bethlehem: Natum videte Regem angelorum: Venite adoremus, Venite adoremus, Venite adoremus Dominum.

Startled and touched, he began the repeating words of the chorus, pausing with his green cross held high in his arms. The others who, scattered about the chapel, heard his deep tones, answering, took up the chorus, and chanted it slowly to the end, Miss Houghton looking round with tears in her eyes, at this unexpected response to the suppressed and undefinable feelings of her heart. It was an impressive scene, the guests, servants, gardeners, and a few of the choir‐boys, all mingling in the impromptu worship so well befitting the beautiful work they had in hand. At the end of the verse, the traveller hastily gained the top of the ladder, and, having fastened the holly cross in its place, intoned a second verse, in which Miss Houghton immediately joined, and the harmonious blending of their voices had, if possible, a still more beautiful effect than the unaccompanied chant of the first verse. Again the chorus chimed in,

Venite adoremus, Venite adoremus, Venite adoremus Dominum.

in full, solemn tones, and all sang from their places, their festoons in their hands, so that at the end of the hymn the traveller said thoughtfully to his companion: “Laborare est orare should be our motto henceforth. I wish all our work were as holy as this.”

“And why not?” she answered quickly; “only will it so, and so it shall be. We are our own creators.”

“What a rash saying!” he exclaimed, with a smile; “but I know what you mean. God gives us the tools and the marble; it is ours to carve it into an angel or a fiend.”

At last the chapel decoration was over, and a few of the more venturesome among us went out in the snow for a walk.

Meanwhile, in the corridor (so we called our favorite sitting‐room), the Yule‐logs were crackling cheerfully on the wide hearth, and the fitful tongues of flame shot a red glimmer over the old‐fashioned furniture. One of the chairs was said to have belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, and there was another, a circular arm‐chair, that looked as if it also should have had a history connected with the great and learned. Full‐length portraits of the old possessors of Aldred covered the walls, and on the stained‐glass upper compartments of the deep bay‐window at one end were depicted the arms and quarterings of the family. The Yule‐logs were oak, cut from our own trees, and perforated all over with large holes through which the flames shot up like fire‐sprites.

The Christmas‐tree and magic‐lantern also had to be put in order to save time and trouble, and a stage for tableaux occupied the rapt attention of the amateur mechanician (our great‐aunt’s son) and of “Jim,” the traveller and practised factotum. Miss Houghton was never very far from the scene of these proceedings, and, when she was not quite so near, “Cousin Jim” was not quite so eager. Almost all our guests had brought contributions for the Christmas‐tree, of which our children had the nominal charge, and with these gifts and our own it turned out quite a royal success. Presents of useful garments, flannels, boots, mittens, woollen shirts, petticoats, and comforters, were stowed away beneath the lower branches, while all visible parts were hung with the toys and fruits, lights and ribbons, that so delight children. Gilt walnut‐shells were a prominent decoration, and right at the apex of the tree was fixed a “Christ‐child,” that thoroughly German development, an image of the Infant Saviour, holding a starred globe in one hand and a standard in the other. A crèche had also been prepared in the Lady‐chapel, a lifelike representation of those beautiful Christmas pictures seen to such perfection in the large churches of Italy. Munich figures supplied the place of wax models, however, and were a decided improvement.

Many people from the village had asked leave to come in and look at these peculiar decorations; but, as few of them were Catholics, it had been thought better to wait till the third Mass on Christmas day to open the chapel to the public. Christmas eve was a very busy day, and towards five o’clock began the great task of welcoming the rest of the expected guests. This was done in no modern and languid fashion; the servants, clad in fur caps and frieze greatcoats, stood near the door with resinous torches flaring in the still night air—it was quite dark at that early hour—and the host and hostess welcomed them at the very threshold. The children helped them to take off their wraps, and held mistletoe sprigs over their bended heads as they reached up to kiss them. Indeed, mistletoe was so plentifully strewn about the house that it was impossible to avoid it, but we had so far eschewed the freedom of the past as to consider this custom more honored in the breach than in the observance. The children and the servants, however, made up for our carelessness.

Very little toilet was expected for a seven o’clock dinner (we were not fashionable people), but we found that our well‐meant injunctions had hardly been obeyed. For the sake of the picturesque, so much the better, I thought. One of our friends had actually donned a claret‐colored velvet suit, with slippers to match, embroidered with gold; and, when we looked at each other in silent amusement, the wearer himself smiled round the circle, saying pleasantly:

“Oh! I do not mind being noticed. In fact, I rather like it—this was a lady’s fancy, you see.”

“How, how?” we asked eagerly.

“Well,” answered the Londoner, a regular drawing‐room pet, and a very clever society jester, “I was challenged to a game of billiards by a fair lady, the Duchess of ——. She said to me, ‘And pray do wear something picturesque.’ I bowed and said, ‘Your grace shall be obeyed.’ I happened to have some loose cash about me. I could not wear uniform, because I did not belong even to the most insignificant of volunteer regiments, and I went to my tailor. His genius was equal to the occasion, and this was the result. I played with the duchess, and she won,”—the hero of the velvet coat was an invincible billiard champion.—“As I have the dress by me, I take the liberty of wearing it occasionally in the country. It is too good to be hidden, isn’t it?”

So he rattled on till dinner was announced. It was a merry but frugal meal. The mince‐pies and plum‐pudding crowned with blue flame, the holly‐ wreathed boar’s head of romance, were not there; they were reserved for to‐morrow. So with the “wassail‐bowl,” the fragrant, spirituous beverage of which each one was to partake, his two neighbors standing up on each side of him, according to the old custom intended as a defence against treachery; for once it had happened that a guest whose hands were engaged holding the two‐handled bowl to his lips was stabbed from behind by a lurking enemy, and ever after it became de rigueur that protection should be afforded to the drinker by his neighbor on either side.

The fare to‐night was still Advent fare, but, after dinner, Christmas insisted upon beginning. We were told that the “mummers” from the village were come, and waited for leave to begin their play. They were brought into the hall, and the whole company stood on the steps leading up to the drawing‐rooms. The scenery was not characteristic—a broad oaken staircase, a Chinese gong, the polished oak flooring, the massive hall‐door. The actors themselves, seven or eight in number, dressed in the most fantastic and extemporized costume, now began the performance; and but for the venerable antiquity of the farce, it was absurd and obscure enough to excite laughter rather than interest. The children were wild with delight, and were with difficulty restrained from leaping the “pit” and mingling with the actors on the “stage.” Indeed, for many days after nothing was heard among them but imitations of the “mummers.” There was a grave dialogue about “King George,” then a scuffle ensued, and one man fell down either wounded or in a fit. The doctor is called; the people believe the man dead, the doctor denies this, and says, “I will give him a cordial, mark the effect.” The resuscitated man afterwards has a tooth drawn by the same quack, who then holds up the tooth (a huge, unshapely equine one provided for the occasion), and exclaims: “Why, this is more like a horse’s tooth than a man’s!” I never could make out the full meaning of the “mummers’” play; but, whether it was a corruption of some older and more complete dramatic form, or the crude beginning of an undeveloped one, it certainly was the characteristic feature of our Christmas at Aldred. It took place regularly every year, without the slightest deviation in detail, and always ended in a mournful chorus, “The Old Folks at Home.” After the actors had been heartily cheered, and the host had addressed to them a few kind words of thanks and recognition, they were dismissed to the kitchen, to their much coveted entertainment of unlimited beer. There they enacted their performance once more for the servants, who then fraternized with them on the most amiable terms.

Meanwhile, our party were gradually collecting round the wood‐fire in the corridor. It was a bitter cold night, the snow was falling noiselessly and fast, and the wind howled weirdly through the bare branches of the distant trees. Our old aunt remarked, in her gentle way:

“One almost feels as if those poor owls were human beings crying with cold.”

“We look like a picture, mother,” somewhat irrelevantly answered her son after a slight pause; “the antique dresses of many of us are quite worth an artist’s study.”

Mrs. Burtleigh, whose blonde beauty was coquettishly set off by a slight touch of powder on the hair, and a becoming Marie Antoinette style of négligé, here pointedly addressed the traveller.

“Sir Pilgrim,” she said, “did you ever think of home when you had to spend a Christmas in outlandish countries?”

“Sometimes,” answered “Jim” absently, his eyes wandering towards Miss Houghton, who stood resting her head against a carved griffin on the tall mantel‐piece.

She caught his glance, and said half saucily:

“Now, if it was not too commonplace, I should claim a story—Christmas eve is not complete without a story, at least so the books say.”

“If it were required, I know one that is not quite so hackneyed as the grandmothers’ ghosts and wicked ancestors we are often surfeited with at Christmas,” replied her friend quickly. The whole circle drew closer around the fire, and imperiously demanded an explanation.

“But that will be descending to commonplace,” pleaded the traveller.

“Who knows? It may turn out the reverse, when you have done,” heedlessly said Mrs. Burtleigh.

“Well, if you will have it, here it is. Mind, now, I am not going to give you a three‐volume novel, full of padding, but just tell you one incident, plain and unadorned. So do not look forward to anything thrilling or sensational.

“Some years ago, I was in Belgium, hastening home for Christmas, and spent three or four days in Bruges. I will spare you a description of the grand old city, and come to facts. I was just on the point of leaving, and had got to the railway station in order to catch the tidal train for Ostend, when a man suddenly and hurriedly came up to me, an old servant in faded livery, who, without breathing a word, placed a note in my hand, and was immediately lost to sight in the crowd. The waiting‐room was dimly lighted, but I could make out my own name, initials and all, on the envelope. In my confusion, I hurried out of the station, and, stepping into a small hôtellerie, I opened the mysterious note. It was very short: ‘Come at once to No. 20 Rue Neuve.’ The signature was in initials only. The handwriting was small and undecided. I could hardly tell if it were a man’s or a woman’s. I knew my way to the Rue Neuve, not a really new street, but one of Bruges’ most interesting old thoroughfares. No gas, a narrow street, great gaunt portes‐cochères, and projecting windows on both sides, the pavement uneven, and a young moon just showing her crescent over the crazy‐looking houses—such was the scene. I soon got to No. 20. It was a large, dilapidated house, with every sign about it of decayed grandeur and diminished wealth. Two large doors, heavily barred, occupied the lower part of the wall; above were oriels and dormers whose stone frames were tortured into weird half‐human faces and impossible foliage. No light anywhere, and for bell a long, hanging, ponderous weight of iron. I pulled it, and a sepulchral sound answered the motion. I waited, no one came; I thought I must have mistaken the number. Taking out the letter, however, I made sure I was right. I pulled the bell again a little louder, and heard footsteps slowly echoing on the stone flags of the court within. Sabots evidently; they made a rattle like dead men’s bones, I thought. A little grille, or tiny wicket, was opened, and an old dame, shading her candle with one brown hand, peered suspiciously out. Apparently dissatisfied, she closed the opening with a bang, muttering to herself in Flemish. It was cold standing in the street, and, as the portress of this mysterious No. 20 made no sign of opening the door for me, I was very nearly getting angry, and going away in no amiable mood at the unknown who had played me this too practical joke. Suddenly I heard the grille open again, very briskly this time, and a voice said in tolerably good French:

“ ‘Monsieur’s name is—?’

“ ‘Yes,’ I replied rather impatiently.

“ ‘Then will monsieur wait an instant, till I undo the bars?’ A great drawing of chains and bolts on the inside followed her speech, and a little gate, three‐quarters of a man’s height, was opened in the massive and immovable porte‐cochère. I stepped quickly in, nearly overturning the old dame’s candlestick. She wore a full short petticoat of bright yet not gaudy blue, and over it a large black circular cloak which covered all but her clumsy sabots. Her cap was a miracle of neatness, and her brown face, wrinkled but cheery, reminded me of S. Elizabeth in Raphael’s pictures. She said glibly and politely:

“ ‘Will monsieur give himself the trouble to wait a moment?’

“She disappeared with her candle, leaving me to peer round the courtyard, where the moon’s feeble rays were playing at hide‐and‐seek behind the many projections. Almost as soon as she had left, she was with me again, bidding me follow her up‐stairs. ‘My master is bed‐ridden,’ she explained. ‘Since he got a wound in the war of independence against Holland, he has not been able to move. Monsieur will take care, I hope, not to excite him; he is nervous and irritable since his illness,’ she added apologetically.

“I confess I was rather disappointed. I had expected that everything would happen as it does in a play—it had looked so like one hitherto. I thought I was going to meet a woman—young, beautiful, in distress, perhaps in want of a champion—but it was only a bed‐ridden old man after all! Well, it might lead to an act of charity, that true chivalry of the soul, higher far than mere personal homage to accidental beauty. I entered a darkened room, scantily and shabbily furnished, and the old woman laid the candlestick on the table. The bed was in a corner near the fire; the uneven parquet floor was covered here and there with faded rugs, and books and papers lay on a desk on the old man’s bed. At first I could hardly distinguish his features, but, as my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I saw that he was a martial‐looking man, with eyes so keen that sickness could hardly dull them, and a bearing that indicated the stern will, the clear intellect, and the lofty bonhomie of an old Flemish gentilhomme. He looked at me with curious and prolonged interest, then said, in a voice full of bygone courtesy:

“ ‘Will monsieur be seated? I have made no mistake in the name?’

“ ‘No,’ I answered, wondering what the question meant.

“ ‘Then, monsieur, I have important news for you. The daughter of your brother—’

“I was already bewildered, and looked up. He continued, taking my surprise for interest: ‘The daughter of your poor brother is now a great heiress, and I hold her fortune in trust for her—do not interrupt me,’ he said, eagerly preventing me from speaking, ‘it tires me, and I must say all this at once. I do not know if you knew of her being taken from her parents when a child; of course you recollect that, after her mother’s marriage with your brother, there was a great fracas, and poor Marie’s father disinherited her at once. When the child was born—I was her god‐father, by the bye—her parents being in great poverty, I begged of the grandfather to help and forgive them, the more so as your brother was making his poor wife very unhappy. He refused, and, though he generally took my advice (he was an an old college friend of mine), he was obstinate on this point. The child grew, and the parents were on worse terms every year. Marie’s father held out against every inducement; your poor brother—forgive me, monsieur!—fell into bad company, and made his home a perfect hell; his wife was broken‐hearted, but would not hear of a separation, and her only anxiety was for her child. I proposed to her to take the responsibility myself of putting the little one out of reach of this dreadful example of a divided household, and she consented. The father stormed and raved when he found the child was gone, but for once his wife opposed him, and refused to let him know her whereabouts. Every year I interceded with the grandfather, who consented to support the little girl, but would never promise to leave her a competency at his death. One day, suddenly, your poor brother died.’

“I could not help starting; he saw my surprise.

“ ‘Oh!’ he resumed, ‘did you not know how he died? Pardon me, monsieur, I remember now that none of his English kin followed him to the grave, but I had heard your name before.’

“ ‘Monsieur,’ I began, fearing that he might be led on to talk of family secrets such as he might not wish to share with a stranger, ‘you have told me a strange tale; but allow me to undeceive you—’

“ ‘How did you deceive me?’ he asked impatiently, and I, remembering the old dame’s warning not to excite him, was puzzled how to act. In the meanwhile, he went on.

“ ‘Eh bien! The mother then went to England, to the school where her child was, and saw her, but she did not long survive the wear and tear of her wretched life, and the grief her husband’s death caused her—for, poor woman, she loved him, you see.’

“ ‘Just like a woman, God bless her!’ I murmured involuntarily. The old man bent his head in cordial assent, but immediately resumed: ‘Her father blessed her before she died, and promised to care for the little girl. He then drew up this will’—here he laid his hand on a thick packet on the desk—‘and entrusted it me. The child was nine years old then, and that was fifteen years ago. She was to be told nothing till her twenty‐first birthday, and to be brought up in England, unconscious of anything save that she was the child of honest parents. This went on for some years, and then my old friend died. I continued to send regular remittances to the little girl’s temporary guardians; the bulk of the fortune I kept in the house—there in that chest; perhaps it was a foolish fancy, but I did not care to have it in a common bank. The war came and passed over the flower of our land, and you see, monsieur, what it has left of my former self. Well, after a time, five or six years ago, I ceased hearing from my little ward; I was unable to get up and search for her; all that advertisements and correspondence could do I did, and my chief endeavor was to find you. I thought, if anything were likely, this was; she would go to you, her father’s step‐brother, a different man, as I always heard her mother say, from what her own unhappy parent had been.’

“ ‘But,’ I said, ‘allow me to correct a mistake, monsieur; I never had a step‐brother, or a brother either.’

“ ‘What!’ the old man exclaimed nervously—‘what do you mean? Do not joke about such things. Your name is ——. Your hair is fair and wavy, your figure tall and stalwart—that was the portrait of my poor little ward’s uncle, a different man, of different blood, as well as different name, from her father.’

“ ‘Do not tell me any names, monsieur,’ I here insisted, ‘until I have told you who I am.’

“He looked at me, still agitated, his brows knitted, and his lips quivered. I told him my name, birth, country, profession, and assured him that I, an only son, had never heard of any story like his. He seemed thunderstruck, and could hardly take in the idea; but, recollecting himself, said: ‘Pardon me, monsieur, but I have, then, caused you great inconvenience.’

“His politeness now seemed overwhelming; he was in despair; he was désolé. What could he do? How could he apologize? I quieted him as best I could by professing the utmost indifference about the delay, and begged him, though I would solicit no further confidence, to consider my lips as sealed, and, if he wished it, my services as entirely at his disposal.

“He smiled curiously, then said: ‘The best apology I can make is to tell you the whole. Your name and initials misled me. Having heard that you were in Bruges, I sent my messenger, who, it seems, only reached you as you were on the point of starting for Ostend. I thought it was my ward’s uncle I had found, and, never having seen him, I could not tell if you were the wrong man. I must continue to try and find him; if I fail—never mind, I want to tell you her name. She is Philippa Duncombe, and, when I saw her last, she was a dark child, quick, peculiar, and resolute. It is so long ago that I could give you no idea of her exterior as she is now. I think she must have suspected her dependence upon a supposed charity, and have left school without the knowledge of any one. Anyhow, I must still try to find your namesake; as for you, monsieur, I cannot thank you enough for your forbearance.’

“I left Bruges the next day, but, as you may suppose, the story of the Baron Van Muyden never ceased to haunt me, and a few months after I was glad and flattered to receive a letter from the old veteran saying that he had now ascertained that my namesake, the child’s half‐uncle, had been dead some years, and that he felt that to none other but myself would he now wish to transfer the task of searching for the lost heiress. Of course I accepted.”

Our friend paused here, and looked thoughtfully at the fire. The Yule‐logs were burning so merrily that a ruin seemed imminent, and while the silence was yet unbroken a sound of distant singing came towards the house. It was the gay company of Christmas carollers, singing their old, old ditties through the frosty night, in commemoration of the Angel‐songs heard by the watching shepherds so many long centuries ago on the hills of Judæa. But the company was too much absorbed in the traveller’s tale to heed the faint echo. Miss Houghton sat with her dark eyes fixed on the speaker, and every vestige of color gone in the intensity of her excitement; Mrs. Burtleigh, tapping the fender with her tiny gray satin slipper, seemed strangely excited, and glanced uneasily at her cousin; the rest of us were clasping our hands in our unrestrainable curiosity, and the provoking narrator actually had the coolness to hold his peace!

At last some one spoke, unable to control his goaded curiosity.

“Well?”

“Well?” repeated the artful “Jim.”

“Did you find her?” was the question that now broke from all lips, in a gamut of increasing impatience.

“I told you a story, as we agreed,” he answered; “but, if I tell you the dénoûment, we shall fall into what we wish to avoid—the commonplace.”

“Never mind, go on,” was shouted on all sides. Miss Houghton was silent, but she seemed to hang on his words. He had calculated on this emotion, the wretch, and was making the most of his points!

At last he resumed in a slow, absent way:

“Yes, I accepted the search; I made it; I did all I could think of—but I failed.”

The bomb had burst, but we all felt disappointed. This was not commonplace, not even enough to our minds. “He had cheated us,” we cried.

“I can only tell you the truth; remember this was all real, no got‐up Christmas tale, to end in a wedding, bell‐ringing, and carol‐singing. Hark! do you hear the carollers outside?”

No one spoke, and he went on, still meditatively: “I do not mean to give it up, though.”

Miss Houghton, who, till now, had said nothing, opened a small locket attached to one of her bracelets, and, keeping her eyes fixed on “Cousin Jim,” passed it to him, saying:

“Did you ever see this face before?”

He took it up, and looked puzzled. “No,” he said; “why do you ask?”

We all looked at her as if she had been a young lunatic, her interest in the story being apparently of no very lasting nature. She then unfastened a companion bracelet, the hanging locket of which she opened and handed to her friend again.

“This face you have seen?” she asked confidently.

He started, and a rush of color came over his bronzed cheeks.

“Yes, yes, that is the Baron Van Muyden—younger, but the same. And here is his writing, ‘To Marie Duncombe, her sincere and faithful friend.’ Miss Houghton?”

“Yes,” she answered calmly, as if he had asked her a question.

“Then what I have been looking for for three years I have found tonight?” he said, looking up at her, while we were all stupefied and silent.

“And what I have never dreamt of,” she answered in a low voice, “I have suddenly learned to‐night.”

The carollers were now close under the windows, and the words of a simple chorus came clearly to our hearing—

The snow lay on the ground, The stars shone bright, When Christ our Lord was born On Christmas night.

After a few moments’ silence, our curiosity, like water that has broken through thin ice, flowed into words again. Many questions and a storm of exclamations rang through the room, and the concussion was such that the Yule‐logs crashed in two, and broke into a race across the wide hearth, splinters flying to the side, and sparks flying up the chimney. Then Miss Houghton spoke with the marvellous self‐possession of her nature.

“I knew my own name and my mother’s from the beginning,” she said, “and Monsieur Van Muyden, and the old house, and the Flemish bonne in the Rue Neuve. I remember them all when a child. I used often to sleep there, and the night before I left Bruges I still remember playing with the baron’s old sword. I remember my mother coming to see me at school in England, a convent‐school, where I was very happy, and giving me these bracelets. She told me never to part with them; she said she would not be with me long. They told me of her death some months afterwards. The other portrait is that of my grandfather, given by him to my mother on her fête day, just before her marriage, with a lock of his hair hidden behind. She always wore it. M. Van Muyden’s was done for her when I was born, and was meant to be mine some day, as he was my god‐father. The remittances he spoke of used to come regularly; but, when I grew older, my pride rebelled (just as he guessed, you say), and I hated to be dependent on those who, kind as they were, were not my blood‐relations. I ran away from school, and lived by myself for a long time in poverty, yet not in absolute need, for I worked for my bread, and worked hard. I had a great deal to go through because I dared not refer any one to the school where I had lived. Mrs. Burtleigh was very kind to me; I told her my story, as far as I knew it, and somehow she found out that we were cousins through my father; so she made me take her maiden name, Houghton, instead of the one I had adopted before. She, of course, thought as I did, that the child of the disinherited Marie Duncombe and the unhappy Englishman, my poor father, could be naught but a beggar. She was kindness itself to me, and, though I was too proud to accept all she offered me, I did accept her companionship and her home. Many little industries of my own, pleasant now because no longer imperatively necessary, help me to support myself, as far as pecuniary support can be called such; my home has been a generous gift—the gift I prize most.”

She stopped, and Mrs. Burtleigh looked up in impatient confusion, perhaps conscious that her feelings and motives had been too mixed to warrant such frank, unbounded gratitude. “Jim” said nothing, and Miss Houghton seemed so calm that it was almost difficult to congratulate her. She was asked if she had recognized herself from the first in the story.

“Yes,” she said; “I knew it must be me.”

“You took it coolly,” some one ventured to observe.

“I have seen too much of the revers de la médaille to be much excited about this,” she said; but, if she was outwardly calm, her feelings were certainly aroused, for her strange eyes had a far‐away look, and the color came and went in her cheek.

Our friend seemed almost crestfallen; we thought he would have been elated. Presently she said to him, giving him the bracelets:

“You must take these to Bruges, and I think you had better take me, too.”

He stared silently at her. Just then the bell began to ring for the midnight Mass. What followed Miss Houghton told us herself.

The guests hurried to the chapel, rather glad to get rid of their involuntary embarrassment. Those two remained behind alone. She was the first to speak.

“I think you are sorry you have found me.”

“Yes,” he answered slowly, “sorry to find it is you: Miss Houghton was poor, and Miss Duncombe is an heiress.”

“What matter! If you like, Miss Duncombe will give up the fortune, or, if you want it, she will give it to you.”

He looked offended and puzzled.

“You do not understand me,” she said, half laughing: “Miss Duncombe will let you settle everything for her, and say anything you like to Miss Houghton.”

“You do not mean—” he began excitedly.

“I do,” she answered composedly.

And they were engaged then and there. He wanted to be married before they left England, but she refused, saying their wedding must be in a Flemish cathedral, and their wedding breakfast in a Flemish house. And so it was; and No. 20 Rue Neuve is now their headquarters, while the household of the Belgian heiress is under the control of the old Flemish woman who once shut that door in the face of the heiress’ husband.

M. Van Muyden is happy and contented, and a merrier Christmas day was never spent at Aldred than the day of this unexpected recognition.

Midnight Mass, Christmas‐tree, school‐feast, and all succeeded each other to our perfect satisfaction; the health of the heroine of “Cousin Jim’s” tale was drunk in the “wassail‐bowl” on Christmas night, and, as the happy, excited, and tired Christmas party separated on the day following New Year’s day, every one agreed that it was a pity such things so very seldom happened in real life.

Fleurange.

By Mrs. Craven, Author Of “A Sister’s Story.”

Translated From The French, With Permission.

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IV. The Immolation

L.

While our travellers are completing the last stage of their journey, we will precede them to St. Petersburg, and transport our readers for a short time among scenes very different from those in which the incidents of our story have hitherto occurred.

The sentence of condemnation has been pronounced, and for some days the names of the five persons who were to suffer death have been known and privately circulated; privately, for the trials which excited universal interest were seldom discussed in society. At that epoch (different in this respect from a subsequent one, when liberty to say anything was allowed in Russia before anywhere else), whether through prudence, servility, or a fear resulting from the reign of the Emperor Paul, rather than the one just ended, every one refrained with common accord from any public expression of opinion whatever respecting the acts of the government. Flattery itself was cautious not to excite discussions that might give rise to criticism. The sovereign authority did not require approval, but only to be obeyed, not judged. This was generally understood, and the consequence was a general silence respecting forbidden topics; whereas, on every other subject, as if by way of indemnification, Russian wit was unrestrained, and so keen that the nation which prides itself on being the most spirituelle in the world found a rival, and only consoled itself by saying Russian wit was borrowed. It is incontestably certain that, though there were still some survivors of the time of Catherine’s reign, the French language was now so universally used in society at St. Petersburg, that people of the highest rank, of both sexes, spoke it to the exclusion of their own tongue, and wrote it with such uncommon perfection as to enrich French literature; whereas they would have been very much embarrassed if required to write the most insignificant note, or even a mere business letter, in the Russian language.

There is no intention of discussing here the causes that led to this engrafting of foreign habits, or of examining whether the Russians at that period, in imitating the French, were always mindful that when others are copied it should be from their best side. Still less would it be suitable to consider whether the people who possess the faculty of assimilation to such a degree are the most noble, the most energetic, and the most sincere. This would lead us far beyond our modest limits, to which we return by observing that, in spite of a splendor and magnificence almost beyond conception, in spite of a tone of good taste and a courtesy now almost extinct in France, in spite of hospitality on a grand scale, characteristic of Slavonic countries, an indefinable restraint, felt by all, prevailed in this attractive and brilliant circle, insinuating itself everywhere like an invisible spectre, modifying and directing the current of conversation—even the most trifling—and affecting not only the intercourse of fashionable life, but the freedom of friendly converse and the very outpourings of affectionate confidence.

The Marquis Adelardi had had several opportunities of mingling in this society, and found it congenial. It was a society in which he was specially adapted to shine, for he, too, as we are aware, had passed his life in a school of enforced silence; and, if he was formerly numbered among those who revolt under such restrictions, he had now renounced all efforts to break through them, and learned to turn his attention elsewhere. He understood, better than any other foreigner at St. Petersburg, how to navigate amid the shoals of conversation; to be entertaining, agreeable, interesting, and even apparently bold without ever causing embarrassment by an inadvertent remark; and if, in the ardor of discourse, he approached a dangerous limit, the promptness with which he read an unexpressed thought sufficed to make him change, with easy nonchalance, the direction of a conversation in which he seemed to be the most interested.

He was not, however, disposed to talk with any one the day, or rather the evening, we meet him again—this time at the Countess de G——’s, a woman of superior intellect, already advanced in years, whose salon was one of the most brilliant and most justly popular in St. Petersburg. Everything, indeed, was calculated to facilitate social intercourse of every degree, and, if there was a place where the bounds we have just referred to were invisible, though never forgotten, it was here. What could not be said aloud here, more than elsewhere, had a thousand facilities for private utterance. On the other hand, for the benefit of prudent people who preferred to say nothing at all, there were tables where they could play whist or a game of chess. A piano at one end of the spacious salon was always open to attract amateur performers, then more numerous than now, when no one ventures, even in the family circle, to play without unusual ability.

In this friendly atmosphere, our marquis, generally so social, was silent and preoccupied. Seated in a corner on a sofa where no one else was sitting, he took no part in the general conversation. And yet, as the room filled, and various groups were formed, here and there foreigners, and especially the members of the diplomatic corps who frequented the house, broached the great topic, and by degrees were heard on various sides the names of Mouravieff, Ryleieff, Pestel, and two others likewise condemned to death, as well as the names of those who were to be exiled—a punishment almost as terrible.

A young German attaché, perceiving Adelardi, approached, and took a seat beside him. “And Walden,” said he in a low voice, “have you not had permission to see him twice?”

“Yes.”

“Have you seen him since he was informed of his fate?”

“No; but I have reason to hope I shall obtain that favor.”

“He is not sorry, I imagine, to escape the gibbet.”

“Not the gibbet; but as to death, I am sure he thinks it preferable to the fate that awaits him.”

“Poor fellow! but then, qu’allait‐il faire?”—

“Dans cette galère?” interrupted the marquis with displeasure. “The question is certainly apropos, and I would ask him if I could obtain a reply that would avail him anything.”

“By the way,” said the other, “I suppose you know who has just arrived at St. Petersburg?”

The marquis questioned him with a look of uncertainty, for he was expecting more than one arrival that day.

“Why, the fair Vera, who has returned to her post.”

“Really!” exclaimed Adelardi eagerly. “In that case perhaps we shall see her here, for I am told she comes every evening when in the city.”

“Yes, but not till the empress dispenses with her services. It is nearly ten o’clock. She will probably be here soon. Our agreeable hostess is one of her relatives.”

“I was not aware of it. I know the Countess Vera but little. She was not at court when I was here three years ago. I only saw her two or three times at the Princess Lamianoff’s, who was then here, but was not presented to her.”

“At the Princess Catherine’s? I believe you. It is said she wished Vera to marry her son, who was indeed very assiduous in his attentions. The young countess did not appear wholly insensible to them at that time. Do you suppose she is still attached to him?”

“I do not know.”

“Poor girl! I pity her, in that case, but it is not very probable she will long be infatuated about a convict. Besides, she will find others to console her, if she makes the effort.”

At that moment the piano was heard. The young diplomatist was requested to take a part in a trio, and the music put an end to the conversation that was becoming too ardent on every side, through the interest caused, not by the offence, but by the misfortunes of the criminals. Every one knew them, and several of them belonged to the same coterie which now scarcely dared utter their names aloud.

Adelardi remained in the same place, his head resting on his hand, more absorbed than ever. He pretended to be listening to the music, and was mechanically beating time. But he was thinking of something very different, and only started from his reverie whenever the bell announced a new arrival. Then he eagerly raised his head and looked towards the door, but only to resume his former position at the entrance of each new visitor—as if not the one whom he desired to see.

LI.

At the beginning of the same evening a different scene was occurring, not far distant, in a salon still more elegant and magnificent than the one we have just visited. It was not, however, intended, like that, for the reception of visitors, but solely for the pleasure and comfort of her who occupied it—a lady, as was evident, though there was no profusion of useless trifles or superfluous ornaments. But it seemed as if her hands could only touch what was rare and costly. Gold, silver, and precious stones gleamed from every object destined to her constant use, from the open cassette that contained her work to the sumptuous bindings of the books scattered over the embroidered covering of the table, or lying on a small étagère of malachite near a large arm‐chair. This chair, intended for reading, was also adapted to repose by the soft cushion covered with the finest lace for the head of the reader to rest upon in an attitude at once convenient and graceful. On all sides were flowers of every season in as great abundance as if they grew in the open air at the usual time. They gave out an exquisite odor, which, with perfumes more artificial but not less sweet, embalmed the apartment.

If, as some think, and we have already remarked, places resemble those who inhabit them, the reader may be eager to know the owner of this. We will endeavor to describe her as she appeared to those who knew her at the time of our story: a woman of that age when beauty is in all its freshness; who was truly said to have the dignity of a goddess and the form of a nymph; a face sweet and pale, but with noble, delicate features; a complexion of charming purity; a look and smile that were captivating; and the whole picture was framed by hair floating in long curls over graceful white shoulders.

Such was the person who, at the sound of a manly and sonorous voice, entered the salon just described, and threw herself into the arms of him who had called her by name. Their first words were expressive of joy at seeing each other again after a long separation of some hours, and for a time they seemed only to think of each other. Their glances, their smiles met, and it might have been supposed they had nothing in the world to do but love each other and tell each other so.

But the tone of conversation gradually changed. She grew earnest and he became uneasy. He made an effort to reply to the questions she addressed him and sometimes persistently repeated, but he appeared to do so unwillingly, as if he yielded out of condescension, and with difficulty resisted a desire of imposing silence on her. Once he rose and left her, but she followed him, softly placed her arm within his, and, drawing herself up to her utmost height (for, though she was quite tall, he was a whole head taller) whispered in his ear. He bent down to listen, but while she was talking a frightful change suddenly came over his face. She perceived it, and looked at him with surprise and an anxiety she had never felt before, as he leaned against the mantel‐piece and remained there grave and silent with folded arms.

He was then twenty‐nine years old, and in the brilliancy of that manly beauty which suffering, care, the violent passions of a later age, and time itself, scarcely altered. Besides his lofty, noble stature, and features so regular that no sculptor could idealize them, there was a charm in the expression of his face and the tone of his voice which inspired attachment as well as admiration. Hitherto resentment or anger had seldom been known to flash from his eyes or cause his voice to tremble, and perhaps this was the first time she had ever seen his blue eyes light up with so threatening a gleam. She did not dare persist in her request, but waited for him to break the silence. By degrees his ominous aspect gave place to profound and bitter melancholy. “Ah!” said he at length, “this is a sad beginning!” Then after a short silence, he looked around as he continued: “Cherished home! we shall perhaps often regret the happy days passed here!”—

“We will not leave it,” replied she with a quickness that betrayed how unused she was to contradiction. “We will keep it as it is, and always come back to it. Our grand days shall be passed, if need be, in the gloomy Winter Palace, but our happiest days shall be spent here, and they shall be in the future what they have been in the past.”

He shook his head: “The past was ours: the future does not belong to us. We must henceforth devote ourselves to our great country, and sacrifice all—all! God requires it of us.”

“All!” repeated she with alarm. “What! even happiness and mutual confidence? Oh! no, that portion of the past nothing shall infringe upon! And there is still another right I shall never renounce—that of imploring favor and pardon for the guilty.” She hesitated, and then went on, clasping her hands and fixing her eyes on him with a supplicating expression: “Will you no longer listen to me?”

“Always in favor of the unfortunate, but never for the ungrateful!”

He frowned as he said these words, and turned towards the door, but she stopped him.

She felt it would not do to persist, and with the adresse which is the lawful diplomacy of love, she at once changed the subject, and obliged him to listen while she discussed projects she knew he had at heart. She spoke of herself, of him, of the happy past, their brilliant future, of a thousand things, and indeed of everything except her whispered petition which she now wished him to forget.

The reader has already discovered himself to be in the presence of the young emperor and empress, whose unexpected accession took place in the midst of a storm. They were in the habit of meeting thus in the palace where they lived during the happy days of their early married life, when no thought of the throne disturbed their youthful love!(188) Both hesitated a long time about leaving this charming palace for the sovereign residence, and, when constrained to do so by the necessity of their position, they kept it as it was, without allowing anything to be changed, as a witness of the days that, in spite of the imperial purple, they continued to call the happiest of their life.

After the empress was left alone, she remained thoughtful a moment, then, approaching the malachite étagère, hastily rang a small gold bell. A door concealed beneath the hangings instantly opened, and a young girl appeared. She stopped without speaking, awaiting an order or some observation. But there was nothing in her attitude to indicate the timidity that might have been expected in a maid of honor answering the bell of her sovereign. On the contrary, there was a majestic beauty and an air about her which might have seemed haughty had it not been modified when she spoke. Then, there was a caressing glance in her eyes, though they sometimes sparkled as if betraying more passion than tenderness; but her fine form, her black eyes, her thick fair hair, and the delicacy of her complexion, rendered her at once striking and imposing. She waited some moments in silence—then, seeing her mistress did not address her, she advanced and spoke first: “Did your majesty venture to plead his cause?” said she.

The empress started from her reverie and sadly shook her head. “My poor Vera,” she replied, “you must renounce all hope.”

The young girl turned pale. “Renounce all hope!” exclaimed she. “O madame! can that be your advice? Can it be there is no hope?”

The empress, without replying, seated herself in her arm‐chair, took a book from the étagère, and began turning over the leaves as if she wished to put an end to the conversation. Vera’s eyes flashed for an instant, and it was with difficulty she repressed an explosion of grief or irritation. She remained silent, however, and stood beside the table absently plucking the petals from the flowers in a crystal vase before her.

The empress meanwhile kept her eyes fastened on her book, but presently she raised them and looked at the clock. “I do not need you any longer, Vera. It is ten o’clock. You are going to the Countess G——’s this evening, I think.”

“Yes, madame, if your majesty has no further orders to give me.”

“No, I have nothing more.—Ah! I forgot. Open that drawer,” pointing to the other end of the apartment. “You will find a letter there.”

Vera obeyed, and brought the letter to her mistress.

“Be sure to forward it to the address,” said the latter. “It is the permission for the Princess —— to accompany her husband to Siberia. I am happy to be able to render that heroic woman this sad service. But she is not the only one.”

“What a fate those women are bringing on themselves!” said Vera, shuddering with horror.

“Yes, it is indeed fearful,” said the empress; “but I admire them, and will serve them every way in my power.”

Vera was silent, and after a moment, seeing the empress had nothing more to say, she gravely approached to take leave of her. As she bent down to kiss her hand, the empress pressed her lips to her forehead.

“Come, Vera,” said she, “look a little more cheerful, I beg you. To satisfy you, I promise to make one more effort. But I think, my dear, you are very generous to express so much anxiety about him, for it is not the emperor alone who has reason to call him ungrateful!”

At this, Vera’s face crimsoned, and she drew herself up at once. “Your majesty has a right to say anything to me,” said she in a trembling voice, “but this right has generally been used with kindness.”

“Whereas you now find me cruel. Well, be it so; we will let the subject drop. Good‐night, and without any ill‐feeling, my dear.”

She dismissed her maid of honor with a motion of the head. Vera bowed, and without another word left the room.

LII.

“The Countess Vera de Liningen!”

At this name the Marquis Adelardi looked up, but this time he did not resume his former attitude, for the person he had so impatiently awaited at last appeared. It was she! The cause of this impatience, if we would know it, was a resolution to make an effort that evening in behalf of his friend through the Countess Vera, but it was first indispensable to be sure of her feelings towards him. He wondered if he should discover any traces of the ill‐concealed passion she once manifested for George, or if time and indignation, aided by the influence of the court, had done their work? Or had his inconstancy inspired an indifference which had not been disarmed by his misfortunes? All this Adelardi flattered himself he should discover in a single conversation, provided she consented to an interview. As to any fear of her eluding his penetration, he had too good an opinion of himself in that respect.

As soon as she appeared, he looked at her with lively interest, and an attention which he indulged in without scruple. Having seen her only twice some years before, without speaking to her, he thought she would not recognize him till he was formally presented.

Vera crossed the salon without embarrassment, and with the ease and grace of a person accustomed to high life and the sensation she produced. She was dressed in black, the court, and even the citizens, still wearing mourning for the Emperor Alexander. This made the dazzling whiteness of her complexion and her golden hair the more striking, and suited her form of perfect symmetry, though noble rather than slender. The only ornament she wore was a knot of blue ribbon on her left shoulder, to which was attached the chiffre of diamonds (her badge as maid of honor), in which were woven together the initials of the three empresses: Alexandrine, then reigning; Mary, the empress‐mother; and Elizabeth, Alexander’s inconsolable widow, who was so soon to follow him to the tomb.

Recent emotion still flushed the young girl’s cheeks, and the tears of wounded pride, hastily wiped away, gave her a mingled expression of melancholy and haughtiness which at once inspired a desire to pity and a fear of offending her.

She first approached the table where the lady of the house was playing whist. The latter raised her eyes, and merely smiled as she gave her a friendly nod of the head. Vera, without offering her hand, bowed, and made a salutation at once graceful and respectful, which was customary in that country when one lady is much younger than the other; she pressed her lips to the edge of the black lace shawl which the elderly lady wore; then she remained standing a moment near the card‐table, looking around the room. There was in this look neither eagerness, nor curiosity, nor coquetry: it was a mere survey of the room and its occupants, and it was easy to see she was seeking no one and expecting no one. She only replied to the salutations addressed her by a slight inclination of the head, sometimes by a smile.

Presently, seeing a vacant seat, she went to take possession of it, and thus found herself near the canapé occupied by the Marquis Adelardi. She was scarcely seated when the young diplomatist who had so recently spoken of her approached with lively eagerness, to which she only responded by a look of indifference and giving him two fingers of her gloved hand.

The Marquis Adelardi took advantage of this favorable opportunity to approach the young German and beg to be presented to the Countess Vera. Adelardi’s name was no sooner pronounced than it awoke a remembrance, at first vague, then distinct enough to make her blush. This lively embarrassment was quite evident for a moment. She bowed without speaking as he was presented, and, turning her face immediately away, continued for some moments to converse with the other, but only long enough to recover from her confusion. She speedily put an end to this trifling conversation, and, suddenly turning towards Adelardi, she said, without any trace of her recent embarrassment: “I remember very well, Monsieur le Marquis, your visit at St. Petersburg three years ago, but I was so young then you had probably forgotten me.”

Adelardi replied, as he would have done in any case, but in this instance with truth, that such a supposition was inadmissible.

“And as for me,” he continued, “never having had the honor of a personal acquaintance, I necessarily thought myself wholly unknown to you.”

“Your friends have so often spoken of you that your name was familiar, but your features, I acknowledge, were somewhat effaced from my memory.”

“Yours naturally clung to mine. Besides, I also heard you constantly spoken of.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Have you seen the Princess Catherine lately?” said she.

“No, I left Florence at the beginning of December.”

“For St. Petersburg?”

“Yes.”

“And have you been here ever since?”

“Yes. You were absent at my arrival, otherwise I should not have waited till the present time to solicit the favor I have just obtained.”

There was another momentary pause. The young girl looked around, and continued, in a lower tone: “You were here, then, the twenty‐fourth of December?”

“I was.”

She hesitated an instant, then, lowering her voice still more, said: “And have you seen your friend since that fatal day?”

“Yes, and I hope to see him once more—alas! for the last time.”

Vera bit her lips, quivering with agitation, but soon resumed, with a coolness that surprised and, for a moment, disconcerted the marquis:

“I formerly knew Count George de Walden, but for some time had lost sight of him. Nevertheless, his sentence fills me with horror, and I would do anything in the world to deliver him from it—him and the rest.”

“Him and the rest? One as soon as the other?”

“One as soon as the other; they all excite my pity. I wish the emperor would pardon them all.” Her voice by no means accorded with her words; but Adelardi continued as if he did not perceive it:

“Pardon them all! That would be chimerical. But there are some who are deserving of clemency.”

“The emperor is more lenient towards inferior criminals than to those who, after being loaded with favors, forget his kindness.”

“And yet there may be extenuating circumstances even in some cases of that number.”

“Do you know of any that would be of any avail to Count George?” said she eagerly.

“Not quite so loud; we may be overheard.”

“Yes; you are right,” she said, resuming her former tone. “Let us change our seats; we look as if we were plotting something here, and should avoid attracting attention. Let us examine the albums on yonder table. There we can continue our conversation with less restraint.”

“Well,” continued she, as soon as they had effected the change proposed, and were seated before the albums, which they pretended to be examining carefully.

“Well,” replied Adelardi, “what I mean is that many things of no avail in the eye of the law might not be without influence over him who is head of the law.”

And while she was listening with interest, unintentionally betrayed by her eager, agitated expression, her glowing cheeks, and parted lips, Adelardi pleaded his friend’s cause, relating what we have already learned respecting his apparent, rather than real, complicity, his ignorance of the actual designs of the conspirators, and the circumstances that led to his presence among the insurgents on the twenty‐fourth of December. In short, he gave her all the details of which she had been totally ignorant, having only heard, during her absence, of George’s offence and the sentence he had incurred.

“And the emperor,” said she eagerly, “does he know it was he who saved his brother’s life that dreadful day?”

“I doubt it; there were only two witnesses who could attest it. One of these did not come forward, for fear of compromising himself; the other was exceptionable.”

“Who was the other?”

“A man named Fabiano Dini, George’s secretary; but a great culprit, not considered worthy of credit. He told the truth, however, ardently hoping his testimony might save his master.”

“He is doubtless condemned to the same fate?”

“Yes, but to a more severe one; his sentence is for life, whereas George’s is only for twenty‐five years.”

“Only twenty‐five years!” repeated she, with a shudder.

“Yes, it is horrible; it is worse than death! And George will envy the wretch who was the prime cause of his misfortune, for Dini, seriously wounded on the twenty‐fourth of December, will probably die before the sad day fixed for their departure.”

They were now interrupted by something not foreign to the subject of their discourse. A lady, unpretendingly clad, who till now had remained aloof, approached the young maid of honor, and, with a faltering, respectful tone, asked if the petition addressed his imperial majesty had been granted.

“Yes,” said Vera eagerly. “Permission has been accorded. The Princess —— received it this very hour. I left it myself at her door, on my way here.”

She kindly extended her hand to the person who addressed her. The latter bent down as if to kiss it, but Vera prevented it by cordially embracing her.

“Behold a true, faithful friend in misfortune,” said she, as the other left them. “She herself is capable of going to Siberia with her whose dame de compagnie she was in happier days. But then, the Princess —— has in her misfortunes the happiness of feeling herself beloved and respected by all.”

“Assuredly,” said Adelardi. “She is really an admirable woman.”

“So admirable that she is beyond my comprehension.”

“How so?”

“I do not understand how a person can resolve on the course she wishes to pursue—she and the others.”

“What!” said Adelardi, looking at her with surprise. “You do not understand how a woman can thus wholly devote herself to the man—the husband whom she loves.”

Vera shook her head. “No,” said she. “I do not wish to appear better than I am. If I were in such a position, if I had the misfortune of loving one of those convicts, he might rely on my exertions to obtain his pardon, and to use every means in my power to that end. But, as to sharing his lot and following him to Siberia, no, my dear marquis, I frankly acknowledge that is a proof of devoted affection I feel wholly incapable of.”

Another form at this moment passed before the marquis’ mental vision, beside which the beauty actually before him paled, and slightly modified the lively admiration with which he regarded her.

“Well,” said he, after a moment’s reflection, “I know one of these convicts for whom a woman—a young lady of about your age—is ready to give a still greater proof of devotion than the Princess ——, for she is not his wife. She is only—his betrothed, and wishes to marry him on purpose to share his fate.”

“That is something entirely original,” said Vera.

“To do that,” pursued Adelardi, “she has a double favor to obtain, and is coming to St. Petersburg for that purpose. She will be here to‐morrow, or, at the latest, in a few days. I have been commissioned to solicit for her an audience of the empress. Can I do so through your instrumentality?”

“Certainly. All these requests pass through my hands, and none have been rejected. But this is really the most singular case that has occurred.” She drew her tablets and a pencil from her pocket. “The name of your protégée?” said she.

Adelardi hesitated an instant, then, noting a little anxiously the effect produced, said:

“Her name is—Fleurange d’Yves.” He was relieved to hear the maid of honor say, after carefully writing down the name:

“Fleurange! that is a very singular name, and one I never heard before. To‐morrow,” continued she, rising, and returning the tablets to her pocket, “before noon you shall have a reply. Au revoir, Monsieur le Marquis.”

As she gave him her hand, she added in a low tone: “I thank you for all your information, and will endeavor to avail myself of it. If you see Count George, tell him—but no, tell him nothing. If by the merest chance I succeed, it will be time enough then to tell him what he owes to my efforts. If I do not—it will be better for him to remain ignorant of my failure.”

The Marquis Adelardi returned home greatly preoccupied, and absently took up two letters lying on the table. But after opening them, he successively read them with equal interest. First, he looked at one of the signatures: “Clement Dornthal? He is the cousin who accompanies the fair traveller. They have arrived, then.—Well, the end of the drama is approaching: we must all endeavor to play our parts with prudence. Mine is not the easiest!”

He opened the other note, and hastily ran over it. “Thursday! I shall see him on Thursday at two o’clock. Poor George! it will be a sad meeting, in spite of the news I have to surprise and console him.”

He had the satisfaction of learning by this note that, thanks to the powerful influence brought to bear on the occasion, he would be permitted to pass an hour with the prisoner every day during the week that yet remained before the sad train of exiles would set forth.

“Poor George!” he again repeated. “Can it be he has really come to this?—But who knows what may yet take place? If the proverb, ‘What woman wills, God wills,’ is true, all hope is not lost, for here are two women evidently with the will to aid him, and energetic enough to overrule the most adverse destiny. Two—doubtless one too many, and I have been rather bold to risk a fearful collision. But things have come to such a point that they can hardly be worse. If the fair Vera succeeds, it is George’s affair to get out of the complication of gratitude to her who has saved him, and the one ready to follow him. But if she fails, as seems only too probable, then the case will be very simple: our charming heroine will have no rival to fear.”

LIV.

After the succession of disagreeable surprises Mademoiselle Josephine had experienced during her painful journey, another of a different nature, but the greatest of all, awaited her at the end. Her imagination, we are aware, never furnished her with anything beyond the strictest necessity. It was only with difficulty she succeeded in comprehending that her dear Gabrielle had decided to marry a stranger condemned to the galleys, and this inconceivable idea seemed to have penetrated her mind to the exclusion of all others. She was going to join a prisoner, and from the day of her departure from Heidelberg she looked upon herself as on the way to a dungeon. When therefore she heard the words, “We have arrived!” and their sledge passed under the arch of an immense porte cochêre, she shivered with fear. It was, consequently, with a sort of stupefaction she found herself in a brilliantly lighted vestibule, whence a broad staircase led to a fine long gallery opening into one salon after another, at the end of which our travellers were ushered into a dining‐room, where supper was awaiting them of a quality to which mademoiselle was quite as unaccustomed as to the splendor with which it was served. She looked around with mute surprise, hardly daring touch the dishes before her, and looking at her two companions with an interrogative expression of the greatest perplexity. But they both seemed affected and preoccupied to such a degree as not to notice what was passing around them, and mademoiselle, faithful to her habits, forbore questioning them for the moment.

The repast was made in silence; after which Clement wrote a note which she heard him ask a valet to send to M. le Marquis. Then the two ladies were conducted to the apartments prepared for them. Fleurange embraced her companion and wished her good‐night, and Mademoiselle Josephine was left alone in a chamber surpassing any she had ever seen, with large mirrors around her, in which for the first time in her life she saw herself from head to foot. There was also a bed à baldaquin, which she scarcely dared think destined for her modest person, but in which at length she extended herself with a respect that for a long time troubled her repose. Never had the excellent Josephine found herself so completely out of her element. She wondered if it was really herself beneath those curtains of silk, and, when at last she fell asleep, it was to dream that Gabrielle, splendidly apparelled, was mounting a throne, and she, Mademoiselle Josephine, arrayed in a similar manner, was at her side. Her disturbed slumbers were not of long duration. Before day she was up, and impatiently waiting for the hour when she could leave her fine chamber and sally forth to explore this strange dwelling which the night before seemed so much like a fairy palace.

This impression was not lessened by the light of day. The rooms were really splendid, and furnished with the taste the Princess Catherine everywhere displayed, and which was as carefully consulted in the house where she only spent three months of the year, as in her palace at Florence, which she made her home. Mademoiselle went from one room to another in a state of continually increasing admiration, and, while thus walking about, she found everywhere the same mild temperature, which seemed something marvellous, for all the doors were open, and not only were there no fires to be seen, but no glass or even sashes in the windows. Apparently there was nothing to screen her from the frosty air without—freezing indeed, for on their arrival at St. Petersburg the thermometer was down to fifteen or sixteen degrees, and yet—what was the secret of this wonderful fact? She was not cold in the least, though the sight of the large windows made her shiver, and she only ventured to stand at a distance and look at the view without.

She beheld a vast plain covered with snow, with carriage‐ways in every direction, bordered with branches of fir. Vehicles of all kinds were crossing to and fro. Yonder was a succession of vast buildings, and farther off were the gloomy walls of a fortress flanked by a church whose gilded spire glittered in the winter sun—a sun radiant, but without warmth; which imparted a dazzling brilliancy to the snow, but whose deceptive light, far from alleviating the severity of the season, was, on the contrary, the surest sign of its merciless rigor.

While thus admiring and wondering at everything, Mademoiselle came to the last salon of the enfilade, where, before one of the large windows, she perceived Fleurange motionless and absorbed in such profound reverie that she did not notice her approach.

“Ah! Gabrielle, here you are! God be praised! I was lost, but no longer feel so, now I have found you. But, for pity’s sake! what are you doing at that open window?”

At this, Fleurange turned around with a smile. “Open! my dear mademoiselle? We should not be alive long, clad as we are.”

“I really do not understand why I do not feel the cold, and yet—”

Fleurange motioned for her to approach (for the old lady still kept at a respectful distance from the dangerous openings), and made her touch the thick glass, one pane of which composed the window—a luxury at that time peculiar to St. Petersburg, and which often deceived eyes more experienced than those of the simple Josephine. Reassured, but more and more amazed, she remained beside Fleurange at the window, profiting by the occasion to ask all the questions hitherto repressed. Everything was gradually explained to her, and she comprehended that this magnificent house belonged to Count George’s mother.

“And he?” she ventured to say when Fleurange had answered all the questions,—“he, Gabrielle, where is he?”

“He!” repeated Fleurange, as a flush rose to her cheeks and her eyes filled with tears—“he is there: there, mademoiselle, within the walls of the fortress before us!”

Poor Josephine started with surprise. “Pardon me!” said she. “If I had known that, I should not have mentioned him.”

“Why, mademoiselle?—The sight of those walls does not make me afraid! On the contrary, I long to enter them. I long to leave all this splendor which separates me from him as it did before! O my dear friend! you must not pity me the day I am united to him!”

The language of passion always had a strange effect on this elderly maiden, but she only allowed herself to reply meekly:

“Well, my dear child, we will not pity you! It is Clement and I who will need pity when that day comes, and you must not be vexed if—” And in spite of herself, great tears filled her eyes, which she promptly wiped away.

She remained silent for some moments, then spoke of something else, feeling if she resumed the subject it would speedily lead to an explosion of grief which she resolved to restrain that she might not afflict her young friend.

“What wide plain is that between the quay and the fortress?” she soon continued.

“That is the Neva,” replied Fleurange, smiling.

“The Neva?”

“Yes, the river that runs through the city.”

“The river?” repeated Mademoiselle Josephine. “Come, Gabrielle, I know I am very ignorant of everything relating to foreign countries, but still, not to such a degree as to believe that. A river!—when I see with my own eyes hundreds of carriages on it, sledges and chariots of all kinds, going in every direction, and houses and sheds!—And what are those two great mountains I see yonder?”

“They are ice‐hills, such as they have in Russia, mademoiselle, and which were imitated in wood three years ago at Paris. Do you remember? I am told these are only erected temporarily during the carnival.”

“Very well; but what you have said does not prove that to be the river, and that you are right.”

“It seems incredible, I know, but everything we see there now will disappear in the spring, leaving only a broad stream between that fine granite quay and the fortress. But I confess I can scarcely realize it myself, never having seen it.”

Clement now appeared. He looked pale and disposed to be silent, and gave every indication of having passed a no less restless night than Mademoiselle Josephine, though for a different reason. After exchanging some words with his companions, his eyes glanced over the broad river, and, like those of Fleurange, fastened on the gloomy walls of the fortress. It was a strange chance that led them all there precisely opposite. Clement gazed at the place with despair, jealousy, and horror, but still was unable to turn his eyes away.

“There, then, is the end,” thought he; “for her, the end desired: for me, the grave of my youth! Yes, when she once enters those walls, all will be at an end for me, were I to live beyond the usual period. My life will be ended at twenty years of age!”—

These reflections and others of the same nature were not calculated to make Clement very agreeable that morning. He was not only serious, which often happened, but, contrary to his habit, he was gloomy and taciturn. Their breakfast was despatched in silence, after which it was only by a great effort he gradually succeeded in regaining his usual manner.

“Cousin Gabrielle,” said he then, “I appear morose this morning, I am aware, and I beg your pardon. But I am only sad, I assure you—sad in view of what is approaching. This is pardonable, I hope,” continued he, taking Mademoiselle Josephine’s hand; “you will not require us, will you, to leave you without regret?”

“That is what I said to her a moment ago,” said poor Josephine, wiping away her tears. “She says she is happy; that she longs to be there,” casting a glance across the river. “We only desire her happiness, I am sure; but then for us—”

“Yes,” said Clement, with a sad smile of bitterness, “for us the few days to come will not be very happy, and we really have reason to be sad. As for me, Gabrielle, I also regret those just ended; for in this new sphere my rôle is at an end. I am now to be for ever deprived of the pleasure of being useful to you in any way.”

He was still speaking when the Marquis Adelardi was announced; and he hastily rose.

“Stay, Clement,” said Fleurange eagerly—“stay. I wish this excellent friend to become acquainted with you.”

“I also wish to make his acquaintance, but not now. Tell him that to‐ morrow, yes, to‐morrow morning—or even this evening, if he will receive me, I will call at his residence. Do not detain me now.”

And before the marquis appeared he was gone. He felt he should be de trop at this interview of such deep import to Fleurange, for such it was. To see George’s friend once more, his confidential friend—him who at this solemn period had become the intermediary authorized by his mother!—There was great reason to be agitated at such a thought. Besides, Adelardi had always inspired her with sympathy and confidence, and in this new sphere she realized how beneficial his experience would be, for Clement was right in saying he could no longer be of any use. He was as ignorant as she of the habits and usages of the court. And yet, to obey the Princess Catherine’s instructions, her first object must be to obtain an audience of the empress—a formidable prospect, which frightened her a thousand times more than all that afterwards awaited her. She therefore received the marquis with such childlike confidence as to redouble the regard he had always felt for her. There was the same beauty, the same simplicity about her, and, above all, the charm most attractive to eyes as blasés as his—of resembling no one else in the world! The extraordinary courage she showed herself capable of made him appreciate the more that which she manifested in separating from George, and revealed to him the whole extent of the sacrifice then made with so much firmness.

The mission confided to Adelardi assumed, therefore, a graver aspect in his eyes than before, and he was for an instant tempted to reproach himself for having, the night previous, invoked the aid of a rival in George’s behalf, who might prove an enemy to the charming girl before him. On all accounts, however, he could not regret this last effort for his friend’s welfare. In case Vera failed, and by chance was afterwards tempted to display any ill‐will at another’s performing an act of devotedness she declared herself incapable of, he had taken some precautions to defeat her, and flattered himself the favor would be obtained before she discovered by whom it was implored.

Meanwhile, the maid of honor was punctual. The marquis had already received her reply, and now placed it in his young friend’s hands.

“Your request is granted: Mademoiselle Fleurange d’Yves will be received by her majesty on Thursday, at two o’clock.

V. L.”

“The day after to‐morrow!” said Fleurange with emotion. Then, blushing as she continued: “But how happens it that the name which I have not borne for so long occurs in this note?”

“It is yours, is it not?” replied the marquis evasively.

“Yes, it is mine, but—” she stopped. A particular remembrance was now associated with the name of Fleurange. No one had called her so but George for more than three years. And the day for ever graven on her memory, he told her he should keep that name for himself—himself alone. She regretted to find it here written by a strange hand, and felt an involuntary contraction of the heart.

“I should have preferred the request made in the name I generally bear.”

“Pardon me. I am to blame in this,” said Adelardi. “I supposed it a matter of indifference. I thought the name of Fleurange would particularly attract the attention of her whose favor you seek, and remain more surely in her memory.”

This was merely an excuse which occurred to him in reply to a question he had not anticipated. His real motive was to conceal from the maid of honor another name perhaps more familiar, and which might be connected in her mind with some prejudice injurious to the success of the petition of which she was the intermediary.

To Be Continued.

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Sayings

“We serve God by climbing up to heaven from virtue to virtue; we serve Satan by descending into hell from vice to vice.”—S. Bonaventura.

He who reflects upon death has already cut short the evil habit of talkativeness; and he who has received the gift of inward and spiritual tears, shuns it as he would fire.—S. John Climacus.

Spiritual blessings attained by much prayer and labor are solid and durable.—Ibid.

The first degree of interior peace is to banish from us all the noise and commotion created by the passions, which disturb the profound tranquillity of the heart. The last and most excellent degree is to stand in no fear of this disturbance, and to be perfectly insensible to its excitement.—Ibid.

The heart of the meek is the throne on which the Lord reposes.—Ibid.

The day will belong to him who is first in possession.—Ibid.

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