Prince Von Bismarck And The Interview Of The Three Emperors…

Prince Von Bismarck And The Interview Of The Three Emperors

By M. Adolphe Dechamps, Min. D’état

From La Revue Générale De Bruxelles.

MY DEAR FRIEND: You question me about the events which during the past two years have been subverting Europe, and you in particular ask me what I think of the meeting of the three emperors at Berlin, and of the policy of von Bismarck.

Your first inquiry is too general for me to take up in a letter which I wish to avoid making too long, but in a work which I am writing at present I will endeavor to do so to the extent of my ability. About the year 1849, I went to work on an Étude sur la France, out of which, during the second Empire, I put forth three separate publications.(189) In these I followed the course of Napoleon III., both in the successes and in the blunders which brought about his fall; and now in the midst of the obscurity of general politics which thickens more and more from day to day, and wherein the attentive observer perceives more sinister flashes than gleams of sunshine, I am about to complete the main work which I began more than twenty years ago.

In 1859, I sent my first publication on the Second Empire to the aged Prince von Metternich, who honored me with his friendship, and asked him for his views about the condition of Europe, which was then on the eve of being profoundly changed by the war in Italy.

The following is an extract from the interesting reply which I received from him only a short time before his death: “After having been a witness and spectator of the catastrophes which burst forth between the years 1789 and 1795, in the latter one I made my first entry into the higher walks of the political world, and 1801 was the first year of my diplomatic career. I consequently cannot be in ignorance of anything that has taken place since the two remote epochs above mentioned. Now, am I thereby in advance of other living men? Can I consider myself capable of drawing up a prognostication of what will happen even so far only as regards the most immediate future? Certainly not! But, nevertheless, one thing I know I can do, I can venture to affirm that not during the course of the last seven decades has there been a single moment when the elements which make up social existence have found themselves plunged in so general a struggle as they are now.”

Since the prince thus wrote me, we have had the campaign of Italy against Austria in 1859; the war in Germany which ended in Sadowa; the civil war in the United States of N. A.; the colossal war of 1870; the astounding fall of the second French Empire; the rule of the Commune, and the conflagration in Paris; a Republican government in France; the setting up of the Empire of Germany; the Italian Revolution in Rome, which keeps the Pope a captive in the Vatican and all the church in mourning; we have had Spain contended for by three dynasties and a prey to anarchy and civil war; and we have a socialistic revolution stirring up everywhere the laboring masses and unsettling the deepest foundations of the society of our day!

What would old Prince von Metternich say if, having before him the immense upheaving of which we are witnesses, he could be now called upon to reply to the general inquiry which you have put to me? He would decline giving an opinion; he would refuse to make any predictions; he would confine himself to the expression of deeper fears, because of the general and formidable struggle now raging between all the elements which make up the very life of society. I will do just as he would, and for a hundredfold more reasons than he could have. I feel, as do all those who have any political instinct, that decisive and dreadful events are drawing nigh; though I cannot yet distinctly perceive them, I feel them, as one does the approach of a storm, from the heaviness of the air before seeing the lightning flash or hearing the thunder roll.

I lay aside, then, your general inquiry, and take up the second one, which is more precise, and which relates to the meeting at Berlin and to the policy of von Bismarck.

It is almost needless for me to mention that, retired as I have been for a long time from politics, any opinions which I may express are merely individual ones, that I alone am responsible for them, and that nobody can claim a right to extend that responsibility to my friends, and still less to the political party which I have had the honor of serving. I make this express reservation.

What is, then, the meaning, the character, and the bearing of the meeting of the three emperors? Is it a congress? Is it an alliance?

It is neither one nor the other, and this has been carefully proclaimed. It is not an European congress, since England and France were not present at it, the one having been left aside, and the other naturally excluded. It is not a congress, since no treaty will sanction its views and results. But, besides, Prince von Bismarck wants neither congress nor treaty. He attached great importance to signing the treaty of Prague alone with Austria and the treaty of Frankfort alone with France; he refused, with a certain hauteur, to allow any interference of the other European powers in those treaties, although they brought about a fundamental change in the status and equilibrium of Europe.

In times past, after a great war, Europe has always intervened through a solemn congress in which it dictated the terms of a general peace, thereby securing for it solidity and duration. Thus the treaty of Westphalia brought with it its consequent peace, the treaty of Vienna the peace of 1815, and more recently the treaty of the Congress of Paris in 1856 followed upon the war in the Crimea. Heretofore Europe has been subject to a system of equilibrium: Bismarck has done away with the latter, and broken up the former.

But he perceived the danger of this attitude and this situation. Germany had vanquished Austria, crushed France, and had won European supremacy, but she stood alone. Austria, forced out first from Italy, afterwards from Germany, could not, without feeling a deep and natural jealousy, see the German Empire rise to the first rank while she sank to the second. Russia cannot see the German Empire extend from the Danube to the Baltic, and overtop the Slavic Empire, without becoming also jealous. England cannot look upon this state of things, which leaves her nothing to do but to keep quiet and silent, without feeling somewhat as Austria and Russia do. There is felt, then, at St. Petersburg, as at Vienna, and perhaps at London, an invincible distrust of the predominance of Germany and of the rupture, for her benefit, of the equilibrium of Europe. There are deep and opposing interests which are incompatible with a true alliance between the three emperors, and, albeit they have at Berlin shaken hands, toasted, and fraternally embraced one another and exchanged certain general ideas, they have not allied themselves on settled political views.

M. von Bismarck has himself pretty accurately defined the meeting at Berlin: “It is of importance that no one should suppose that the meeting of the three emperors has for its object any special political projects. Beyond a doubt, this meeting amounts to a signal recognition of the new German Empire, but no political design has directed it.”

It amounts to this or very nearly this: M. von Bismarck wanted neither a congress nor a treaty, nor did he seek an alliance which was impossible of attainment just now; but he was determined to put an end to his present isolation, and he sought in particular to cut short the dream of retaliation in which France might indulge from a hoped‐for alliance with Russia or with Austria.

The government of Berlin has in the meeting of the three emperors sought two and perhaps three ends: I. To bring about the recognition of the German Empire by the two great military powers of the North, and in that way deprive France of all hope of finding an ally, with a view to war, either at St. Petersburg or at Vienna. II. To discourage at the same time the particularism(190) of Bavaria and of South Germany, which has always looked for a support in the direction of Vienna. The third end may be to disarm the resistance of Catholics to the absurd and odious persecutions organized against them, by intimating to them that their cause has been abandoned by the Apostolic Emperor, the head of the House of Hapsburg.

The remarkable letter published in Der Wanderer of Vienna, under the heading of “The Order of Battle,” sets forth very cleverly each of these two hopes aforesaid of the Berlin diplomats.

“Those diplomats,” says Der Wanderer, “are rather barefacedly making game of Austria’s good‐nature. They calculate that this good‐nature will have the effect of paralyzing two (as M. von Bismarck considers them) implacable enemies of the empire, but heretofore friends of the Hapsburg dynasty; I mean the particularism of the minor states and the Catholic opposition. ‘Thanks to the house of Austria,’ say they, ‘we are going to disarm those reptiles, and pull out their venomous fangs.’ At the same time, those diplomats do not conceal their joy (premature, I hope) at what they call the Canossa(191) of Berlin and the retaliation of Olmutz. ‘We will get the old seal of the empire’ (I quote their words textually) ‘affixed to our heritage by the House of Austria.’ ”

It would seem, then, that the Emperor of Austria, by appearing at Berlin, meant to say to particularism and perhaps to the Catholic body: You need no longer count on me. And the Emperor of Russia went there to offer a toast to the German army and to signify to France: Do not count on any alliance with me for a war hereafter.

This would indeed be the crowning of M. von Bismarck’s policy. Since the two great wars against Austria and against France which by their prodigious results assuredly far surpassed his hopes and previsions, he has but one solicitude and one thought—to isolate France, to secure her military and political impotence, to file down the old lion’s teeth and to muzzle him.

To this end, he needed strong and impenetrable frontiers, which he got by the acquisition of Alsace and Lorraine. Prince von Bismarck cannot fail to perceive that the annexation of these two provinces to Germany constitutes for it, in a political point of view, a source of weakness rather than of strength; that it is an additional embarrassment to the difficulties following the organization of German unity; that Alsace and Lorraine will be, for a long time to come, another bleeding Poland on the flanks of the new empire; nevertheless, the conquest of these two provinces seemed to him, in a military point of view, indispensable as a first material guarantee against the possibility of retaliation on the part of France. By the possession of those provinces, he turns against France the formidable triple line of defence of the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Vosges; at Strasbourg and at Metz he holds the strategical keys of France; these two strongholds are, so to speak, iron gates of which the bolts are kept at Berlin. The other Rhenish frontiers are defended by the armed neutrality of Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Switzerland. Seated behind its impassable frontiers, and relying upon its powerful military organization and the remembrance of its recent triumphs, the German Empire appears perfectly secure from attack.

But even all this was not enough for Prince von Bismarck. He has just been repeating the policy which turned out so well for him in the war of 1866 against Austria. Then, through the guilty and senseless connivance of Napoleon III., he allied himself to Italy; he compelled Austria to divide her forces, to have two armies, one at Verona, the other in Bohemia—which was making sure beforehand of the defeat of Austria. M. von Bismarck has just begun a second time this skilful manœuvre. He has formed an offensive and defensive alliance with Italy which owes its political life to France, and repays the boon by treachery. By means of this alliance he would compel France, in the event of a war, to have an army of the Alps and an army of the Rhine, which would be equivalent to certain defeat.

Any war of retaliation is consequently for a long time to come rendered impossible.

There would be left to France only one resource, and that a distant one, viz., an alliance with a great military power, such as Austria, or, in particular, Russia, whose secret jealousies she would turn to her account.

But such an alliance presupposes France raised up, in a political, military, and moral sense, from her present ruin, and in possession of a settled government, stable within and influential without. Can a republic, even a conservative one, and even if it always had at its head as capable a statesman as M. Thiers, so raise France? Can a republic which is a good enough raft to take refuge on for a while, a so to speak narrow bed, which will do for France, wounded and ailing, to lie on during the period of convalescence—can it, in a country which lacks manly habits and historical institutions, unite enough solidity, security, wise liberty, strength, and grandeur to become the ally of so great an empire as Russia? To my mind, the idea of an alliance between a French republic and one of the two empires of the North against the German Empire is one of those impossibilities which need but to be asserted, not to be argued. If France could succeed in reuniting the separated links of her history, in reconciling her present with her past, if she were to again become a traditional, representative, and free monarchy, one holding itself equidistant from the abuses of the old régime and the errors of the Revolution—oh! then her situation would indeed be changed, and great alliances at present impossible might become possible soon thereafter. But such alliances would not have for their object never‐ending retaliations and new wars; they would bear their fruits through social peace, through the restoration of authority and order, and through that true, prudent, and measured liberty which, now that they have it not, they talk so much about. The greatness of France depends less on the extent of her frontiers than on her political, social, and religious renovation.

It is because M. von Bismarck understands perfectly that an alliance between one of the great military empires of the North and republican France is a chimerical project, that he encourages the adherents of the republic at Versailles to sustain their work.

Anyhow, M. von Bismarck, having in view the nature of contingencies, has sought to shut France out from hopes or temptations in this direction; after, having in her folly dreamt of getting a frontier on the Rhine, she has wretchedly lost, through the folly of her emperor, her eastern frontier; after, having sworn to tear in pieces the treaty of 1815, to which she had submitted with detestation, she has had to sign at Frankfort the treaty in virtue of which she was invaded and dismembered.

The new Empire of Germany, resting on its formidable army, protected by impenetrable frontiers, certain of an alliance with Italy which renders the undertaking of war against it almost impossible for France, sustained by the official friendship of Austria and of Russia, compels France to be resigned and peaceful; condemns her to political and military impotence, or, what may sound better, to walk in the ways of prudence. M. Thiers, in words which the French press has published, has recently made a resolute profession of this policy of prudence, by proclaiming that he desires peace—peace to build up and fructify; and that France, at all events, will not seek to break it.

When, from the balcony of the Imperial Palace at Berlin, it is proclaimed that the object and result of the meeting of three emperors is to sanction the statu quo of Europe, and to consolidate a general peace, we believe that they mean what they proclaim; but what is the signification of the proclamation? Why, that they have thereby accepted the actual state of things which has grown out of the recent wars; that is to say, the European supremacy of the German Empire, founded on the powerlessness or the cautious prudence of France; and that they think to have extinguished the centre of combustion from which the firebrand of war might be again hurled over Europe.

This is assuredly a clever policy, one in which Prince von Bismarck might allow himself to take a certain pride.

But in this serene sky there is one dark cloud, and we may well suppose that this cloud has disturbed the optimism of the diplomats assembled at Berlin. This cloud is that dreaded unknown future when France will be no longer governed by M. Thiers.

Salvation is not to come to France from the republic; in France there is neither a republic nor a monarchy; the forces which tend to a monarchy are disunited, and consequently powerless, and those which tend to a republic are still more divided; the nation is living under an administration ad interim; there is an absence of settled government and settled institutions, and an impossibility of establishing either, because of the wide divisions of irreconcilable parties, of anarchy in principles and ideas. The salvation of France for the time being is one man, a leader whose hand is pliable, firm, and commanding enough to hold political parties in submission and keep down the rivalries which would give France over to another civil war. M. Thiers believes that any present attempt to set up a monarchy would light up a civil war; while the conviction of the majority of the Assembly at Versailles is just as strong that, if the republic lasts, this civil war will break out on the morrow of the day when France will have lost M. Thiers. Probably both are right; it is rather to the condition itself of France than to the men that lead her that this lamentable state of affairs is to be attributed which finds its expression in the government of a provisional republic having nothing to look forward to in the future but unfathomable darkness and mystery.

M. Thiers is the embodiment of the conservative republic, which will last just so long as he lives, and I desire that his needed dictatorship be prolonged for a long while yet; but can we reasonably entertain such a hope? He has undertaken the admirable work of saving France; he has in Paris fought and won the great battle against anarchy; he has carried the loans through, reorganized the army and finances of France; he is pushing forward the evacuation of her territory; he maintains order. All this is very fine and grand; he is indeed acting the part of the saviour of his country; but let him not seek to do more; let him not be ambitious to become the founder of a government; let him rather be content with merely playing the first part at the head of affairs.

I thoroughly appreciate the work M. Thiers is engaged in; he directs his policy by the light of present events, the only ones he can control; he is going through the reparative period, but what is he preparing? What is he founding for the future? What heritage will he leave after him, and who will be his heir? Such are the questions which must come up to every reflecting mind, and in particular to his, so remarkably clear, perspicacious, and penetrating.

The weak side of his policy is that it leaves France on a political terra incognita. The creation of a few additional institutions will not suffice to raise France out of the provisional status in which she lies since her fall; I mean such as a vice‐presidency, the establishing of a lower house, all which would be adding shadows to shadows. It would never amount to anything more than an administration ad interim, and a period of expectation of a definite, stable, regular government having influence abroad, such an one as France feels that she does not but should possess. The question for M. Thiers, as well as for France and for Europe, remains the same: What is being prepared, what will the future bring?

As we know the tree by its fruits, so do we judge a policy by its results, and so will M. Thiers be judged.

If he leaves after him the heritage of a traditional and representative monarchy, or if, like a second Washington, he leaves as his successor to France a second John Adams or Thomas Jefferson who will enter upon the work of consolidating a republic really conservative, free, Christian, and powerful, he will indeed be a great man; but, if he is to be followed in power by a Gambetta who will be the predecessor of the socialist commune of Paris, he will, notwithstanding the immense services he has rendered, be severely judged by history. No one assuredly ought to understand this better than he.

Is the second President of the fourth or fifth French Republic to be a now unforeseen Jefferson or a Gambetta?

Such is the dreaded question now before us. These threatening eventualities have doubtless been attentively considered at the conference in Berlin. M. von Bismarck may have developed thereat the political plan which I have endeavored to analyze, and which has for its object the founding of the peace of Europe on France’s inability to undertake another war; but revolutionary and demagogical France, bearing incendiarism from Paris to Madrid, to Rome, and perhaps elsewhere, must be opposed in some other way than by the establishment of impenetrable frontiers and the formation of alliances; and on these other means of opposition the three emperors must have seriously conferred at Berlin, and I doubt much whether waging war against the Catholic Church has seemed to them the best way to avert the danger aforesaid.

II.

I have sought in this letter to set forth the character and import of the meeting at Berlin, and to show the policy which Prince von Bismarck has endeavored to inaugurate there. I have not been eaves‐dropping at the doors of the chambers in which the three emperors and their chancellors held their deliberations; but there is no difficulty in conjecturing what was talked about, and, I may add, what was thought therein.

We must not overestimate the importance of these conversations; the meeting at Berlin will no more bring about positive results for the solution of pending questions in Europe than did the numerous interviews which Napoleon III. had with the Emperor of Austria, the ministers of Great Britain, and the czar. As we have stated before, it is not a congress; it forms no alliances, and no treaty determining the new European equilibrium will come out of it. What M. von Bismarck wished particularly to bring about was the presence of the two emperors with their counsellors in the capital of the new empire. Their mere presence signified, in the eyes of the prince chancellor:

The recognition of the German Empire; the sanction of the treaties of Prague and Frankfort, which were to form the basis of the new equilibrium of Europe.

The impossibility for France to find a powerful ally that would enable her to attempt a war of retaliation.

On the part of Austria, the abandonment of all idea of returning to her old German policy, and the repudiation of all connivance with the particularistic resistance of the lesser states of Germany.

I will presently examine whether the presence at Berlin of the head of the dynasty of Hapsburg signifies also the repudiation of the Catholic movement which the persecutions directed against the church have stirred up throughout entire Germany.

Assuredly this policy of M. von Bismarck shows, I will not say grandeur, but skill and audacity; and it has been crowned by wonderful success. When I saw Prince von Bismarck raise Prussia, that a few years ago could hardly rank among the great powers, to the height of the Empire of Germany through the victories of 1866 and 1871—when I contemplated these astounding results, I was for a moment tempted to consider him as a great minister, as one of the rare successors of Richelieu or of Stein.

I was the more inclined to this judgment because, as a Belgian, I was grateful for the honest and upright policy which he had followed as regards Napoleon III. before the last war. There is no longer any room for doubt, now that the diplomatic documents are known, that Napoleon III., in order to redeem the unpardonable blunder which he had committed by favoring the war of 1861 between Prussia and Austria, endeavored to obtain in Luxemburg and in Belgium the compensations which he considered needful for him in view of the aggrandizement of Prussia. We know about the rough draft of the Benedetti treaty, which no amount of equivocation and timid denial can do away with.

I had, in my work published in 1865, clearly denounced the plot; and from the Belgian tribune, because I had pointed out these perils to its government, I have been called a political visionary and almost a traitor to my country. Subsequent events have justified my allegations, and now every one knows that the dangers which we ran for a time were more real, nearer at hand, and greater than even I imagined them to be.

The war of 1870 was the consequence of the refusal of the government of Berlin to yield to the guilty covetousness of Napoleon III. I ascribe the honor of the former to M. von Bismarck and to the integrity of William IV. I had proclaimed the existence of two eminent perils: a diplomatic peril, viz., an alliance of France with Prussia, of which Belgium would have been the stakes and the victim; the chance of a war between those two nations, in which France might have been victorious. We have, almost by a miracle, escaped those two perils; through the war of 1870, Belgium has been preserved from diplomatic conspiracies, and as a Belgian I can never forget it.(192)

Belgium, since the late war, finds herself in a new position which has not attracted the attention it deserves.

Belgium, for a long time back coveted by France, particularly by France under the Empire and under the Republic, had, above all, to fear an alliance between France and Prussia, which latter might sacrifice her to the political combinations growing out of such an alliance. That is what Napoleon III. attempted in the Benedetti negotiation, and it was this peril which before the recent war alarmed my patriotism.

Now this peril has vanished. An alliance between the German Empire and France is now put off for a long time. But there is another motive still more powerful, and which constitutes our complete security, which is this: that the existence of a neutral and strong Belgium has become henceforward for the German Empire a necessity of the highest order. Since the government of Berlin has thought it indispensable for strategic purposes to hold Metz and the lines of the Meuse and of the Vosges, it cannot allow, under any consideration, independent Belgium to disappear and France to occupy that territory of Belgium which is watered by the Meuse and the Scheldt. Our neutrality protects the Rhine on the side of the gap between the Sambre and the Meuse, but can afford this protection only provided our neutrality is politically and militarily strong to such an extent as our financial resources will warrant.

Our neutrality, in order to be one of the supports of the peace of Europe, must be ever an honest one; it must stand as a barrier against aggression whether from the east or from the south; it must be hostile to no power. On the other hand, it is plain that, in order to fill this position of barrier and guarantee, Belgium must remain always armed and able to repel an attack at the outset; otherwise, she would become politically useless, and, in the event of a war, the occupation of her territory would follow as the fatal result of such omission.

This was true before the late war, and on this point my views have not changed; but, since the new European situation created by the war, this truth is twice as plain, and our duties to Europe have increased twofold. It is important that all our political men, without distinction of party, and that the entire nation, understand well the position to which we have been brought by recent events.

Far from being hostile to the German Empire, I find in it a new guarantee for the independence of my country. Our neutrality now rests on all the powers and on all the treaties that have been made: it had become a habit, after the advent of the Napoleonic Empire, to consider England as the special protector of our national independence, but now that Germany has a particular and powerful interest in that independence, instead of one special support only, we now have two.

It is proper that I should make this statement, as I am about to submit M. von Bismarck’s policy to a severe criticism. In this page of history which I have been rapidly writing, I have not been wanting in praise; and, if these lines are ever read by M. von Bismarck, he cannot complain of the appreciation which I have so far expressed of his policy. In the pages that follow, I shall not spare criticism. Much as I have admired the policy which prepared the war, in equal degree does my mind fail to comprehend the policy followed at Berlin since the peace, and which appears to me to be a perfect antithesis of the former one.

This latter policy appears to me so incomprehensible that I ask myself whether Prince von Bismarck, instead of being a political genius like Stein, is not entering upon the path of error in which Napoleon III. came to his ruin.

Napoleon III. has also been the ruler of Europe; the second Empire for many years enjoyed preponderance in Europe, and might have retained it much longer but for the accumulated blunders of imperial policy. Napoleon III., who had begun his reign isolated from other monarchs, and to whom the appellation of my cousin had been disdainfully denied, found himself, immediately after the war in the Crimea and after the Congress of Paris, at the head of a great Western alliance formed with England and Austria and by isolating Russia and annulling Prussia. He had reached the zenith of power in Europe; he had a star in which he and every one besides believed; kings and emperors came to Fontainebleau and to the Tuileries to pay their court to the parvenu sovereign who had been transformed into a Louis XIV., just as has happened at Berlin.

When I saw Napoleon III., at the summit of such a situation, break with his own hands, like a hot‐brained child, this magnificent Western alliance to which he was indebted for his high fortune; conspire at the Congress of Paris with M. de Cavour to bring about that fatal war in Italy against Austria which was the first cause of his disasters; turn out of the straight path of conservative principles which he had sworn to follow, and then lose himself in the tortuous and obscure ways of revolution, my judgment of him was definitively made. A man who could commit such a folly was neither a statesman nor a political genius; he was merely a lucky adventurer who had been helped on and spoiled by events, but who did not know enough to turn them to account.

It was just then, in 1859, on the eve of the war in Italy, that I wrote my first work on Le Second Empire, in which I did not hesitate to predict that this war, no matter how much glory it might make for the emperor, would nevertheless amount to a political defeat which would lead to the fall of the Empire. “The heads of even the wisest men,” I said, “are liable to turn when they have reached such an elevation as he has arrived at.” And I selected as the epigraph of my work, the words which old Prince von Metternich had uttered when speaking of the extreme good‐fortune of the Emperor of the French: “He is successful,” said the prince to me; “he has excellent cards in his hands, and he plays his game well, but he will be lost as a revolutionary emperor on the Italian reef.” This remarkable prediction, made long before the war in Italy, has been verified to the letter, and my book, written in 1859, was merely a commentary upon it which subsequent events have confirmed.

M. von Bismarck is also at the acme of his triumph; he is presiding at his Congress of Paris. Behold Prussia, which but a few years ago had hardly any voice in the councils of Europe, now become the German Empire, and behold the Emperor of Germany getting the czar and the Emperor Francis Joseph to sanction at Berlin his victories, his conquests, and his political supremacy, by leaving France isolated, and making of no account England, which had kept herself aloof in her policy of forbearance.

Well, I do not hesitate to select this hour of triumph, when M. von Bismarck’s policy has been crowned at Berlin, in the midst of festivities the splendor of which is talked of far and wide, to predict its failure in the end if he does not change it. My reason for asserting this in presence of a state of things so contrary to my prediction is that M. von Bismarck is committing one of those blunders, I dare not say one of those political follies, which astonish reason, and which form the premises of a syllogism having for its conclusion an inevitable failure. The blunder is precisely similar to that perpetrated by Napoleon III., who, in consequence of having allied himself with revolutionary Italy, was led from Mexico to Sadowa, and from Sedan to Chiselhurst. This blunder on the part of M. von Bismarck, and of which he will yet repent, is his alliance with revolutionary Italy, which drags him into a war against the Catholic Church, which has always proved fatal to those who have attempted it, and which destroys the work of German unity which he had associated with his name. The epigraph of my work on Le Second Empire, borrowed from Prince von Metternich, might serve for this letter as well, if applied to the Emperor of Germany and his chancellor; if the head of the dynasty of the Hohenzollerns continues in the path of revolution in which M. von Bismarck has led him, “he will also perish, like the revolutionary emperor on the Italian reef.”

Is it rashness on my part to point out to Prince von Bismarck and to the German Emperor the Tarpeian rock so nigh to the capitol to which they have ascended? Am I unjust towards the prince chancellor?

No one had a higher opinion of his political merit than I, and in appreciating, as I have done in this letter, his astounding successes, I have not been sparing of praise nor indeed of admiration. If, then, I am compelled to draw a comparison between Napoleon III. and him, and to measure by the blunder committed by the Emperor of the French in 1859 that which he is now committing, I must ask his pardon, for I make a great difference between those two contemporary personages. In the same degree that Napoleon III. was irresolute, beset by somnolent indolence and continual hesitation, so does, on the other hand, Prince von Bismarck know how to show a tenacious persistence and audacity in the carrying out of his designs; but this very tenacity may be a source of additional danger, if he enters upon a road which leads to an abyss; he will go forward in it quicker and more irremediably than another would, because he knows neither how to stop nor to draw back.

Let us, then, study the policy of M. von Bismarck.

And, in the first place, without wishing in the least to belittle the share which evidently belongs to him in the triumphs of Prussia, we must, nevertheless, admit that another important share falls to Count von Moltke, the greatest warrior of our day; and an equally considerable part is due to the blunders of his adversaries, Austria and Imperial France.

If, for example, Napoleon III. had not betrayed Austria in 1866 by allowing and favoring the alliance between Prussia and Italy, a war against Austria would have been impossible, and the victory of Sadowa would not have taken place; the senseless war of 1870, which grew out of the victory of Sadowa, would have been without either cause or pretext; France would be now erect, Austria would have maintained its influential position in Germany, and the German Empire would not have been established for the profit of Prussian unitarisme.

With the foundation of German unity, of the German Empire, Napoleon has had almost as much to do as M. von Bismarck. The great chancellor has found ready for him two instruments which he did not invent: the military genius of von Moltke, and the folly of Napoleon. To complete the expression of my thought, I will add that the German Emperor has only been, as he himself proclaimed after his victories, a mere instrument in the hands of Divine Providence for the chastisement of France. France has been unfaithful to her past history, from which she has severed herself; she has been unfaithful to the monarchical form of government which has rendered her glorious, and to the church which has made her great; she has lost, by a twofold apostasy, her political faith and her Catholic faith; she no longer possesses her institutions, which have been, one after the other, destroyed either by the old régime or by the Revolution; she no longer knows how to restore the monarchy, the elements of which have been scattered in the tempests of revolution; she knows not how to keep up a republic of which she has neither the habits, the historical conditions, nor the conditions social and political; she is in that state through which nations, condemned to perish, fall and decay, and out of which those nations which God wishes to save can get, only through punishment by fire or by the sword. M. von Bismarck has been, and may become again, that fire and that sword; which may perhaps be an honor, but does not justify pride.

The political work, then, which has produced the German Empire undoubtedly deserves praise, and assuredly does honor to the political merits of Prince von Bismarck, but does not facilitate the forming of a definitive judgment in his regard. It is in the work of peace that the statesman shows himself, and I must say it, that in this respect I do not find M. von Bismarck as great as events seemed to have made him out to be; just as he has been seen to be intelligent, fortunate, almost great during the period of warfare, so in like degree do I incline to consider him, in the period of present organization, improvident and blind.

This work of organization is a difficult one; it requires wisdom and time. M. von Bismarck has recourse to precipitation, to force, and to wrath.

German unity, inuring to the benefit of Prussia, could not, before the war of 1866, have been foreseen. When, in 1863, the Emperor of Austria made his triumphal entry into Frankfort, bearing in his hand federal reform, he was surrounded by all the princes of Germany. Prussia stood alone, abandoned by all Germany; and, if Napoleon had not foolishly thwarted the plans of the Emperor Francis Joseph, the Emperor of Germany would have been crowned, not at Berlin, but at Vienna.

After the war of 1866, Prusso‐Germanic unitarism had not yet been accomplished. Saxony and the states of the South which had fought by the side of Austria were defeated; they submitted to, rather than accepted, the terms which Prussia forced on them as the consequence of their defeat. Northern Germany was bounded by the Main, and the minor states ever felt themselves drawn towards Vienna, their old centre of attraction.

It was the war of 1870, declared by Napoleon against the whole of Germany, notwithstanding the patriotic protest of M. Thiers, which all at once created this unity; this unity, which brought all the Germans together under one flag, received thus the baptism of glory and of blood.

But the Prusso‐German unitarism, extemporized and rough‐cast by the war, was not consolidated; many difficulties remained to be overcome.

M. von Bismarck saw before him two formidable adversaries: the particularism of the middle states, and socialist democracy, which claims to abolish unity for its own gain, by substituting the German Republic for the German Empire.

Several symptoms go to show that the particularist movement, which had been stopped by the war, is reviving, and certainly the hostile action directed against the Catholics assists powerfully towards giving it new life. The symptoms of the awakening of this movement are numerous; it is needless that I should enumerate them; they are perfectly known at Berlin, and have assuredly become aggravated since the religious war undertaken by M. von Bismarck.

The particularism of the states, then, is not dead, and red democracy is full of life. These are the two great difficulties which M. von Bismarck’s policy finds in its way. To these must be added a third one: the assimilation of the two conquered provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, so thoroughly French by the ties of history, of religion, of habits, and of interests.

To overcome these obstacles, to organize unity, the basis of the new empire, to accomplish his great work, M. von Bismarck needs prudence, time, and the hand of a true statesman.

Now, what does the Prince von Bismarck do? To the three considerable existing obstacles he adds another one, greater and more dangerous than the former, a difficulty which did not exist, which he of his own accord created, which he wantonly got up, and which will crush him; I mean the religious difficulty, the brutal war, the veritable persecution which he is organizing against the Catholics. He had to fight against particularist opposition and radical opposition; he himself, with deliberate purpose, needlessly and without reason, raises up a third one—the opposition of sixteen millions of Catholics united with their bishops; that is to say, almost half of the new empire which he thus unsettles and, so to speak, dissolves with his own hand.

Can anything be imagined more incomprehensible or more thoroughly preposterous?

What end is M. von Bismarck pursuing? By what thought and what views is he guided? The prince chancellor is neither mad nor blind; he has given abundant evidence of this; and yet, is it not folly, is it not blindness, to thus throw, without any appreciable motive, and with a heart as light as that of M. Emile Ollivier, sixteen millions of Catholics, including all their clergy and all their bishops, into a resistance which will be all the more obstinate and formidable because it will derive its strength from the oppression of conscience, from the suppression of liberty, the rending of the constitution, from the violation of justice and of rights? I have put these questions to eminent Germans of all parties, but have never got clear and satisfactory answers.

The Catholic Germans behaved admirably during the war; the Bavarian, Westphalian, and Rhenish troops were everywhere foremost under fire and in earning honor and glory. The priests and religious, both men and women, have shown a heroic devotedness on the battlefields, in the ambulances, and in the hospitals, so that M. Windthorst was enabled to say in the parliament at Berlin that many of those religious would go into exile wearing on their breasts the iron cross which they had earned during the last campaign.(193) The old antipathies against Prussia which prevailed along the Rhine and beyond the Main among Catholic populations were dying out; the establishment of religious liberty in Prussia on a more generous basis than in the lesser states had won the Catholics over to unity under Prussian hegemony; and the illustrious Bishop of Mayence, Mgr. de Ketteler, in an address which made a great noise in Germany and throughout Europe, raised the standard of rallying and unity.

The German Empire was consequently very near being established. M. von Bismarck stirs up a religious war which divides it in two and breaks it asunder. The war had brought together under the same flag Germans of all nationalities and all religious beliefs. Should not, then, all manner of pains have been taken to keep them united in the mutual work of the organization of the empire? Should not the first thought of a politician, after having achieved such wonderful success, and having before him the obstacles which still remained to be overcome, have been to begin by establishing peace in religious matters?

But I must repeat the question, What did M. von Bismarck do? He repulses the Westphalians and people of the Rhine who had become reconciled; he revives in Bavaria and in the South that particularism which was dying out; and on the political grievance he grafts a religious one; he doubles the obstacles of all kinds which lie in the way of his plans for Germanizing Alsace and Lorraine, so thoroughly French and Catholic; into their bleeding wounds he, as it were, introduces gangrene, by entering upon an unheard‐of religious persecution, and without any pretext that he dare avow; he compromises in the most serious manner the work of unity, towards the founding of which he had aided so much; he acts as would the greatest adversary of that unity who could not contrive any better means for its destruction than to do just what Prince von Bismarck is doing—he drives into the ranks of opposition nearly half of the soundest population of the empire; he sets against himself the two hundred million Catholics spread throughout the world, and who are everywhere protesting against his oppression; he will also turn against him the old conservatives, who have been deeply hurt by the enactment of the law in regard to schools, as well as all sincere friends of religious and political liberty, so audaciously ignored by him. These friends of liberty are becoming scarce; they maintain, in the face of this odious violation of their principles, a shameful silence which they will have to break, if they wish to avoid making liberalism synonymous with hypocrisy.

Have I erred in comparing the policy of M. von Bismarck with that of Napoleon III., and his present blunder with that committed by the ex‐ emperor when, after the Congress of Paris, he broke up the splendid Western alliance?

When I endeavor to interpret M. von Bismarck’s conduct, I can find but one motive which can serve for its explanation, and that is his alliance with Italy. That alliance, which he conceived necessary in order to keep the forces of France divided, and to render a war of retaliation impossible, has drawn him into a fatal hostility against the Catholic Church.

His ally, Victor Emanuel, has conquered the Roman States by stratagem and by violence; he has usurped in Rome the throne of the pontiff king, who among the monarchs of Europe possesses assuredly the most ancient and most venerated titles to sovereignty; he holds the Pope captive in the Vatican, until such time as he can compel him to set out on the road to exile; he deprives the Sovereign Pontiff of the church of that sovereignty on which his independence rests, and thus throws the universal church into alarm and mourning.

This outrage against the church, perpetrated at Rome by the Italian government, has had its counterpart in Berlin. No doubt the condition which Victor Emanuel set upon alliance with him has been to make the German Empire enter into the vast plot got up against the independence and liberty of Catholicity.

Well! without being a prophet, it is not difficult to predict that the Italian alliance will prove as fatal to the German Empire as it has been to the second Napoleonic Empire, and that on the Italian rock M. von Bismarck’s work will be dashed to pieces, if he allows it to remain in the evil path in which it is now so deeply sunk.

III.

Prince Bismarck considers himself to be the successor of Stein, to whom he has caused a statue to be erected, and whose great policy he claims that he is continuing. In this respect, he is profoundly mistaken; and, very far from following that policy, he abandons and betrays it.

Stein and all his school have, like Burke and Pitt, combated the principles of the French Revolution. French ideas had, at the close of the last century, invaded Germany, and the armies of the first Republic had no difficulty in conquering by their arms a country which they had before overrun with their ideas.

Baron von Stein, that restorer of the German Vaterland and liberty, was a mortal foe of the French Revolution. His mission and his work were to withdraw Germany from the fatal path into which, following France, she had strayed, and to bring her back into the path laid out for her by her history.

He could not save Prussia from the defeat at Jena, but he trained her, by his thorough and excellent reforms, for revenge at Waterloo and Sedan. He it was who formed Scharnhorst, the organizer of military Prussia, and whose system Count von Moltke perfected; he, probably, who became the soul of the patriotic movement in 1813; he it was who, together with Scharnhorst, Stadion, and Gagern, gave to Germany that powerful impulse out of which came the great present situation; he it was who stood the distinguished protector of the German historical school, that real antithesis of the French revolutionary school, which former had as its influential organs Niebuhr, Eichhorn, Schlegel, Görres, the two Grimms, de Savigny, etc., and which M. de Sybel represents still in our day.

Stein was a conservative, a patriot, and a Christian. What he fought against in the French Revolution was that philosophic and abstract method that France had adopted, destructive of all national tradition; that spirit of exclusive and narrow equality which influenced her course, and in the pursuit of which, according to M. de Tocqueville, she has lost liberty; that absolutism, whether in democracy or in Cæsarism, that obliteration of the individual, that indifference to rights, that worship of brute force, that extinguishment of all local, provincial, and autonomous life, that exaggerated idea of the state, that oppression of religious liberty, of Christian teaching, and of the Catholic Church, all of which characterized the French Revolution.

Stein wanted a Germany united, but federal, Christian, liberal, traditional, and historical; he wanted her, as Burke did England, to be the reverse of revolutionary France.

Now, is it not Stein’s work, that Germany born of his reforming genius, that M. von Bismarck is destroying? The liberal national party, on which he leans, is merely a doctrinaire French party, anti‐historic, ideological, and anti‐religious, the harbinger of levelling and radical democracy; a party which inclines to absolutism and Cæsarism, adores centralization, unconditional unification, and the omnipotence of the state, and which is the adversary of all proud and free consciences, and of any independent church. It is not the Protestant idea, but the Masonic and Hegelian one which this party represents.

Stein was a Christian, a conservative, and a German; the Prince von Bismarck is sceptical, revolutionary, and belongs to the French school. Stein sought to found German unity on federal liberties, in the alliance of the church with the school, and on peace between religious denominations; M. von Bismarck overturns that basis, substitutes in its place absolutist and Prussian unification, secularized teaching, and religious discord.

It is surprising that, when in France the ideas which inspired the French Revolution have been abandoned even by the most intelligent part of the school of liberalism; by such men as Tocqueville, Thierry, and Guizot, who are discouraged, and talk more openly of their disappointments than of their hopes; when M. Renan asserts that the French Revolution “is an experimental failure”; when the Revue des Deux Mondes, through the pen of M. Montégut, proclaims “that the Revolution is politically bankrupt”; on the very morrow of the final miscarriage of that Revolution under its two forms of government, the Empire fallen at Sedan, and the social Republic fallen under the ruins of the Paris Commune—it is at that very time that Prince von Bismarck thinks it skilful and profound to import that French revolutionary system into Germany! M. Renan has cause for rejoicing; he has given utterance to a wish which M. von Bismarck has set about to fulfil. “France,” he said, “need not be considered lost if we can believe that Germany will be in her turn drawn into that witches’ dance in which all our virtue has been lost.”

To sum up: German unity, the great German Empire, which such an extraordinary concurrence of circumstances had created, is being dissolved and ruined by Prince von Bismarck through the most inconceivable of political blunders. He throws sixteen millions of Catholics, once friendly to the Empire, into opposition to it; he gives a new food and new strength to the particularism of the Southern States, and to the Polonism of Posen; he makes twofold the difficulties of accomplishing the assimilation of Alsace and Lorraine; to political grievances he superadds religious grievances, far more to be dreaded than the former; he enkindles an implacable religious war upon the ruins of that denominational peace which King Frederic William III. had happily established, and by aid of which the present emperor and the empress Augusta had, in the opening period of their reign, won the hearts of the Catholics of the Rhine. To cover this blunder, M. von Bismarck enters into the Italian alliance which destroyed the second Napoleonic Empire, and will destroy the German Empire; and he abandons the historic German policy restored by Stein, to rush into the retinue of the national liberal party, into the paths of the French Revolution, into that witches’ dance to which M. Renan refers; and he inoculates his own country with the poison which has killed France!

IV.

But there is one final consequence of the policy of Prince von Bismarck to which I wish to call attention, and which is not least in gravity.

Austria, after having lost Italy, had, by the treaty of Prague, been excluded from Germany. Nevertheless, the German Empire, under the hegemony of Prussia, had not been set up; there existed only a Northern Germany, having the Main as its boundary; the Southern States, and even Saxony, preserved a certain autonomy; and Austria might hope by a wise policy to draw little by little into the sphere of her influence and attraction those countries which had been accustomed to look upon Vienna as their political pole.

The war of 1871 against France, which had united all the Germans under one flag, established German unity and the German Empire. The boundaries of the Empire were moved from the Main to the Danube, and all hope for Austria to regain her old German position was gone.

Austria accepted this situation; the Emperor Francis Joseph and his two counsellors, Count von Beust and Count Andràssy, worked together to bring about a sincere reconciliation between Austria and the German Empire.

They gave up the idea of bringing back the Southern States into the circle of Austrian influence; they feared, on the contrary, lest the German provinces of Austria, detaching themselves little by little from the weakened rule of the Hapsburgs, might be irresistibly drawn towards Berlin, the powerful and glorious centre of the German Vaterland.

Those fears may at present be entirely set at rest. There has been a complete reversal in the position of things. The people, for the most part so Catholic, of the Tyrol, of Lower Austria, and of Bohemia, will lose all inclination to draw nearer to the German Empire, where a bitter persecution is being waged against their religious faith. The bonds which unite them to Austria will be drawn the tighter. On the other hand, will not the Catholics of the Rhine, of Westphalia, of Poland, of Suabia, of Franconia, of Würtemberg, of Bavaria, of Alsace, and of Lorraine, driven from the bosom of the German Empire, in which they are no longer citizens, but pariahs, be tempted to look again in the direction of Austria, the centre of their older sympathies? All Austria has to do is not to interfere; M. von Bismarck is working for her.

The prince chancellor, notwithstanding the elated confidence which he has in his strength, has understood the danger of the situation.

In order to change it, he had but one easy thing to do, and that was to modify his policy, to give up persecuting the Catholics, to admit that he had gone astray, and to return to a calmer and wiser policy; but this he would not do; he has preferred to keep on, and to try to drag Austria into the same road.

Last year, at Gastein, he tried to induce Count von Beust to join in the campaign which he wished to begin against the internationale rouge and the internationale noire, but the Emperor Francis Joseph baffled the attempt. The prince chancellor renewed it the same year with the emperor himself at Salzburg, but he failed a second time.

Has he met with more success at Berlin, upon the occasion of the meeting of the three emperors? Has he tried to get Russia and Austria to recognize not only the German Empire, but to sanction by their adhesion to it his home policy against “Romanism,” that is to say, against the Catholic Church, or has he at least succeeded in inducing the belief that he had not tried in vain? Has he sought to drag them into the war which he is carrying on against the Jesuits, against the religious orders, against denominational liberty, against Catholic teaching, against the clergy and the bishops, until such time as he can make it break forth at Rome, by laying, in the next conclave, an audacious and sacrilegious hand on the pontifical tiara?

We shall find this out before long. If Austria follows the policy of the centralist party of the German professors at Vienna and at Prague, to which Count von Beust has already yielded too much, and which is identical with the policy of the national liberal party of Berlin, she will have advanced the interests of Prince von Bismarck, and not her own; she will have labored for him and against herself; she will have turned aside the danger imminent to the German Empire through M. von Bismarck’s blunders, and of which the Austro‐Hungarian Empire should have profited; she will have, with her historical good‐nature, served the views of Prussia to the detriment of her own; and Francis Joseph, the Apostolic Emperor, unfaithful to his traditions and to the arms of his house, will have made his policy subordinate to that of a Lutheran emperor!

I positively refuse to believe that any such result can come out of the interview at Berlin, albeit that our generation is accustomed to the realization of political impossibilities. I would fain persuade myself that, if the Prince von Bismarck has endeavored to draw Austria into his war against the Catholics and against Rome, he will have failed at Berlin as he did at Salzburg through the good sense of the Emperor Francis Joseph.

V.

The more I study M. von Bismarck’s policy, the less I understand it. If he were a sectarian pietist, I could account to myself for the idea of perfecting the political and military unity of Germany by a religious unity, of creating a Protestant state: it would indeed be a sorry Utopia, and to attempt it would be to make the mistake of being three centuries behind his time.

But M. von Bismarck is neither a sectarian nor a fanatic; he is rather, I believe, a sceptic who has little care for religious controversies, and who probably understands very little about the question of the Papal Infallibility which he is wielding as a warlike weapon against the church. M. von Bismarck is a politician; politics he aims at and should be busied in; his mission is to help found an empire and not a schism or a sect. Now, it is the Empire, the political work, which he gravely compromises by disturbing so profoundly through a denominational conflict the religious quiet which that work needed for its consolidation. Instead of the German state founded on unity and general assent, it is the Protestant state founded on the deepest and most incurable divisions that he seems to aim at creating. There is no difficulty in predicting that he will lose the political unity in the pursuit of a religious unity which is but a chimerical and impossible anachronism.

This political course which the prince chancellor has inspired the Emperor William to follow, whose past one makes such a striking contrast with it, is to me an insoluble enigma, and raises doubts in my mind of M. von Bismarck’s transcendent ability.

I will nevertheless try to make out this political enigma, by studying the pretexts on which the government of Berlin relies to justify itself, the circumstances by which it has been enticed, and the temptation to which it has yielded.

The pretext which it puts forward is the decision of the Vatican Council in regard to the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff in matters of doctrine.

The circumstances by which it was carried away are the Italian alliance abroad and the alliance with the national liberal party at home.

The temptation that misleads it is the hope, fortunately disappointed, which the stand of the inopportunist bishops of Germany and of Austria caused it to form, which stand the Berlin government had mistaken for a real dissent from doctrine, and destined to become the foundation of a national church separated from Rome by that dissent.

I call the question of Papal Infallibility a pretext, and, in fact, it is a groundless quarrel without any importance or earnest meaning.

I am not called upon to enter here into a theological dissertation upon the dogma of the infallibility of the church and of its sovereign magistracy, etc. I refer my readers to the excellent works which have been published on the subject, and I trust to be excused for mentioning in particular those written by my brother the Archbishop of Mechlin.

I will say but one word en passant on the question. For every Catholic, there is no longer any open question. Before the council, discussion was allowable; since the definition proclaimed by an œcumenical council united to the Pope, all discussion is closed.

Every one knows of the conversation between a very intelligent lady of great faith and the Count de Montalembert, shortly before the death of that illustrious friend, in which she asked him what he would do if the council together with the Pope should define infallibility. “Well, I will quietly believe it,” replied the great orator, with the firm accent of the Christian who knows his catechism, and who recites his act of faith.

In fact, no father nor doctor of the church, from Origen and S. Cyprian down to S. Thomas and Bossuet, no council, no theologian, no Catholic, has ever doubted the doctrinal infallibility of the church. The controversy lay with the Gallicans, who claimed that the words of the Pope addressed to the church ex cathedrâ needed the assent of a council or of the church throughout the world to acquire the character of infallibility.

All the old Catholics of all the schools, Gallican even included, were agreed to accord to the definitions of a council united with the Pope, that is to say, the church, the divine privilege of infallibility set forth in Holy Scriptures and in all tradition. On this point Bossuet holds the same doctrine as Fénelon and Count de Maistre.

Now, in the present instance we have a council united to the Pope, and no council, from that of Trent back to that of Nicæa, has been more numerously attended, more solemn, freer, or more œcumenical, than that of the Vatican. To deny this is downright nonsense, in which those take refuge who seek to hide their apostasy from their own eyes. If the Council of the Vatican has not been œcumenical and free, then manifestly no council in the past has ever been.

To reject the doctrinal definition of the Council of the Vatican, in which the Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops of all the world, whether opportunist or inopportunist, have agreed, would undoubtedly be to abandon the church of Christ, and to renounce the Catholic faith; it would be going beyond Gallicanism, which never thought of calling in question the decisions of a council united to a pope; even beyond the Jansenism of Port Royal, which would perhaps have accepted the Bull of Innocent X. if sanctioned by a council; it would be going beyond 1682, back to Luther; that is to say, to open heresy, and to the entire abandonment of the church, our mother.

How can M. Döllinger not see this? He who in 1832, at Munich, where the encyclical of Gregory XVI. reached M. de Lamennais, insisted with the latter, with all his force as a theologian, that he should submit to the pontifical encyclical, which, in the doctor’s eyes, was binding on conscience, although no council had adhered to it—how can he now, in his own case, resist the decisions of Pius IX. and the Council of the Vatican? He who has written so many works of grave learning, and in particular that one on The Church and the Churches, how comes it that he does not see that he is no longer in the church, and that he is seeking a shelter for his revolt in the smallest, the poorest, and the most dilapidated of those churches of a day which, in the name of history, he has so severely condemned? How can he find himself at ease and his soul tranquil in those ridiculous conventicles of Munich and of Cologne, by the side of Michelis, of Reinkens, Friedrich, Schulte, the ex‐abbé Michaud, the ex‐father Hyacinthe, and surrounded by Jansenist and Anglican bishops, by Protestant and schismatic ministers, by rationalists of all colors? How comes it that his faith and his learning are not shocked when brought into the midst of that confusion of doctrines and of tongues, and of ignorance of all kinds, which rendered the Congress of Cologne so notorious; that congress whereat the question was discussed “of the reunion of the old Catholics with the other churches having affinity of faith,” which means with all the sects separated from Rome, to the exclusion of the great universal church of S. Augustine, S. Thomas, Pascal, Descartes, Bossuet, Fénelon, de Maistre, Lacordaire, of the eight hundred bishops of the council, and of the sainted Pontiff Pius IX.? How can he, a man of learning, a priest, advanced in years, on the brink of eternity, prefer to put himself under the pastoral crook and the jurisdiction of the Jansenist Archbishop of Utrecht, or of a schismatic Armenian bishop, and fraternize with the Anglican bishops of Lincoln, Ely, and Maryland, rather than remain an humble priest, but proud of that Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church whose admirable unity bursts forth in the midst of the vast persecution which is being begun and prepared for her, and of which the Provost of Munich consents to be the guilty instrument?

This closes my parenthetical remarks on Dr. Döllinger and the Old Catholics, who are in reality merely old Jansenists and very old Protestants, and I come back to M. von Bismarck and to his policy.

Prince von Bismarck and the governments of Germany have no occasion to trouble themselves about the question of settling whether infallibility attaches to the Pope speaking ex cathedrâ, or to the Pope united to the council; these are all dogmatic theses with which they have no concern. The pretext got up by politics for trespassing on the domain of religious faith is the following: The politicians allege that the declaration of the council has conferred upon the Pope a new authority, that this authority is absolute and unlimited, and that this state of things affects the relations between the church and the state, which is thereby thrown upon its defence against possible usurpation. The Emperor of Germany, in a conversation which he recently had at Ems with M. Contzen, the courageous Burgomaster of Aix‐la‐Chapelle, brought out this singular idea of the politicians when he alleged “that the church, by proclaiming the dogma of infallibility, had declared war to the state.”

How can this be? In what respect does the question of the infallibility of the church touch the relations between the church and the state?

The declaration of the Vatican Council is not new; it belongs almost textually to the Council of Florence when it proclaimed the faith which had existed for centuries; it is ancient; all, or nearly all, the bishops at the late council were agreed, and are now all agreed, as to the ground of the doctrine; they were only divided on the question of opportuneness, and Mgr. the Bishop of Orléans, in his pastoral letter of assent, declared that he has always professed the doctrine which had been proclaimed.

Nothing, then, has been changed, and church and state remain in precisely the same situation of reciprocal independence in their distinct spheres, and of harmony in their relations, in which they were before the council.

Some either imagine, through most admirable ignorance, or hypocritically make show of believing, that the pontifical infallibility is a personal privilege, in this sense, that it is conferred on a person who cannot err in anything, that the Pope is infallible in all that he says and in everything; that he could lay upon the faithful the obligation of believing any decision that he might proclaim whether in the exclusive domain of science or in the exclusive domain of politics, where faith is not at all involved.

The object of infallibility is the doctrine of the faith and of the revealed law. The church has the deposit of revelation, of the Holy Scriptures, and of tradition; the Pope is its supreme guardian; the evangelical promise of infallibility is nothing else than the promise of fidelity in the custody of this sacred deposit! When the Pope or the council united to the Pope declares that a truth is contained in the deposit of revelation, they do not invent matter, they repeat and discern; they do not create a new truth, they confirm an old one, and cause new light to beam from it.

Infallibility is, then, not personal in the absurd sense in which the word is used; neither is it absolute and without limits; its domain, which is that of faith and morals, is clearly marked out by the constitution of the Vatican Council. “According to the perfectly clear text of the decree,” say the Prussian bishops who met at Fulda in 1871, “all allusion to the domain of politics is completely excluded from the definition of this dogma.” His Eminence Cardinal Antonelli, in his despatch of the 19th of March, 1870, to the Nuncio at Paris, is even more precise. “Political affairs belong,” he says, “according to the order of God and the teachings of the church, to the province of the secular authority, without any dependence whatever on any other.”

But, as between the secular power and the church, relations are necessary, these are settled by the two authorities through arrangements or concordats.

I allow myself to call Prince von Bismarck’s attention to this point. Positive relations between the church and states have been settled by concordats only; always, at all periods of history, the popes alone have negotiated concordats with the states; pontifical infallibility has absolutely no connection with concordats, and the Pope when he signs them does not speak ex cathedrâ and as supreme doctor of the church. How, then, can the declaration of the council have changed the relations between the church and governments, and how can the church, by proclaiming the dogma of infallibility, be said to have declared war to the state?

It is, then, a mere matter of pretext. In point of fact, it is the German Empire which is laying claim to absolute and unlimited power in the domain of religion as well as in the domain of politics; it examines and judges dogmas, intrudes itself into ecclesiastical discipline; it closes the priest’s mouth in his pulpit—by the lex Lutziana; it closes Catholic colleges and schools; it forbids religious to preach, to hear confessions, and even to celebrate Mass; it forbids the bishops to canonically exclude from the bosom of the church those who openly separate themselves therefrom; it banishes, for no crime, without trial and in bodies, the religious orders, in the same way that Louis XIV. (though he could give better reasons) drove the Huguenots from the soil of France; it favors schism, and aims at establishing a national church. It is, then, the German state which is declaring war to the church, and which is raising claim to political and religious infallibility by founding a veritable civil theocracy.

Let us put aside the pretext, which can in no wise serve either for the justification or for the explanation of the conduct of the government of Berlin. Let us examine the real motives which governed that conduct, the circumstances by which the emperor was carried away, and the fatal temptations which deluded him.

VI.

Foremost among these reasons and temptations has been, as I have said before, the alliance with Italy. It was the first cause, and was the signal for the sudden change which took place in the interior policy of the German Empire. This is evident from the fact that the political storm burst forth during the last session of Parliament precisely upon the occasion of a paragraph in the draft of the address got up by the national liberal party, and which was a stone hurled at the papacy. This was taking place at Berlin at the very hour when the Italo‐German alliance had been concluded at Rome; the coincidence is striking, and proves that war against the Catholic Church and her head has been made a condition of this alliance.

The next temptation, the second blunder of Prince von Bismarck, has been his exclusive alliance with the national liberal party, whose character I have defined above. This alliance with pseudo‐liberalism is the corollary of his alliance with Italy; both rest within and without on the revolutionary and anti‐Christian principle. War on Rome and the papacy has been the condition of the alliance with Italy; war on the Catholics in Germany has been the condition of the alliance with the national liberal party.

Prince von Bismarck had, for several years, met a keen resistance to his plans from the national liberal party, while during the same period he found a support in the conservative section of the Prussian chambers, with whom were joined the few Catholics of note who happened to be members of them.

To‐day he turns away from this weakened but still powerful conservative section, and he wages the bitterest war against the centre section, which is made up of Catholics. These two sections watch over the deposit of old German traditions; they wish to preserve the federal and constitutional character of the Empire, to maintain the Christian and denominational character of the schools, and throughout the nation, religious peace. Latterly the conservative section has become weak; it has yielded to M. von Bismarck’s policy; but sooner or later its traditions will bring it to the side of the section of the centre, in order that both may unite in sustaining the historic principles of the Germanic race against the centralizing anti‐religious policy of the national liberal party, which represents above all else the idea of the French Revolution.

The section of the centre, which, in 1870, in point of numbers amounted in the parliament to but very little, has seen its power increase proportionately with the development of the pseudo‐liberal party of centralization, of omnipotence of the state, of political levelling, and of anti‐Christian reaction. The outrage committed on the papacy by the Italian government gave increased energy to the Catholic movement, and the section of the centre, which, at the time it was first organized, consisted of fifty members only, saw its numbers increase after the elections to more than sixty, all united together by strong convictions; it can count to‐day nearly eighty, and it is safe to predict that, unless the government sends into the interior, or into exile, or puts in prison the leaders of the Catholic movement, the party of the centre will, after the next elections, thanks to the war begun against the church, have gained a force of more than one hundred votes, which will thus counterbalance those of the national liberal party.

It is this growing power of the party of the centre, the fruit of M. von Bismarck’s policy, which has impelled him to his policy of violence and anger against the Catholic Church; he means to make the clergy, the Jesuits, the religious orders, and the bishops pay for the political loss of rest occasioned to him by this phalanx which is growing into a legion, and at whose head stand such powerful leaders as Reichensperger, Mallinckrodt, and Windthorst. The eloquent words of these orators, as in former times those of O’Connell in England, and Montalembert in France, spread beyond the boundaries of Germany, to arouse and stir up everywhere all lovers of right, justice, true liberty, and the church of Jesus Christ.

The third temptation of the German government has been the stand taken in the Vatican Council by nearly all the bishops of Germany and of Austria. These pious and learned prelates were all agreed, along with those of the entire world, as to the mere ground of the doctrine; all or nearly all were infallibilists; Josephism, Fébronianism, had been for a long time dying, if not dead; but these same bishops were nearly all inopportunists. This M. von Bismarck misapprehended, he believed that there was, among the bishops in council, a real dissent as to doctrine; he imagined that the majority of the German and Austrian bishops would separate from Rome to follow M. Döllinger in the path of defection or of schism, through which he is moving to his ruin. The Italian alliance and the alliance with the national liberal party carried M. von Bismarck into hostile action against Rome; the difference of opinion among the bishops on the question of the opportuneness of the decision by the council led him to hope that he would find therein the elements for a Janist(194) and national church.

In this he has been entirely mistaken. “He had left the Holy Spirit out of his reckoning,” said recently to me a learned ecclesiastic of Berlin, and I add that he had also not reckoned on the faith and virtue of the episcopate.

Observe what is going on and how the Catholic tide is rising and resisting. M. von Bismarck met at Sedan a splendid, courageous French army, which, badly led and crushed by the fire of the German artillery, was forced to capitulate; he will henceforth find in opposition to him the Catholic populations, with their clergy and their bishops at their head, who will rise, in the name of God and of the liberty of the church, who will resist and never surrender.

M. von Bismarck is about to have experience of what the Catholic bishops are and of what they can do. They will not conspire; they will not sow rebellion and revolution; they will not join themselves to the red international party, but they will resist and will not yield. “In this present sad condition of things,” said the bishops met together at Fulda in April, 1872, “we will fulfil our duty by not disturbing the peace between the church and the state.” “As Christians,” said the learned Bishop of Paderborn, in his touching address to the exiled Jesuits—“as Christians, we can oppose neither force nor overt resistance to the measures of governmental authority. Albeit such measures seem to us iniquitous and unjustifiable, we may only meet them by that passive resistance which our divine Master Jesus Christ has taught us by his words and example; that silence, calm and full of dignity; that patience, tranquil and resigned, but abounding in hope; that loving prayer which heaps burning coals on the heads of our persecutors.”

Such is the admirable language of the German bishops, as it fell from the lips of the Archbishop of Cologne, Mgr. von Droste‐Vischering, on the very day preceding that on which he was led captive by a guard of soldiers to the fortress of Minden. The calm and intrepid Bishop of Ermeland is deprived of his salary and injured in his authority; he is marked out for punishment, and he awaits the coming of the soldiers with the fetters to bind him.

I cannot recall the venerated name of Mgr. Krementz without adding to it the illustrious one of Mgr. Mermillod, whom all Europe will continue to address as Bishop of Hebron and Geneva, despite that decision of the council of state which forbids him to exercise any function whatever, whether as bishop or as curate, and which cuts him off from all salary. Here, then, we have this republican and liberal Switzerland suppressing the Jesuits and all cognate religious orders, the brothers of the schools, the sisters of charity; closing seminaries, as at Soleure, because the moral theology of S. Liguori was taught there; unseating bishops, as at Geneva; and the people that do these things are yet shameless enough to talk of liberty, while all the speech‐makers of liberalism, whose hair stands erect at the mention of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and who dinned the world with their clamors in the young Mortara case, cannot find a single word of liberality, not a single protest, not a single expression of indignation, to stigmatize these unheard‐of outrages against all liberties at once, and against all the rights of human conscience.

I have just been adverting to the passive resistance of the bishops in Germany; but the lay movement, which is kept strictly within the law, is less passive, less resigned, and is somewhat inflamed by politics. The reaction against the unwarranted persecution set on foot a year ago is breaking out everywhere. A committee of direction has been formed at Mainz, whose business is to centralize the legal resistance of German Catholics for the defence of religious liberty thus threatened and assailed. This committee, in their address dated in July last, call upon the Catholics of Germany to a crusade in opposition to the aggressions of the government. “We claim,” says this address, “for our creed that liberty and independence guaranteed to it by the constitution; and under the device, For God and our Country, we will fight to the last for the maintenance of our rights.” This address is signed by some of the most illustrious names of Germany, foremost among which I may mention those of Count Felix de Löe, of Baron de Frankenberg, of Count C. de Stolberg, and of the Prince of Isenburg.

A numerous meeting of Catholics voted to send the Archbishop of Munich an address praising him for his firmness and encouraging him in the contest which he is maintaining. At Breslau, a Catholic Congress has just assembled with great éclat. All the Catholic men of note in Germany were present at it. Vent was therein given to the most energetic complaints and the most indignant protests, resolutions of great firmness were adopted, a new impulse was given to all those associations which, like that of S. Boniface, of S. Charles Borromeo, and of Pius IX., have multiplied on German soil works of teaching and of charity; powerful preparations were in this congress made for resistance, while confiding in their rights and in God.

While the Catholic laity were thus meeting and organizing at Breslau and at Mainz, the bishops were quietly deliberating at Fulda, presided over by the Archbishop of Cologne, who is mindful of his illustrious predecessor, Clement Augustus. There, as the apostles of old in the cenaculum, they tarry in prayer, and they will come forth with a confidence and a courage such as have overcome adversaries far more powerful than the Prince von Bismarck.

VII.

The old régime, before it died out, made trial of rebellion against the church. Frederick the Great was certainly as able as M. von Bismarck; he had the world at his feet, and the church in Germany, infected with the doctrines of Fébronius, was apparently in the pangs of death. The last act recorded in history of the then three ecclesiastical electors of Mayence, Cologne, and Trèves had been to meet with the Archbishop of Salzburg, Primate of Germany, for the purpose of drawing up the Punctuations of Ems (1786), which were a code of rebellion against the Holy See. What a contrast with the present assembling of the German bishops at Fulda! These servile Punctuations of Ems were beginning to be carried out, when the armies of the French Republic came down and inflicted upon the authors of them the punishment they deserved.

Every one knows about Pombal, Choiseul, and Charles III., who confined the Jesuits within certain territorial limits, drove them away, cast them into prison, or sent them into exile, pretty much in the same way as M. von Bismarck is doing.

The power which did all this was swallowed up by the French Revolution.

This revolution, satanic, to use M. de Maistre’s term, out and out anti‐Christian, as M. de Tocqueville calls it, in its turn drove out, exiled, put to death, whether in the massacre of September, the drownings of the Loire, by the axe of the guillotine or the dagger of ruffians, the priests, Jesuits, and religious whom the old régime had spared.

But this sanguinary revolution went down in the slough of the Directory, and Napoleon put an end to it.

That extraordinary man perceived that persecution wounds the hand which uses it; he sought to make peace with the church; he reopened the churches, recalled the priests and the bishops, and signed the concordat. This was the great epoch of his reign: Ulm, Austerlitz, and Jena.

But the potent emperor, intoxicated by glory and by pride, having become master of the world, thought he would be master of the church as well; his rule was over bodies, he sought to extend it over souls; which is the dream of all founders of empire. He stretched out his hand to the States of the Church, and annexed them to the French Empire; for which he was excommunicated by that gentle Pope Pius VII. He seized the pope, bore him away from Rome into exile at Savona and at Fontainebleau, and he found that under the lamb‐like exterior of his victim there beat the heart of a lion. He summoned together the council of 1811, thinking that it would be an easy matter to form a national church of which he would be Supreme Pontiff.

This took place in 1811. The next year brought the campaign of 1812, to be followed by the events of 1813 and 1814; Leipsic, Elba, Waterloo, and the rock of St. Helena last of all.

There is another example nearer to our times, upon which I have looked as a witness, and which I submit for the meditations of the Emperor of Germany.

King William I. of Orange fell into precisely the same blunder which William IV. is now repeating. He ruled over the beautiful kingdom of the Netherlands, so easy for him to maintain, and which through his mistakes was broken up. He, too, sought to constitute national unity through unity of language and of religion. So he suppressed, in 1825, the Catholic schools and colleges in Belgium, drove out the Jesuits and the brothers of the Christian schools, founded at Louvain the Philosophic College in which the clergy of the future national church were to be trained, violated the right to teach and of association, prosecuted the Bishop of Ghent, Mgr. de Broglie, got him condemned, and he was pilloried, in effigy, on a public square of Ghent, between two felons. This reckless and blind policy excited in Belgium a movement of resistance similar to that which we remark at the present moment in Germany. Five years later, in 1830, the Catholic liberal union was brought about, and every one knows the events to which it gave birth.

This much is matter of history. The German persecution is a trial for the church and for Catholics, but it will also bear with it the salvation which a trial properly borne always brings. Two results will come out of this trial: the Catholic Church, which they mean to weaken or prostrate, will, as always heretofore, come out of the contest more united and more powerful; Protestantism, in whose name the persecution is set on foot, will be mortally wounded by it, and will see its dissolution hastened; pseudo‐liberalism, which will have played the part of intolerance and persecution, will be unmasked, and all the friends of a prudent and sincere liberty will make their reconciliation with the persecuted, one with that great Catholic Church, ever militant, ever attacked, sometimes a martyr, but which ever in the end comes out triumphant over these trials which temper her anew, purify her, and add to her greatness. The world will understand that in trials such as she is now going through in Germany she is fighting for the liberty of the conscience of the human race.

Governments, and in particular great empires founded on force, look upon the independence of the universal church with feelings of jealousy and impatience; the idea of a national church has always been a favorite and a pleasing one with despotisms, because it promises them a servile instrument to carry out their designs. But when the church is subject to the state, there can be no church. The high level of the consciences of the people sinks as freedom disappears. The true and divine church can be contained within no boundaries and in no nationality; it is the spiritual kingdom of consciences and of souls; from the independence of the church, the independence of consciences and souls derives its life. If the church is under the yoke of the state, all consciences must suffer like subjection. The world will at last comprehend that national churches, that is, churches in subjection, can have only enslaved souls as followers, and that there can be no freedom for the conscience of man, except upon the sole condition of the independence of a church, accountable, not to any human power, but to God.

Will the persecution which has been begun be kept up with the same tenacity and violence which the Prince von Bismarck now displays? I fear less from it for the church than for himself and the German emperor, whose good sense, uprightness, and religious conscience must feel out of place in the midst of a policy so outrée, revolutionary, anti‐Christian, and anti‐constitutional, so contrary to his instincts, his natural disposition, and his antecedents. “It cannot be,” said M. A. Reichensperger, “that a monarch, crowned with the laurels of victory, after having achieved external peace through the courage and the fidelity of the entire German nation, will authorize the persecution of millions of Germans on account of their faith, and consent to destroy internal peace—that peace which in particular is the work of his royal brother, whose memory is still blessed by all Catholics.”

I add my prayer and my hope to the prayer and the hope of the great German patriot and orator, but I confess that his fears, which are greater than his hopes, are felt by me also, and to like extent. The times are gloomy. “The deluge is drawing nigh; but on the waters I see the ark of the church,” said Count de Montalembert. “She will ride it out, she will live, and will preside at the funeral of the very powers that thought to have prepared her own.”

Let Prince Bismarck not forget the words recently uttered by Pius IX. at one of those allocutions so sublimely eloquent and touchingly holy in spirit, which, from his prison in the Vatican he addresses to the world. He was addressing German Catholics, and he told them: “Be confident, be united; for a stone will fall from the mountain, and will shatter the feet of the Colossus. If God wills that other persecutions arise, the church does not fear them; on the contrary, she becomes stronger thereby, and she purifies herself, because even in the church there are things that need to be purified, and nothing contributes more thereto than the persecutions exercised on her by the great ones of the earth.”

Prince von Bismarck may perhaps have smiled on reading these words fallen from the lips of the Pontiff Pius IX.; if so, he is sadly mistaken; those old popes who are imprisoned and exiled, but who, to use the profound expression of the Count de Maistre, always come back, are also gifted with the command of words which are “as burning coals heaped upon the heads of their persecutors.” The Emperor Napoleon I., too, smiled at the excommunication hurled at him by Pope Pius VII., then weak and disarmed, and his complete ruin followed shortly after. I advise the prince chancellor to bear in mind the stone falling from the mountain and breaking the feet of the Colossus. I had myself, in my book published in 1860, ventured to refer to that same passage of Scripture: “That splendid figure,” I said, “which Daniel sets before us of kingdoms WITH FEET PART OF IRON AND PART OF CLAY, and of the church, that stone, cut out of a mountain, without hands, which broke in pieces the kingdoms, and became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth—that figure has its application in every age, and should stand for all Christians as a hope amid trials and a teaching to all the proud.”

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A Christmas Memory

God did anoint thee with his odorous oil To wrestle, not to reign; and he assigns All thy tears over like pure crystallines For younger fellow‐workers of the soil To wear for amulets.

E. B. BROWNING.

No more brilliant party ever assembled for Christmas festivities in Northern Vermont than that which met on such an occasion, very early in this century, at the home of a young lawyer in the beautiful little village of Sheldon, since widely renowned for the efficacy of its healing waters.

The host and hostess were from families who came among the first settlers to Vermont. The company was gathered from all parts of the new and sparsely settled state, with a sprinkling of students who were completing their legal course at the famous law‐school of Judge Reeves, in Litchfield, Conn.—of which their host was a graduate—and of young ladies and gentlemen from different places in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Several of these young ladies were passing the winter with acquaintances in Sheldon, and the whole country from the “Province Line” (and even beyond it) to St. Alban’s was made merry with a succession of gay parties, sleigh‐rides, dinners, suppers, and dances given in their honor. Even the sequestered hamlets of Richford and Montgomery, nestled among their own green hills, did not escape the general hilarity, but were startled from their quiet decorum, and resounded with a merriment which awakened unwonted echoes in their peaceful valleys.

Among the guests at this Christmas festival was a young lady of Vermont, Miss Fanny A——, whose fair form rises before us as we write from the dim mists of childhood’s earliest memories—a vision of gentle dignity and youthful loveliness which time has no power to efface.

Though some years younger than the lady of the house, she was her very dear and intimate friend, and was now passing a few weeks with her. Her queenly manners, the silver ripple of her low, sweet voice in the flow of a conversation which held her listeners spell‐bound, as it were, by its clear and impressive utterances, bore witness to her familiarity with the most refined circles of city and country society, and the high culture of her splendid intellect.

Other circumstances, as will be seen, combined with her personal charms at this time to make her the centre of interest and attraction wherever she appeared.

She was the youngest daughter of a Green Mountain hero whom Vermont most delights to honor. Her father died when she was too young to realize her loss. Some years later, her mother—from whom she inherited her remarkable beauty and graceful dignity—married a most amiable man, who was capable of appreciating the rich treasure she committed to his charge in the person of her young daughter. Every advantage the country offered was secured to develop and polish the gem of which he was inexpressibly proud, and over which he watched with a solicitude as tender as her own father could have exercised.

At that time, the gay society in New England was strongly tinctured with the species of infidelity introduced and fostered by the writings of Thomas Paine and his disciples, among whom Fanny’s father had been conspicuous. Her step‐father was not of that school, but he detested the cant and Puritanism of the only religious people he had ever known—regarding them as pretensions of which even those who adopted them were often the unconscious dupes. He had never been drawn within reach of better influences, then exercised only by the Protestant Episcopal Church in Vermont, to rescue intelligent thinkers from the grasp of infidelity. He conducted the education of his gifted daughter, therefore, with the most scrupulous care to avoid entirely all considerations of religion in any form. When her active and earnest mind would peer beyond the veil he had so carefully drawn between its pursuits and the interests of eternity, and send her to startle him with some question touching those interests which he could only answer by evasive ridicule, or an emphatic request that she would refrain from troubling her head about such matters, she would retire to ponder within herself, even while striving to obey her earthly father, the higher obligations imposed by One in heaven. Light and wisdom from above soon illuminated the soul that surrendered itself a willing victim before the altar of eternal truth. She was led by a divine hand, through paths she knew not, to a temple of which she had scarcely heard, and, while still living among those to whom the Catholic religion was entirely unknown, entered its portals to find herself—scarcely less to her own astonishment than to the amazement and horror of her devoted parents—a Catholic, as firmly established and steadfastly resolved as if she had been born and educated in the faith!

The grief and indignation of her parents knew no bounds. They looked upon it as a most disgraceful infatuation. Peremptorily imposing silence upon her in relation to the subject, they determined to suppress it, if possible, until every means had been used to divert her mind from the fatal delusion.

All the wiles and artifices of the gayest and most fashionable circles in various American cities to which she was taken, were exhausted in vain to captivate her youthful fancy and deliver her soul from its mysterious thraldom. In vain the ardent addresses of devoted admirers—who were destined in the near future to be the brightest ornaments the bench and bar of their state could boast—were laid at her feet. In vain were all those worldly allurements, generally so irresistible to the young, spread before her. Her soul turned steadfastly away from each bewitching enticement, to solace itself with thoughts of the humble sanctuary in Montreal, where the weary bird had found a place in which she might build her nest, even within the tabernacle of thy house, O Lord of hosts!

In the autumn preceding the Christmas festival of which I write, the ramblers had returned from their fruitless wanderings. Fanny’s parents, discouraged and discomfited, resolved at this crisis to enlist the zeal of a few very intimate friends in their cause, by disclosing to them the great and unaccountable calamity which had befallen their child.

Among those whom they earnestly entreated to aid them in efforts to extricate her from the grasp of the great deceiver, was the lady with whom she was now passing the weeks of the early winter. A Connecticut Episcopalian of the High‐Church stamp, she occupied what they playfully called a “half‐way house,” at which they hoped she would be able to persuade Fanny to stop. She invited several gay young ladies to meet and enliven Fanny’s visit, but took the greatest pains to conceal from them the religious tendencies of her beautiful guest. She entered with great zeal upon every scheme for winter pastimes, in the hope of diverting the mind of her young friend from its absorbing theme. In their private conversations, she exhausted every argument to convince Fanny that the Episcopal Church offered all the consolations for which her soul was yearning. In vain, in vain! She who had been called to drink from the fountain‐head could not slake her thirst with draughts from scattered pools, which brought no refreshment to her fainting spirit. Vain also were the precautions used for concealment. Suspicions soon arose among her young companions that there was something wrong with Fanny. A rosary had been partially revealed as she drew her kerchief from her pocket. Worse still, a crucifix had been discovered under her pillow! Here were proofs of superstition indeed, of rank idolatry in unmistakable form, and no one knows to what unimaginable extent! Then it began to be whispered around the admiring and compassionate circle that she had not only taken the first step on the downward road, but was even now contemplating the still more fatal and final one of religious immolation!

It was their apprehension of this direful result which imparted a new and melancholy interest in their eyes to all her words and actions. Though she maintained a modest reserve upon the subjects dearest to her heart, they thought they could discover some mysterious connection with these in every expression she uttered.

On several occasions, the most adventurous of her companions endeavored to penetrate the silence that sealed her lips in regard to her religious convictions, by direct questions, and, when these failed, by ridicule of such “absurd superstitions”; but to no purpose. Her nearest approach to any satisfactory remark was in reply to one of these questions: “It is impossible to convey any clear idea to your mind, in its present state, concerning these matters. Your opinions are founded upon prejudice, and your prejudices are the result of your entire ignorance in relation to them. If you really desire to be better informed, you need, first of all, to pray with humility for light and guidance, and then seek for knowledge. If you do this with sincerity, you will surely be instructed, and ‘know of the doctrine’; but, if you refuse to take this first step, all the teaching in the world will be of no avail. ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. If they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither would they believe though one should come to them from the dead.’ ”

She rebuked ridicule with such calm dignity that it was soon abandoned, one of her assailants, a very lively young lady, remarking one day: “It is astonishing to see how terribly in earnest Fanny is! She certainly believes in the Catholic religion with all her heart, though how a person with her extensive information and splendid talents can receive such absurdities is a puzzle to common sense!”

But her severe trials were in her home. Her parents were unutterably grieved when she persisted in accepting the Catholic faith. This further determination to forsake those who had so fondly loved and tenderly cherished her, and who were so justly proud of the use she had made of the opportunities for improvement which their solicitude had secured for her, was beyond all human endurance.

If she had been the victim of adversity or of disappointed hopes, there might have been some excuse; but that the idol of doting parents should abandon her elegant home to the desolation in which her departure would enshroud it, and turn from all the advantages that wealth, position, and the homage of society could offer—dashing to the ground on the very threshold of life the brilliant prospects which were opening before her—was worse than madness! They complained bitterly to her of her ingratitude and heartless disregard of their feelings and wishes; poured unmeasured and contemptuous reproaches upon her for stifling the modest womanly instincts of her refined and delicate nature, to strike out boldly upon a new road hitherto untrodden by any woman of New England. Remonstrances, pleading, reproaches, and contempt were alike unavailing. Listening only to the persuasions of that “invisible Lover” whose voice had called her to relinquish the seductive charms which surrounded her worldly course, she turned away from them steadfastly to follow him and carry his cross up the steep and thorny paths of penance and self‐ abnegation, offering herself entirely to him on the Calvary made glorious to her by his precious blood.

Not “immediately,” however, like those whom he called of old, did she “leave the ship and her father, to follow him.” Weary years of waiting and yearning, far from the tabernacles where her soul had chosen its home, did she accord in tender regard for the feelings of those, so truly and deeply beloved, who could not give her up, and who had no clue by which to trace the course her spirit was taking, or power even to conjecture the motives that actuated her.

When at length the time arrived to which they had consented to limit her stay with them, who shall describe the pangs that rent her heart in a parting so full of grief; in severing these nearest and dearest ties, and in witnessing the anguish which overwhelmed those around whom her tenderest earthly affections were entwined?

Alone, but full of peace, “leaning on the arm of her Beloved,” did she tread the painful path. Her parents could not accompany her to witness the sacrifice which prostrated their fondest hopes, nor could they ever bring themselves to visit her in the sanctuary she had chosen.

Her Sheldon friend did so repeatedly, and was amazed to find her radiant with a joy which her countenance had never before revealed—happy in the peaceful home that offered only poverty and an unceasing round of labors in the service of the sick and suffering, with a happiness which the splendors of her worldly one could never impart.

Multitudes of New England people visiting Montreal flocked to the convent, begging to see the lovely young nun of the Hôtel Dieu, who was the first daughter New England had given to the sacred enclosure, and whom they claimed as belonging especially to them through her connection with their favorite Revolutionary hero.

So continual were these interruptions that she was driven at length to obtain the permission of the mother‐superior absolutely to decline appearing in answer to such calls, except when they were made by the friends of former days, for whom she still preserved and cherished the liveliest affection.

By a singular coincidence—or rather, let us say, through tender memories of the gentle nun long since departed from the Hôtel Dieu, and the prevailing efficacy of her prayers—a large proportion of those who were present at the Christmas party at Sheldon, including the mistress of the feast and many of her family, were, from time to time as years flew by, received into the bosom of the Holy Catholic Church.

And so does our gracious and mighty Mother, “ever ancient, ever new,” win her triumphs, one by one, perpetually through all the ages—wins them often in the face, nay, even perforce, of circumstances apparently the most directly opposed to her influence; accomplishes them by means so weak and simple as would seem, according to all human reasoning, utterly inadequate. In countries far remote from her gentle influence, one is called—we hardly know how or why—in this place, another in that, as if the words of our divine Lord found their fulfilment even in this: “Two shall be in the field: one shall be taken, and one shall be left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill: one shall be taken, and one shall be left.”

And every soul thus called to launch its eternal interests upon the ocean of infinite truth must encounter much the same appalling trials, be haunted by the same startling doubts and dark forebodings. Over the sunken rocks of heresy and unbelief along this coast the billows break with a force that affrights the stoutest heart, and many a would‐be voyager shrinks back dismayed before their power; but once pluck up heart of grace to pass the foaming barrier, in the mid‐ocean all is “peace, and joy unspeakable, and full of glory.”

We cannot more fitly conclude this little sketch of a real event than by a quotation from Montalembert’s closing chapter on the “Anglo‐Saxon Nuns”:

“Is this a dream, the page of a romance? Is it only history—the history of a past for ever ended? No; once more it is what we behold and what happens amongst us every day.... Who, then, is this invisible Lover, dead upon a cross eighteen hundred years ago, who thus attracts to him youth, beauty, and love?—who appears to them clothed with a glory and a charm which they cannot withstand?—who seizes on the living flesh of our flesh, and drains the purest blood of our blood? Is it a man? No; it is God. There lies the secret, there the key of this sublime and sad mystery. God alone could win such victories and deserve such sacrifices. Jesus, whose godhead is amongst us daily insulted or denied, proves it daily, with a thousand other proofs, by those miracles of self‐denial and self‐devotion which are called vocations. Young and innocent hearts give themselves to him, to reward him for the gift he has given us of himself; and this sacrifice by which we are crucified is but the answer of human love to the love of that God who was crucified for us.”

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The House That Jack Built

By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”

In Two Parts.

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II. Concluded

Late in the afternoon, Bessie went down and leaned on the bars again, looking up and down the road, looking at the tracks left by Father Conners’ carriage‐wheels—the smooth curve of their turning; looking to see the shadows creep across the road as the sun went down. The sadness of a lonely evening was upon her, and, though she had not lost her morning resolution, she had lost the joyous hopefulness with which those resolutions were made.

At her left, and quite near, a fringe of young cedars made a screen between the ground that belonged to her house and the farmer next to it, where her uncle Dennis had lived when John Maynard had wooed and won her.

Pain came with that recollection, and almost the old bitterness. “I must go home again, and put my resolutions in practice right away, or I shall lose them,” she said to herself. “It won’t do for me to stay here and brood over my troubles. I cannot bear loneliness; and how terribly lonely it is here! I wish I had some one to speak to besides poor Aunt Nancy.”

She started, hearing a soft, clear whistling not far away. The strain was familiar, not to this region, but to her city life. While she listened, the sound ceased, or rather broke off suddenly.

Bessie’s eyes were wide open, her face flushed. Was there more than one person who could whistle so marvellously clearly and sweetly?

Some one began to sing then more sweetly still, and coming nearer while he sang words written by the most melodious of poets:

“Hark! a lover, binding sheaves, To his maiden sings; Flutter, flutter go the leaves, Larks drop their wings. Little brooks, for all their mirth, Are not blithe as he! ‘Tell me what the love is worth That I give thee.’

“Speech that cannot be forborne Tells the story through: ‘I sowed my love in with the corn, And they both grew. Count the world full wide of girth, And hived honey sweet; But count the love of more worth Laid at thy feet.

“ ‘Money’s worth is house and land, Velvet coat and vest! Work’s worth is bread in hand, Ay, and sweet rest. Wilt thou learn what love is worth? Ah! she sits above, Sighing, ’Weigh me not with earth. Love’s worth is love!’ ”

The singer had come yet more near, and would have been visible to her had not Bessie Maynard’s looks been downcast and her head drooping low. When the song ended, and the step paused, she lifted her eyes, and saw James Keene standing before her smiling and waiting for the greeting she was so slow to give.

Surprise, and perhaps fear, deprived Bessie for a moment of her self‐ possession. “What! you here!” she exclaimed, without the least sign of courtesy; and with that exclamation broke down the barrier of silence that had existed between them.

“Why should I not be here?” he asked quietly. “May not I also have memories connected with this place? It was here I recovered health, after an illness that nearly cost me my life. It was here I shot my first bear. And it was here I first saw you.”

Bessie perceived at once that, if the old reserve was to be maintained, she must immediately assume an air of decisive politeness. For an instant she wavered. Silence may be best for those who are doubtful of themselves, and, not willing to commit any flagrant wrong, are still not resolved to be absolutely honest. But when we are strong in the determination to be sincere, and to let the light of day shine not only on our actions, but on our inmost thoughts, then, perhaps, by speech we may most nobly and effectually establish our position.

Bessie Maynard, therefore, waited for the words which would give her an opportunity to put an end to the tacit and vague understanding existing between them.

He read her silence rightly; it was a command for him to speak; and he obeyed it, though the pale face and large, downcast lids gave little hope of any such answer as he might wish to receive.

“In those old days, so long ago, when I came here to try what a half‐ savage life would do for me, and was astonished to find a delicate human flower in the wilderness, I was a prophet.”

He leaned on the cedar bar that separated them, and looked dreamily off toward the woods. He would not surprise in her face any involuntary expression she might wish to conceal from him; he would take advantage of no impulse. If she came to him, she must come deliberately. For, setting aside Christianity—and he did not pretend to believe in it—James Keene had an exceptionally honorable nature. He would gladly have taken this woman away from a husband who, he believed, knew not how to value her, and who made her miserable by his neglect, but he held that it would be no wrong for him to do so.

“Yes, I was a prophet,” he continued; “for I believed then, what I am sure of now, that your marriage was a most unwise one. Give me credit, Bessie, for having been sincerely pained to see that, as years passed away, you had reason to come to the same conclusion. Whatever selfish wishes I may have had, I would at any time have renounced them could I have seen you happy with the man you chose to marry, knowing no other.”

Bessie lifted her eyes, and looked at him with a steady, tearful gaze. “People might say that you are wicked to speak so to me,” she said; “but I think that, according to your belief, you are very good; only you have no faith in religion. I esteem you so highly that I am going to make a confession which, perhaps, you may think I ought not to make. There have been times during these last few years when, if I had not had some little lingering faith, I would have welcomed from you an affection which I have no right to receive. There have been times when you might have spoken as lovingly as you could, and I should not have been angry. I tell you this partly because you must have at least suspected that it was so. And more than this. If I had seen you here a few days ago, my impulse would have been to welcome you more ardently than I ever yet welcomed any friend. You can understand how it all has been, without my explaining. I was so lonely, so neglected! I was so lonely!”

She had spoken with a sad earnestness, and there was something touchingly humble yet dignified in her manner; but, at the last words, her voice trembled and failed.

He was looking at her now. Excitement and suspense showed in the sparkling of his clear blue eyes, in the slight flush that colored his usually pale face, in the lips firmly compressed.

“All is changed now,” she went on. “I have been recalled to my religion, to my duty. I do not think that you should any more show me that sympathy which you have shown, and I do not think that you should see me frequently. I thank you for your kindness toward me. It has often been a comfort. But I am a wife”—she lifted herself with a stately gesture, and for the first time a wave of proud color swept over her face—“and the sadness which my husband may cause me no other man may ever again soothe.”

There was silence for a moment. The gentleman’s face had grown pale. There was a boundless tenderness in his heart for this fair and sorrowful woman, and he was about to lose the power to offer her even the slightest comfort, while at the same time he must still retain the knowledge of her suffering.

“I shall respect your wish and your decision,” he said, with emotion. “Forgive me if I have trespassed too much in the past. It seemed to me very little; for, Bessie, if I had not known that you had a religious feeling which would have held you back, or would have made you miserable in yielding, I should long ago have held out my hand to you, and asked you to come to me. If I had felt sure of being able to convince you beyond the possibility of subsequent regret, I should not have kept silence so long. But I respect your conscience. I should esteem myself a criminal if I could ask you to do what you believe to be wrong.”

Bessie Maynard’s face was covered with a blush of shame. Her thought had never gone consciously beyond the length of tender, brotherly kindness, and it was cruelly humiliating to see in its true light the position in which she had really stood. At that moment, too, she first perceived what a gulf lay between her soul and that of the man who had seemed always so dangerously harmonious with her. In principle, in all that firmly underlies the changeful tide of feeling, they were antagonistic; for he could speak calmly and with dignity of a possibility from which she shrank with a protesting tremor in every fibre of her being.

“I am going back to my husband,” she said, “and I shall never again forget that his honor and dignity are mine. I have been weak and childish, and more wicked than I knew or meant, and it all came because I loved my husband too much and God too little. But I trust”—she clasped her hands, and lifted her eyes—“I trust that I shall have strength to begin now a new life, and correct the mistakes of the past.”

She forgot for a moment that she was not alone, and stood looking away, as if there stretched before her gaze the new and loftier pathway in which she was to tread. Her companion gazed at her unchecked, with searching, melancholy eyes, not more because she was dearer to him in her impregnable fortress of Christian will than she ever had been in her human weakness, than because there rose from the depths of his restless soul a cry of longing for that firm foundation and trust which can hold a man in the place where conscience sets him, no matter how the tempests of passion may beat upon his trembling heart.

“There is, then, nothing left me but to say farewell.”

The poignant regret his voice betrayed recalled her attention.

“It has come to that,” she said gently. “But if you could know all I mean in saying farewell to you, it would not seem an idle word; for I hope and pray that you may fare so well as to come before long into the church. It is a refuge from every danger and every trouble, and I have only just found it out! Good‐by.”

She gave him her hand, and they separated without another word. But Bessie did not stop to look after this visitor. Whatever regret she might otherwise have felt was swallowed up in the one thought—it had seemed to him possible that she might leave, not only her husband, but her sacred, sainted babes, and go to him! To what a depth had she fallen!

When she had disappeared in the house, he strolled slowly down the road. Unless you had looked in his face, you would have taken him for a man who was calmly enjoying the contemplation of nature in that forest solitude. But from his face looked forth a spirit weary and hopeless that hastened not, because it beheld nowhere a place worth making haste to reach. Once only the gloom of his countenance lifted, and then it was with no cheering brightness, but as the cloud is momentarily illuminated by angry lightning.

A man was coming up the road, not such a man as one usually sees in these wild places, but one who bore the marks of city training and habits. The uniform gray clothing, the wide Panama hat, even the unobtrusive necktie, belonged to the city. This man was taller and broader‐shouldered than he whose eyes flashed out so scornfully at sight of him. His face was dark, vivid, and clean‐shaven, the forehead was wide, the dark‐brown hair closely cut, the gray eyes clear and penetrating. It was a face fitter to carve in stone than to paint, for its color and expression were less noticeable than its fine, strong outlines.

Yet now there shone a soft and eager light over that granite strength. There was a look of glad surprise, mingled with a certain amused self‐ chiding, as though of one who comes back from a long and gloomy abstraction, and finds a half‐forgotten delight still waiting at his side.

At sight of this man, James Keene’s first emotion had been one of anger, his first impulse to meet him boldly and with scorn. But scarcely had he taken one quickened step before he stopped, with a revulsion of feeling as unsuspected as it was confounding. Reason as he might, emancipate himself as he might from what he considered the superstitions of religion, he found himself now overwhelmed with confusion. He strove to call up to his mind all those arguments on which he had founded himself, but they fell dead. Whether it was the instinct of a noble heart that would not betray even an enemy, or an irradicable root of that religious faith which had been implanted in his childhood, or the strangeness of one who for the first time acts on principles long maintained in theory, or only a sensitive perception of the esteem in which the faithful world would hold his action, he could not have told. He only knew that, instead of standing, lofty and serene, in the dawn of this new light before which superstition and oppression were to pass away, he felt as if he were surrounded by a baleful glare from the nether fires. Sudden and scathing, it caught him, and burned his courage out like chaff.

In his eagerness and preoccupation, John Maynard had scarcely observed the person who approached; and, when the stranger turned aside into a wood‐ path, he gave him no further thought.

There was the little crooked house squinting at him out of its two windows, with the boards he had nailed, the chimney he had built, the door he had hung; there was the whole wild, rude place, with everything askew, that had once seemed a paradise—that had been a paradise—to him. With his hands and eyes educated, as they were now, to the utmost precision of outline and balance, the sight made him laugh out; and yet the laugh expressed as much pleasure as mockery.

He was taking his first holiday since he had left this house, and everything was delightfully fresh and novel yet familiar to him. He did not see the beauty that a poet or a painter would have found in that unpruned rusticity, for he was an artist of the exact; but the wabbly frame‐house, the reeling fences, the road that wound irregularly, the straggling trees that leaned away from the northwest, made a good background against which to contemplate the trim and shining creatures of his hands, regular to a hair’s breadth, unvarying and direct.

Coming to the bars, he threw himself over instead of letting them down, and found that he had grown heavier and less lithe than he was when last he performed that feat. He walked up the rocky path, his heart beating fast as he thought of the old time, and of the slim, bright‐faced girl he had brought there as a bride. If she could stand in the doorway now, as she was then, and smile at him coming home, he felt that he could be the old lover again. He had a vague idea that Bessie had grown older, and sober, and pale. Come to think of it, he hadn’t known much of her lately, and she had been dissatisfied about something. Why had she allowed him to get his eyes and ears so full of machinery? Surely he had lost and overlooked much. He had a mind to complain of her, only that he felt so good‐natured.

At sound of a step, Aunt Nancy went to the door; but at that sound Bessie took her sewing, and bent over it. Had James Keene repented their hasty parting?

“Does Miss Bessie Ware live here?” asked the gentleman, with immense dignity.

“Bessie Ware?” repeated Aunt Nancy, in bewilderment; then, as the recollection of Bessie’s confessions flashed into her mind, she stiffened herself up, and answered severely: “No, sir, she does not!”

“The idea of his refusing to give her her husband’s name!” she thought indignantly.

“Why, John!” exclaimed Bessie, over the old lady’s shoulder.

Aunt Nancy gave a cry of delight. She would at any time have welcomed John rapturously; but his coming now made her twice glad. Of course he and Bessie would make it all up.

The exuberance of her welcome covered, at first, the wife’s deficiency. But when the excitement was over, and they had gone into the house, Bessie’s coldness and embarrassment became evident.

“I am very much surprised to see you here,” she said, when her husband looked at her. She did not pretend to be glad.

“Are you sorry?” he asked, with a laugh.

“I am too much astonished to be anything else,” she replied quietly. “What made you come?”

John Maynard was disappointed and mortified. That for years he had met his wife’s affectionate advances as coldly he did not seem aware. Other things had occupied his thoughts. He did not recollect, as he had not noticed at the time, that her manner was now just what it had long been.

Supper was over, eaten in an absent way by the husband, who glanced every moment at his wife. He found her very lovely, though different enough from the glad, girlish bride who had once brightened this humble room for him. He could not understand her. Had she no recollection of those days?

She did not seem to have, indeed, for she made no reference to them by look nor speech, but talked rapidly, and with an air of constraint, of things nearer in time, and listened with affected interest while he told the latest city news, and the latest news of his own work; how high the engine spouted; of the tiny model locomotive he had built, all silver, and gold, and fine steel; of the money he expected to make by his new patent; of an accident that had happened in his shop—a German organist, with two or three others, had come to look at his machinery, and got his hand crushed in it, which would put a stop to his playing.

Bessie looked up with an expression of pain. “Poor man!” she murmured. “How miserable he must be!”

“Yes; I was sorry for him,” the husband replied. “They say he cared for nothing but music. His name is Verheyden.”

“Poor man!” Bessie sighed again, looking down. “Those machines are always hurting some one.”

“It was his own fault,” the machinist said hastily. “Did he suppose that the engine was going to stop when he put his forefinger on it? Why, that machine would grind up an elephant, and never mismake its face. But it is the first time any one was ever hurt by a machine of mine.”

He did not understand the glance she gave him. It was not pleasant, but what it meant he knew not. She was thinking: “It is not the first time one has been hurt so.”

Aunt Nancy found business elsewhere, and left the couple to themselves.

“I forgot you were coming away that day, Bessie,” her husband said hastily, the moment they were alone. “I never thought of it till I was five miles off, and then I concluded that you must have changed your mind, or you would have told me not to go.”

“You know I never tell you not to go anywhere,” she replied coldly.

He colored. “But you know that I didn’t mean to have you go to the depot alone. When I read what you wrote to Jamie, I felt sorry enough.”

In all the long years that were past, how generously would she have met an apology like this! How quickly would she have disclaimed all sense of injury, and even have tried to find some fault in herself! But now her heart, with all its impulses, seemed frozen. She only gave him a glance of surprise, and a quiet word. “There was no need of company, I knew the way.”

There was silence. Gradually, through the deep unconsciousness and abstraction of the man, came out incident after incident of their late life, slight, but significant. Each had seemed a detached trifle at the time, but now as he sat there, abashed and ill at ease, they began to show a connection and to grow in importance. It was as when, in a thick fog, the sailor sees dimly a black speck that may be only a floating stick, and another, and another, till, looking sharply, as the mist grows thinner, he finds himself caught among rocks at low tide.

John Maynard tried to throw off with a laugh the weight that oppressed him. “Come, Bessie, let the late past go, and remember only the life we lived here. Let’s be young people again.”

He went to her side, bent down, and would have kissed her, had she not evaded his touch, not shyly, but with a crimson blush and a quick flash of the eyes.

“Don’t talk nonsense, John!” she said, in a low voice that did not hide a haughty aversion. “Let us speak of something sensible. I have been thinking that some of our ways should be changed at home. I shall begin with myself, and attend strictly to my religion. Besides, I am not doing rightly in allowing James to grow up without any discipline, and I think he should be placed in a Catholic school, where he will be taught his duty. He is quite beyond my control.”

Her morbid humility and diffidence were gone. The feeling that had made her give up all rights rather than ask for them did not outlive the moment of her reconciliation with the church.

“I am willing he should go to any school you choose,” her husband replied gravely, impressed by the change. “I suppose the boy is going on rather too much as he likes. Do whatever you think best about it, and I will see that he obeys.”

She thanked him gently, and continued: “I shall go to High Mass after this, and I should be glad to have you go with me, if you are willing. It would be a better example for James than to see you go to the shop on Sundays. He is becoming quite lawless. We have no right to give our children a bad example. I would be glad to have you go with me, if you will.”

John Maynard’s face was glowing red. He felt, gently as she spoke, as if he were having the law read to him. “I am willing to go with you, Bessie,” he said. “I am not a Catholic, but I am not anything else.”

She thanked him again, earnestly this time, for it was a favor he had granted her, and she knew that he would keep his word. “You are good to promise that,” she said.

He laughed uneasily. “Have you anything else to ask?”

“I do not think of anything,” she replied, and there was silence.

The husband got up, and went to the door. The sun was sinking down the west. He looked at the glow it made, and remembered how he had seen it there in the days that were past, how quiet and peaceful his life had been, how much happier, had he but known it, than in the turmoil of later years. Then the days had been full of healthful employment, the nights of rest and refreshment, untroubled by the feverish dreams that now swarmed in his sleeping hours. And what was it that had made his life so happy? What had been the motive, the delight of everything? Nothing but Bessie, always Bessie, his help and his reward.

He turned his face, and saw her still sitting there, her head drooping, her hands folded in her lap. Those hands caught his glance. They were pale and thin. They looked as though she had suffered.

He went to her impulsively as his heart stirred, and put his arm about her shoulder. “Bessie, forget the last years, and let’s be as we were in the happy old time.”

She did not look angry; but she withdrew herself gently from him.

“John,” she said, “that is too much to expect at once. Years of pain cannot be forgotten in a moment. When you came to‐day, you asked if Bessie Ware lived here. She does not. The Bessie Ware you married is dead. I scarcely know yet who or what I am. I only know that I shall try to do my duty by you, and repair some of the faults and mistakes of the past. But, John, I must warn you that it is harder to reconcile an estranged wife than to win a bride.”

One piercing glance, angry and disappointed, shot from his eyes; then he went to the outer door. He stood a moment on the threshold, then stepped on to the greensward. Another pause, and he walked slowly back through the garden, seeming not to know whither he went.

Aunt Nancy, anxiously awaiting signs of reconciliation, saw him wander about aimlessly, then go and lean on a fence next the woods, his back to the house.

She went into the front room at once. She was on John’s side now.

“Bessie,” she said decidedly, “you mustn’t stand too much on your dignity with John. Men are stupid creatures, and do a good many hard things without meaning or knowing; and, if they come round, it isn’t wise to keep them waiting too long for a kind word.”

Bessie Maynard laid down the work she was pretending to do, and her hands trembled. “I am not acting a part, Aunt Nancy,” she said, “and I cannot be a hypocrite. I feel cold toward John. And I feel displeased when he comes and kisses me, as if he were conferring a favor, and expects me to be happy for that. I could not give up if I would, I ought not if I could. There is something more required than a little sweet talk.”

A half hour passed, and still John Maynard stood motionless, with his elbows leaning on the fence, and his head bowed. If Bessie had seen his face, it would have reminded her of the time when he first studied mechanics, and became so absorbed in the one subject as to be dead to all else. But there was the difference that he studied then with a vivid interest, and now with gloomy intentness.

An hour passed, and still he stood there; and the sun was down, and the moon beginning to show its pearly light through the fading richness of the gloaming. The birds had ceased singing, and there was no voice of wild creatures in the woods. It was the hour for prayer and peace‐making.

John Maynard started from his abstraction, hearing his name spoken by some one. “John!” said Bessie. She had been watching him for some time from the door, and had approached slowly, step by step, unheard by him.

He turned toward her a pale, unsmiling face. “How late it is!” he said. “I must make haste.”

She spoke hesitatingly, something doubtful and wistful in her face. “I have been thinking that I might have received you better, when you came on this long journey. Won’t you come in now and rest? I didn’t mean to turn you out of the house that you made—for me.”

He turned his eyes away. “And I’ve been thinking, Bessie, that I’d better go right back again; I can go down to the post‐office to‐night, and take the stage to‐morrow morning.”

“You will not go!” she said.

“I should only spoil your visit,” he went on. “I don’t want you to begin to ‘do your duty’ by me just now. I know, Bessie, that you had a good deal to complain of; but I swear to you that I did not mean to be hard. You know I had twenty‐five years to make up; and I was always looking for better times. I was so blind that I was fool enough to think you would be glad to see me here, and that we could begin over again where we began first.”

She did not answer a word. There is something confounding in the sudden humiliation of a man who has always been almost contemptuously dominant.

He looked at his watch. “I must make haste, or they will be in bed,” he said. “Make some sort of an excuse to Aunt Nancy for me. And when you want to come back, let me know, and I will meet you at the depot or come after you.”

He started, and she walked beside him down the path to the road. He seemed hardly able to hold his head up.

She walked nearer, and slipped her hand in his arm, speaking softly: “I said a little while ago that the pain of years cannot be forgotten in a moment. But I was wrong. I think it may.”

He looked at her quickly, but said nothing, and they reached the bars. Neither made any motion to let down the pole. They leaned on it a minute in silence.

“The fact is, Bessie,” the husband burst forth, “I’ve been like a man possessed by an evil spirit. I’m sorry, and that is all I can say.”

“No matter, Jack! Let it all go!” his wife exclaimed, clasping her hands on his arm, and holding it close to him. “You weren’t to blame!” (Oh! wonderful feminine consistency!) “Let’s forget everything unpleasant, and remember only the good. How you have had to work and study, poor, dear Jack! You must rest now, and never get into the old drudging way again.”

Aunt Nancy raked up the fire, and put down the window, looking out now and then at the couple who leaned on the bar below. Each time she looked, their forms were less distinct in the twilight. “That’s just the way they used to do fifteen years ago,” she muttered contentedly.

She sat a few minutes waiting, but they did not come in. Aunt Nancy sighed and laughed too. “It beats all how women do change their minds,” she said. “I did think that Bessie would hold out longer. Well, I may as well go to bed.”

By‐and‐by she heard them come into the kitchen.

“Now, I shut the doors and windows, and you rake up the fire,” Bessie said. “Do you remember it was always so, Jack?”

“Of course I do, little one,” was the answer. “But Aunt Nancy has got the start of us to‐night.”

“Aunt Nancy!” repeated Bessie, in a lower voice. “I declare, Jack, I forgot all about her.”

“I’ll warrant you did!” says Aunt Nancy to herself, rather grimly, perhaps.

“We will be sure to keep all our good resolutions, won’t we?” Bessie said.

“All right!” says John.

The door shut softly behind them, and there were silence, and peace, and hope in the house that Jack built.

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A Retrospect

Concluded.

Nothing of interest presented itself during the reign of Philip the Bold, except the council held there in 1278. In 1383, the unfortunate Charles VI., wearied with state troubles that he was so ill fitted to cope with, fled in despair from the Louvre to Compiègne. But he was not to find peace here more than in the busy turmoil of the city. Soon after his arrival he was attacked with insanity; at first it was considered of no moment, the natural consequence of a violent reaction or a weak and nervous temperament; great pains were taken to conceal the fact from the public, but after a time the symptoms became alarming, and it was impossible to keep the secret. After the festivities which followed his ill‐starred marriage with Isabeau de Bavière, the disease broke through all bounds; everything seemed to conspire to exasperate it: the assassination of Clisson by the Baron de Craon, the apparition of the phantom in the forest that seized the king’s bridle and uttered the mysterious message as it disappeared, the bal masqué when the Duke of Orleans inadvertently set fire to the king’s Indian costume—a skin smeared with a tarry substance and stuck all over with feathers—all these shocks, coming at short intervals, irritated the disordered imagination to fury, and the attacks became frequent and ungovernable. The king’s illness was imputed by popular superstition to the malefices of Valentina of Milan, Duchess of Orleans, who, if she lacked the power, no doubt had strong motives for evoking the powers of darkness to destroy the king’s reason, and thereby his authority. The demon which had taken possession of Charles’ brain does not seem to have invaded his heart or changed the natural goodness of his disposition. He was removed from Compiègne in one of his fits of madness, and when some years later he re‐entered it, it was by force of arms; the Bourguignons held the place. Charles laid siege to it; after a desperate resistance it surrendered, and he entered in triumph; nothing however could induce him to punish the rebels, he said there was blood enough upon the ground, and he would take no vengeance on his subjects except by forgiving them. Compiègne was soon to be the theatre of a more momentous struggle than these rough skirmishes between Charles and his people. Shortly after the mock peace signed there by Bedford, it was attacked by the Duc de Bourgogne and the English with Montgomery at their head. Jeanne d’Arc on hearing of it evinced great sorrow and alarm, but she flew at once to the rescue, and appeared suddenly in the midst of the king’s troops, with the oriflamme of S. Denis in one hand, and her “good sword of liege” in the other. The sight of her whom they looked upon as the angel of victory raised the drooping spirits of the soldiers and filled them with new ardor; they raised a cry of victory the moment they beheld Jeanne. Enguerrand de Monstrelet, who was an eye‐witness of the siege, describes her attitude and the conduct of the troops throughout as “passing all heroism ever before seen in battle.” But, alas! the star of the maid of Orleans was destined to set in darkness at the hour of its greatest splendor; her own prediction, so often repeated to Charles and those around him, “Un homme me vendra” (A man will betray me), was about to be fulfilled. On the 24th of May, 1429, there was a formidable engagement between the two armies. Jeanne, at the head of hers, performed prodigies of valor; after a brilliant sortie in which the enemy were repulsed, she was re‐entering the town by the Boulevard du Pont, and had almost reached the barrier through which hundreds of her own victorious soldiers had already passed, when, lo! the gates swing forward on their hinges, and are closed against her! The maiden’s cry of despair as she raised her sword and stretched both arms towards the gates was echoed by a yell of fiendish joy from the enemy; in an instant she was surrounded, disarmed, and taken captive by Montgomery. Guillaume de Flavy, governor of Compiègne, was accused of having committed this act of treachery, bribed by Jean de Luxembourg. If the accusation be true, and it has never been seriously challenged, the traitor’s punishment was as fitting as it was merited; he was immediately destituted of his office and revenues by the Connétable de Richemont, and driven to hide his base head in private life, where the Nemesis who was to avenge Jeanne d’Arc awaited him in the shape of his wife; she was jealous of her husband, who, it would seem, fully justified the fact; after leading him a miserable life and failing to convert him by slow torture from his evil ways, she bribed the barber to cut his throat one morning while shaving him, and finished the operation herself by smothering him under a pillow. For many years de Flavy’s effigy was burnt regularly at Compiègne on the 24th of May.

Louis XI. was liberated from the English, and came to Compiègne time enough to embitter the last days of his father, Charles VIII., who let himself die of hunger there from terror of being poisoned by his son. Comines says that his dutiful son and most amiable of men was so irritated by his courtiers for mocking “his boorish manners, his uncouth dress, and his taste for low folk,” that to spite them he published an edict forbidding them to hunt or touch the game in the forest of Compiègne, a prohibition against all precedent, nor did he ever invite them to join him there in the chase. But the pretty palace open to the four winds of heaven soon grew distasteful to him, and he forsook it for the more congenial retreat of Plessis‐les‐Tours, where, surrounded by spies and quacks and a moat filled with vipers and venomous snakes, he ended in terror and suffering a life which presents a strange mixture of shrewdness and credulity, bonhomie and ferocity, impiety and the grossest superstition.

Francis I. took kindly to Compiègne, which had been deserted by his two predecessors. His first act on coming there, as king, was to do public homage to the Holy Shroud. Louis, Cardinal de Bourbon, grand‐uncle to the king, and abbot of S. Corneille, exposed it to the veneration of the king and the people amidst great ceremony and prayer of thanksgiving. “He took the holy relic, and laid it on the grand altar with sentiments of great devotion and tenderness, which he expressed by abundant tears.” Francis added to the shrine “twenty‐two rose‐buds of pure gold, enriched with precious stones and pearls, and attached to twenty fleurs‐de‐lys of gold,” says Cambry, in his Déscription de l’Oise. There is also a letter of Francis’ giving a naïve account of the ceremony, quoted at length in the Histoire du Saint Suaire de Compiègne. Francis passes from the scene, and we see “the noble burgesses of Compiègne,” as he was fond himself of calling them, making great stir to receive his successor, Henri II., on his return from Rheims. Two years more, and there is the same merry hubbub, and the town is in gala dress to welcome Catherine de Medicis on her marriage. This abnormal type of a woman fell ill not long after her arrival, and vowed that if she recovered she would send a pilgrim to Jerusalem to give thanks for her; he was to start from Compiègne, and perform the journey all the way on foot, making for every three steps forward one step backward. Cambry says the vicarious pilgrimage was “faithfully executed according to the queen’s vow.”

Charles IX. was only a flying visitor at Compiègne. An odd story is told by D. Carlier and others as occurring there during his time. A man was discovered in the forest who had been brought up by the wolves, and taken so completely to their way of life that he had nearly turned into a wolf himself. “He was hairy like a wolf, howled, outran the hounds at the hunt, walked on all fours, strangled dogs, tore and devoured them.” For a time he made sport for the people, who hunted him like other game, but having shown a propensity to deal with men as he did with dogs, they laid a trap for him, chained him, and took him before the king. Charles, more humane than the noble burgesses, refused to have him killed, but ordered him to be shorn and confined in a monastery. “What reflections,” naïvely exclaims D. Carlier, “does not this incident suggest on the danger of bad example, and the pernicious effects of evil society!” It would be interesting to hear how the novice behaved himself in his new position, whether he developed any latent dispositions for the mystic life, and quite left behind him the habits of his early education which had corrupted his good manners; but of this D. Carlier says nothing.

Henri III., who lived at St. Cloud making omelets, expressed a wish to be buried near the Holy Shroud at Compiègne, in the church of S. Corneille; and as soon as Henri IV. became master of his “good town of Paris” he faithfully carried out this wish. Owing, however, to the dilapidated state of the finances, he could not do so with the proper ceremonial. “It was pitiful,” says Cheverny, in his Memoirs, “to see the greatest king of the earth in a chapelle ardente with only one lamp, one chaplain belonging to the late king, named La Cesnaye, and a few shabby écus to keep up a shabby service.” Instead of being removed to S. Denis after a temporary rest near the Holy Shroud, the body remained on in the vaults of S. Corneille, on account of a prophecy which said that Henri IV. would be buried eight days after Henri III.; a prediction which was actually accomplished, “though not,” says Bajin, “in a manner apprehended by the king”. When Henri IV. fell by the hand of Ravaillac, the Due d’Epernon advised Marie de Medicis to have the obsequies of the late king performed before those of her husband. Henri IV. was therefore kept waiting till his predecessor’s grave was filled. The first ceremony was performed quietly, almost in secret; and then the “good Béarnias” was taken to S. Denis, all France weeping and refusing to be comforted.

Louis XIII. was attracted to Compiègne solely by the pleasures of the chase. We see him watching the meet from a window giving on the Cour d’honneur, and whispering to the Maréchal de Praslin, “You see that man down there? He wants to be one of my council, but I cannot make up my mind to name him.” “That man” was Richelieu. The words were repeated to Marie de Medicis, as all her son’s words seem to have been, and she, counting on the prelate’s influence in supporting her against the king and her other enemies, vowed that he should be named, and so he was. A few days later we see Louis, equipped in his hunting costume, stride into the room of the queen‐mother, and proclaim in a boistering manner, meant to vindicate the independence of his choice, that he “had named the Bishop of Luçon member of his council as secretary of state.” Marie de Medicis looks coolly surprised, and bows her approval. By‐and‐by we have the Earl of Carlisle and Lord Holland presenting themselves at Compiègne to solicit the hand of Henriette of France for the Prince of Wales. They are received with every mark of cordial good‐will on the part of Louis and entertained with great splendor; but Richelieu looked askance on their mission; it was his way to begin always by mistrusting an offer, whether it came from friend or foe; in this case his piety was alarmed for Henriette’s faith, and he suspected England of some sinister design in seeking alliance with France. Louis, however, overruled his fears and scruples, and the minister contented himself with taking extraordinary precautions to ensure to the princess by contract the free exercise of her religion, stipulating that she should have in all her chateaux a chapel “large enough to hold as many people as she pleased.” The marriage was celebrated by proxy at Notre Dame, Buckingham representing the Prince of Wales, and from thence the court escorted the bridal party on their way as far as Compiègne. Louis XIII., though he made but short sojourns at the palace, kept up close and friendly intercourse with the inhabitants, writing to them himself when any important event took place. He announced to them, for instance, the siege of Rochelle, the war with the Spaniards, the peace with England, and many other events in which the honor and safety of the state were interested.

Louis XIV. was only eight years old when he paid his first visit to Compiègne, accompanied by his little brother the Duc d’Anjou and the Queen Regent; they were obliged to seek hospitality from the monks of S. Corneille, because the Carmelite nuns were at the palace, which had been lent to them while their monastery was being repaired, and Anne of Austria would neither intrude upon them nor suffer them to be disturbed. What a checkered space intervenes between this first appearance of the grand monarque at Compiègne and his last, when we see him passing the troops in review for the amusement of Madame de Maintenon! He stands uncovered beside her chaise à porteurs and stoops down to explain the various evolutions, while she raises three fingers of the glass to catch the explanation without letting in the cold; the Duchesse de Bourgogne and the Princesse de Conti, and all the train of princes and princesses, are grouped round the poles of the Widow Scarron’s chair, listening respectfully while the king speaks; but he addresses none of them.

Louis XV. made his entry into Compiègne preceded by a troop of falconers with birds on their wrists, and accompanied by cannon and music of fife and drum, and every demonstration of popular joy. He was just eighteen then; his life was like the beginning of a stream, bright and clear to its depths; soon it was to grow troubled, darkening and darkening as it reached its middle course, till at last the waters ceased to flow and there was nothing but a loathsome swamp. Compiègne was associated with the brightest and happiest incidents of his life. In 1744, after he had commanded the army with the Maréchal de Saxe, taken Ypres, Furnes, and Menin, and performed that series of brilliant feats of arms that raised him to the rank of a demi‐god in the eyes of the people, Louis was marching to Alsace when he was suddenly stricken down with a malignant fever and obliged to lay up at Metz. The news of his illness was received as a personal calamity all over France. Never before nor since was such a spectacle given to the world of a nation wrestling with its agony beside the death‐bed of a king. The churches were filled day and night, the people weeping as if every man were trembling for a wife, every woman for a son; unable to control their grief they wept aloud, “filling the streets with lamentations”; public prayers were everywhere offered up; processions were formed in every town and village, and a universal concert of supplication was going up to the divine mercy for the life of the king. When it was known that their prayers were heard, and that he was restored to them from the jaws of death, the reaction was like a national frenzy. “The nation,” says Bajin, “thrilled with joy from one end to another.” They christened their new‐found prince le bienaimé and henceforth he was called by no other name; he entered Paris like a conqueror bringing home the spoils of half of the world; at every step his progress was impeded by the people falling at his horses’ feet and struggling to clasp the hand of their beloved; mothers held up their babes to kiss him, and strong men clung to his hands and covered them with kisses and tears. Louis, overcome by this great tide of love that was sweeping round him from his people’s heart, was heard to repeat constantly while the tears streamed down his cheeks, “O mon Dieu, qu’il est doux d’être aimé ainsi!” (O my God! how sweet it is to be thus loved!) It was a manifestation the like of which history has never chronicled. Another not less ardent, though on a smaller scale, awaited the king at Compiègne. The town, deeming itself entitled to make a special family rejoicing, invited him to a Te Deum to be sung in the time‐honored abbey of S. Corneille. The king went and joined with deep emotion in the solemn hymn of thanksgiving. A monster bonfire was lighted on a hill above the town, a rainbow of colored lamps, stretching over an enormous space, symbolized the fair promise of delight which had risen upon France, fountains of red and white wine flowed copiously on the great Place, and a ball was given at night to which every inhabitant of the town was invited, and came; gentle and simple, rich and poor, old and young, all welded by a common joy without distinction of class into one kindred. The victor of Fontenoy responded nobly to this magnificent testimony of his people’s trust. Alas! that he should have outlived this glorious morrow, and turned from his brave career into a slough of selfishness and vice to become a byword to the tongues that blessed him, and accursed of the nation that had lavished such a wealth of love upon him! The title of Bienaimé, which had been spontaneously bestowed on him by the people, and been regularly prefixed to his name in the almanac and elsewhere, became a butt for squibmongers, and was applied to the king only in mockery and scorn. The following is a specimen:

“Le Bien‐aimé de l’Almanach, N’est plus le Bien‐aimé de France, Il fait tout ob Loc et ab Lac. Le Bien‐aimé de l’Almanach: Il met tout dans le même sac, La justice et la finance, Le bien‐aimé de l’Almanach N’est plus le bien‐aimé de France,” etc.(195)

When Marie Antoinette came to France as the bride of the Dauphin, it was at Compiègne that their first meeting took place. Louis Quinze greeted her with the most paternal affection; but his great, his sole preoccupation was, not how the Dauphin would like his fair young bride, or how she would take to the timid and rather awkward youth who blushed to the roots of his hair when the king, after raising her from her knees and embracing her, desired him to do the same, but how this pure young creature, who was entrusted to his fatherly care, would receive the Marquise du Barry. He presented her after all the other ladies of the court, and with a trepidation of manner that he was not able to conceal; but the incident had been foreseen and discussed at Vienna as well as at Compiègne. Marie Antoinette, sustained by her proud but polite mother, proved equal to the occasion; “she showed neither hauteur nor empressement,” but met the difficulty in a manner which put the king at ease, and impressed the court with a high sense of her tact and discretion. Nor was this first impression belied by her subsequent conduct; the Dauphine proved, on many trying occasions, that her good sense and judgment were a match for the nobility of her spirit and the goodness of her heart; the busybodies who worked so diligently to embroil her in a quarrel with Madame du Barry were foiled by her straightforward simplicity and the dignified reserve which she maintained alike towards them and towards the favorite. An instance of this occurred a few weeks after her marriage. The son of one of her women of the bedchamber, a Madame Thibault, killed an officer of the king’s guard in a duel; Madame Thibault threw herself at Marie Antoinette’s feet, and besought her to implore the king for her son’s pardon; the Dauphine promised, and after a whole hour’s supplication she obtained it. Full of gratitude and delight the young princess told everybody how good the king had been, and how graciously he had granted her request; but one of the ladies of the court, thinking to spoil her pleasure and excite her jealousy, informed her that Madame Thibault had also gone on her knees to Madame du Barry to intercede for her, and that the marquise had done so. Marie Antoinette, without betraying the slightest vexation, replied very sweetly: “That confirms the opinion I always had of Madame Thibault, she is a noble woman, and a brave mother who would stop at nothing to save her child’s life; in her place I would have knelt to Zamore(196) if he could have helped me.”

Charles V.’s old chateau, which had been patched, and mended, and added to till there was hardly a stone of the original building left, was thrown down by Louis Quinze, and rebuilt as we now see it. It was just finished in time to receive Louis Seize on his accession to the throne. The new king came here often to hunt, but he seldom stayed at Compiègne, though it was dear to him as the place where he first beheld Marie Antoinette. When the Revolution broke out, Compiègne suffered like other towns; some of its churches were destroyed, others pillaged; the Carmelites, whose convent had been the prayerful retreat of so many queens of France, were imprisoned in the Conciergerie, after appearing before Fouquier Tinville on a charge of having had arms concealed in their cellars. To this preposterous accusation, Mère Térèse de S. Augustin, their superioress, drawing a crucifix from her breast, answered calmly: “Behold our only arms! They have never inspired fear but to the wicked.” But what did innocence avail against such judges? The Carmelites were condemned to death, and executed at the Barrière du Trône. They ascended the scaffold singing the Veni Creator, and had just reached the last verse as the last victim laid her head on the guillotine. While awaiting in prison the day of their deliverance, those valiant daughters of S. Teresa amused themselves composing a parody on the Marseillaise, of which the following is a couplet:

“Livrons nos cœurs à l’allégresse! Le jour de gloire est arrivé; Le glaive sanglant est lévé, Préparons nous à la victoire; Sous les drapeaux d’un Dieu mourant Que chacun marche en conquérant; Courans et volons à la gloire! Ranimons notre ardeur, Nos cœurs sont au Seigneur: Montons, Montons, A l’échafaud, et Dieu sera vainqueur!”(197)

Napoleon I. furnished Compiègne for his young Austrian bride, Marie Louise; she was on her way thither when he met the carriage in the forest, and, jumping in, scared her considerably by the abrupt introduction.

At Compiègne took place Alexander of Russia’s famous interview with Louis XVIII.; the king entered the dining‐room first, and unceremoniously seated himself; his courtiers, scared at the royal discourtesy, began to murmur amongst themselves, which, the czar noticing, he observed with a smile: “What will you? The grandson of Catherine has not quarterings enough to ride in the king’s coach!”

Charles X. received at Compiègne Francis and Isabella of Naples, and gave for their entertainment a hunting fête, at which 11 wild boars, 9 young boars, 7 stags, 56 hind, 10 fawns, 11 bucks, 114 deer, and 20 hares fell victims to the will of the royal sportsmen. Charles, who was on the eve of losing a more serious and brilliant royalty (1830), was, by common consent, proclaimed king of the hunt.

The last circumstance of note connected with Compiègne is the camps held there by Louis Philippe in 1847, and commanded by the Duc de Nemours.

Under the Empire the chateau was inhabited for a short time by the court every autumn, and was the centre of brilliant fêtes and hospitalities.

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The Cross Through Love, And Love Through The Cross

Concluded.

The next morning he went to the Juden‐Strasse before the hour of the synagogue service, and walked up unannounced into old Zimmermann’s room. As he had hoped, so it proved—she was there, reading the Psalms to the old man. He wondered if she remembered him, if she had noticed him when he had stood upon the landing last Sabbath morning. Zimmermann greeted him with a nod that had not much recognition in it, but said:

“Maheleth, give the stranger a chair. Mein Herr, this is my good little nurse.”

Holcombe bowed, and the girl looked at him in silence for a few seconds.

“I remember,” she then said, “you picked up my music for me in a storm, nearly a month ago.”

“I thought you would not have known me again,” Holcombe stammered.

“Oh! yes, I am not forgetful. You have been very good to my patient, and I am very grateful, for he has eaten more this week than he has for a whole month.”

“I think I heard your father was ill, fräulein?”

“Oh! he has been so for many months. Is your English friend gone?”

“Yes; he has gone home to be married. I wish, fräulein, if you could suggest anything, I could be of some use, besides bringing fruit and flowers to this house. Do you know, since I have been in Frankfort, I have never found anything to do?”

“Do you mean,” she asked very gravely, “you wish to be of use to us?”

“I mean, if I could come and sit with Herr Löwenberg, and read or write for him, while you are away; for they tell me you are out all day, and it must be lonely for him.”

“That is very kind of you,” she answered, looking at him in calm wonder; “it is true he has no society, for the little girls hardly count.”

“Has he any books?” asked Holcombe. “Because I have plenty, and they might amuse him; and I have English newspapers, too, coming in regularly. Does he speak English?”

“He understands and reads it; but you are a stranger, and why should we place our burdens on your shoulders?”

“Oh! you must not mind my way; this sort of thing is a mania with me, you know.”

“It is a mania seldom found,” croaked out the old man.

“I think,” put in Maheleth, “it is time for me to leave you. How can I thank you, Mr. Holcombe? Perhaps, when you leave my friend here, you will stop at the next landing, and go in and see my father?”

“I will, and you must not think I am in a hurry.”

The ice thus broken, many visits followed, and at night, when Maheleth was at home, Henry read to the family in the little plain room that was so beautiful in his sight. More than once had he again seen the girl in the cathedral, always standing, and separated from the worshippers, always with that same sad, anxious look. One night, he noticed a certain constraint in the father’s and daughter’s manner, and Löwenberg was less cordial to him than usual. After that, Maheleth seemed yet more troubled, and grew paler and thinner. He asked old Zimmermann if he knew of any fresh trouble in the family, but he could learn nothing from him. Rachel, who always answered the bell, detained him one evening, and said:

“I would not go in to‐night, if I were you. Don’t be offended, mein Herr.”

“Why, Rachel, what is the matter?”

“Fräulein Löwenberg went to the Catholic Church last night, and her father found it out, and he said it was your fault.”

“Well, I will go in all the same; I had nothing to do with it, and my friend must not be angry with his daughter.”

Löwenberg was alone, and the room had a tossed look about it, very different from the cosy aspect it usually wore. The invalid lay on a couch, with a discontented expression on his dark, thin face.

“Are you worse to‐night?” gently asked Holcombe.

“Ay, worse indeed, and you must add to my troubles after I had treated you as a son!”

“I! My friend, do you think that of me? Don’t you know me better?”

“Ah!” said the invalid irritably, “don’t try to deceive me. You know I have nothing left to care for but my daughter, and you have been trying to convert her. I know why, too, but you shall not see her any more.”

“You wrong me, Herr Löwenberg. I have never spoken to your daughter about religion, because I did not know whether it might be agreeable to her or not, and she never started the subject.”

“You know she goes to your church?”

“Yes, I have seen her there several times; she never saw me, however, and I never hinted to her that I had seen her.”

“You speak very fairly about it; but I know how unscrupulous you Christians can be in this matter. You would think it a grand thing to convert her.”

“Undoubtedly, if I could do it by sheer conviction. But you should know me too well to believe I would do it by any undue or secret influence.”

“You do not know how dear she is to me; you do not know how her defection from our ancient faith would break my heart; how I should have to renounce her for my other children’s sake!”

“And how you would stain your soul with the blackest ingratitude, Herr Löwenberg, if you did!” interrupted Henry excitedly.

“So you think that, do you? You don’t know who she is, and how such a thing would be so unpardonable in her that no consideration could influence me. I never told you before, but she is of another blood than you are—she is the descendant of martyred rabbis, and her race is as pure as that of the old Machabees. We are not Germans. We are Spaniards, and, though ruined, our family pride is as great as it ever was—as great, too, as our love for our faith.”

“How long ago was it you were ruined?”

“Only a year and two months, and I fell ill six months ago; my wife died almost as soon as we came here, and my Maheleth has earned our daily bread, and taught her sisters, and managed the housekeeping, all alone. It is enough to make one curse God!”

“Hush, hush!” said Holcombe. “You do not mean that—you know you have too many blessings to thank him for.”

“And the best and only one you are seeking to take from me.”

“I swear to you that much as I should wish and pray for it—for that I will not conceal from you—yet I have never influenced your child in any way.”

“You have, because you love her.”

Henry was staggered at the suddenness of his words.

“You cannot deny it,” continued the invalid.

“No,” answered the young man; “I have no desire to deny it, but your daughter never heard it from my lips, and never would.”

“Never would!” echoed Löwenberg, firing up. “And do you, too, despise her for her race—she that is as far above you as you are above your lowest peasant!”

“God forbid!” said Henry solemnly; “for I think of her as of one of whom I am not worthy. But my faith forbids our union, and, love her though I shall to my dying day, my love should never cross my lips to stir and wound her heart.”

“You shall see her no more; you have seen her too much already; if you love her, as you say, desist at least now.”

“Do you mean that she knows—perhaps returns—my love?”

“I have said enough, and shall not gratify your vanity. But promise me you will not see her again, and I will even believe that you did not try to proselytize her.”

“No; I cannot promise that. Circumstances might arise under which it would be death to keep that promise, and yet I should have no hope of inducing you to give it me back.”

“You mean she might become a Christian?”

“Even so, as I pray she may.”

“And you will marry her then, and she feels it, and yet you pretend you use no influence!”

“I would marry her if she would not think me unworthy.”

“I need say no more. You have been my friend, and I thank you for your kindness; but henceforth our paths are separate. If I lose my child, I shall know you robbed me of her. I only ask you now to consider what I told you of our family and fortunes as a sacred confidence.”

“My friend,” said Henry sadly, as he rose, “I will obey you, and you may consider your secret as sacred as if it were my own. But remember this is your own act, and, if ever you wish to call on my friendship again, my services will be as willingly yours as though this breach had never been. God bless you and your daughter Maheleth!”

He left the room as in a dream; Rachel scanned his face curiously as she let him out at the crazy door.

“So,” he thought, “thus ends my connection with that house; and yet God knows how true my intentions were. I dare not seek her, still I know she may need me. God grant it be true that Maheleth is a Christian at heart!”

Unconsciously he bent his steps towards the cathedral; a few people were collected about the confessionals. The stained windows were dark and blurred in the uncertain light; only a lamp here and there hung from the pillars.

Perhaps his prayers were more fervent in intention than full in form, and mechanically he watched the shrouded confessionals. Suddenly from behind the green curtain of one of them issued the figure of the Jewish girl, a calm look lighting up her features, and her deportment altogether unlike that which he had so often and so painfully noticed.

Her eye fell upon him instantly, and, far from shunning him, gave him a long glance of recognition and sympathy. She knelt for some time, then rose and walked down the nave. He followed her, and at the entrance door she paused as if to wait for him.

“I have seen your father, Fräulein,” Holcombe said, “and he told me a great many things.”

“I hardly think he quite knows how far things have gone,” she answered gently. “I could give up anything for him except my soul, and for some months I have known that only by becoming a Christian could I save it.”

“I have often seen you in church.”

“Have you, indeed?”

“Your father accuses me of converting you.”

She blushed, and was silent for a few minutes.

“You have helped me by your prayers, I am sure,” she said at last.

“Tell me,” he asked, “are you a Catholic yet?”

“No; I only went into the confessional to speak to the priest; in a few days I shall be baptized.”

“I have a favor to ask you—will you let me be present?”

“Certainly, it will make me very happy, believe me.”

“Do you know that, when your father hears of it, he will turn you out of your home?”

“He said so—did he tell you so?”

“He did, but he could not have meant it.”

“Oh! yes,” she said sadly, “he would do it; he would think it a duty, a matter of principle.”

“It would be very ungrateful.”

“Ungrateful! Was I not bound to work for him who gave me life? He worked hard for us, and in the time of trouble we owed it to him.”

“But if he throws you off, what will become of him?”

“That is the saddest part; but I know God will take care of him.”

“Remember, Maheleth, that either for yourself or for him (for your sake) you must never hesitate to call upon me. Promise me that.”

It was the first time he had called her Maheleth. She blushed and looked down, saying:

“You have been very generous and very kind to my father; but surely now you have parted friendship with him?”

“No, I have not, as I told even him; but, were it not so, for your sake it should be.”

“I have God to look after me, Herr Holcombe.”

“But I want to be his instrument.”

“His Raphael, as you have been to us through this desert of want and poverty.”

“And will you not be my Sarah?” he asked suddenly, but in a soft, low voice.

Her whole frame shook; then she looked up in his face, silent.

“I have loved you since I knew you,” he went on to say; “I mean since I saw you first; but I never meant to tell my secret, for you know I could not wed a Jewess. But now, thank God! the bar is gone, and I can be happy without sin.”

She did not answer yet.

“Have I deceived myself, then?” asked the young man sadly. “And do you not love me, as I hoped?”

“I do,” she answered, quickly looking up. “God knows I do, but I cannot marry you.”

“Why, why, Maheleth? You torture me.”

“Because it would break my father’s heart, and because it would give him reason to say I had changed my faith for you.”

“But how could he?”

“I could not leave him in misery, and my little sisters alone, and go and live in peace and earthly comfort which they could not share.”

“They are most welcome to share it, Maheleth.”

“You are too good, too noble,” she said; “but it cannot be.”

“And you love me, you say?”

“Must we not love God better, dear, dear friend? Henry, do not be angry with me. You will be my dear brother in the faith always.”

Holcombe was too overcome to speak. She stopped and entreated him to leave her.

“I am paining you beyond necessity,” she said; “you will be happier and calmer if you do not see me till the day of my baptism. All things are God’s will, and, bitter as the trial may be, he gives us strength to bear it, if we look to him. Farewell, Henry.”

He wrung her hand in silence, and saw the drooping figure pass quickly out of sight. He felt how much harder her trial was, and how selfish his own words had been, yet he did not try to see her again until the day of her baptism.

The ceremony was to take place at the cathedral, at four in the morning. The sun had just risen, and the quiet streets were golden with his light. Holcombe was watching at the door. She came very soon, wrapped in a long black cloak, looking radiant and calm, as if nothing more could be of any consequence to her, nor stir her heart confusedly. She held out her hand to her friend with a “God bless you!” that left him dumb. Her cloak was laid on a carved bench, and her white robe gleamed under the rainbow from the great stained‐glass window above her. More beautiful than ever she seemed, and more angel‐like. The priest poured the saving waters upon her head, and performed all the holy mystic ceremonies of the sacrament, and she, as if in a heavenly trance, followed him throughout with her eyes and her lips. Mass was said directly after, and she and Henry knelt together at the altar‐rails to receive the Bread of Angels. A long time passed after Mass, and when at length Maheleth, now Mary, rose from her knees, it was only to go to the distant Lady‐chapel, and there offer up a golden brooch of Spanish workmanship, one of the few treasures saved from the wreck of her father’s fortune.

As she left the church, Henry followed her.

“Are you going home?” he asked timidly.

She turned her dark eyes upon him very softly, but with no sadness in them.

“I have no home now,” she said slowly. “Last night I bade my father farewell; I am going to the convent.”

A look of terror came into Henry’s face.

“To stay there always?” he asked.

“As God wills—I do not know,” she replied.

“But are you not sorry about your father and sisters?”

“It was a hard trial,” she answered, with radiant calmness in her eyes, “but God has taken the sorrow out of it now.”

“And shall I not see you again, now your faith is mine? I saw you often when there was a gulf between us!”

“It is better you should forget me. But that shall be as God wills; I leave it to him, and will make no arrangements.”

“Thank you for that, anyhow; remember all I told you, dear Maheleth; so far, at least, you can make me happy.”

“I will remember it always, and bless you for it, but I do not promise to act up to it.”

“Never mind, you cannot help God protecting you, no matter through what instrument.”

And with these words he left her.

For some weeks they did not meet, but Henry was busy at correspondence with his English agents and bankers. In the meanwhile, regular remittances arrived at Herr Löwenberg’s house, which he at first refused to accept, not knowing whether they came from his daughter whom he had thrown off, or his friend whom he had insulted, and not wishing to be beholden to either for his daily pittance. But starvation was the alternative, and, had not Rachel kindly shared her meals with his children, and sent him little inexpensive dishes now and then, hunger would have made him yield long ago. As it was, he missed his daily sustenance sorely, and at last, under protest, and promising himself prompt repayment of these loans as soon as he should be well again, he began to use the money sent to him. Many a time Holcombe came to the door to inquire after him from the good‐natured Rachel; and every day, in the dusk of the evening, came his daughter, almost always bearing a basket that held some little delicacy.

One night it happened that Henry and Maheleth met at the door. She was the first to speak.

“You see I am not yet immured in my convent!” she said gayly. “I have to thank you so much for coming here to look after my dear father. I shall be leaving Frankfort soon, and then there will be no one to be so good to him as you.”

“But I shall not leave. Do you really mean you are going?”

“Yes; the good nuns have got me a governess’ situation somewhere in Bohemia with Catholics. I shall go next week.”

“May I come and bid you good‐by?”

“Oh, yes! come on a visiting day, Thursday. Have you seen my sisters? How are they looking?”

“I saw them a week ago; they looked tired, I thought.”

“Oh! they don’t know how to nurse him, and he tires them, I am afraid. But God will see to them and him too.”

“Will you be able to come back here for a vacation?”

“Perhaps in a year—not before.”

“Your father may be well again by that time.”

“God grant it! But I must not stay any longer now.”

And having made some inquiries of Rachel, she left the house.

Henry Holcombe longed for Thursday. He wanted to ask leave to write to Maheleth, to give her news of her father, he would say. When the time arrived, the parlor at the convent was full, and he hardly relished making his adieus in a crowd. He was relieved to find a nun come and beckon him away, and show him into a quiet little room, with a polished floor, a Munich Madonna, and a few plain chairs round a dark table.

In a few minutes, a pleasant‐looking old religious came in, followed by Maheleth.

The girl reached her hand to Henry, saying:

“Sister Mary Ambrose knows you by name very well.”

The talk was general for a short time, then the old nun got up and walked to the window.

“I wanted to ask you if I might write to you, Maheleth,” said the young man, much relieved by the prospect of a comparative tête‐à‐tête.

“If you wish to do so, by all means.”

“And you don’t wish it?” he said, in disappointment.

“I meant it might be painful to you after all. What I wish is of no moment.”

“Maheleth, how can you say so, when you know I shall always feel for you the same love I do now?”

“Well, my friend, let that pass. Write to me, then; you know your letters will be welcome.”

“I will always let you know about your father.”

“You will not always stay in Frankfort?”

“Not quite, but I shall be here again this time next year.”

She smiled and said:

“I might not be here myself.”

“Then I shall see you wherever you are, and I shall ask you the same question you have answered once.”

“Ah! Henry, do not trust to accidents! It may never be; forget me, as I already told you.”

“We’ll not argue about it; we will wait and see. Look, I have brought you something,” he added, taking a tiny velvet case from his breast‐pocket. “It is not an engagement‐ring, do not be afraid,” he said, as she seemed troubled; “it is only a souvenir, and I want you to promise me to wear it for one year, till I see you again. After that, you shall do as you like about keeping it. You know what a rosary‐ring is?” he asked, as he showed her the broad yellow band notched by tiny bubbles of gold. “And here is the cross laid upon it, and the cross is of pearls, the emblem of innocence. You read what is inside now.”

She took it and read the device on the interior rim: “Crux per amore; Amor per cruce.”

“The cross through love; Love through the cross,” he explained.

She replied by kissing the ring and handing it to him, as she said:

“Put it on my finger, Henry, and only you or God himself shall ever draw it off.”

“You do not mean—”

“Hush! how can you question him? But I fear he will not call me in that way. Who knows, perhaps we shall meet next year? I leave my father to God and you.”

The old nun came back from the window.

“My child, I am afraid I cannot stay any longer,” she said.

The girl rose, and took Henry’s hand in both her own.

“God bless and reward you, my dear, dear friend. You know all I would say and yet cannot.”

He kissed her hand, and, with an ineffable look of holy calm, the Jewish convert left the room, still glancing back at him.

Two months passed, and Löwenberg grew better. One morning, a large letter was brought to him, with the Madrid post‐mark. He opened it hastily, and scanned its contents. The letter fell from his hands as he read, and a dizziness came over him; he lay back on his couch, deadly pale.

“Is it anything bad about Maheleth?” timidly asked little Thamar.

“No,” he said, momentarily roused to anger. He took up the letter again and muttered, “A million dollars!” The children thought he was worse, and looked on with scared faces.

The letter was from a banker at Madrid, saying that he was authorized by a person deeply in Señor Cristalar’s debt, but who wished to remain nameless, to apprise him of a certain sum, a million dollars, lying in ready money at his command in Hauptmann’s bank at Frankfort. The person had long been wishing to make this restitution, but had not till now been able to ascertain his hiding‐place. The invalid was in a fever; he could not help thinking of the young Christian he had spurned, yet he tried to persuade himself it was not he, but the man to whose knavery he had owed his total ruin.

Several days passed, and at last he wrote to Holcombe at the hotel he had been staying at. In ambiguous terms, he spoke of a generous service undeserved by him, and of his desire to see him, if only once. But the Englishman was gone and had left no address. He then wrote to his Madrid correspondent, urging him to try and discover the person from whom the money had been sent; but the banker wrote word that the whole transaction had been kept very secret, and that, before it had become known to him, it had passed through so many hands that it was impossible to find out the first person concerned. There was a hint of some American bank connected with it, and the money had been originally paid down in American gold; but beyond this there was no clue. Cristalar thought the Spanish banker had been probably bribed to keep silence, and a few more weeks sped by without his taking any active measures about his newly‐found wealth. He received and acknowledged a letter of advice from Hauptmann’s bank, telling him of the sum at his disposal, and Hauptmann himself came to call upon him and offer him his congratulations. The Spaniard, who still called himself by his German name, received the visit of his former employer as a mere conventional act of courtesy, and seemed in no wise elated by the sudden good‐fortune he was being congratulated upon. He did not change his lodgings, but he hired a servant, and sent his daughters to the best Jewish school in the town. As soon as he got well, which was by rapid degrees, after he had received the letter that once more made him a millionaire, he left his children in charge of Rachel, and proceeded to London, where he advertised daily for information of Henry Holcombe. The weekly supplies in small sums had never discontinued, but he felt assured that, notwithstanding all these blinds, he could not be mistaken as to the name of his benefactor.

Meanwhile, Maheleth in her Bohemian home heard from Rachel of her father’s fortune, his restoration to health, and his journey to England. She, too, wrote to Henry, and asked him to tell her if it were he that had thus returned good for evil. He simply said in reply that he was free to do as he liked with his money, and that he thought Señor Cristalar knew better how to use it than he did.

Summer came again, and with it Henry Holcombe; the old Juden‐Strasse was once more before him, and then he learnt that Herr Löwenberg had gone three months ago to Madrid. He had been travelling in Italy and Greece, and had never gone home to his old English country‐house, which now was let to good and steady tenants. He went to the convent; she was not there, but they expected her. So there was nothing for it but to go and chat with Rachel and old Zimmermann about old times and old friends.

A week later he called again at the convent, and the portress told him to wait. In the same little parlor, unchanged and clean, he waited for a quarter of an hour, hoping and dreading to see Maheleth. She came in this time alone. He took her hand in his, and looked a hungry look into her eyes. She said to him, smiling:

“Do you see I have kept my promise? I have the dear ring on my finger, and every day I have said the rosary with it for you. And now, you know, I must thank you.”

“I cannot bear it; don’t, for my sake, Maheleth! Have you heard from your father?”

“No; he never will write, I knew that; but I have heard of him; he is in Spain. He will begin again as a banker, I feel sure, and never rest till he has repaid you.”

“I don’t want to be repaid, except with interest, and you know it is not from him I can ask that. Do you remember that I was to ask you the same question I asked once already?”

“Yes, Henry, but think what you are doing.”

“I shall ask it first, and then think.”

“Well, Henry, if I should say that, I will answer it as you wish, provided you can gain my father’s consent?”

The young man looked blank.

“I believe that is what God would wish me to do, Henry. My father has no further need of me, and he or I owe you a debt of gratitude we can never pay; yet I should like his distinct permission, if I could have it, and you can obtain it more easily than I can.”

“I shall not rest till it be done,” said Holcombe excitedly. “Shall I write to him? Maheleth, you have had ‘Crux per amore’; now God will give us ‘Amor per cruce.’ ”

He wrote that very day to Madrid, asking the hand of his daughter from the wealthy Jewish banker, and pleading as hard as though he were some poor outcast, with never a roof to his head, begging for the favor of a royal maiden’s love. Cristalar was overjoyed at knowing at last where to find the man he owed health and fortune to, and, instead of a letter, he sent a telegram to say he would be in Frankfort in a week.

Henry took the telegram to the convent; Maheleth turned very pale as she read it.

“It is all right, surely, darling, is it not?” asked Holcombe.

“I have never seen him since the eve of my baptism.”

“And,” interrupted the young man, “please God, you will see him again the eve of our marriage.”

She hid her face in her hands. “God grant it!” she murmured, under her breath.

Ephraim Cristalar, for he called himself by his own name now, went to the hotel where Holcombe used to live, and inquired for the young Englishman. He had not long to wait.

“Mr. Holcombe!” he exclaimed, as he caught him in his arms, “I cannot speak to you—you are master of all I am and have; can you but forgive me, say?”

“My friend and father!” replied Holcombe, “you must not give way like this! I only asked you a simple question, a great favor, it is true, but that is all we have to speak of.”

“Oh! I know better than that, Henry. What have you to ask of me, when all I have is yours?”

“There is one thing I want, you know what; and my only other request is that you will see your daughter.”

Cristalar drew back. “She is yours, Henry Holcombe,” he said solemnly, “as far as she is mine to give; but she is an alien to my faith, and to my home.”

“No, no, it must not, shall not be. Remember how she fed you, worked for you, brought up your little ones, and sent you the little she earned, even though you had cast her off.”

“It is cruel, Holcombe, to remind me of that,” said Cristalar reproachfully. “Perhaps as your wife I may see her—as the wife of my benefactor, not as my daughter.”

“I want to take her from your hands. And think how she has wearied for you all this time!”

“I know—and do you think I have not missed her? I have only half lived since she left me; and I love her beyond description even yet, but that is an unhallowed love.”

“Say, rather, an unnatural delusion; I mean your refusal to see her. You will, for my sake, for your son‐in‐law’s sake?”

“Leave me now, Henry, I must think.”

Need we tell the end? How his better nature triumphed; how prosperity had softened his heart, and gratitude had bent his pride; how at last his father’s love could stand no longer the knowledge of his child’s great sorrow; and how Henry’s prophecy that Maheleth should see her father on the eve of her marriage was anticipated by many weeks? Her sisters and Señor Cristalar accompanied her to the cathedral, and, after the ceremony, the banker put into the hands of the officiating priest a check for $10,000 for the Catholic poor of Frankfort.

Holcombe House was made ready soon after for the bride’s reception, and Señor Cristalar established a branch bank in London, of which his son‐in‐ law was partner and responsible head. In a very few years, the Holcombe income was the same it had been before the appalling drain the agents had spoken of, when the young possessor had drawn the £100,000 of ready money left him by his father, and added to it an equal sum raised on the estate.

The old Spaniard could never be induced to abandon the faith that was as much a part of his family pride as of the tradition of his race; but Thamar and Agar, Maheleth’s two sisters, were baptized two years after the marriage, under the names of Elizabeth and Magdalen, and, when they in their turn married into noble English houses, their father certainly showed no sign of disapproval of their change of religion, in the princely fortunes he allotted to each.

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Europe’s Angels

It was night, and the old year was passing away. The angels had sung their anniversary strains of gladness, and had announced anew the coming of the Prince of Peace, only a week ago, yet there was a solemn silence now in their serried ranks, as they pressed around a group of their representatives.

I can hardly tell you where this was, or whether it was “in the body or out of the body” that I fancied I saw the glorious vision; I only know that it seemed as if infinite space were around them, and an amphitheatre of angelic faces, like living stones, were making a barrier between them and space, as the rainbow does between clouds.

There were many of those whom I have called representatives, and each bore some strange emblem, which I understood to be the badge of the nation over which he was set. Around each stood a host similarly distinguished, the guardian angels of each individual soul composing the nation. There was an awful stillness on this the last night of the year, as the conclave of angels sat brooding over the events of the immediate past. A few, more prominent among their brethren, presently stood forward, while a figure of marvellous beauty, but calm austerity of aspect, presented a book to them, which it supported as a deacon against its head. The book was closely written on one side, while the opposite page was blank.

An angel, crowned with an iron crown, and robed in a wonderful garment of deep azure,(198) curiously wrought in gold with stars and signs of lore and art, such as only one land in Europe can boast of being able to interpret, taking a pen in his hand, spoke to the assembled multitude.

“Brethren,” he said, in a deep, musical voice whose tones indicated both gravity and conscious strength, “before I write my brief record of the year we have now added to our experience, let me speak to you, as fellow‐ watchers over our God’s earthly treasures. My trust has been a bitter and a heavy one, yet withal a glorious vindication of faith and truth. We have risen among nations like a comet that for a moment eclipses the steadier and more lasting glory of the older planets, but in our course there were obstacles which have now become almost the monument of martyrs. Unmindful of the lion‐hearted men to whom Wilfrid, and Boniface, and Lioba preached, and of whom the strongest bulwark of intellectual faith was built by their later and more national saints, our new rulers have sought to renew the persecutions of the XVIth century, and the absolutism of a State Church. But our God, the ‘dear God’(199) of our people, knew how to raise up defenders for himself in the fearless pastors of his flock; knew how to inspire them with a bravery that scorned imprisonment and laughed at death, that made them raise their voices against presumptuous and intrusive authority on the one hand, and barefaced heresy on the other. We have triumphed in persecution; we have re‐echoed the non possumus of our earthly father and Pontiff; we have shown to our God the will of martyrs after having displayed before our sovereign the deeds of patriots. He thought to weld a mighty nation into one empire; he has riven it in twain in his unblest attempt, and has called up against his puny military power the anger of that God who, on the shores of the Red Sea, did punish Pharaoh and his host. ‘Who is like to thee, among the strong, O Lord? Who is like to thee, glorious in holiness, terrible and worthy of praise, doing wonders?’ ”(200)

Those that wore robes like that of the mighty angel who had spoken took up his last triumphant words, and chanted them forth in two alternate choirs, and the voice that came from this host of choristers seemed like the voice of the sea thundering amid caves and rocks. It surged up and died away in long reverberating echoes, a hymn of strength and defiance, a prophecy of a magnificent and almost endless future.

Then the angel who had spoken wrote a few words in the book, and, turning, presented the pen to one who stood close beside him, tall, stately, and calm, in white raiment, with the historical fleur‐de‐lis broidered thickly over his robe. On his brows shone the same emblem, wrought in gold and pearls, while in his left hand he held a flame‐colored standard, the oriflamme of the Crusades.

“My brethren,” he began, “this year has been a silent one compared with its last two predecessors; but none the less a year of sacrifice, of heroic expiation, of patient humility of spirit. We have lived amid perils as deep as religious persecutions; amid the perils of a civilization that is unchristian, and of refinements worse than heathen. The worship of the false gods has come back, and we are surrounded with a corruption as terrible as that of imperial Rome or effeminate Byzantium. Our name is no longer supreme, our escutcheon no longer unstained, our sword is broken in the hands of others, our missions are unprotected, and our influence no longer paramount among barbarians and plunderers, and still our corruption flourishes as unblushingly and undauntedly as ever, and our rivals, nay, our very captors, come to learn it at our feet. This is now our shameful supremacy; but, in the midst of these Capuan revels, is there still a hope for the nation? Yes, my brethren, the same hope that our glorious iron‐ crowned compeer has told us was his hope—the church, the faith, the truth. If our rulers, like those of our whilom foes, forget the Christian heroes whom we call our forefathers, the men who at the field of Tolbiac vowed our nation to the God of armies, and in a thousand fields in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt redeemed that holy vow, we do not and cannot forget it. Sons and daughters of the Crusaders, heirs and heiresses of the Kings of Jerusalem and the Knights of Rhodes and Malta, many of our nation are now in the holier army, the holier knighthood of religion; their habit is their coat of mail, their swift prayers and their swifter sacrifices are their battle‐axes, their spears, their maces; in every land they are fighting the battle of their own, in every breach defending the honor of their fallen country. All eyes are still upon their acts; their land, like a magnet, compels the glance of Europe and the world. The saviours who are working hiddenly at the regeneration of ‘the eldest daughter of the church’ are of no party, own no secret master, work for no wages, and seek no reward; they are soldiers of the cross, children of God, who, in the hospitals, the prisons, the galleys, the schools, the Chinese stations, the Canadian missions, the cloistered monasteries, under the names of Sisters of Charity, Order of Preachers, Missions Etrangères, Christian Brothers, Benedictines of Solesmes, Jesuits, and Sulpiciens, work for God, in God, with God. ‘Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ ”(201)

The choir of white‐robed angels that clustered round the one who had ceased speaking took up the grave refrain, and chanted it as their brethren had done before, and the song swelled majestically as it seemed to reach the uttermost bounds of the living barrier of angel faces round the central groups. Ere yet it had subsided, the last of the heavenly speakers wrote his record in the book, and gave the pen into the hand of a third angel who stood in grave expectancy by his side.

This one was tall and stalwart‐looking, a warrior‐angel, one would involuntarily be sure to think, yet his long trailing robe of crimson was woven not with dragons or golden leopards, but with miniature cathedrals, abbeys, and priories. The heaviness of this golden embroidery seemed to drag the garment into yet more statuesque folds, as the mighty wearer drew himself slowly up and took the pen, letting go, as he did so, his hold upon a silver shield bearing a blood‐red cross. His fair waving locks were uncrowned, and he bent his head towards the two who had spoken before.

“My brethren,” he began, and his voice sounded clear and clarionlike, “you have each of you sought in the continuation of the traditions of the past a pledge of the regeneration and safety of the future. I, too, looked to the early past for the golden age I would fain see revived among us, but, unlike you, it is neither persecution nor bloodshed that I have to record. Our nation is not eclipsed in power or in influence; and although our rulers are hardly worthy of their chivalric forerunners, yet there are yet among them some who are heirs to their fathers’ greatness of soul, though not to the integrity of their faith. Still, our race has kept more unblemished than others that reverence for authority without which no faith is sure, no empire stable. Our life flows more calmly on in our island‐home than does the troubled stream of our brethren’s days beyond the sea. Still, amid benefits without number, amid the march of science and the progress of art, things that in exchange for the ancient gift of faith our second fatherland every day gives us in return, we have one fruitful source of dread and danger—the sordid love of gain which makes our people restless during life, and leaves them hopeless in death. To strive against this demon of the air—for we seem to breathe his spirit in the very atmosphere—is the constant endeavor of my being. To knit art to God as it was joined to him in the olden days, to put honor before wealth, and conscience before success, to raise principle triumphant over interest, is my daily, necessary, but most wearisome task. Many voices erstwhile charmed our nation—that of the warrior, the bard, the monk; the voice of glory, the voice of learning, the voice of holy love. Now one cry alone harshly calls our children together—the cry of gain. Our country has forgotten its ancient fanes of learning, its island monasteries, its townlike abbeys, its glorious cathedrals, colleges, libraries, and halls, it has forgotten its tournaments of science, its chants, its liturgies, even its earthly pageants, and has run after the abject golden calf of these latter days. Not the poor alone, but the noble and great have with less excuse come down into the new arena, and lowered themselves to the level of money‐seekers, till the chivalry of our race has become a forgotten dream, a talisman that has lost its charm, a thing as out of date as a crowded abbey with its holy pomps of daily service would be among the darkened, busy streets of a modern gold‐coining city. And yet in many a nook, in many an obscure street of a little town, in many a shady, peaceful country home, are rising the fair progeny of our statelier fanes of old, and beneath groined roofs and before carved altars rise prayers as beautiful and as divers as the trefoils and roses on capital and pillar. In prayer, whether petrified into fair churches standing for ever, or moulded into golden altar‐plate rich with chasing and with gems, or flying straight to God’s feet in ardent, winged words of love, we place our last hope, the hope of the only true conversion our land can ever know; for ‘there is a success in evil things to a man without discipline, and there is a finding that turneth to loss.’ ”(202)

Here a countless host of angels, as gravely radiant, yet with the same solemn shade of sadness in their aspect, as the last speaker, took up his parting words, and chanted them slowly. I thought they caught unconsciously the ring of the holy words chanted so often through the ages of faith, in that land of cathedrals and cloisters. Indeed, the angel choir and their stately leader seemed none other than monastic champions turned into bright heavenly spirits, so akin is everything in that isle to the claustral ideal from which sprang its life—civil, collegiate, ecclesiastical, feudal, and social.

As the chanted dirge grew less and less distinct, another angel advanced to take the pen his predecessor had just laid in the folds of the book, after having written his year’s record within. This one had stood so far in the background as to have escaped my awed notice until now. He wore a long, loosely‐falling robe of black, and bowed his head as if in grief; his hands were clasped, and a golden and a silver key were held between his fingers; in his step there was no elasticity, and in his eye no gladness. All those who followed him seemed equally sorrowful, but soon I heard why it was, and no longer marvelled at it.

“Brethren,” he said, in mournful tones, “brethren of all climes, who once envied me my proud position of warden over the land which holds the father of all Christians, envy me no longer the sad honors I must yet bear. When I look at my nation, I can see nothing through my tears. Once I saw treasures of art and beauty; I can take pride in them no longer. I saw fair landscapes, the envy of the world, the garden of Europe, the beautiful God’s‐acre of a past of heroic deeds, buried in honorable oblivion as the seedlings of a more glorious crop of Christian heroism—I can take pleasure in these no more. I saw a people mild, inoffensive, believing, loving; now I see them corrupted, deluded, led away, and turned into furies. I saw churches gorgeous with the many gifts of fervent piety and grateful wealth; I see ruins now, sacrilegiously used for godless purposes, in derision and contempt of their lofty dedication. I saw one city, the jewel of the universe, the city of sanctuary and refuge, where faith reigned, and grief was comforted, and weakness was made strength; a ‘city of the soul,’ where God held court mid thousands of earthly angels, and where he found again the mingled worship of the mysterious Hebrew temple and of the holy, silent house of Nazareth. But now, brethren, rude men have scattered our treasures, profaned our churches, seized our cloisters, driven away learning and charity to put lewdness and brutality in their place, and have renewed, with far more blasphemous intention, the horrors of the barbaric invasions. I see the father of the faithful with the crown of martyrdom surmounting his tiara, waiting, like the Ecce Homo eighteen hundred years ago, the final verdict of an infuriate mob, while other nations, Pilate‐like, wash their hands of the sacred, helpless charge it were their first duty to defend. My brethren, weep with me, weep for me, and yet rejoice; ‘for the Lord will not cast off for ever.’(203) ‘And in that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and out of darkness and obscurity the eyes of the blind shall see.’ ”(204)

Many were the eager voices that took up the words of hope and sang them with a fervor which only guardian spirits can know. As the strain swelled and spread, then fell into a gentle murmur, as if the singers were loth to leave off the prayer of faith and hope, the angel had written his short record for the passing year, and looked around to welcome his next successor. There was a pause, and among the angelic conclave a swaying to and fro denoted that some suppressed feeling was at work. Those who had spoken stood apart in a conspicuous group, conferring among themselves; but I looked with awe and interest at those who had hitherto been silent.

The old year’s span was very short now. On earth the snow was falling, preparing a fitting shroud for the departing guest, and a fitting cradle for the coming stranger; there were revellers in many houses, heedless sleepers in more, and watchers in only a few; there were monastic choirs filing into silent churches for the coming office of matins; and there were also miserable outcasts, some voluntary slaves of the world, others unwilling watchers, poverty‐stricken, hunger‐smitten, desperately tempted creatures who might murmur at and even curse their fate, yet would not begin the year by breaking God’s commandments; there were many sinners doing penance, many happy death‐beds, many freed souls rushing on the wings of long‐repressed desire towards the goal that weary years of purgatory had hardly hidden from their longing gaze; and well might the angelic host thrill with holy delight as all these sights and sounds struck upon their consciousness. The good surely outweighed the bad!

Just then an angel stepped from among the hitherto silent throng—an angel with a face full of suffering, sweetness, and patience, yet withal a look of something deeper and stronger than mere patience; and his black robe was sown with silver stars, while a star glittered also on his forehead. In quick accents, full of strength, he addressed his companions, holding the pen in his hand.

“Brethren!” he said, “the march of events, as the world calls it, has passed over and by our nation, but in God’s eyes we are not so soon forgotten. The civilizer of Eastern Europe, the bulwark of Christianity against the Moslem faith, we have nevertheless suffered by the hands of Christian princess and been annihilated in the name of civilization. A martyr‐nation, a victim to false diplomacy, we stand in Europe with the chains still about our feet, while empires change hands and dynasties come and go; exiled and dispersed like the Hebrews of old, we are known, like them, by our indomitable faith and ever hopeful patriotism. Within this year, a gigantic empire has manacled us more cruelly, gagged us more closely, than before, but we are steadfast yet, for ‘blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ ”(205)

The words were caught up and re‐echoed by the angel throng around their star‐crowned leader, while he wrote the brief record of another year’s bitter wrongs still so heroically and silently borne. He passed the pen to another clothed in purple, who looked at him with angelic sympathy before he spoke. His voice was still and low, but clear as a silver bell.

“My brethren,” he said, “my task is hard and dreary; a mist of prejudice hangs over those vast steppes which form my dominions; a false civilization educates our nobles to a pitch of unnatural and seeming polish in which all truth is killed, and all natural kindness crushed; like the apples of the Dead Sea, our country is fair to the eye of the world, but ashes to the taste of God. We have all to hope, it is true, but much to fear; and, while the desolate semblance of the true faith spreads its outward and deceptive gorgeousness before the barren and fettered nation, the souls of our brethren perish of thirst, as it were, within sight of the Fountain of Life. Brethren, pray for my unhappy charge, and thou, O God! enlighten my people! ‘How incomprehensible are thy judgments, and how unsearchable thy ways!’ ”(206)

The purple‐robed choir around him took up the angel’s last words, and slowly chanted them, as if in awe and expectation, while their leader wrote a few brief words in the book.

Another came forward, gathering his golden robe together, the hem of which was broidered with figures of ships and charts, somewhat faded now, but this was redeemed by the effulgent brightness of the scroll he held on his outstretched hand a scroll bearing the divine motto, Ad majorem Dei gloriam. Looking swiftly around, he began thus:

“My brethren, my provinces are narrowed and my nation lessened since her ships explored the ocean, her fleet sent forth armadas, and her leaders conquered new continents, but the spirit of the missionary and the martyr has not followed that of the less successful and less lasting investigator. Chivalry still lives in the land of the Cid, and fires the hearts in whose veins flows the blood of the Crusaders of Granada. Saints took up the warrior’s shield, and won their spurs in distant, dangerous services, till the names of Xavier, Loyola, Gaudia, and Teresa became the household words of a whole universe. Unbelief has poisoned our present position, and for our sins we have suffered dire misfortune and perennial disturbance. Still, our people are unchanged; faithfully the sons of the Visigoth martyrs keep the trust of their fathers, and, secure amid their mountain fastnesses, within the last year have raised the standard of the cross wreathed with the golden lilies of a national and well‐beloved dynasty. We have had triumphs of the soul and heroic deeds of patriotic daring mingled together in the annals of our peasant soldiers; the spirit of another Vendée has spoken to our nation; and God has rejoiced to find at last a human bulwark against human unbelief. ‘Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy; deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man.’ ”(207)

And while the angel wrote his record in the book, his followers echoed his last words in tones of mingled triumph and supplication, chanting them, as all the others had done before them, in two alternate choirs. And now there was again a pause, while the first groups of angels who had spoken drew closer to the book, and gazed at the last records written in it. One more representative came forward, an angel robed in softest green, and bearing a harp in his hand. Turning to the west, he spoke in a voice full of deep emotion: “My brethren, I look towards the sea, and gaze at the land of the setting sun. I see my people spreading over the earth, so that I have more children in far‐away lands than on my own soil. I see them, the pioneer nation of whom Brendan was the first leader, planting the cross and the shamrock in unfailing union, wherever they go. Long ages of suffering have not reft them of the gift of faith, the treasure of art, or the strength of enterprise; their arm hath upreared every throne and stayed every altar; their women make a Nazareth of every home and a tabernacle of every hovel; their race links two worlds, that of the past and that of the future, that of culture and civilization, to that of enterprise and freedom. I look with pride on the ocean darkened by the barks of my people, and forget, as I look, to sigh over the ruined fanes and dismantled castles of old. Children of impulse, they carry their home in their hearts, and make another Erin round every cross they plant. Sea kings, but Christians, they take from the Norsemen their daring, and from their own isle its poetry, and, blending the two, bear the highest gifts of the Old World to be the heirlooms of the New. To my nation may it well and fittingly be said, ‘They went out from thee on foot, and were led by the enemies: but the Lord will bring them to thee exalted with honor as children of the kingdom.’ ”(208)

These prophetic words were caught up by the numerous followers of the green‐robed angel, and rang now in grand and now in softened cadence through the boundless field of space that encircled the heavenly throng. As the tones died away, the angel wrote his record in the book, and the bells of earth sounded faintly in the still air.

The old year was passing away, and the angels in silence gathered round the book. As the last stroke of midnight was heard, the bearer of it turned the leaf, presenting a surface fair and smooth as the petal of a lily, and the whole company of blessed spirits intoned the Veni Creator.

I heard as it were in a dream, and saw forms of light and beauty disperse like the fleecy clouds of morning, till the singing died away in faraway corners of our old, prosaic, yet blessed earth. The songs of heaven were carried into the uttermost recesses where earthly misery was keenest and earthly revelry loudest on that fateful night; and, as its echoes passed over them, the misery grew strangely bearable, the revelry was unaccountably hushed. Everywhere the new‐born year came in with a blessing and a promise, reverently gathering its predecessor’s lessons even while mourning its inevitable shortcomings; and so once more, according to the patience of God, his ministers went forth to clear for every man a new field where, past errors being forgotten, he might renew his struggle in the battle of life, and retrieve himself in the eyes of infinite purity and infinite justice.

Such was the beautiful death of the old year 1872.

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The Nativity Of Christe

Behould the Father is His daughter’s Sonne, The bird that built the nest is hatched therein, The Old of Yeares an hower hath not outrunne, Eternall life to live doth now beginnn, The Word is dumm, the Mirth of heaven doth weepe, Mighte feeble is, and Force doth fayntely creepe.

O dyinge soules! behould your living Spring! O dazeled eyes! behould your Sunne of grace! Dull eares, attend what word this Word doth bringe! Upp, heavy hartes, with joye your joy embrace! From death, from darke, from deaphnesse, from despayres, This Life, this Light, this Worde, this Joy repaires.

Gift better than Himself God doth not knowe, Gift better than his God no man can see; This gift doth here the giver given bestowe, Gift to this gift lett ech receiver bee: God is my gift, Himself He freely gave me, God’s gift am I, and none but God shall have me.

Man altred was by synne from man to best; Beste’s food is haye, haye is all mortal fleshe; Now God is fleshe, and lyes in maunger prest, As haye the brutest synner to refreshe: O happy fielde wherein this foder grewe, Whose taste doth us from beastes to men renewe!

SOUTHWELL.

The Progressionists.

From The German Of Conrad Von Bolanden.

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