Chapter III

Chapter III

“SOWING THE WIND.”

THE cottage where the Geralds lived was almost the entire inheritance that had fallen to Miss Pembroke from those large estates which, it seemed, should have been hers; but her wishes were submitted to her circumstances with a calmness that looked very like contentment. Mother Chevreuse called it Christian resignation, and she may have been at least partly right. But it was contrary to Miss Pembroke’s disposition to fret over irreparable misfortunes, or even to exert herself very much to overcome difficulties. She liked the easy path, and always chose it when conscience did not forbid. She made the best of her circumstances, therefore, and lived a quiet and pleasant, if not a very delightful, life. Mrs. Gerald was friendly; their little household was sufficiently well arranged and perfectly homelike; they had agreeable visitors, and plenty of outside gaiety. On the whole, there seemed to be no reason why anything but marriage should separate the owner from her tenants.

Of marriage there was no present prospect. Several gentlemen had made those preliminary advances which are supposed to have this end in view, but had been discouraged by the cool friendliness with which they were received. The wide-open eyes, surprised and inquiring, had nipped their little sentimental speeches in the bud, and quite abashed their killing glances. Miss Pembroke had no taste for this small skirmishing, in which so many men and women fritter away first what little refinement of feeling nature may have gifted them with, and afterward their belief in the refinement of others; and not one true and brave wooer had come yet.

People had various explanations to give for this insensibility, some fancying that the young woman was ambitious, and desirous to find one who would be able to give her such a position as that once occupied by Mrs. Carpenter; others that she had a vocation for a religious life; but she gave no account of her private motives and feelings, and perhaps could not have explained them to herself. She certainly could not have told precisely what she did want, though her mind was quite clear as to what she did not want. Mr. Lawrence Gerald’s real or imaginary love for her did not, after the first few months, cause her the slightest embarrassment, as it did not inspire her with the least respect. The only strong and faithful attachment of which he was capable was one for himself, and his superficial affections were so numerous as to be worthy of very little compassion, however they might be slighted.

Sweet-brier Cottage, as it was called, might, then, be called rather a happy little nest.

Nothing could be prettier than the apartment occupied by the owner of the house, though, since she had her own peculiar notions regarding the relative importance of things, many might have found the mingling of simplicity and costliness in her furnishing rather odd. An upholsterer would have pronounced the different articles in the rooms to be “out of keeping” with each other, just as he would have criticised a picture where the artist had purposely slighted the inferior parts. The deal floors were bare, save for two or three strips of carpeting in summer, and sealskin mats in winter; the prim curtains that hung in straight flutings, without a superfluous fold, over the windows, around the bed, and before the book-case, just clearing the floor, were of plain, thin muslin, plainly hemmed, and had no more luxurious fastenings than brass knobs and blue worsted cords to loop them back; but a connoisseur would have prized the few engravings on the walls, the candlesticks of pure silver in the shrine before the prie-dieu, and the statuette of our Lady that stood there, a work of art. In cleanliness, too, Miss Pembroke was lavish, and one poor woman was nearly supported by what she received for keeping the draperies snowy white and crisp, and wiping away every speck of dust from the immaculate bower. No broom nor brush was allowed to enter there.

“It is such a pleasure to come here,” Mother Chevreuse said one day when she came to visit Honora; “everything is so pure and fresh.”

“It is such a pleasure to have you come!” was the response; and the young woman seated her visitor in the one blue chintz arm-chair the chamber contained, kissed her softly on the cheek, removed her bonnet and shawl, placed a palm-leaf fan in her hand, then, seated lowly beside her, looked so pretty and so pleased that it was charming to see her. These two women were very fond of each other, and in their private intercourse quite like mother and daughter. Theirs was one of those sweet affections to which the mere being together is delightful, though there may be nothing of importance said; as two flames united burn more brightly, though no fuel be added. It might have been said that it was the blending of two harmonious spheres; and probably the idea could not be better expressed. The sense of satisfying companionship, of entire sympathy and confidence, the gentle warmth produced in the heart by that presence—these are enough without words, be they never so wise and witty. Yet one must feel that wit and wisdom of some kind are there. There is all the difference in the world between a full and an empty silence, between a trifling that covers depth, and a trifling that betrays shallowness.

Our two friends talked together, then, quite contentedly about very small matters, touching now and then on matters not so insignificant. And it chanced that their talk drifted in such a direction that, after a grave momentary pause, Miss Honora lifted her eyes to her friend’s face, and, following out their subject, said seriously: “Mother, I am troubled about men.”

But for the gravity that had fallen on both, Mother Chevreuse would have smiled at this naïve speech; as it was, she asked quietly: “In what way, my dear?”

“They seem to me petty, the greater part of them, and lacking in a fine sense of honor; lacking courage, too, which is shocking in a man.”

“Oh! one swallow does not make a summer,” said Mother Chevreuse, thinking that she understood the meaning of this discouragement. “You must not believe that all men fail because some unworthy ones do.”

“It is not that at all,” was the quick reply. “You think I mean Lawrence. I do not. He makes no difference with me. I mean the men from whom one would expect something better; the very men who seem to lament that women are not truer and nobler, and who utter such fine sentiments that you would suppose none but a most exalted and angelic being could please them or win their approval. I have heard such men talk, when I have thought with delight that I would try in every way to improve, so as to win their admiration, and be worthy of their friendship; and all at once, I have found that they could be pleased and captivated by what is lowest and meanest. It is disappointing,” she said, with a sigh. “It is natural that women should wish to respect men; and I would be willing to have them look down on me, if they would be such as I could look up to.”

“Has any one been displeasing you?” Mother Chevreuse asked, looking keenly into the fair and sorrowful face before her. She suspected that this generalizing sprang from some special cause. But the glance that met hers showed there was at least no conscious concealment.

“These thoughts have been coming to me at intervals for a good while,” Miss Pembroke answered calmly. “But, of course, particular incidents awaken them newly. I was displeased this morning. I met a lady and gentleman taking a walk into the country, and I did not like to see them together.”

“But why should you care, my dear?” asked Mother Chevreuse, with a look of alarm. She understood perfectly well that the two were Mr. Schöninger and Miss Carthusen.

The young woman answered with an expression of surprise that entirely reassured her friend: “Why should I not care for this case as well as another? He is a new-comer, and all my first impressions of him were favorable. I had thought he might prove a fine character; and so it is one more disappointment. But I am making too much of the matter,” she said, with a smile and gesture that seemed to toss the subject aside. “I really cannot tell why I should have thought so much about it.”

She bent and gaily kissed her friend’s hands; but Mother Chevreuse drew her close in an embrace that seemed by its passion to be striving to shield her from harm. She understood quite well what Honora did not yet know: that the nature which the Creator defined from the beginning when he said: “It is not good for man to be alone,” had begun to feel itself lonely.

“I would try not to think of these things, my dear,” she said earnestly. “Trust me, and put such thoughts away. There are good men in the world, and one day you will be convinced of that; but it is never worth while to look about in search of some one to honor. Think of God, and pray to him with more fervor than ever. Add a new prayer to your devotions, with the intention of keeping this useless subject out of your mind. Remember heaven, work for the poor, and the sinful, and the sick, and, above all, do not fancy that it is going to make you happy though you should be acquainted with the finest men, or win ever so much their esteem. It isn’t worth striving for, even if striving would win it. Nothing on earth is worth working for but bread and heaven.”

Miss Pembroke looked a little disappointed. She had expected sympathy and reassurance, and had received instead a warning. “I hope, mother, you do not think me bold in speaking on such a subject,” she said, dropping her eyes; and then Mother Chevreuse knew that she had better have spoken lightly.

“Certainly not!” she answered, laughing. “Do you think I fear you are going to lecture on woman’s rights?”

And so the little cloud passed over; and, when her visitor went away, Honora had quite dismissed the subject from her mind. There were her simple household duties to perform; then Lawrence came home to take an early luncheon and dress to go to Annette Ferrier’s, where there was to be a musical rehearsal; and, as soon as lunch was over, who should come in but F. Chevreuse!

Lawrence had a mind to escape unseen; but the priest greeted him so cordially, pointing to a chair close beside his own, that it would have been rude to go. And having overcome the first shyness that a careless Catholic naturally feels in the presence of a clergyman, he found it agreeable to remain; for nobody could be pleasanter company than F. Chevreuse.

“I beg unblushingly,” he owned with perfect frankness, when they inquired how his collecting prospered. “To-day, I asked Dan McCabe for a hundred dollars, and got it. He looked astonished, and so does Miss Honora; but he showed no reluctance. At first blush, it may seem strange that I should take money that comes from gambling and rumselling. My idea is this: Dan is almost an outlaw; no decent person likes to speak to him, and he has got to look on society and religion as utterly antagonistic to him. He is on the other side of the fence, and the only feeling he has for decency is hatred and defiance. He takes pride in mocking, and pretending that he doesn’t care what people think of him. But it is a pretence, and his very defiance shows that he does care. It is my opinion that to-day Dan would give every dollar he has in the world, and go to work as a poor man, if he could be treated as a respectable one. He is proud of my having spoken to him, and taken his money, though I dare say he will pretend to sneer and laugh about it. You may depend he will tell of it on every opportunity. Better than that, he will feel that he has a right to come to the church. Before this, he had not, or at least people would have said he had not, and would have stared at him if he had come. Now, if he should come in next Sunday, and march up to a front seat, nobody could complain. If they should, he would have the best of the argument, and he knows that. Then, once in the church, we have a chance to influence him, and he a chance to win respectability. He isn’t one to be driven, nor, indeed, to be clumsily coaxed. The way is to assume that he wishes to do right, then act as if he had done right. He never will let slip a bait like that. He will hold on to that if he should have to let everything else go, as he must, of course. I knew, when I saw him look ashamed to meet me, that he wasn’t lost. While there’s shame, there’s hope. So much for Dan McCabe. Am I not right, Larry?”

Lawrence stooped to pick up F. Chevreuse’s hat, which had fallen, and by so doing escaped the necessity of answering. One glance of the priest’s quick eyes read his embarrassment, and saw the deepening color in Honora’s face.

“I am sure you are quite right, father,” Mrs. Gerald said hastily, with a tremor in her voice. “Perhaps Dan would never have been so bad if too much severity had not been used toward his early faults. And so your collecting goes on successfully. I am so glad.”

The priest, who perceived that he had, without meaning it, stirred deep waters, resumed the former subject briskly:

“Yes, thank God! my affairs are looking up. But there was a time when they were dark enough. I have been anxious about Mr. Sawyer’s mortgage. He is not so friendly to us as he was, or else he needs the money; for he would grant no extension. Well, I raked and scraped every dollar I could get, and I knew that, before next week, I couldn’t hope to collect above one or two hundreds in addition; and still it did not amount to more than half of the two thousand due. So I wrote off to a friend in New York who I thought might help me, and set my mother praying to all the saints for my success. For me, I don’t know what came over me. Perhaps I was tired, or nervous, or dyspeptic. At all events, when the time came for me to receive an answer to my letter, all my courage failed. I was ashamed of myself, but that didn’t help me. While Andy was gone to the post-office, I could do nothing but walk to and fro, and shake at every sound, and watch the clock to see when he would be back. I always give the old fellow half an hour. I wasn’t strong when he went. In ten minutes I was weak, in fifteen minutes I was silly, in twenty minutes I was a fool. ‘I can’t wait here in the house for him,’ I said; ‘I’ll take to the sanctuary, and, whatever comes to me there, it can’t kill me.’ So I left word for Andy to bring my letters to the church, and lay them down on the altar steps, and go away again without speaking a word; and out I went, and knelt down by the altar, like an urchin who catches hold of his mother’s gown when somebody says bo! to him. By-and-by, I heard Andy coming. I knew the squeak of his boots, and the double way he has of putting his feet down—first the heel, then the toe, making a sound as though he were a quadruped. Never had he walked so slowly, yet never had I so dreaded his coming. I counted the stairs as he came up, and found out that there were fifteen. For some reason, I liked the number; perhaps because it is the number of decades in the rosary. I promised in that instant that, if he brought me good news, I would climb those stairs on my knees, saying a decade on every stair in thanksgiving. Then I put my hand over my face, and waited. He lumbered in, panting for breath, laid something down before me, and went out again. I counted the fifteen steps till he was at the bottom of them, then snatched up my letter, and broke the seal; and there was my thousand dollars! When I saw the draft, I involuntarily jumped up, and flung my barrette as high as I could fling it, and it came down to me with a mash that it will never get over. But, my boy,” he said, turning quickly, and laying his hand on Lawrence Gerald’s knee, “that your hat may never be mashed in a worse cause!”

Lawrence had been listening intently, and watching the speaker’s animated face; and, at this sudden address, he dropped his eyes, and blushed. Alas for him! his hat had more than once been mashed in a cause little to his credit.

“And now,” continued F. Chevreuse, with triumph, “I have at home in my strong desk two thousand dollars, lacking only fifty, and the fifty is in my pocket. After this, all is plain sailing. There will be no difficulty in meeting the other payments.”

The ladies congratulated him heartily. In this place, the interests of the priest were felt to be the interests of the people. Making himself intimately acquainted with their circumstances, he asked no more than they could reasonably give; and they, seeing his hard and disinterested labors, grieved that they could give so little.

Presently, and perhaps not without an object, F. Chevreuse spoke incidentally of business, and expressed his admiration for pursuits which one of the three, at least, despised.

“There is not only dignity but poetry in almost any kind of business,” he said; “and the dignity does not consist simply in earning an honest living, instead of being a shiftless idler. There is something fine in sending ships to foreign lands, and bringing their produce home; in setting machinery to change one article into another; and in gathering grainfields into garners. I can easily understand a man choosing to do business when there is no necessity for it. I have just come from a sugarstore down-town, where I was astonished to learn that sugar is something besides what you sweeten your tea with. It was there in samples ranged along the counter, from the raw imported article, that was of a soft amber-color, to lumps as white and glittering as hoar-frost. Then there were syrups, gold-colored, crimson, and garnet, and so clear that you might think them jewels. I remembered Keats’

‘Lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon.’

They asked me if I would like to taste these. Would I taste of dissolved rubies and carbuncles? Why not I as well as Cleopatra? Of course I would taste of them. And how do you suppose they presented this repast to me? On a plate or a saucer, a stick or a spoon? By no means. The Ganymede took on his left thumb a delicate white porcelain palette, such as Honora might spread colors on to paint roses, heliotropes, and pinks with, and, lifting the jars one by one with his right hand, let fall on it a single rich drop, till there was a rainbow of deep colors on the white. When I saw that, the sugar business took rank at once beside the fine arts. And it is so with other affairs. If I were in the world, I would prefer, both for the pleasure and the honor of it, to be a mechanic or a merchant, to being in any profession.”

When the priest had gone, Lawrence Gerald went soberly up to his chamber, thinking, as he went, that possibly an ordinary, active life might, after all, be the happiest. The influence of that healthy and cheerful nature lifted for a time, if it did not dispel, his illusions, as a sudden breath of west wind raises momentarily the heavy fogs, which settle again as soon as the breath dies. For one brief view, this diseased soul saw realities thrusting their strong angles through the vague and feverish dreams that had usurped his life. On the one hand, they showed like jagged rocks that had been deceitfully overveiled by sunlighted spray; on the other, like a calm and secure harbor shining through what had looked to be a dark and weary way.

He opened a handkerchief-box, and absently turned over its contents, rejecting with instinctive disdain the coarser linen, curling his lip unconsciously at sight of a large hemstitching, and selecting one that dropped out of fold like a fine, snowy mist. A faint odor of attar of roses floated out of the box, so faint as to be perceptible only to a delicate sense. The same rich fragrance embalmed the glove-box he opened next, and the young man showed the same fastidious taste in selecting.

It appeared trivial in a man, this feminine-daintiness; yet some excuse might be found for it when one contemplated the exquisite beauty of the person showing it. It seemed fitting that only delicate linen and fine cloth should clothe a form so perfect, and that nothing harsh should touch those fair hands, soft and rosy-nailed as a woman’s. Yet how much of the beauty and delicacy had come from careful and selfish fostering, who can tell? Physical beauty is but a frail plant, and needs constant watching; it loses its lustre and freshness in proportion as that care is given to the immortal flower it bears. Both cannot flourish.

“I wouldn’t mind doing business after it was well established,” he muttered, carefully arranging one lock of hair to fall carelessly over his temple, in contrast with its pure whiteness. “It is the dingy beginning I hate. I hate anything dingy. People mistake when they fancy me extravagant, and that I like show and splendor. I do not like them. But I do like and must have cleanliness, and good taste, and freshness, and light, and space.”

What he said was in some measure true; and “pity ‘tis, ‘tis true” that simple good taste can, in the city at least, be gratified only at an extravagant price, and that poverty necessarily entails dinginess.

He glanced about the room, and frowned with disgust. The ceiling was low, the paper on the walls a cheap and therefore an ugly pattern, the chairs and carpet well kept, but a little faded. Plain cotton blinds, those most hideous and bleak of draperies, veiled the two windows, and an antiquated old mahogany secretary, the shape of which could have been tolerable only when the prestige of new fashion surrounded it, held a few books in faded bindings.

The young man shrugged his shoulders, and went toward the door. As he opened it, the draught blew open another door in the entry, and disclosed the shaded front chamber, with its cool blue and snowy white, its one streak of sunshine through a chink in the shutter, and its wax candle burning before the marble Madonna.

“That is what I like,” he thought, and passed hastily by. Annette would be waiting for him.

The sensible thoughts inspired by F. Chevreuse lasted only till the quiet, shady street was passed. With the first step into South Avenue, and the first glance down its superb length, other feelings came, and cottages and narrow ways dwindled and were again contemptible. The high walls, and cupola, and spreading wings of his lady’s home became visible, and he could see the tall pillars of Miss Ferrier’s new conservatory, which was almost as large as the whole of the house he lived in. The fascination of wealth caught him once more, and the thought of labor became intolerable.

Miss Ferrier was indeed on the lookout, and, brightening with joyful welcome, came out to the porch to meet her visitor as he entered the gate. He had so many times forgotten her invitations that she had not felt sure of him, and the pleasant surprise of his coming made her look almost pretty. Her blue-gray eyes shone, her lips trembled with a smile, and a light seemed to strike up through her excessively frizzled flaxen hair. If it had only been Honora! But, as it was, he met her kindly, feeling a momentary pity for her. “Poor girl! she is so fond of me!” he thought complacently, feeling it to be his due, even while he pitied her. “But I wish she wouldn’t put so much on. She looks like a comet.”

For Miss Ferrier’s pink organdie flounces streamed out behind her in a manner that might indeed have suggested that celestial phenomenon. She had, however, robbed Peter to pay Paul; for, whereas one end of her robe exceeded, the other as notably lacked.

“Mamma has not yet come back from her drive,” she remarked, leading the way into the drawing-room. “It is astonishing what keeps her so long.”

“Oh! it’s one of her distribution days, isn’t it?” Lawrence asked, with a little glimmer of amusement that brought the blood into his lady’s face.

Two mornings of every week, Mrs. Ferrier piled her carriage full of parcels containing food and clothing, and drove off into some of the poorest streets of the town, where her pensioners gathered about her, and told their troubles, and received her sympathy and help. The good soul, being very stout, did not once leave her carriage, but sat there enthroned upon the cushions like some bountiful but rather apoplectic goddess, showering about her cotton and flannels, and tea and sugar, and tears and condolences, and perhaps a few complaints with them. It is more than probable that, under cover of this princely charity, Mrs. Ferrier had a little congenial gossip now and then. Among these poor women were many no poorer than she had once been, and they were much nearer to her heart and sympathies than those whom Annette brought to her gorgeous drawing-rooms. Mrs. Ferrier was far from wishing to be poor again, but for all that she had found wealth a sad restriction on her tastes and her liberty. To her mind, the restraints of society were worse than a strait-jacket, and it required all Annette’s authority to keep her from defying them openly. But here she was at home, and could speak her own language, and at the same time be looked on as a superior being. Jack and John could leave the carriage, and step into the little ale-house at the corner; and, if one of them should bring her out a foaming glass, the simple creature would not resent it. There was always an idle urchin about who was only too proud to stand at the horses’ heads while Mrs. Ferrier had a chat with some crony, who leaned toward her over the carriage-steps.

Miss Annette was sometimes troubled by a suspicion that her mother did not always maintain with her protégées as dignified a distance as was desirable; but she was far from guessing the extent of the good lady’s condescension. Her hair would have stood on end had she seen that glass of ale handed into the carriage, and the beaming smile that rewarded John, the footman, for bringing it. Her misgivings were strong enough, however, to make her blush with mortification when Lawrence spoke of the distribution days. The pleasure with which she had anticipated a short tête-à-tête with her intended husband died away, and she seated herself in a window, and anxiously watched for her mother’s coming.

She was not kept long in suspense. First there appeared through the thickly flowering horse-chestnut trees a pair of bright bays so trained and held in that their perpendicular motion equalled their forward progress; then a britzska that glittered like the chariot of the sun. In this vehicle sat Mrs. Ferrier in solitary state. One might have detected some apprehension in the first glance she cast toward the drawing-room windows; but, at sight of the young man sitting there beside her daughter, she tossed her head, and resumed her self-confidence. She had a word to say to him.

Jack brought his horses round in so neat a curve that the wheels missed the curbstone by only a hair’s breadth; and John descended from the perch—whence during three hours he had enjoyed the view of a black-leather horizon over-nodded by the tip of Mrs. Ferrier’s plume of feathers—and let down the step.

We are obliged to confess that Mrs. Ferrier descended from her carriage as a sailor descends the ratlines, only with less agility. But, what would you? She was already of a mature age when greatness was thrust upon her, and had not been able to change with her circumstances. Moreover, she was heavy and timid, and subject to vertigo.

“I’m much obliged to you, John,” she said, finding herself safely landed. “Now, if you will bring that parcel in. I’d just as lief carry it myself, only....”

A glance toward the drawing-room window finished the sentence. Of course, Miss Annette would be shocked to see her mother waiting on herself; and, in all matters relating to social propriety, this poor mother stood greatly in awe of her daughter, and, indeed, led quite a wretched life with her.

As the lady walked through the gate and up the steps, with a half-distressed, half-defiant consciousness of being criticised, one might find a slight excuse for the smile that showed for an instant on the lips of her intended son-in-law; for it must be owned that in decoration Mrs. Ferrier was of a style almost as Corinthian as her house-front. A rustling green satin gown showed in tropical contrast with a yellow crape shawl and a bird-of-paradise feather; she had curls and crimps, she had flounces and frills, she had chains and trinkets, she had rings on her fingers, and we should not be surprised if she had bells on her toes.

“O mamma!” cried Annette, running out into the hall, “what made you go out dressed like a paroquet?”

“Why, green and yellow go together,” mamma replied stoutly. “I’ve heard you say that they make the prettiest flag in the world.”

The young woman made a little gesture of despair à la Française. “Of course, colors can’t help going together when they’re put together,” she said. “The question is whether they are in good taste. And cannot you see, mamma, that what is very fine for a banner isn’t proper for a lady’s dress? But no matter, since it cannot be helped. And now, I have something to tell you. I read in a book this morning that fleshy people could make themselves thinner by giving up vegetables and sweets, and living on rare beef and fruits, and using all the vinegar they could on things. That’s worth your trying.”

“But I don’t like raw beef and vinegar,” cried the mother in dismay.

“It is not a question of liking,” replied the young woman loftily. “It is a question of health, and comfort, and good looks. It certainly cannot be to you a matter of indifference that the whole neighborhood laugh behind their blinds to see you back down out of the carriage.”

“Let ‘em laugh,” said the mother sulkily. “They’d be willing to back out of carriages all their lives if they could have such as mine.”

Annette drew herself up with great dignity: “Mamma, I do not consider anything trivial when it concerns the credit of the family. To keep that up, I would starve, I would work, I would perform any hardship.”

To do the girl justice, she spoke but the truth.

“You might take claret with lemon in it, instead of vinegar,” she added after a moment. “And, by the way, I have ordered dinner at half-past four, so as to be through in time for an early rehearsal. Mr. Schöninger is engaged for the evening, and they are all to be here by half-past five. Do be careful, ma. Mrs. Gerald is coming up.”

“I don’t care for ‘em!” Mrs. Ferrier burst forth. “I’m tired of having to mince and pucker for the sake of those Geralds. What are they to me? All they want of us is our money.”

Annette hushed her mother, and tried to soothe her, leading the way into a side room; but, having begun, the honest creature must free her mind. “You’ve had your say, and now I want to have mine,” she persisted, but consented to lower her voice to a more confidential pitch. “I’m going to have a talk with Lawrence to-day when dinner is over. I sha’n’t put it off. If company comes before I get through, you must entertain them. My mind is made up.”

“Oh! gracious, mamma!” cried Annette, turning pale.

“There are some things that you know best, and some that I know best,” the elder woman went on, with a steady firmness that became her. “I give up to you a good deal, and you must give up to me when the time comes. I shall talk to that young man to-day; and, if you know what is best for you, then say no more about it. You are not fit to take care of yourself where he is concerned, and I’m going to do it for you. No matter what I want to say to him. It is my place to look out for that. All you have to do is to be quiet, and not interfere.”

Annette was silent; and, if you had looked in her face then, you would have seen that it by no means indicated a weak character. She was looking at facts sharply and bravely, considering which of two pains she had better choose, and swiftly coming to a decision. Strong as was her will in that province where she ruled, it was but a reed compared with the determination her mother showed when her mind was made up. The daughter would sometimes yield rather than contend, and she was always ready with reasons and arguments to prove herself right. But the mother had none of that shrinking, on the contrary, took pleasure in having a little skirmish now and then to relieve the tedium of her peaceful existence; and, not being gifted in reasoning, was wont to assert her will in a rather hard and uncompromising manner. Moreover, having once said that she would or would not act in any certain manner, she never allowed herself to be moved from that resolve. This was so well known to her family and intimates that they took care not to provoke her to a premature decision on questions that affected their interests.

“Well, mamma,” Annette said, looking very pale as she yielded, “you must do as you please. But don’t forget that Lawrence has not been used to rough words. And now it is time for you to change your dress.”

At these words, the sceptre changed hands again. Mrs. Ferrier sighed wearily, remembering the happy days when she could put on a gown in the morning, and not take it off till she went to bed at night.

John, the footman, sat in the hall as the two ladies came out of the library, and, instead of going directly up-stairs as her daughter returned to the drawing-room, Mrs. Ferrier made a little pretence of looking out through the porch, to learn the cause of some imaginary disturbance. When at length she went toward the stairs, she was fumbling in her pocket, and presently drew out a small parcel, which she tossed down over the balusters to John, standing under. The paper unfolded in falling, and disclosed a gorgeous purple and gold neck-tie, which the footman at once hid in his pocket.

“Do you like the colors, John?” she asked, leaning over the rail, and smiling down benignantly.

He nodded, with a quick, short answering smile, which shot like lightning across his ruddy face, disturbing for only an instant its dignified gravity.

“Ma, are you going up-stairs?” called Annette’s sharp voice from the drawing-room.

“Yes; if you’ll give me time,” answered “ma,” hastening on.

There was no reason why she should not buy, now and then, a little gift for her servants, and there was no need of proclaiming what she had done, and so making the others jealous. Or perhaps John had asked his mistress to exercise her taste in his behalf, himself paying for the finery. He was a very sensible, independent man, and did not need to be pecuniarily assisted.

At the head of the stairs, the mistress of the house met Bettie, the chambermaid, who had been a witness to this little scene.

“How do you get along, Bettie?” the lady asked, trying to patronize.

The girl turned her back and flounced away, muttering something about some folks who couldn’t get along so well as some other folks, who could go throwing presents over the balustrade to other folks.

Poor Bettie! perhaps she envied John his neck-tie.

The rich woman went into her chamber, and shut the door. “I declare, I’m sick of the way I have to live,” she whimpered, wiping her eyes. “I don’t dare to say my soul’s my own. I’m afraid to speak, or hold my tongue, or move, or sit still, or put on clothes, or leave ‘em off, or to look out of my eyes when they’re open.” She wiped the features in question again. “And now I’m likely to be starved,” she resumed despairingly; “for, if Annette sets out to make me do anything, she never lets me rest till I do it. I was happier when I had but one gown to my back, and could act as I pleased, than I’ve ever been with all the finery, and servants, and carriages that are bothering the life out of me now. It’s all nonsense, this killing yourself to try to be like somebody else, when what you are is just as good as what anybody is.”

Which was not at all a foolish conclusion, though it might have been more elegantly expressed.

She stood a moment fixed in thought, her face brightening. “I declare,” she muttered, “I’ve a good mind to—“ but did not finish the sentence.

A wavering smile played over her lips; and as she sat on the edge of the sofa, with a stout arm propping her on either side, and her heavily jewelled hands buried in the cushions, Mrs. Ferrier sank into a reverie which had every appearance of being rose-colored.

When she was moderately pleased, this woman was not ill-looking, though her insignificant features were somewhat swamped in flesh. Her eyes were pleasant, her complexion fresh, her teeth sound, and the abundant dark-brown hair was unmistakably her own.

She started, and blushed with apprehension, as the door was briskly opened, and her daughter’s head thrust in. What if Annette should know what she had been thinking of?

“Ma,” said that young woman, “you had better wear a black grenadine, and the amethyst brooch and ear-rings.”

Having given this brief order, the girl banged the door in her energetic way; but, before it was well shut, opened it again.

“And pray, don’t thank the servants at table.”

Again the Mentor disappeared, and a second time came back for a last word. “O ma! I’ve given orders about the lemons and claret, and you’d better begin to-day, and see how you can get along with such diet. I wouldn’t eat much, if I were you. You’ve no idea how little food you can live upon till you try. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if you were to thin away beautifully.”

At last she departed in earnest.

Mrs. Ferrier lifted both hands, and raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Who ever heard,” she cried, “of anybody with an empty stomach sitting down to a full table, and not eating what they wanted?”

This poor creature had probably never heard of Sancho Panza, and perhaps it would not much have comforted her could she have read his history.

We pass over the toilet scene, where Nance, Miss Annette’s maid, nearly drove the simple lady distracted with her fastidious ideas regarding colors and shapes; and the dinner, where Mrs. Ferrier sat in bitterness of soul with a slice of what she called raw beef on her plate, and a tumbler of very much acidulated claret and water, in place of the foaming ale that had been wont to lull her to her afternoon slumber. These things did not, however, sweeten her temper, nor soften her resolutions. It may be that they rendered her a little more inexorable. It is certain that Mr. Gerald did not find her remarkably amiable during the repast, and was not sorry when she left the dining-room, where he and Louis Ferrier stopped to smoke a cigar.

She did not leave him in peace though, but planted a thorn at parting.

“I want to see you in the library about something in particular, as soon as you have got through here,” she said, with an air that was a little more commanding than necessary.

He smiled and bowed, but a slight frown settled on his handsome face as he looked after her. What track was she on now? “Do you know what the indictment is, Louis?” he asked presently, having lighted a cigar, turned his side to the table, on which he leaned, and placed his feet in the chair Annette had occupied. “Milady looked as though the jury had found a bill.”

Louis Ferrier, whom we need not occupy our time in describing, didn’t know what the row was, really; couldn’t tell; never troubled himself about ma’s affairs.

Lawrence smoked away vigorously, two or three lines coming between his smoothly-curved eyebrows; and, as the cigar diminished, his irritation increased. Presently he threw the cigar-end impatiently through an open window near, and brought his feet to the floor with an emphasis that made his companion stare.

“If there is anything I hate,” he cried out, “it is being called away into a corner to hear something particular. I always know it means something disagreeable. If you want to set me wild, just step up to me mysteriously, and say that you wish to speak to me about something particular. Women are always doing such things. Men never do, unless they are policemen.”

Young Mr. Ferrier sat opposite the speaker, lolling on the table with his elbows widespread, and a glass of wine between them, from which he could drink without raising it, merely tipping the brim to his pale little moustache. He took a sip before answering, and, still retaining his graceful position, rolled up a pair of very light-blue eyes as he said, in a lisping voice that was insufferably supercilious: “Ma never does, unless it’s something about money. You may be pretty sure it’s something about money.”

The clear, pale profile opposite him suddenly turned a deep pink, and Lawrence looked round at him with a sharp glance, before which his fell. The little drawling speech had been delivered with more of a drawl than that habitual to Mr. Ferrier, perhaps, and it seemed that there was a slight emphasis which might be regarded as significant. Gerald had not taken any great pains to conciliate his prospective brother-in-law, and Louis liked to remind him occasionally that the advantages were not all on one side.

Lawrence rose carelessly from the table, and filliped a crumb of bread off his vest. “I say, Louis,” he remarked, “do you know you have rather a peculiar way of putting your head down to your food, instead of raising your food to your mouth? Reminds one of—well, now, it’s a little like the quadrupeds, isn’t it? Excuse me, that may be taken as a compliment. I’m not sure but quadrupeds have, on the whole, rather better manners than bipeds. Grace isn’t everything. Money is the chief thing, after all. You can gild such wooden things with it. I’m going to talk about it with your mother. Good-by! Don’t take too much wine.”

He sauntered out of the room, and shut the door behind him. “Vulgar place!” he muttered, going through the entries. “Worsted rainbows everywhere. I wonder Annette did not know better.” A contrasting picture floated up before his mind of a cool, darkened chamber, all pure white and celestial blue, with two little golden flames burning in a shady nook before a marble saint, and one slender sun-ray stretched athwart, as though the place had been let down from heaven, and the golden rope still held it moored to that peaceful shore. The contrast gave him a stifled feeling.

As he passed the drawing-room door, he saw Annette seated near it, evidently on the watch for him. She started up and ran to the door the moment he appeared. Her face had been very pale, but now the color fluttered in it. She looked at him with anxious entreaty.

“Don’t mind if mamma is rather ... odd,” she whispered hurriedly. “You know she has a rough way of speaking, but she means well.”

He looked down, and only just suffered her slender fingers to rest on his arm.

“I would help it if I could, Lawrence,” she went on tremulously. “I do the best I can, but there are times when mamma won’t listen to me. Try not to mind what she may say ... for my sake!”

Poor Annette! She had not yet learned not to make that tender plea with her promised husband. He tried to hide that it irritated him.

“Upon my word, I begin to think that something terrible is coming,” he said, forcing a laugh. “The sooner I go and get it over, the better. Don’t be alarmed. I promise not to resent anything except personal violence. When it comes to blows, I must protect myself. But you can’t expect a man to promise not to mind when he doesn’t know what is going to happen.”

A door at the end of the hall was opened, and Mrs. Ferrier looked out impatiently.

“‘Anon, anon, sir!’” the young man cried. “Now for it, Annette. One, two, three! Let us be brave, and stand by each other. I am gone!”

Let us stand by each other! Oh! yes; for ever and ever! The light came back to the girl’s face at that. She no longer feared anything if she and Lawrence were to stand together.

Mr. Gerald walked slowly down the hall. If his languid step and careless air meant fearlessness, who can tell? He entered the library, where Mrs. Ferrier sat like a highly colored statue carved in a green chair, her hands in her lap (her paws in her lap, the young man thought savagely). She looked stolid and determined. The calm superiority which he could assume with Annette would have no effect here. Not only was Mrs. Ferrier not in love with him, which made a vast difference, but she was incapable of appreciating his real advantages over her, though, perhaps, a mistaken perception of them inspired her at times with a sort of dislike. There is nothing which a low and rude mind more surely resents and distrusts than gentle manners.

The self-possessed and supercilious man of society quailed before the ci-devant washwoman. What would she care for a scene? What shrinking would she have from the insulting word, the coarse taunt? What fine sense had she to stop her at the point where enough had been said, and prevent the gratuitous pouring out of all that anger that showed in her sullen face? Lawrence Gerald took a strong hold on his self-control, and settled instantly upon the only course of action possible to him. He could not defy the woman, for he was in some way in her power. He could marry Annette in spite of her, but that would be to make Annette worse than worthless to him. Not one dollar could he ever hope to receive if he made an enemy of Mrs. Ferrier; and money he must have. He felt now with a new keenness, when he perceived himself to be in danger of loss, how terrible it would be to find those expectations of prosperity which he had been entertaining snatched away from him.

Mrs. Ferrier looked at him glumly, not lady enough to point him to a seat, or to smooth in any way the approaches to a disagreeable interview. There was no softness nor delicacy in her nature, and now her heart was full of jealous suspicion and a sense of outraged justice, as she understood justice.

The young man seated himself in a chair directly in front of her—he would not act as though afraid to meet her gaze—leaned forward with his arms on his knees, looked down at the eyeglasses he held, and waited for her to begin. A more polite attitude would have been thrown away on her, and he needed some little shield. Besides, her threatening looks had been so undisguised that an assumption of smiling ease would only have increased her anger.

The woman’s hard, critical eyes looked him over as he waited there, and marked the finish of his toilet, and reckoned the cost of it, and snapped at sight of the deep purple amethysts in his cuff-buttons, not knowing that they were heir-looms, and the gift of his mother. He was dressed quite like a fine gentleman, she thought; and yet, what was he? Nothing but a pauper who was trying to get her money. She longed to tell him so, and would have expressed herself quite plainly to that effect upon a very small provocation.

“I want to know if you’ve broken that promise you made me six months ago,” she said roughly, having grown more angry with this survey. “I hear that you have.”

“What promise?” he asked calmly, glancing up.

“You know well enough what I mean,” she retorted. “You promised never to gamble again, and I told you what you might depend on if you did, and I mean to keep my word. Now, I should like to know the truth. I’ve been hearing things about you.”

A deep red stained his face, and his lips were pressed tightly together. It was hard to be spoken to in that way, and not resent it. “When I make a promise, I usually keep it,” he replied, in a constrained voice.

“That’s no answer to my question,” Mrs. Ferrier exclaimed, her hands clenching themselves in her lap. “I’ll have the truth without any roundabout. Somebody—no matter who—has told me you owe fifteen hundred dollars that you lost by gambling. Is it true or not? That is what I want to know.”

Lawrence Gerald raised his bright eyes, and looked steadily at her. “It is false!” he said.

This calm and deliberate denial disconcerted Mrs. Ferrier. She had not expected him to confess fully to such a charge; neither, much as she distrusted him, had she thought him capable of a deliberate lie if the charge were true—some sense of his better qualities had penetrated her thus far—but she had looked for shuffling and evasion.

He was not slow to see that the battle was at an end, and in the same moment his perfect self-restraint vanished. “May I ask where you heard this interesting story?” he demanded, drawing himself up.

Her confusion increased. The truth was that she had heard it from her son; but Louis had begged her not to betray him as the informant, and his story had been founded on hints merely. “It’s no use telling where I heard it,” she said. “I’ll take your word. But since you’ve given that, of course you won’t have any objection to giving your oath. If you will swear that you don’t owe any gambling debts, I’ll say no more, unless I hear more.”

He reddened violently. “I will not do it!” he exclaimed. “If my word is not good, my oath would not be. You ought to be satisfied. And if you will allow me, I will go to Annette now, unless you have some other subject to propose.”

He had risen, his manner full of haughtiness, when she stopped him: “I haven’t quite got through yet. Don’t be in such a hurry.”

He did not seat himself again, but, leaning on the back of a chair, looked at her fully.

“I wish you would sit down,” she said. “It isn’t pleasant to have you standing up when I want to talk to you.”

He smiled, not very pleasantly, and seated himself, looking at her with a steady gaze that was inexpressibly bitter and secretive. She returned it with a more piercing regard than one would have thought those insignificant eyes capable of. She had not been able to understand his proud scruple, and her suspicions were alive again.

“If all goes right,” she began, watching him closely, “I’m willing that you and Annette should be married the first of September. I’ve made up my mind what I will do for you. You shall have five hundred dollars to go on a journey with, and then you will come back and live with me here two years. I’ll give you your board, and make Annette an allowance of five hundred a year, and see about some business for you. But I won’t pay any debts; and, if any such debts come up as we have been talking about, off you will go. If this story I’ve heard turns out to be true, not one dollar more of mine do you ever get, no matter when I find it out.”

“I will speak to Annette about it,” he said quietly. “Is that all?”

She answered with a short nod.

Annette was anxiously waiting for him. “What is it?” she asked, when she saw his face.

He snatched his hat from the table. “Come out into the air,” he said; “I am stifling here.”

She followed him into the gardens, where an arbor screened them from view. “Did you know what your mother was going to say to me?” he asked.

“No!” It was all she had strength to utter.

“Nothing of it?”

“Nothing, Lawrence. I saw that she did not mean to tell me, so I would not ask. Don’t keep me in suspense.”

He hesitated a moment. Since she did not know, there was no need to tell her all. He told her only her mother’s plans regarding their marriage.

“You see it’s a sort of ticket-of-leave,” he said, smiling faintly. “We are to be under surveillance. Hadn’t you better give me up, Annette? She will like any one else better.”

The sky and garden swam round before her eyes. She said nothing, but waited.

“I only propose it for your sake,” he added more gently, startled at her pallor. “In marrying me, you run the risk of being poor. If that doesn’t frighten you, then it’s all right.”

Her color came back again; but no smile came with it. These shocks had been repeated too many times to find her with the same elasticity.

“This cannot go on a great while,” she said, folding her hands in her lap, and looking down. “Mamma cannot always be so unreasonable. The best way now is to make no opposition to her, whatever she proposes. I may be able to influence her as we wish after a while. You may be sure that I shall try. Meantime, let us be quiet. I have learned, Lawrence, never to contend unless I can be pretty sure of victory. It is a hard lesson, but we have to learn it, and many harder ones, too. The best way for you is to laugh and seem careless, whether you feel so or not. The one who laughs succeeds. It is strange, but the moment a person acts as if he felt humiliated, people seem to be possessed of a desire to humiliate him still more. It doesn’t do in the world to confess to any weakness or failure. I have always noticed that people stand in awe of those who appear to be perfectly self-confident and contented.”

Lawrence Gerald looked at her in surprise as she said this in a calm and steady way quite new to him. Some thought of her being strong and helpful in other ways besides money-bringing glanced through his mind. “You know the world at least, Annette,” he said, with a half-smile.

No smile nor word replied. She was looking back, and remembering how she had learned the world. She, a poor, low-born girl, ignorant but enthusiastic and daring, had been suddenly endowed with wealth, and thrown upon that world with no one to teach her how to act properly. She had learned by the sneers and bitterness, the ridicule and jibes, her blunders had excited. Mortification, anger, tears, and disappointments had taught her. Instead of having been led, she had been spurred along the way of life. She had seen her best intentions and most generous feelings held as nothing, because of some fault in their manifestation; had found the friendships she grasped at, believing them real, change to an evasive coldness with only a surface-froth of sweet pretence. Strife lay behind her, and, looking forward, she saw strife in the future. As she made this swift review, it happened to her as it has happened to others when some crisis or some strong emotion has forced them to lift their eyes from their immediate daily cares; and as the curtain veiling the future wavered in that breeze, they have caught a glimpse of life as a whole, and found it terrible. Perhaps in that moment Annette Ferrier saw nothing but dust and ashes in all her hopes of earthly happiness, and felt a brief longing to hide her face from them for ever.

“Your company are coming,” Lawrence said. He had been watching her with curiosity and surprise. It was the first time she had ever disregarded his presence, and the first time he had found her really worthy of respect.

She roused herself, not with a start, as if coming back to a real present from some trivial abstraction, but slowly and almost reluctantly, as though turning from weighty matters to attend to trifles.

“Can you be bright and cheerful now?” she asked, smiling on him with some unconscious superiority in her air. “These little things are not worth fretting for. All will come right, if we keep up our courage.”

As she held out her hand to him, he took it in his and carried it to his lips. “You’re a good creature!” he said most sincerely.

And in this amicable frame of mind they went to join the company.

Crichton was eminently a musical city. In the other arts, they were perhaps superficial and pretentious; but this of music was ardently and assiduously cultivated by every one. Wealthy ladies studied it with all the devotion of professional people, and there were not a few who might have made it a successful profession. Among these was Annette Ferrier, whose clear, high soprano had a brilliant effect in bravuras or compositions requiring strong passion in the rendering. All this talent and cultivation the Crichton ladies did not by any means allow to be wasted in private life. Clubs and associations kept up their emulation and skill, and charitable objects and public festivals afforded them the opportunity for that public display without which their zeal might have languished. The present rehearsal was for one of these concerts.

They were to sing in the new conservatory, which was admirable for that purpose. It was only just completed—an immense parallelogram joined to the southwestern corner of the house, with a high roof, and tall pillars making a sort of porch at the end. No plants had yet been arranged, but azaleas and rhododendrons in full bloom had been brought in and set in a thicket along the bases of the pillars, looking, in all their airy roseate flush of graduated tints, as if a sunset cloud had dropped there. Against this background the benches for the singers were ranged, and Annette’s grand piano brought out for Mr. Schöninger, their leader. Sofas and arm-chairs were placed near the long windows opening into the house for a small company of listeners.

“I wish Mother Chevreuse could have come,” Mrs. Ferrier said, surveying the preparations with complacent satisfaction.

Mother Chevreuse was employed much more to her own liking than she would have been in listening to the most excellent music in the world: she was waiting for her son to come home from his collecting, and take tea with her in her cosy little parlor. If the day should prove to have been successful to him, then he could rest a whole month; and, in expectation of his success, she had made a little gala of it, and adorned her room and table with flowers. The curtains next the church were looped back, to show a group of sunlighted tree-tops and an edge of a bright cloud, since the high walls hid the sunset from this room. The priest’s slippers and dressing-gown were ready for him, and an arm-chair set in his favorite place. He must rest after his hard day’s work. The evening paper lay folded within reach.

Mother Chevreuse looked smilingly about, and saw that all was ready. The green china tea-set and beautiful old-fashioned silver that had been preserved from her wedding presents made the little table look gay, and the flowers and a plate of golden honeycomb added a touch of poetry. Everything was as she would have wished it—the picture beautifully peaceful and homelike.

“What would he do without me?” she murmured involuntarily.

The thought called up a train of sad fancies, and, as she stood looking out toward the last sunny cloud of evening, long quivering rays seemed to stretch toward her from it. She clasped her hands and raised her eyes, to pray that she might long be spared to him; but the words were stopped on her lips. There was a momentary struggle, then “Thy will be done!” dropped faintly.

At this moment, she heard a familiar step on the sidewalk, the street door opened and banged to again, and in a moment more F. Chevreuse stood on the threshold, his face bright with exercise and pleasure.

“Well?” his mother said, seeing success in his air.

He drew himself up with an expression of immense consequence, and began to declaim:

“‘Dick,’ says he, ‘What,’ says he, ‘Fetch me my hat,’ says he, ‘For I will go,’ says he, ‘To Timahoe,’ says he, ‘To the fair,’ says he, ‘To buy all that’s there,’ says he.”

“You’ve made out the whole sum!” was her joyful interpretation.

“Yes; and more,” he answered. “I am rich, Mother Chevreuse. All the way home, my mind has been running on golden altar-services and old masters.”

Mother Chevreuse seated herself behind the tea-tray, set a green and gold cup into its appropriate saucer, and selected a particular spoon which she always gave her son—one with a wheat-ear curling about the quaint, half-effaced initials; he, insensible man that he was, unconscious whether it was silver or tin.

“While you have a resting-place for the Master of masters, you need not give much thought to any other,” she said. “But I own that my thoughts often run on a golden altar-service. Only to-day I was reckoning that what I possess of my own would buy one.”

“O vanity!” laughed the priest. “You want to make a show, mother. Instead of being content to help with the brick and mortar, or the iron pillars, you must approach the very Holy of Holies, and shine in the tabernacle itself. Fie, Mother Chevreuse!”

“I mentioned it to F. White,” she said, “and he almost reproved me. He said that there was more need of feeding the hungry than of buying golden altar-vessels. I told him that gold endures, but bread is soon eaten; and he answered that, if the eating of bread saved from theft or starvation, and put hope into a breaking heart, it was making finer gold than could be wrought into a chalice. A good deal of grace may be found in a loaf of bread, said F. White.”

“That’s true,” answered the priest cheerfully. “F. White has sense, though he grudges me a gold chalice. I’ll remember that when he comes here begging for his organ. F. White, says I, it’s sheer vanity to talk of organs when there are suffering poor in the world. A tobacco-pipe is better than an organ-pipe, when it stops an oath in the mouth of a poor hod-carrier who has no other comfort but his smoke. Much grace may be found in a clay pipe, F. White, my darling.”

Merry, foolish talk, but innocent and restful.

“And, by the way,” resumed the priest, “that same F. White has gone away, and I must go and attend a sick call for him. I got the telegram as I came along.”

“Not to-night!” the mother exclaimed.

“Yes, to-night. I sent word that I would come. The man is in danger. Besides, I could not spare time to-morrow forenoon. I can drive the five miles before ten o’clock, stay the rest of the night there, and come home in the morning in time to say Mass at six o’clock. That is the best plan. I don’t care to be out very late.”

“It is the better way,” she said, but looked disappointed. “I don’t like to have you out late at night, it gives you such headaches.”

“Headache is easier to bear than heart-ache, mother,” said the priest brightly, and went to the window to give Andrew his order for the carriage. “Have it ready in front of the church at a quarter before nine o’clock,” he said. “And, Andrew, light the gas in the sacristy.”

Mother Chevreuse anxiously served her son, urged him to take a muffler, lest the night air should prove chilly, poured a second cup of tea for him, and, when he was ready to start, stood looking earnestly at him, half in pride of his stalwart manliness, half in tender, motherly anxiety lest some accident should befall him on the long, lonely drive.

“Hadn’t you better take Andrew with you?” she suggested.

“And why should I take Andrew with me?” the priest asked, putting a stole in his pocket.

“Why ...” she hesitated, ashamed of her womanish fears.

“An excellent reason!” he laughed. “No, madam; I shall take no one with me but my good angel. My buggy holds but two. Good-night. Sleep soundly, and God bless you!”

She stood with her lips slightly parted, watching him earnestly, as if fearful of losing some slight word or glance; but his cheerful talk woke no smile in her face.

He would not appear to notice anything unusual in her manner, and was going out, when she stopped him.

“Give me your blessing, dear, before you go,” she whispered, and fell on her knees before him; and, when he had given it, she rose and tried to smile.

The priest was disturbed. “Don’t you feel well to-night, mother?” he asked.

“Yes, quite well,” she replied gently. “Perhaps I am foolish to be so nervous about your going. It seems a lonely drive. Go now, or you will be late.”

She followed him to the door, and stood there till she saw him come out of the church, step into his buggy, and drive away.

“Good-night! good-night!” she said, listening till the last sound of his carriage-wheels died into stillness; then, breathing a prayer for his safety, she went back to her own room.

Jane had cleared away the table, drawn the curtains, and lighted a lamp, and had gone down to her company in the kitchen.

“What does make me so lonely and fearful?” exclaimed the lady, wringing her cold hands.

She busied herself in little things, trying to drive the trouble away; refolded the paper her son had not found time to read, pushed his arm-chair nearer the table for herself, and, discovering a flake of smooth-pressed clay which his boot had left on the carpet, took it up, and threw it into the fireplace. That homely little service brought a faint smile to her face.

“The careless boy!” she said fondly. “He never could remember to wipe his boots on coming in, even when he was a mere lad. I can see his bright face now as it looked when he would argue me out of scolding him. His mind was occupied with lofty matters, he said; he could not bring it down to boots and mud. It sounded like a jest; but who knows if he might not even then have been about his Father’s business!”

Dropping into his chair, she sat thinking over the old time and her boy’s childhood. How happy and peaceful their life had been! Half chiding herself, as if she knew he would have called it folly, she went into her bedroom, and brought our a little trunk, in which were preserved souvenirs memorable in her life and his.

There was his christening-robe. She shook out the length, and pushed two of her fingers through the tiny embroidered sleeve.

“How little we dream what the future is to be!” she murmured. “I wonder how I would have felt if, when I was embroidering this, there had risen before my eyes the vision of a chasuble hanging above it? But I couldn’t have been prouder of him than I was. He was a fine healthy boy, and had a will of his own even then. When he was baptized, he got the priest’s stole in his baby fist, and I had to pull it away finger by finger, the little fellow clinging all the time.”

There were boyish toys, schoolbooks adorned with preposterous pencil-drawings, in which the human figure was represented by three spheres set one over the other, and supported on two sticks; there were letters written his mother while he was away from home, at school or college, and a collection of locks of hair cut on successive birthdays, till the boy had laughed her out of the custom. She placed these side by side now, ranging them according to their dates, and studied the gradual change from the silken-silvery crescent of a curl cut from the head of the year-old babe, through deepening shades, to the thick brown tress cut on his twentieth birthday. Every little lock had its story to tell, and she went over each, ending with a kiss, in fancy kissing the child’s face she seemed again to see. And as she sat there conning the past, memory struck every chord of her heart, from the sweet, far-away vibration when her first-born was placed in her arms, and coming down through deepening tones to the present.

She lifted her face, that had been bent over these mementos. “Now he is Father Chevreuse, and I am an old woman!” she said; and, sighing, rose and put the souvenirs all away. “We have had a glad and prosperous life; how little of sorrow, how little of adversity! I never before realized how much I have to be thankful for.”

Presently she put a veil over her head, and went out through the basement into the church to say her prayers. She always said her evening prayers before the altar; and now she had double cause to be scrupulous. She must atone for past unthankfulness, and pray for her son’s safe return.

By ten o’clock, the house was closed for the night, and the inmates had all gone to their quiet slumber. Mother Chevreuse’s uneasiness was all gone, and, after devotions of unusual fervor, she felt an unwonted peace. “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” she said, and sank to sleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.

About midnight, she started up, wide-awake, and listened. There was a low, stealthy sound, as of a door being softly opened. Could her son have changed his mind, and come home again? Some one was certainly in his room. She stepped out of bed, and listened keenly. There was a faint noise like the rattle of a latch or lock, and then a soft step retreating.

“It is he come back!” she thought joyfully; and, even in thinking so, was smitten by a wild and sudden fear. She slipped on a dressing-gown and sandals, and hurried toward the door. “My son!” she said breathlessly as she opened it.

Faintly seen in the dim light, a man’s form was leaving the room by the entry. A shawl or cloak wrapped him from head to foot, and he held a little chest in his hand. In that chest F. Chevreuse kept his money.

All personal fear deserted his mother’s heart at that sight. She thought only that the fruit of her son’s long labors was being carried away under her eyes, and that, after the brief joy of his success, he would come home to bitterness and disappointment.

She ran after the retreating figure, and caught it by the arm. “Shame! shame!” she cried. “It is the money of the poor. It belongs to God. Leave it, in God’s name.”

The man bent down, and wrapped his form still more closely from recognition, as he wrenched himself loose. But while forced to let go his arm, she caught at the casket he held, and clung with all her strength, calling for help.

“Let go!” he said, in a hoarse whisper. “Let go, or I shall do you harm!”

As she still clung and cried for help, they stood at the head of the stairs leading to the basement of the house. Steps were heard below, and Jane’s voice calling Andrew, and screaming from the window.

The man made one more fierce effort to free himself. Drawing back from the stairs, he turned quickly, and threw himself forward again. There was a sharp cry, “My son!” and a fall. Then a fainter cry, “My God!” and then silence.

TRAVELLERS AND TRAVELLING.

WHAT does one gain by travelling? says some old wiseacre, with a shake of the head. Better the man that settles down and grows with his native or adopted dwelling-place. “The rolling stone gathers no moss,” is a venerable saying. Men who stay only a short time in one place can never be sufficiently known or loved by any people, and hence their credit and fortune cannot increase.

What does one not gain by travelling? says the boy who is just old enough to relish Robinson Crusoe, whose natural curiosity is feverish for knowledge. For him, all countries are more interesting than his own. He longs to climb the hill that bounds his native plain, to see what lies beyond. No one for him so interesting as the soldier or sailor come back from foreign lands, and he asks, with deep, attentive inquiry, “if there are boys in such places, too, and whether they are born there, or if they also went away from here?” Power, wealth, beauty, have no charm for him. Money he values merely because it opens his path to distant lands; and his instinctive desire to know is the passion of his youth. This is the story of all of us, at least all of us boys. It is only when our curiosity is satisfied either by personal experience or by credible hearsay, when we meet members of the whole human family, and find them seeking in our country that peace and beauty which we used to ascribe to theirs—it is then we realize that life is not poetry; that one’s native land is generally happiest for him; and that the best thing for one to do is to choose a spot thereof, and, as “H. G.” used to say, “to settle down and rise with it.”

Between the sturdy proverb of the oldest inhabitant and the boundless dream of the boy exists the medium wherein we shall find the uses of travel. There is nothing which may not be abused, and travelling may degenerate into a passion in individuals; but the strength of the ties of country, home, and family, whereby nature has bound us, forbids any but solitary instances of men who have wandered, useless vagabonds on the earth, trespassing on all countries, and aiding none; while, if the Holy Ghost call forth some apostle from his kindred to sound the trump of faith among many peoples, the Lord, who gives him an extraordinary mission, will endow him with special grace, and the world will gain by his vocation. This is the greatest traveller: who goes forth, not to his own gain, nor to further his nation’s weal, but to extend the kingdom of God on earth; to enlighten those who sit in darkness, and bring them to the knowledge of the truth.

Why do people travel? People travel for health, for pleasure, for business, and for knowledge. Some fifty thousand Americans travelled in Europe last summer with one or other of these objects in view. Have they all gained by their trip? Has the nation profited? Are they healthier, happier, richer, wiser, for their tour in Europe? A general answer to these questions cannot be given. All depends on the character of the individuals who composed that large army. Their particular circumstances and characteristics may have caused some to gain, others to lose, both when there is question of health, as well as when we speak of enjoyment, riches, and useful knowledge. I was one of that invading army that descended on Europe last year, and will try to make others partakers of whatever is communicable of the advantages derived from the trip which under advice I took to the other hemisphere. We will see who are they that lose by going abroad, what danger and damage they incur, and the reasons why. We will also find what persons profit by the excursion, what dispositions are required for this; and, by contrasting and comparing each, we shall be enabled to conclude how much of loss and how much of gain there is in travel, how the one is avoided, and the other achieved. All this I will make bold to illustrate from my own experience.

A change of air is well known to influence one’s health very much; for a man lives as much on good air as on what are commonly considered the elements of sustenance. I heard a gentleman state that the change from Newburg to New York in summer had caused him to gain eleven pounds in a fortnight. It was all in the change. A citizen flying from this pent-up atmosphere to the expanded vision and pure breezes of that delightful town could hardly have gained more in the same period. Hence the doctors prescribe change of air so frequently. An English physician says: “It is undoubted, explain it how we may, that a change of air, diet, and scene rouses the faculties, improves the appetite, and raises the spirits. When you set out for France, then, on your little trip of twenty-five miles across the channel, pray Heaven you may get thoroughly sea-sick, that nothing old or vitiated may make a bad foundation for the new man you are going to build up.” People from the plain gain by a change to the mountains; people from the mountain by visiting the plains. People from inland by going to the sea-shore, and those from the beach by retiring to the meadows. As with the body, so with the mind. Our faculties become as it were choked up and stagnant by continual monotony; even the most brilliant conversation, music, the best jokes of a friend, fail at last to please or rouse the spirit. Activity and exercise are necessary for the mind and soul as well as for the body, and are obtained by seeking contact and conflict with new ideas, sights, and wonders to move the imagination; and the consequent enlivening of the spirits acts at once on the body, and does more to restore physical power than any material food. It is by visiting foreign places; seeing strange customs which excite our curiosity; wondering at Alpine heights and Rhenish castles; sympathizing with the decayed glories of Venice and old Rome; confronting ourselves with the soul-entrancing beauty of the Bay of Naples and the awe of that burning mountain which stirs the depths of the spirit—it is thus we produce that friction, that reaction requisite for rousing soul and body from tepidity and the stagnancy of hypochondria and disease. Our spirits rise, the circulation is quickened by the winds of France and the music of Italy, the strange cuisine of other lands start all our organs into activity, and happiness and health are the result.

There are those, however, who travel, and yet gain neither in spirits nor in health. What often makes the difference, other things being equal, is the bigotry and contrariety of certain individuals. Some persons are so ignorant, and therefore so bigoted, that they will never tolerate customs different from their own, hold all who think otherwise than they in profound contempt, and will persist in following their own ways no matter where they go, and although the habits and opinions of an entire nation are opposed to them. Such persons never gain good spirits; for they will not open the windows of their miserable little souls, to let in the rays of happiness in which the people about are basking. An Englishman of fifty years ago, for instance, sets out with the notion that whatever is not English is contemptible. Hence, he is disgusted with the pleasant sounds of the French tongue; the agreeable politeness of the lady in the restaurant irritates him—perhaps he feels angry that a Frenchwoman should be so much at ease in his presence; the play he despises, because his taste is too debased to rise to its enjoyment, or because Parisians applaud it. He will have his beefsteak in the morning and his heavy slices of bread, no matter though the whole French nation should think a light breakfast more healthful. Hence, it is impossible that this man’s health should improve. Instead of getting mentally sea-sick (he can’t help getting bodily so; and the prouder he is, the more amusing his appearance then), and throwing off prejudice, he keeps in his mind a bile that jaundices his views, and corrodes every healthy idea that may possibly enter his soul. He follows his own notions at the table; and, as the food and habits of his northern isle do not suit southern latitudes, of course he gains nothing in health, and often becomes sick, and returns home disgusted with dons and messieurs, signors and mynheers, and tells you “there’s no use in travel—he tried it.” The first requisite, then, is, when you go to Rome, to do as the Romans do. The customs of a place show what its inhabitants prefer; and it is silly in any man to set his own little ideas against the experience of a whole people.

My friend and I had the misfortune to meet one of this class on setting out on our trip, and thrown together as we necessarily were on an ocean steamship, it caused us a great deal of inconvenience. The poor man was actually yellow from dyspepsia and bigotry. I am sorry to say he passed for an American. Whether his bigotry caused that viselike fastening up of his better nature, and, reacting on his body, ruined his digestion, as might easily be, or whether the desperate state of his chylopoetic fluids produced a corresponding straitness in his soul, which we assumed as the more charitable supposition, I can’t say; but certainly all the benefit of new and entertaining society, all the advantages of sea air, change of diet, etc., were lost, necessarily lost to him. What was the cause of his old-fogyism? One dreadful incubus—you might call it a standing evil, a nightmare (diurnal as well as nocturnal)—was the presence at the same table, and in the willing association of those whom he also preferred, and whose company he courted, of us two priests. The man could not look us in the face, could not accept the salt at our hands, would not “do us the pleasure of wine,” as they say on English ships; in fact, his bigotry stood between him and his own enjoyment and good appetite, rendered our position disagreeable, caused the rest of the company (Protestants themselves) to condemn his behavior in the strongest terms on deck, and ruined the pleasure of our voyage, at least during the time spent at table. One of his acquaintances was a whole-souled, honest, generous gentleman, a Methodist from Brooklyn. He, on his part, took every opportunity to throw sunshine about him, and to be polite to us especially, as if to make up for the fellow’s savageness; and one day, when the dyspeptic was complaining to the waiter as bitterly as if he were being flayed alive, the other turned to him, and said aloud: “Ebenezer, if I was an undertaker getting up a funeral, I’d hire you for chief mourner.” John invited us to his cabin, and the other turned away from its door when he saw us within. John proposed to take his cheerful, amiable wife to Ireland first; Ebenezer declared his abhorrence of the Irish and his contempt for Killarney. “He wouldn’t advise anybody to go to Ireland; he’d been there three times, and there was nothing to see but beggars.” John took him up before the company: “Why did you go there the second and third time, Eben?”—a question which disconcerted the dyspeptic, and caused intense amusement to the passengers. Such an one had no use to go travelling for health or anything else. You must open the windows of your soul, slacken the risible muscles of your face, and reduce yourself to a soft, pliable, impressionable condition, if you want to benefit by change of air, scenery, and society. Dry, hard wax does not receive the impression of the seal. But let a man set out with proper dispositions, leave care and prejudice behind, be ready to speak of men and things as he will find them, let no thought of business come up for a while, but move along easily and quietly through the scenes and people of other lands, and he will experience the advantages of travelling for health.

Another motive for travel is business. The post and the telegraph afford wonderful facilities for carrying on commercial relations between different firms and branches of the same house in different countries; but many circumstances render personal visits and interviews often necessary. Hence, the number of travellers on business is very large. Many New York houses send trusty men to Europe annually or oftener to buy the stuffs and to inspect and select the styles which fickle fashion imposes on her votaries.

The American is not satisfied with looking through foreign eyes, for he knows that short or long-sightedness is often the defect of even business men in those old countries. Hence, he goes to see and inspect for himself, and commonly finds an opening where the Frenchman, the German, even the Englishman, did not suspect its existence; throws a bridge over a chasm which to them seemed impassable; works his way through difficulties they thought unsurmountable; and pushing on over precipices and untrodden ways, “that banner with the strange device, Excelsior,” in his hands, astonishes the natives, and secures the trade of the world. Thus Singer, the sewing-machine man, goes to the ancient mediæval city of Nürnberg, amongst other places—a city seemingly so dead as to have recently erected another monument to Albrecht Dürer, the artist, the only statue in the town; as if the last man of push and note they produced was dead 350 years. Singer goes to this sleepy old city, and, in spite of the depth and inflexibility of the old channels in which trade had been running for a thousand years, attempts to revolutionize it all at once with his sewing-machine. In spite of the opposition of the tailors, which similar endeavors in parts of Great Britain failed to overcome, he succeeds; for, instead of hiring a plain office, in the simple manner of the country, and cautiously investing a little capital at the outset, the American, with characteristic enterprise and self-approved wisdom, spends hundreds in advertising and thousands in erecting a building the most imposing and expensive of its kind in the venerable city, astonishes the slow Bavarians while attracting them by the employment he gives, makes them believe that he is indeed the bringer of the great good he claims, obtains their trade, and, while filling his own pockets, is a herald of his country’s genius and enterprise. Another instance: while sailing down the Rhine last October in one of those steamers which approach nearest to the graceful beauties of our own rivers, and which are therefore most highly praised by tourists, we were a little surprised and considerably proud at seeing “Lent’s Floating American Circus” (like a vast floating bath) paying a visit to one of the cities of that noble stream, up and down whose banks it for ever roves, catering for the amusement and instruction and picking up the loose thalers of Fatherland with as much sang-froid as Dan Rice on our Mississippi. When the people of the Continent behold the Americans coming three thousand miles over the sea, passing inside England, from whom we learnt these very institutions, whose child our nation was, they naturally form a very high opinion of the superior enterprise and skill of the republic, so that our democratic institutions gain respect and our flag honor, while English influence gradually decays. Thus George Pullman goes over and steps in before John Bull, and secures the sleeping-car business on the Continent. Nay, it is only now that, roused by his aggressive boldness, England begins to adopt our great improvements in travel, afraid of being left still more shamefully behind. Thus does the business traveller, while making his own fortune, advance his country’s name and influence; and his successful policy is always that of generosity, accommodation, and politeness.

A class of men called commercial travellers is very numerous in England and Ireland. They are a relic of the period preceding this great advertising age, and go about from town to town soliciting orders and selling goods of which they carry samples. Many of them are peddlers also, and sometimes carry great value in money, jewelry, etc., and offer story-tellers an attractive field for wild tales of robbery on lonely roads, and murder in wayside inns. They all have some story of this kind to relate. In Ireland, a room in every hotel is set apart, called the commercial room, for the exclusive use of these men, whose business transactions and responsibility require special care and convenience, and where they can deposit their valuables without danger of loss or damage. I was in a car once with one of these lonely gentlemen, and he told me he travelled from the 1st of January to the 23d December.

The company of a wife is not considered conducive either to economy or to profit; but their life must be a dreary one, especially in Ireland, where the accommodation on the railroads and in some of the country hotels is not only very poor, but even dangerous to health. In England even, they have just begun to heat their cars, which are far below those on the Continent; and in Ireland, at least in winter, I have had to sleep in a room with a quarter inch of mildew dank and dark upon the walls. Persons travelling for pleasure, however, are not generally subjected to this last inconvenience, as the localities frequented by tourists are furnished with whatever is needful for their comfort.

Pleasure is, doubtless, the object of most travellers; but it includes much more than the word in its usual acceptance might imply. The wealthy English travel in the mild, genial climates of southern Europe during the prevalence at home of that indescribably abominable weather which sits on London like a plague during the autumn and winter. Some of them also go abroad because they cannot afford to reside at home. They revel in the atmosphere of Rome and Naples—so mild that oranges bloom and flowers deck the walls all through the wintry season. The sun is bright, while the weather is not so mild as to interfere with balls, parties, concerts, etc.; and hunting the fox, the wild boar, and the deer, with the intoxicating pleasures of the carnival, and visits to the interesting monuments of pagan and Christian times, make up a round of diversion and entertainment peculiar to Italy.

The American tourist partakes of the same enjoyments, only that his pleasure is sometimes interrupted and marred by the workings of his practical and ever-active brain. I heard of one of our countrymen paying a moonlight visit to that noblest of ruins, the Coliseum, in company with a party composed of various nationalities. While they gazed in silent, entranced contemplation at its dark majesty, with the rays of the pale planet making its black recesses visible by contrast; while they pictured to themselves 100,000 fair women and brave men seated in its circuit, witnessing the bloody tragedy of the dying gladiator or the triumphant martyr of Christ, the Yankee was asked his impressions, and replied, on reflection, that “it was rayther large, but money might be in the concern if ‘twas only roofed in and whitewashed!”

I need not go to great length to show the pleasure which travelling affords; the delight which all take in seeing new and strange places, customs, works of art, ruins of antiquity, cataracts, mountains, rivers, etc.—all of which have a wonderful charm in lightening one’s heart, wearied by care; in purifying and strengthening the brain, dimmed and dizzied by labor, and filling us with pure and exquisite delight. Besides, many find in travel a refuge from the routine of fashion, and the prospect of that lingering pain which follows her severe, artificial, often painful enjoyments. In other countries you do as you please. You are not criticised if you be not absolutely en rapport with the usages of the tyrant fashion at home, because she has stayed there; nor with the ways of her sister abroad, because no one extages pects you to be au fait in customs not your own. Moreover, you can live more cheaply, and your health is benefited by the change. Hence, families broken down often leave England and go abroad for economy’s sake, thus obtaining freedom by their apparent misfortune.

The student of history and the classics is the one who finds most pleasure in visiting foreign lands. Every town, every river, plain, mountain range, and country, has an indescribable attraction for him, and he gazes still charmed upon scenes which may very soon sate the curiosity of others. His pleasure is one which, if you are a reader, you will appreciate; and, if not, it would be impossible for me to make you understand. See one of these visiting Lake George. His imagination covers the water with the three hundred boats in which Montcalm advanced to the siege of Fort William Henry. He sees Leatherstocking and Uncas plodding through the forest on their war-path, dropping silently down the stream by night, and putting up their heads from under the water for a stolen breath of air, while the bushes on the bank are filled with savages watching for their scalps; stopping to eat and drink in the middle of the forest at what we now call the Congress Spring at Saratoga. Let him gaze for the first time on the coast of Ireland—what an interest has that venerable and lovely land for him! He at once looks out for the ruined castles of her decayed nobility; he seeks thirstingly a sight of those round towers which stand old but fresh monuments of that time “when Malachy wore the collar of gold which he won from the proud invader”; and he remains alone, apart on the deck, recalling in sad satisfaction the scene that presented itself long ago, when abbeys, churches, and schools crowned the fair hill-tops of Erin. Let him stroll companionless through London’s busy streets—he is not alone. David Copperfield, Pickwick, Micawber, Sim Tappertit, Agnes, Little Dorrit, Bill Sykes, and Fagin are always passing and repassing; acting their parts for his entertainment. Let him view the tall, white cliffs of Dover, and he sees Cæsar’s fleet approaching to the conquest of Albion. Calais recalls the days of Catholic England’s greatest military glory. Every spot of France, Germany, Italy lives again for him in one short space its life of two or three thousand years; for all the events of its history, all the heroes of its glory, are present to his memory and imagination even more than their present phases to his vision to-day. He sees the tradesmen of Flanders, the butchers, bakers, weavers, smiths, combining for the liberation of their country at the battle of the Golden Spurs, so called from the immense number of these articles found on the field, representing the number of professional soldiers of knightly rank slain by these bold democrats, whose liberties they came to invade. He feasts his eyes upon the “vine-clad hills of Bingen, fair Bingen on the Rhine,” which his boyish imagination had pictured and laid back in the most loving recesses of his heart. In Switzerland, the mountain-passes are crowned for him by the native heroes, sons of Tell, and of those others who, in the days of Catholic Switzerland, rose against the Austrian despot, and in a band of 1,300 patriots defeated 60,000 hirelings of tyranny at the battle of Morgarten. At Innsbruck, he venerates the soil consecrated by the deeds of the citizen-soldier and martyr of liberty, Andreas Höfer; at Venice, he recalls the glories of the republican queen of the seas; while his interest and pleasure reaching their height in the city of the popes, he pursues a boundless career of enjoyment as he gazes on the monuments, walks over the localities, peoples again the streets and forums, making all the heroes, poets, and great women of royal, republican, imperial, and Papal Rome live their lives and do their great deeds over again, and all for him, all for him. No amount of reading or meditation at home can supply the pleasure derived from visiting the famous places of history, while the previous reading creates the desire and predisposes for the pleasure. Hence it is that all students like so much to travel, and to travel on foot.

Those who travel expensively lose a great deal of the benefit and interest of travel. The magnificent hotels are filled with English and Americans, principally those who affect that rank and demand that obsequiousness abroad to which they could not aspire at home. Many of them are very ignorant, and the waiters, for their sake, speak a mongrel kind of English, which is simply unbearable when it is not absolutely needed. The latter affect English ways; and, though you may desire to practise your college French, German, or Italian, they insultingly reply in your own tongue, as if to spare you any further exhibition of your ignorance, and because their avarice makes them more anxious to learn English than that you should acquire a foreign tongue. I asked one of these servants once how much I was to pay the hackman. My question was in German, his answer in English; but I was on the point of paying thirty-six cents for the lesson I gave him in our language, as he told me to give the man eighty-four kreutzers instead of forty-eight, because he didn’t know how to translate acht und pfierzig. The tourist who, through his ignorance of the language or his desire of display, frequents these English hotels, learns nothing of the languages, nothing of the customs of the people, scarcely anything of the cuisine, but becomes a target for the attacks of interpreters, guides, lying ciceroni, and a host of hangers-on, who impose on him in proportion to his ignorance, and palm off falsehoods on him suited to his bigoted preconceptions on every subject. In the drawing-room and at the table, he may as well be at home in London or New York, as far as language, habits, etc., are concerned, and he often leaves a country with less real knowledge of it than he had before he came.

The artist, the student, the gentleman bachelor, who stroll about for their own pleasure, and pay no unnecessary homage to fashion or humbug—these are the ones who derive genuine pleasure from the novelty and constant surprises of new customs, languages, and people. I have seen such persons, some of them men of independent fortune, travelling in omnibus or on foot about Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. They send their trunks on to some known hotel in a place fifty miles off, and then, carrying simply a knapsack with necessaries for a few days, take a stick and perhaps a pencil and paper, and leisurely walk along the fine roads of those countries, meeting a village every few miles, where they can take some refreshment, or stay over night. This is seeing a country, and knowing its language, customs, people, by personal observation, and not through the uncertain medium of hotel guides. And who would compare the restrained formality of fashionable moving about to the glorious freedom of this? The students of the English College at Rome used to travel thus two or three together during vacation, and spend the time delightfully.

When visiting the ancient, interesting city of Nürnberg last August—its old castle where the peace of Westphalia was signed, and where many of the Western emperors resided; its curious walls and fortifications; its old mediæval houses, with six stories, under an oblique roof; its curious fountains; and the residence of Albrecht Dürer—I entered a magnificent temple of old Catholic times, that of S. Lawrence, now devoted to Lutheran worship. All the crucifixes, pictures, and statuary with the altars still remain; for Luther was a much more intelligent man than many who imitated his rebellion. I was admiring the tabernacle of marble tracery, which reaches from the pavement seventy feet up to the roof along one of the pillars, and is the most exquisite piece of poetry in miniature stone I ever saw, when my attention was drawn to two students, boys of sixteen or seventeen, who were likewise visiting the church. They were very plainly dressed; for the old Catholic universities are free in Europe, and good conduct only is required as a condition of membership. On their backs, they had knapsacks with straps coming over the shoulders, and containing doubtless a change of clothing, while the long German pipe was seen stuck into the bundle. They carried sticks in their hands, and one had a guide-book, and was reading therefrom, and pointing out to his companion the objects of interest existing in the church. I watched the boys with great interest, and felt how happy they were in their simple manners and pure friendship—happy in the possession of knowledge more than if they had the Rothschilds’ wealth or Bismarck’s power; they were in love with and betrothed to wisdom, and independent of the world. Walking about afterwards round the great moat and curious turreted walls of this famous town, I came across my two friends, seated on a bench in the shaded, turf-set promenade which girds part of the city, taking their frugal meal of the inevitable sausage and brown bread of the country. Thus they strolled about from town to town, living plainly and simply as their means—the gift, perhaps, of some patron—required, but happy in the banquet which their own erudition and friendship provided. I have seen many travellers, and they have remained longer or shorter in my memory; but the picture of the two students of Nürnberg will remain with me always.

Among those who travel we may include that class so numerous in our own day in proportion to the increase of the enemies of the supernatural—those who, to satisfy their devotion, visit holy places. The sight of persons or localities associated with supernatural events or with the lives of those whose heroic sanctity we venerate, impresses us beings of half spiritual, half corporeal formation in a wonderful degree. I need not dilate on this. It is the reason why, in all ages, such multitudes have traversed land and sea, spent years even of their lives in visiting the Holy Land, Rome, Loretto, Compostella. That they obtained pleasure and sensible satisfaction you may easily imagine; and that they aided the faith by supplying constant information relative to the locality of sacred events, and thus kept up the strength of tradition, cannot be denied; but I would console those whose responsible care of family or office, whose want of means or leisure, prevent their assuming the pilgrim’s scrip and staff, with the words of Thomas à Kempis: Qui multum peregrinantur, raro sanctificantur.

There is so much to distract one in the strangeness and novelty of foreign places, so much disturbance of order in one’s manner of life, that, as a rule, one is likely to come home less single-minded and less edifying than when he set out. However, I must bear witness to an exception, though it is not calculated to be an example for any one here. It is that of a Frenchman, a youth of twenty, dressed in the national blouse (as a duster in the cars over a decent suit of black), whom I met on the way to the famous shrine of Lourdes. His faith was so simple, his modesty so perfect, his tongue so straight (to use an Indian idiom), that I felt that the true Christian is gentlemanly no matter to what class of society he may belong. I was confounded and ashamed when I compared my faith and hope with his, and knew that for the first time I addressed a man who had never breathed the atmosphere of heresy and unbelief, who had never felt a doubt or recognized a difficulty regarding the truths of religion or the pious beliefs of Catholics. Reflecting on the difference between what is termed “the world” in all the conceitedness of its ignorance, and the class whom he represented, I could not wonder that God should show his preference for the simple, truthful people even by the most stupendous miracles. However, he was still in France. Were he on an American railroad-car, he might have allowed some of the mire of the world to adhere to his garments.

I will not rest long on the subject of the Lourdes pilgrimage, as the entire press has been forced to notice it, and has given full reports of the appearance of the shrine, the gatherings of pilgrims, and the wondrous works. Although the people of the village are said to be gradually losing their simple, amiable qualities, on account of the enlivened trade and the continual distraction consequent on the arrival and departure of perhaps a thousand strangers daily in a village of 2,000 inhabitants, yet we could not help remarking the piety of the matrons, the modesty of the maidens, and the straightforwardness of the men—characteristics more refreshing to us than the breezes coming down from the passes of the Pyrenees. It is delightful to get out of an artificial state of society, and to see men and women as God made them. I will have occasion to refer to this subsequently when I speak of the Irish people. The peasantry of Lourdes, whom God chose for this manifestation, are poor but not slovenly, simple but not uncouth, comparatively illiterate but not ignorant. Education is not at all incompatible with ignorance of reading and writing; while barbarism is not seldom found united with these accidental accomplishments.

One evening, having prayed at the famous grotto, which was most exquisitely decorated with candles supplied by the pilgrims, we strolled toward a farm-house, and, seeing some peasants just finishing their day’s labor, stopped and addressed them. Lord Chesterfield would have been charmed to see the ease and grace with which the farmer rose from his task, and inquired our pleasure. His conversation was pure, straight, and full of faith. He spoke of things miraculous just as he did of other events, evidently not thinking how people can question God’s power, or wonder at his goodness. He had been one of that 20,000 who at times witnessed the ecstasies of Bernadette; and, after describing what he saw, he concluded: “Ah! sirs, who ever visits that grotto treads blessed earth.” My friend complimented him on the purity of his language, and the politeness he had shown us, and which, indeed, we strangers scarce expected from one in his dress and employment. “Why,” said he, “gentlemen, if you take kindness and good grace out of the world, after all, what is there worth living for?” We were charmed. There spoke a Frenchman—one of those who made some one say: “They are a nation of gentlemen.” We visited his poor habitation, and were still more pleased with his filial and conjugal affection, as evidenced by his regard for his wife, and care of his bedridden mother.

A propos of this subject of travelling for pleasure, it was very beautiful to watch from a height the pilgrims, 1,500 in number, winding around the road, crossing the bridge, and going down the hillside to the grotto. First came the cross-bearer with the crucifix shining in the sun, then the women and children in the dark dresses which distinguish the inhabitants of the region. Some of them bore lighted candles; others carried baskets on their arms and heads; others had jars containing wine for their lunch, or intended to be filled with the miraculous water. They sang the Litany of Loretto, some priests along the ranks directing, as they walked in double file. After these came the men; then the altar boys in full dress, and thirty or forty in number; then the clerics, priests, and canons in their robes; and finally the Bishop of Perpignan, in sacred vestments, who had thus come with his people to visit the spot favored by the Immaculate Virgin. I never before saw the expression, “The bishop and his flock,” more perfectly illustrated.

We were particularly struck by the behavior of these people in the church—a beautiful marble structure built on the rock, under the side of which the waves of the passing river had formed the grotto. They had none of the superstitious reverence of Mahometans nor the cold decency of Protestants; but acted with that quiet respect, alike remote from fear and levity, which characterizes well-reared children in their father’s house and presence. After performing their devotions with intense faith and childlike fervor, they sat down before the grotto, on the sweet level bank of the river which skirts the rock, and, in a spirit of Christian recreation, began their frugal lunch.

So familiar are fervent Catholics with the wonderful works of God that they who can talk and laugh when the communion thanksgiving is ended found no difficulty in innocent relaxation after paying their respects and perhaps witnessing miracles at the shrine consecrated by the apparition of Mary. They reminded me of the αγαπη of the first Christians, and of the feast we school-boys used to have long ago, after closing our retreat with receiving the body of Jesus Christ; and I could not but acknowledge that these people were most likely to be favored with supernatural manifestations by him who said: “Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

TO BE CONCLUDED IN OUR NEXT NUMBER.

THE CANADIAN PIONEERS.

FROM THE FRENCH OF M. L’ABBE CASGRAIN.

I.—DETROIT.

ARE you familiar with that fertile, laughing country, so rich in historical souvenirs, whose virgin soil was first trodden by our French ancestors? Are you familiar with these green and undulating prairies, watered by limpid streams, and shaded by maples, plane-trees, figs, and acacias, in the midst of which rises, brilliant in youth and prospective greatness, the flourishing city of Detroit? If you wish to enjoy fully the enchanting picture that this charming country presents—whose climate need not be envious of the Italian sun—ascend the Detroit River some fresh spring morning, when Aurora has shaken her dewy wings over these vast plains, and when the bright May sun has thrown its luminous rays through the transparent mists of morning. Nowhere is there a clearer sky or more ravishing nature. Nowhere are the wavy lines of the blue horizon more distinctly traced. Here are wild and uncultivated sites, romantic landscapes, little wooded islands, like baskets of verdure, all re-echoing the mocking laughter of multitudes of birds. Pretty promontories whose round arms encircle gulfs full of shadows and sunlight; whose waves, caressed by these warm breaths, deposit along the shore a fringe of silver foam. Hills and valleys, covered with luxuriant verdure, mirror themselves in the neighboring wave. On either side the shore stretches along, covered with pebbles or fine gray sand; sometimes embroidered with a lace-like turf, or bristling with tall reeds, crowned with little tufts, among which the timid kingfishers perch, and take flight at the least noise. Here the fresh murmuring rivulets flow under the flowery arches of interlacing boughs; there tiny paths, edged with strawberries and forget-me-nots, wind over the brow of the hill; and, more distant, the fresh spring zephyr trembles on the green meadows, and perfumes the air with a delicious fragrance. The thousand confused noises of the water and the rustling foliage, the warbling of birds, the buzz of human voices, the lowing of herds, and the distant and silvery echo of the bells of the steamers that ply along the river, ascend from time to time through the air, and diffuse an indefinable charm in the soul and through the senses. At short distances apart, pretty little villages stretch along the shore, or group themselves on the banks of a stream, or again on the slope of a hill, or crowning its summit like a diadem. Finally you arrive at Detroit, with its steeples and roofs glittering in the sunlight. Hundreds of boats, engaged in commercial interests, are constantly arriving at or leaving its quays, furrowing the river in every direction. Were I a poet, I would compare this charming city to the superb swan of this country, which, on awakening in the midst of the rushes on the river’s bank, shakes its white wings in taking flight, and showers around a rain of dew and down; or, better still, to the stately magnolia growing on the banks of the stream, when, shaken by the aromatic breath of the morning breeze, it covers the wave in which it is mirrored with the fertile dust of its corolla.

II.—THE PIONEER.

Founded in the year 1700, by M. de la Mothe-Cadillac, Detroit remained for a long time under the Canadian government. It was taken by the English in 1760, and remained in their possession until the war of 1812. Then the United States became the happy possessor of this charming country, which F. Charlevoix has so justly called “the garden spot.” “Detroit,” says the Canadian historian, “has preserved, in spite of its many vicissitudes, the characteristics of its origin, and French is still the language of a large portion of its population. Like all the cities founded and settled by this great people—the monuments of whose genius are landmarks in America—Detroit is destined to become a great business centre, on account of its favorable situation between Lake Huron and Lake Erie.”[183] Toward the year 1770 or 1780, Detroit was far from presenting the flourishing aspect which it offers to the stranger to-day. It was only a small fort surrounded by weak ramparts, and a stockade in which lived a few hundred Canadian colonists—a veritable tent in the wilderness. The fort was the advanced sentinel of the colony, and by consequence constantly exposed to the attacks of the Indians. Around the fortifications the colonists had cleared a few acres of land, which they could only cultivate at the risk of their lives, holding a pickaxe in one hand, and a gun in the other; while beyond, before, behind, to the right, to the left, everywhere a wilderness, everywhere interminable forests, whose gloomy shades concealed multitudes of beings a thousand times more cruel, a thousand times more formidable and to be feared, than the wild beasts and reptiles which shared alike the tenebrious shelter. It is easy from this to imagine what indomitable courage these hardy pioneers possessed who dared to come and plant the standard of civilization in the midst of these distant solitudes, in the face of such multitudinous perils. One of the grandest pictures that the history of the New World presents, after the sublime figure of the missionary, is that of the Canadian pioneer. He is the father of the strongest race that has been implanted on the American continent—the Canadian race; and the noblest blood that has ever flowed in human veins, flows through his—the French blood. Everywhere on the continent the Canadian pioneer is to be found, and everywhere can be traced by his blood. Travel through North America, from Hudson’s Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, from Halifax to San Francisco, and on the snows of the North Pole and the golden sands of California, along the Atlantic strand, and on the moss-covered slopes of the Rocky Mountains, you will find the print of his footsteps. An insatiable activity consumes him. Onward! is his watchword, and he only rests when he has reached the goal of his ambition. But it is not alone the love of adventure nor the violent thirst for gold that stimulates him to action: a nobler ambition urges him on, a more legitimate instinct animates and guides him. He has a mission to accomplish—a mysterious apostleship. Turn for a moment to the pages of our history, and especially to the accounts of the Jesuits, and you will see the Canadian pioneer throughout animated by the most admirable zeal for the conversion of the savages, opening a way for the missionaries by the most heroic efforts, and frequently himself making the most wonderful conversions. We find united in him the three grandest types of manhood: priest, laborer, soldier. Priest!—by his ardent piety, his lively faith, his zeal for the salvation of vacillating souls and obdurate hearts, drawing to the faith entire settlements. Was there ever a more admirable priesthood? Laborer!—before his powerful axe the great forests fall with a crash around him, and his plough tracks, through the fallen trunks, the furrow where the green germ of the future harvest will soon begin to tremble. Soldier!—by years of mortal combat, he has conquered the soil that his hand cultivates. Ah! were I only an artist, to trace on canvas this noble figure in his triple character of priest, laborer, and soldier. In the background of the picture, immense forests, in all their savage grandeur; nearer, the waving grain, growing between the charred trunks. In the foreground, a portion of the great river, with its emerald waves sparkling in the sun. On one side, an angle of the old fort, with its ramparts and stockade, whence rises a modest little belfry surmounted by a cross. On the other side, a band of Indians flying toward the edge of the wood. The centre-piece would be my brave pioneer, his eyes flashing, his hair blown by the breeze, and his forehead bleeding from a ball which had just grazed it, near him his plough, and holding his gun, whose muzzle still smokes from a recent conflict. At the right, he would be pouring the water of baptism on the head of his vanquished and dying enemy, whom he had just converted to the faith. Oh! how could I attempt to paint this vigorous figure in the various attitudes of a soldier-laborer, with his iron muscles, and the calm, serene strength of the man of the fields; the invincible courage of the soldier, and the sublime enthusiasm of the priest! Verily, this picture would not be unworthy of the pencil of a Rubens or a Michael Angelo. Faith, toil, courage; priest, laborer, soldier—this is the Canadian pioneer. It is Cincinnatus, the soldier-laborer, become a Christian. It is the Spartan warrior, who has passed through the Catacombs. The Canadian reader who peruses these lines can raise his head with noble pride, for the blood that flows through his veins is the blood of heroes. He can look attentively at the palm of his hand, and see there still the unction of earth, of powder, and of the priesthood. The pioneer has nobly filled his mission: yours remains to be accomplished. A people to whom God has given such ancestors is necessarily destined for something great, if it faithfully corresponds with the designs of divine Providence. But let us leave these teachings, which properly belong to venerable heads, and return to our story.

III.—EVENING.

At the remote period which we describe, the fur trade of Detroit was immense; and the Indians, aided and encouraged by the facilities for reaching there, came in great numbers to sell the products of their hunting expeditions. There were representatives from the various tribes—Iroquois, Potawatamies, Illinois, Miamis, and a host of others. M. Jacques Du Perron Baby was at that time Indian superintendent at Detroit. This was an extremely important and responsible position at that period. M. Baby had realized a handsome fortune there in a few years. Almost all the land on which the Detroit of to-day stands was then owned by him and a Mr. Macomb, the father of General Macomb, who commanded a portion of the American troops during the war of 1812. At the close of this war, the entire property of M. Baby was confiscated in consequence of his political opinions, which were declared in favor of Canada versus the United States. His fine mansion stood in the centre of the fort, surrounded by a beautiful garden. Having luxurious tastes, he embellished it with all the requirements of refined and cultivated life. The garden was on raised ground, surrounded by a sodded terrace; the house stood in the centre, half concealed by a dense foliage of maple, pear, and acacia trees, which waved their branches coaxingly over its roof. A number of birds, sometimes hidden in the branches, sometimes flying through the air, crossing, pursuing each other, describing a thousand bewildering circles, abandoned themselves to joyous song, while the little ramoneur,[184] complaining on the chimney-top, mingled his shrill, harsh cry with their melodious voices. It was evening. The last rays of the setting sun colored with rose and saffron tints the tops of the forests. The heat had been intense throughout the day. The evening breeze, coquetting among the roses, dahlias, and flowering eglantine, refreshed exhausted nature deliciously, and perfumed the air with the most intoxicating fragrance. Tea was about being served in the garden, and the table was most invitingly covered with tempting viands and lovely flowers. The superintendent and his family were seated around; a young officer who had been several months in Detroit had been invited to join the family party. Two colored servants waited most assiduously at the repast. “What a charming evening!” said the officer—he was a handsome young man, with light hair, noble and expressive features, and rather a high forehead. There was a proud, intelligent expression in his bright eyes, and yet at times something vague and dreamy. “Truly,” he continued, “I have never seen anything in Italy more delightful than this; such a climate, and such ravishing scenery, such fine effects of light and shade! Look there along the horizon, and at those fleecy clouds which float through the azure sky; they resemble a superb scarf fringed with purple and gold.”

“It is indeed a magnificent evening,” replied the superintendent. “We really enjoy a very fine climate in this section of country. I have never seen anywhere a clearer sky or more transparent atmosphere, and nature so grand; but, against all of this, we are deprived of nearly all of the luxuries and comforts of the old country, to say nothing of the constant dangers to which we are exposed from the Indians; for we are on the utmost limits of civilization. You, who have just left the civilized shores of Europe, can scarcely form any idea of the cruelty of these barbarians. Life is indeed very severe in this new country.”

“Yes,” said his wife, whose fine physiognomy indicated her great force of character; “it is only a few years ago that I was obliged to do sentinel duty, and stand at the entrance of the fort with a gun in my hand, while the men were occupied in cultivating the fields around it.”[185]

The conversation was here interrupted by one of the servants, who came to say that a stranger was waiting to see the superintendent and his wife. They all arose from the tea-table.

“You look very sad this evening, mademoiselle,” said the officer, addressing a young girl of sixteen or eighteen years of age, and who, from a strong resemblance, could be easily recognized as the daughter of M. Baby. “What can have happened to cause such a shadow to fall on your fair brow; while all are smiling around you, your heart seems full of sorrow? It is almost impossible that any one could contemplate this lovely scene, and not experience a feeling of interior peace. Nothing so completely bewilders me like an evening of this kind. This graceful harmony of light and shade is for me full of a mysterious intoxication.”

“Alas!” said the young girl, “a few days ago I too could have enjoyed this scene; but to-day, as it were, every object is covered with a funereal pall. This beautiful sky, these green fields, the flowers and fruit, these vermilion roses, which charm your sight, all make me shudder. I see blood everywhere.”

“My God!” cried the officer, “what misfortune can have happened to you?”

“Oh! only a few hours ago, I witnessed such a distressing scene that it is impossible to imagine it. I cannot obliterate it from my mind, or distract my thoughts in the least from the shocking spectacle. But I ought not to distress you by this sorrowful recital. I had rather let you enjoy tranquilly these hours that afford you so much pleasure.”

“Continue, continue,” exclaimed he. “Relate to me this tragic story. Happiness is often so selfish, but we should always have our sympathies ready for the sorrows of others.”

The young girl then continued: “Day before yesterday evening, a party of Indians half intoxicated came into the fort to see my father; they brought with them a young girl, whom they had captured several days before. Oh! if you could only have seen the despair on her countenance! Poor child, her clothes were in rags, her hair hung in tangled masses, and her face was all scratched and bleeding. She did not utter a complaint, nor did she weep; but stood with fixed eyes, mute and immovable as a statue. We might have believed her dead but for a slight trembling of the lips that betrayed the life that was not visible. It was a fearful sight. I have never seen anything like it. Great misfortunes are like severe wounds; they dry up our tears as terrible and sudden wounds arrest the blood in our veins. Compassionating her distressed situation, my sister and myself made her come in and stay in our room through the night; but we did not deceive ourselves with the slightest hope that anything could be done for her rescue, for we knew too well the character of these savages. Nevertheless, we tried to sustain her with a little hope that something might possibly be done. Perhaps our father could succeed in inducing the Indians to let her go. At last she gradually recovered from her state of stupor, and told us her sad, sad story.”

IV.—AGONY.

“I have lived for some time,” said she, “near Fort Wayne with my married sister. One morning, while her husband was at work in the field, several Indians suddenly entered our house. ‘Where is your husband?’ they inquired roughly of my sister. ‘He is at Fort Wayne,’ she replied, frightened by their sinister aspect; and they went out again. Full of anxiety, we followed them with our eyes for some time. ‘O my God! sister,’ exclaimed I, trembling, ‘I am so frightened, so terrified. Let us fly; these savages appear to me to be meditating some dreadful act. I am convinced that they will return.’ Without paying any attention to my words, she continued to watch them as they went off in the direction of Fort Wayne. The road which they took lay only a short distance from the place where her husband was quietly at work, not having the slightest idea of the danger that threatened him. Fortunately, a clump of trees hid him from their sight. We began to breathe more freely, for they had now gone beyond the field; but suddenly one of them happened to turn around. ‘They have discovered him! they have discovered him!’ shrieked my sister, almost fainting with terror. And really they had all stopped, and were looking in the direction where Joseph was stooping down, gathering up the branches of a tree which he had just cut down. He had no suspicion of danger. The Indians, concealed by the trees, were now only a short distance off. Suddenly we heard the report of a gun, and Joseph fell to the ground. Believing him dead, they advanced boldly; but the ball had only grazed his head, and he was stunned for the moment. He quickly recovered himself, and, making a breastwork of the branches of the felled tree, seized his gun, and in an instant two of them were stretched stiff corpses on the ground. The others, alarmed, made a precipitate retreat toward the edge of the woods, and then a quick firing commenced on both sides. Joseph was a fine marksman; at each shot, he disabled an enemy. Three had already fallen. We awaited, in an agony of apprehension, the result of the mortal combat, which would not have been doubtful had it been only an ordinary enemy that the savages had to contend with. But Joseph was a formidable adversary. He fired rapidly, reloading his gun with the most perfect coolness, while the balls were whistling all around him. Placing the muzzle of his gun between the branches, he made the sign of the cross on his breast at the moment of taking aim; then, pulling the trigger, we counted another Indian less. Every time I saw a new victim fall, I could not repress a tremor of delight. Joseph’s unerring ball had just struck a fourth enemy. We began to hope, when we discovered one of the savages creeping along on the ground behind him. No serpent could have advanced with more cunning or address. Without shaking a pebble or disturbing a leaf, he approached slowly; at one time concealing himself behind a little knoll, then under a thicket of brambles, only exposing himself when he saw Joseph busy taking aim. Finally he arrived within two steps of him without being seen. Then, stopping, he waited until Joseph had reloaded his gun. Without suspecting the danger behind him, he raised his gun to his shoulder to take aim; then we saw him lower it quickly, and look around. He had heard a slight noise in the bushes near him. He raised his head and listened an instant, then leaned toward the right, and then toward the left, without perceiving anything; for the savage was lying flat on the ground, behind a pile of branches. Feeling entirely reassured, he again raised his gun to take aim. At the same moment, the Indian, with an infernal smile, raised himself from the earth, and, just as Joseph was preparing to immolate another enemy, he brandished his knife. A last shot was heard, a last Indian fell; but Joseph had also fallen, struck to the heart by the cowardly fiend. The wretch then proceeded to scalp him, after which he plundered him of his clothes, in which he arrayed himself.”

V.—LAMENTATION.

“Paralyzed with horror and fright, we thought no longer of saving ourselves. My sister, in her despair, pressed her baby to her heart, and threw herself at the foot of a crucifix, which she seized in her hands, and mutely covered it with tears and kisses, while I, too, utterly overcome, threw myself on my knees beside her, and mingled my tears and prayers with hers. Poor mother! she did not tremble for herself, but for her child—that dear little angel, whom she loved so tenderly, whom she so adored. It was indeed a beautiful babe, scarcely eighteen months old, and had already begun to lisp ‘Mamma.’ ‘O my God!’ cried my sister between her sobs, ‘if I must die, I willingly give up my life; but save, oh! save my child!’ Then, embracing it, and bathing it in her tears, she clasped it to her heart, and sank to the floor insensible. Although more dead than alive myself, I tried to sustain her, and had her in my arms, when Joseph’s murderer entered, followed by his cruel companions. Without uttering a word, he advanced toward us, and violently snatched the child from its mother. She had not heard them enter the room, but, when they tore the child away from her, she shuddered and suddenly recovered her consciousness. The savages, exasperated at having lost seven of their comrades, now only thought of blood and vengeance. The assassin of Joseph, holding the child at arm’s length, looked at it with the diabolical expression of a serpent charming his victim before striking him. It was an angel in the grasp of a demon. The monster smiled—Satan alone could have laughed as he did. The baby, as if to supplicate his pity, smiled also, with that angelic expression of innocence that would have moved the most hardened and obdurate of hearts. But he, seizing it by the leg, whirled it round for an instant, and then—oh! horror!—dashed its head against the heavy edge of the huge stove. Its brains spattered over its mother’s face. Like a tiger she sprang at the murderer of her child. Maternal love gave her superhuman strength, and, seizing him by the throat, she buried her fingers in his flesh. He tottered; his face turned black, and he fell heavily to the floor, suffocated by the strength of her desperate grasp. She would have undoubtedly strangled him, had not another savage at that instant struck her a blow on the head with his hatchet. My poor sister! her death was indeed a cruel one, but her agony only lasted a moment—her troubles are ended, and she is now in heaven. But I—what will become of me? You see the condition that I am in. O my God, my God! have pity on me.”

And the young girl, wringing her hands in despair, threw herself sobbing into my arms, pressed me to her heart, and implored me not to abandon her into the hands of these brutal savages. But, oh! what is more heart-breaking than to witness misfortune without the power of alleviating it! We spent the night in weeping and trying to encourage her, but I could not help feeling at the time that it was cruel to inspire her with a confidence that I had not; for I knew these savages too well. I knew that the monsters never abandoned their victims. The next day, my father tried in every way to conciliate them, and then interceded in behalf of the young captive. He offered any amount of ransom for her, but in vain; nothing would tempt them. The effects of the liquor had not entirely worn off, and they were sullen and obstinate. My father used in turn prayers and threats to move them; but neither presents, prayers, nor threats could rescue her from their merciless hands. The wretched girl threw herself at their feet, and, embracing their knees, besought them to listen to her supplications; but the monsters only replied to her entreaties by bursts of laughter; and, in spite of her prayers, and sobs, and supplications, they carried her off with them.[186]

“Alas!” said Mlle. Baby, looking sorrowfully at the young officer, “are you surprised now at my sadness, and that I could not smile and be gay after having witnessed such a scene?”

“The demons!” exclaimed the officer, stamping his foot in horror and indignation. “This infamous, bloodthirsty race should be exterminated—exterminated to the last man. Why did I not know this sooner? Yesterday, a Potawatamie came to my quarters to sell some furs. He asked three times as much as they were worth, and I declined buying them. He hung around for some time, annoying me very much, until I finally ordered him to leave. He refused to do so; then, losing all patience with the fellow, I rose from my seat, and, leading him to the door, I kicked him out. He went away muttering, and threatening me with his knife. I had a stick in my hand, and I now regret that I did not knock him down.”

“How imprudent!” said the young girl. “You ought not to have provoked that Indian; don’t you know that a savage never forgets an injury? He may wander around the fort for a year, spying all of your movements, watching your footsteps, tracking you everywhere, hiding in the woods and among the rushes in the river, until an opportunity offers, and he will approach with all the finesse and cunning of a serpent, spring upon you like a tiger, and strike you a death-blow, when you least expect it. I see that you go every day out of the fort to fish on the banks of the river. I advise you not to go any more; it is not safe, and something terrible might happen to you.”

“Pshaw!” said the young officer, “you are too timid. I saw the fellow leave this morning with a number of warriors belonging to his tribe; they were going to Quebec to sell the furs, which they could not dispose of here.”

VI.—THE DREAM.

The clock in the salon had just struck one. Mme. Baby and her daughter were seated sewing in the deep recess of an open window, with a little work-table in front of them. M. Baby had gone away that morning, to look after some land that he had just bought on the other side of the river. The streets were deserted; nearly all the inhabitants of the fort were at work in the fields in the vicinity. The heat was intense. Not a breath agitated the trees in the garden, whose motionless branches drooped languidly toward the earth, as if imploring a refreshing breath or a drop of dew. A negro servant was spreading some linen out to dry on the bushes, and put to flight, in her perambulations, some chickens that were panting with the heat under the sheltering foliage of the trees and shrubs. The silence was only broken by the buzzing of insects, and the noisy whirr of the grasshopper as it danced through the sunlight. The open window, filled with bouquets, looked into the garden, and the pale, melancholy face of Mlle. Baby could be seen between them, bending over an open flower which imaged her loveliness in its fragrant corolla. “Mamma,” said she at last, raising her head, “do you think papa will be away a long time?”

“I think he will be back in four or five days at the latest,” replied her mother. “But why do you ask such a question?”

“Oh! because I am so anxious to have him back again. I want him to take us immediately to Quebec, instead of waiting until next month. The trip will divert my thoughts; for, since those Indians were here the other day with that poor girl they had captured, I have not had a moment’s piece of mind. She is always before my eyes. I see her everywhere; she follows me everywhere. I even saw her in my dream last night. I thought I was sitting in the midst of a gloomy and immense forest, near a wild, rushing river that dashed over a precipice into a bottomless chasm a few steps from me. On the opposite bank, which was covered with flowers, and charming to behold, stood the young captive, pale and tranquil, in a halo of soft, transparent light. She seemed to be in another world. She held in her hands an open book, and, bending towards me, she slowly turned over the leaves. She turned at least sixteen; then she stopped and looked at me with an expression of the greatest sorrow and distress, and made a sign to some one, who then seemed to be standing near me, to cross the torrent. At the signal, all his limbs trembled; his knees knocked together, and his eyes dilated, his mouth gasped with terror, and a cold perspiration stood upon his forehead. He tried to draw back, but an invincible power drew him toward the abyss. He turned toward me, and besought my help most piteously. I experienced the greatest commiseration for him, and tried in vain to extend my hands to help him; invisible cords bound all my limbs, and prevented any movement whatsoever. Vainly he tried to cling to the cliffs along the shore; a relentless force impelled him towards the abyss. He had already reached the middle of the stream, whose deep and foaming waters roared around him, as if impatient to swallow him up. He tottered at every step, and came near losing his equilibrium; but, rallying his strength, he struggled on. At last a great wave broke over him, and he lost his balance. His feet slipped; he looked toward me with a glance of the most inexpressible anguish, and fell. In an instant, he was borne to the brink of the precipice; he threw out his hands, and grasped at a piece of rock that jutted out of the water, burying his fingers in the green and slimy moss which covered it. For an instant, he hung on with the strength of despair; his body, stopped suddenly in its precipitate course, appeared for an instant above the waves. The foam and spray enveloped it like a cloud, and the wind from the fall blew through his dank and dripping hair. His dilated eyes were fastened on the rock, which little by little receded from his convulsive grasp. Finally, with a terrible shriek, he disappeared in the yawning gulf below. Transfixed with agony and horror, I looked across at the young captive; but she, without uttering a word, wiped away a tear, and silently pointed to the last page in the book, which seemed to me to be covered with blood. I screamed aloud with fright, and awoke with a start. My God! will it be a page in my life?”

VII.—BLOOD.

Scarcely had Mlle. Baby finished speaking, when the sound of hasty footsteps was heard at the door, and a man, covered with blood, and with a terrified look, rushed in. It was the young officer. His right arm was broken, and hanging at his side.

“Hide me quickly,” cried he. “I am pursued by the Indians.”

“Up in the attic, quick,” said Mme. Baby to him, “and do not stir for your life.”

In another moment, the savages had entered the room; but, before they could say a word, Mme. Baby pointed to the next street, and they went out again quickly, believing that the officer had escaped in that direction. The admirable composure of Mme. Baby had completely deceived them. Not a muscle of her face betrayed her excessive agitation, and, happily, they did not have time to notice the mortal pallor of the young girl, who, still leaning among the flowers on the window-sill, had almost fainted away. It was one of those moments of inexpressible anguish when a chill like death strikes the heart. Mme. Baby hoped that the savages, fearing the superintendent, would not dare to force themselves into the house; and yet, who could stop them if they did, or who could foresee what these barbarians, once having tasted blood, might do? She hoped that their fruitless efforts might induce them to abandon their search, or, if they persisted, that she would have sufficient time to obtain help, in case they again entered the house. Making a sign to a servant who was at work in the garden, she ordered him to run as fast as he could, and notify some men belonging to the fort of the danger which threatened them. Some anxious minutes elapsed, but the savages did not return. “Do you think they have really gone?” asked the young girl, in a low tone. A faint glimmer of hope appeared in her countenance.

“Even if they should return,” answered Mme. Baby, “they would not dare ...”

She did not finish, but leaning toward the window, she tried to catch the sound of human voices which were heard in the distance. Was it the help that she expected, or was it the voices of the Indians coming back? She could not distinguish. The sound drew nearer and nearer, and became more distinct as it approached. “They are our men,” exclaimed Mlle. Baby. “Don’t you hear the barking of our dog?” And she drew a long breath of relief, as if an immense weight had been taken from her heart.

Mme. Baby did not reply; a faint smile played over her lips. She, too, had heard the dogs barking; but another noise that she knew only too well had also reached her ears. Very soon the voices became so distinct that it was impossible to be deceived any longer. “Here they are, here they are!” shrieked the young girl, sinking into a seat near the window, as the different-colored feathers with which the savages decorated their heads appeared between the trees.

“Don’t tremble so,” said Mme. Baby in a quiet voice to her daughter, “or you will betray us. Look out of the window, and don’t let them perceive your emotion.”

Courage and coolness at a critical moment are always admirable, but when a woman possesses these qualities, they are sublime. Calm and impassive, without even rising from her seat, Mme. Baby tranquilly continued her work. The most practised eye could not have detected the smallest trace of emotion, the least feverish excitement or agitation, on her commanding and noble countenance. A heroine’s heart beat in her woman’s breast, and it was thus that she awaited the arrival of the savages. “Tell us where you have concealed the white warrior,” cried the first one who entered the room. It was the Potawatamie whom the young officer had so imprudently offended. He was dripping with perspiration, and out of breath with his long and fatiguing quest. You could see the rage and exasperation of his disappointment in his ferocious glances, his scowling brow, and the excitement that made every feature quiver.

“Comrade,” replied Mme. Baby, in a tranquil tone of voice, “you know the superintendent well; and, if you have the misfortune to misbehave in his house, you will get into trouble.”

The Indian hesitated a moment, then said, in a feigned mildness of voice, “My white sister knows that the Potawatamie loves peace, and that he never makes the first attack. The white warrior is on the war-path, or the Potawatamie would not have pursued.”

“I have not hidden the white warrior,” answered Mme. Baby. “It is useless to search here; you had better look elsewhere, or he will escape you.”

The Indian did not reply, but, looking at Mme. Baby with a smile, he pointed to a little stain on the floor that no one but an Indian would have discovered. But the sharp eye of the savage had detected there a trace of his enemy. It was a drop of blood, which Mme. Baby had taken the precaution to wipe away most carefully. “My sister has told the truth,” said the Indian, in an ironical tone. “The white warrior has not passed this way; that drop of blood, I suppose, she put there to persuade the Indian that she had concealed the white warrior.” Then, assuming a more serious tone, he continued: “My sister, know well that the Potawatamie will do the white warrior no harm; only show us where he is hidden, and we will go away; we only want to take him pris ...” He stopped, and, bending his head forward, looked through an open window at the other end of the apartment; then, giving a hideous yell, he rushed across the room, and leaped out of the window that opened into the garden. His ferocious companions followed him, howling like a troop of demons. Without seeing what had happened, Mme. Baby understood all. The young officer, hearing the Indians return, and believing himself lost, had the imprudence to jump out of one of the windows into the garden. He ran toward a covered fountain in the centre of the parterre to hide, when the Indian perceived him. How can I describe the scene which followed? The pen drops from my hand. In two bounds, they had reached him, and one of the savages, striking him a terrible blow with his fist, sent him reeling to the ground. He fell on his broken arm, and the excruciating pain caused him to utter a deep groan. They then seized hold of him, and bound his hands and feet. Poor young man! what resistance could he make to his cruel enemies, with a broken arm, and totally disabled and weakened by the loss of blood. He called for help, but the echoes in the garden only answered his cries, and redoubled the horror of the scene. Mlle. Baby, bereft of her senses, threw herself at her mother’s feet, and, hiding her face on her knees, she covered her ears with her hands, to shut out, if possible, from sight and hearing the frightful tragedy. While the rest of the savages were tying their victim down, the Potawatamie drew out his knife, and deliberately commenced to sharpen it on a stone. His face betrayed no excitement whatever; not even the horrible pleasure of gratifying his vengeance, which caused his heart to palpitate with an infernal joy, could change his stoical countenance. “My brother the white warrior,” said he, continuing to whet his knife with the utmost coolness, “knows very well that he can insult the Potawatamie with impunity, because the Potawatamie is a coward, and would rather run than fight.... Does my brother now wish to make peace with his friend, the Potawatamie? He can speak if he wishes, and name his terms, for he is free.” Then, suddenly assuming a ferocious air, he straightened himself up, and, fixing his inflamed eyes on the young officer, said: “My brother the white warrior can now chant his death-song, because he must die.” And brandishing his knife, he plunged it into his throat, while another of these monsters caught the blood in a little copper kettle. The rest of the savages then kicked and stamped upon the body with the most infernal yells and contortions. The death-rattle of the poor victim, mingling with these howls, reached the ears of the young girl, and she shook in a convulsion of horror. At last it all ceased. The victim had been immolated. Pushing aside the corpse with his foot, the Potawatamie, followed by his companions, came again toward the house. “Ha! ha! so you would not tell us where your friend, the white warrior, was?” cried the Indian, as he entered the room. “Very well, since you love him so much, you shall drink his blood.” Mme. Baby, pale as a marble statue, drew herself up firmly. “You can kill me,” said she, “but you can never make me drink it!” The young girl had fainted, and was lying at her mother’s feet. They seized hold of Mme. Baby, and tried to force open her mouth; but failing in their efforts, they threw the contents of the vessel in her face, and left the house.[187]

VIII.—THE SERPENT.

Several months had elapsed since the events had taken place which we have just narrated. It was night. In the centre of the garden, a simple black cross had been erected on the spot where the unfortunate young man had been massacred. No inscription revealed to the passer-by either the name of the victim or the fatal circumstances of his death. Alas! it was written for ever in characters of blood on the hearts of the family. Every evening, the superintendent, with his wife, children, and servants, assembled at the foot of this cross, to pray for the repose of the soul of his unfortunate friend. On this especial evening, all the family had as usual visited the grave, and returned to the house, except the young girl, who, dressed in deep mourning, still remained kneeling at the foot of the sombre monument. She was very pale, and there was an expression of the most ineffable sadness on her face. The evening dew had almost entirely uncurled her long ringlets, which now hung in disorder around her cheeks. You might have mistaken her for a statue of grief. From the clear, high heaven above, the moon poured floods of melancholy light. Its dreamy rays fell on the sod at the foot of the cross and on the face of the young girl like a thought from beyond the tomb—like a silent and grateful sigh from the innocent victim whose memory had left so tender and anguishing an impression in her soul. Her lips moved in ardent prayer—prayer, that celestial solace of the grief-stricken heart, the smile of the angels through the tears of earth. For a long time she thus silently held communion with her God, breathing out her prayers with sighs and tears, as she knelt at the foot of this cross, on the sod still damp with the victim’s blood. At last she rose, and was about to leave, when, raising her eyes for a moment, she thought she saw a shadow moving across an opening in the wall of a shed near by. A cloud, at that moment passing over the moon, prevented her from distinguishing what the object was. She waited a moment until the cloud had passed over, when what was her astonishment to see a human face in the aperture! It must be a robber, she thought, and yet she knew positively that the gate was well secured. “He will find himself nicely caught when the servants come to lock up,” said she to herself. By degrees, however, the head was pushed more and more through the air-hole, and gradually emerged from the obscurity. At the same moment, the moonlight fell clear and full on the face. The young girl actually shivered. She recognized it but too well; it was impossible to be mistaken. It was he; she recognized perfectly his copper skin, his hard, ferocious features, and his yellowish eyes, rolling in their sockets. It was indeed the Potawatamie, the murderer of the young officer.[188]

Her first thought was flight, but an invincible curiosity fastened her to the spot. The Indian continued to work through the aperture; one arm was already out, and he held something in his hand which she could not discern. He tried for a long time to get through the air-hole, which was too small for his body. Finally, while making a last effort, he suddenly turned his head, and fixed his eyes with a very uneasy expression on a little bush near him. He seemed undecided what to do; then, letting go the object, he rested his hand on the ground, and, pushing it against the earth with all his strength, tried to force himself back again through the hole. But his broad shoulders, compressed on both sides by the wall, held him like a vice, and he could neither move one way nor another. Then his uneasiness increased, and he looked again anxiously toward the bushes. A slight rustling of the leaves was then perceptible, and a small head emerged slowly from the shadow of the branches, and extended itself toward the savage. It was a rattlesnake.[189] Immovable and with fixed eyes, the Indian watched the least movement of the reptile, which advanced softly and cautiously, as if aware of the strength and power of his redoubtable adversary. When within a few feet of the savage, it stopped, raised itself up, and, throwing out its forked tongue, sprang toward his face; but, before he could touch him, the Indian, as quick as thought, gave him a violent blow with the hand that was free, and the reptile fell a short distance from him. Then he began again to make every effort to disengage himself; but in vain. The snake, now furious, advanced a second time to recommence the attack, but with more caution than before. Approaching still nearer to his enemy, he threw himself forward with much greater violence, but without success; for the hand of the savage sent him rebounding further off than before. The Potawatamie then gathered all his strength for a final effort of liberation, but of no avail: he remained fast in the opening of the air-hole. Quick as lightning, the reptile, now foaming at the mouth, with blazing eyes, and jaws swollen with rage, his forked tongue extended, sprang with renewed strength toward his prey. His scaly skin glistened and sparkled in the silvery light of the moon, and the slight noise made by his rattles resembled the rustling of parchment, and alone broke the silence of the night. This mortal combat in the stillness of night, between a serpent and a savage more subtle than the serpent, had an indescribable fascination; it was more like a contest between two evil spirits, in the shadow of night, over some unfortunate victim. The serpent now approached so near the Indian that he could almost have seized him with his hand; he raised himself a last time, and, throwing back his head, sprang forward. The savage, guarding himself carefully with his one hand, had followed with his eyes the least movement of the writhing body. It was plain to see that the final fight had begun, and could only terminate in the total vanquishment of one or the other of the combatants. At the instant that the snake sprang like an arrow upon his enemy, the Indian raised his hand; but this time the attack of the reptile had been so rapid and instantaneous that, before he could strike him a blow, his fangs had entered his cheek. A hoarse cry died away in the throat of the savage, who, seizing the serpent with his hand before he could escape, raised him to his mouth, and in his rage tore him to pieces with his teeth. A vain reprisal—the blow had been struck. A short time after, the most horrible cries and fearful convulsions announced that the mortal venom had entered his veins. The victim writhed with despair in the midst of his excruciating agony. It was thought at first that he had finally succeeded in getting out; but subsequently they found the body, enormously swollen, still held in the aperture of the air-hole. His bloodshot eyes were starting from their sockets, his face as black as ink, while his gaping mouth revealed two rows of white teeth, to which still clung the fragments of the reptile’s skin, and flakes of bloody foam. Providence had indeed terribly avenged the assassination of the young officer.

THE JESUITS IN PARIS.

A WALK in the direction of the gloomy though now as ever fashionable Faubourg St. Germain is not exactly one that a non-fashionable person would ordinarily choose; nor does the Rue de Sèvres in that quarter hold out any particular inducement for a foot-passenger to traverse it.

However, it was to the Rue de Sèvres that, on the 18th of January, 1873, I bent my steps; for at one o’clock precisely I had an appointment to keep there with a Father of the Compagnie de Jésus; and No. 35 in that street is the society’s headquarters.

I crossed the Seine at the Pont Royale, and soon found myself in the main artery of the faubourg—the well-known Rue du Bac. I splashed along with omnibuses that seemed determined to do their best to destroy the roughly macadamized carriage-road; by huge gaps in the façade, where the pétroleuse had been at work, and where the dull-red walls looked as if the destroying element were still lurking about them; by blue-coated and blue-hooded policemen, who scrutinized one to an extent that made you debate within your mind whether you had or had not picked the pocket of a passer-by, or lately become affiliated to the Internationale. On, by the “Maison Petit St. Thomas”—a large dry-goods establishment, the name of which may bring back perhaps to some of our lady readers the pleasant season passed a few years since in Paris, with its gay fêtes and agreeable shopping excursions. On, till the plate-glass of the store windows becomes less costly, and the fish and the charcuterie, or ham and sausage shops, become more plentiful. On, till at last, to right and left, “Rue de Sèvres,” in bold white letters on a blue ground, tells me that I have reached my destination. To save time, I thought it necessary to ask some one where the particular house that I wanted was situated. I looked at a sergent de ville, but his glances repelled me. I turned towards a cabman, but I fancied he expected something more than I was prepared to give him; and then, not in despair, but in the natural order of things, I had recourse to the inevitable Parisian chestnut-man, who (I having taken the precaution of buying two sous’ worth of damply-warm chestnuts) willingly gave me all the information that I required.

The exterior of No. 35 Rue de Sèvres is as much like that of any other house in Paris as you can well imagine. There is a certain number of feet of stucco, relieved by oblong windows; and there are two large portes cochères, or folding-doors, far apart from one another, and looking incapable either of being opened or closed; although, in point of fact, the one leads to the church, and the other to the convent.

I entered, of course, by the last-named portal, and, passing through the usual French courtyard, knocked at a glass door, from whence it was evident that a brother porter within held communication with the world without.

I presented my letter of introduction to him, and, while he was making arrangements for the transmission of it to the rightful owner, because it was raining heavily, and because I saw only one door open, I entered by that door, and found myself uninvited and unwittingly in the conciergerie, or porter’s lodge, itself.

The concierge and his occupation afforded me a good deal of amusement, or, to speak less lightly, a good deal of room for thought during part of the three-quarters of an hour that I was destined to wait for the arrival of the priest with whom I had the engagement. He has under his control the management of ten brown wooden handles, attached to ten wires, which wires are connected with ten different doors in different parts of the establishment.

If a person want a confessor, he pulls the wire connected with the church. If a lady desires advice, another pull opens the parlors to her. If a priest wishes to come from the convent, another pull in another direction is necessary. And as these pulls (except in the last case) are invariably followed by a message sent through a speaking-tube by the same brother porter, to inform the priest of the fact that he is wanted; and as through the before-mentioned glass door and otherwise he receives all letters, and answers all queries, both from within and without, he has, I take it, a pretty hard time of it.

I had been too much absorbed at first to observe what was taking place around me; but, after a little, I began to remark that the priests, in passing to and fro through the conciergerie, bestowed upon me more glances of earnest inquiry than I thought my personal appearance actually warranted. At last the mystery was solved by one father being so good as to tell me that seculars generally waited in the parlors. I bowed, thanked him gratefully, and went; but not before I had discovered that, if the pigeon-holes for letters be a true test, there were fourteen or more priests resident in the Rue de Sèvres at that particular time.

I was not sorry for the exchange of place. It was strangely interesting to be sitting in those rooms where, so short a time since, the Communists, under the command of an energetic young gentleman named Citoyen Lagrange, took prisoner the good Superior Father Olivaint and his Père Procureur, M. Caubert.

Strange to sit in those parlors, and gaze upon the large and well-photographed portraits of those two men and martyrs, and to notice the remarkable likeness existing between them. How both had the same square forehead and firmly set, powerful mouth; and how both looked—as they were—soldiers ready to die under the banner for which they fought.

Ne pleurez pas sur moi,[190] cried Father Olivaint to the solitary group of sympathizers whom he met on his way to the Préfecture de Police.

No! mon père, we weep not, but rather thank God that the grand old spirit of martyrdom has not yet died out among us!

Besides the thoughts which the past suggested to me, it was interesting to note the living occupants of the rooms. One silver-haired old gentleman, whom I afterwards found out to be the self-same Père Alexis Lefebvre whom Lagrange left in charge of the house, telling him to keep it au nom de la Commune, was holding a very serious conversation with two or three gentlemen, the red ribbons in whose button-holes declared them to be chevaliers de la Legion d’Honneur. Another father was having quite a small reception of middle-aged married ladies, who probably had, or desired to have, sons either at the College of Vaugirard or at that of S. Geneviève. Another—but stay! here is my particular father, to whose kindness I owe it that I have been enabled to write this paper.

The Society of Jesus is so well known to the citizens of New York that it would be superfluous for me to give any lengthened description of the general principles of government upon which the order is based. Suffice it to say, for the benefit of the uninitiated, that, in common with other religious, they have a head resident at the Roman court; provincials under him, among whom the supervision of the different stations is divided; and superiors of individual houses.

It is peculiar, however, to the Society of Jesus that each provincial has attendant upon him an officer called socius, whose care it is to look after the pecuniary business of the province, and in many kindred ways to assist his chief; but this office, I am informed, does not confer any additional rank upon the holder.

The case is different, however, with some other officials of the society, called “consulters,” who, as their name implies, are chosen from among the number of the elder and more experienced brethren.

The house in the Rue de Sèvres was reopened in the year 1853, after having been considerably enlarged.

The main building consists of a plainly-built quadrangle, on the north side of which, and in immediate connection with it, stands the church, dedicated to the sacred name of Jesus. Running along all the inner sides of the quadrangle, both on the ground and the other two floors, is a lofty, well-ventilated corridor or cloister, adorned here and there, after the usual manner of convents, with religious paintings.

The piece of ground forming the natural centre of the quadrangle is laid out with shrubbery, though without pretension to anything more than neatness.

On the ground floor are situated the refectory, the kitchens, and other offices; while the first and second floors are devoted exclusively to the use of the fathers. The cells, like the corridors, are lofty and well ventilated, but so simple in their arrangement as to require no description.

The priests, in the true monastic spirit, sweep and keep clean their own rooms and even the cloisters; and, from the general air of cleanliness and order that pervades the place, it is evident that the work is well done. This walk through the cloisters of the Jesuit house in Paris would be uninteresting were it not for the remembrance of one ne’er-to-be-forgotten room; and for the sake of the names printed upon the cell doors, bringing back as they do to one’s mind the recollection of past times and weary troubles; and the near presence of men so many of whom have distinguished themselves in working for the cause of holy church.

Tread softly, and be silent now, as ye approach yonder door that bears no printed name; for the key that turns the jealous lock will disclose that to thy gaze which should excite thy intensest feelings of humility!

It is the “Martyrs’ Room,” where are kept the relics of the five heroic men, each one of whom “pro lege Dei sui certavit usque ad mortem et a verbis impiorum non timuit; fundatus enim erat supra firmam petram.”[191]

Anatole de Beugy was arrested with the Père Ducoudray.

“Voilà un nom à vous faire couper le cou,” cried the officer in charge of the party of arrest.

“Oh! j’espère,” replied the father calmly; “que vous ne me ferez pas couper le cou à cause de mon nom.”

I imagine that the officer did not think more highly of F. de Beugy after this. In fact, all through the time of his imprisonment, his captors seem not to have liked him or his indomitable sang froid. His coat is there, in this “Martyrs’ Room” (a secular one, by the bye), and it is pierced with seventy-two Communist bullets—truly, a very palpable proof of his enemies’ animosity.

When the Père Olivaint was on his way to execution, as he descended the stairs of the prison of La Roquette, he found—how naturally!—that he had his breviary tightly grasped in his hand. “They have me,” perhaps he thought, “but they need not have this”; and he presented the book to the concierge of the prison, who had shown him some kindness. God knows what motives the man had, but an officer of the National Guard snatched it from his hand, and threw it into the flames of a fire near by.

The concierge recovered the breviary, or what remained of it, and it is now in the “Martyrs’ Room.”

He who can look upon this relic without emotion must have a very hard heart indeed!

Do any of us ever think that the spirit of penance—corporal penance—is dying out amongst us? There are instruments of self-mortification in this “Martyrs’ Room” that will convince us to the contrary.

It is not a miracle—unless the world and life be all a miracle—if, when men die wondrous deaths, wonderful things should follow upon those deaths; and when we see a marble tablet in this “Martyrs’ Room” telling how, not eighteen months ago, at Mass-time, when the priest invoked the saints whose relics lay beneath the altars in the church, a child was healed of a grievous disease, we must not be surprised.

“Ecce ego vobiscum sum omnibus diebus usque ad consummationem sœculi.”[192]

The beds from La Roquette are here—pieces of sacking, stretched out by a contrivance something similar to that made use of in the formation of camp-stools.

Here are the little silver cases in which the fathers concealed the Blessed Sacrament, to be at last, as each anticipated, his viaticum.

But enough....

The church, as I before stated, is situated on the north side of the quadrangle. It is Gothic, and of fair proportions, consisting of a choir and two aisles. The only side chapel worthy of note is that where repose the bodies of the PP. Olivaint, Ducoudray, Clerc, Caubert, and De Beugy, murdered on the 24th and 26th of May, 1871, by the Communists of Paris. The walls, the floor, the whole chapel, in fact, is literally covered with wreaths of blood-red immortelles; while in front of what, in the event of their canonization, will be the “Martyrs’ Altar,” are five white marble slabs, bearing upon them the names of the five victims, together with the incidents and date of their deaths.

My kind guide—the priest whom I have elsewhere described as being “my particular father”—having now shown me all that was necessary of the house and chapel, returned with me to his cell, and, in some very interesting conversations then and on my succeeding visits, soon gave me an idea of the important works undertaken by his society in Paris.

“We are,” said he, “quite a military order. Fighting is as much our business as it is the soldier’s; and I will even go so far as to say that he is no true Jesuit who does not fight. Of enemies, as you may imagine, there is no lack whatever; but, undoubtedly, here our bête noire is socialism; for you know in Paris, as indeed elsewhere, it has ever been our aim to undertake, if possible, the education of the male portion of society. And this, unfortunately, happens to be the favorite work of the socialists also; for, however faulty their code of moral philosophy may be in other respects, they have at least grasped the fact that to educate the affluent youth of a country is to form the intellect of a rising generation. However,” concluded my instructor laughingly, “we have never been very popular in European society.”

“No,” I answered abstractedly; for I was thinking just then of the sacred name which the order bears—of him who was “Virum dolorum et scientem infirmitatem”;[193] and my thoughts reverted to the martyr shrine that I had so lately seen in the chapel. “But perhaps you, who have in such a special manner enrolled yourselves under the banner of the sacred name of Jesus, have received of him a greater share than others of the shame of the cross.”

The father’s reply was a very practical one. “My dear sir,” said he, “nothing of the kind. The world dislikes us because we persist in teaching, and because it knows perfectly well that all our teaching is impregnated to the core with that particular kind of Catholicity which it hates—the Catholicity, I mean, whose first principle is devotion and implicit obedience to the Holy See.”

It will be seen, therefore, from the foregoing fragment of conversation, that the Jesuits’ work in Paris is for the most part the Catholic education of the upper classes.

The fathers in the Rue de Sèvres do, in one way and another, a good deal of work, although but little, perhaps, of a character that directly identifies itself with the peculiar animus of the order to which I have alluded. They are popular as confessors, and this involves a good deal of labor.

They direct two confraternities of men, each numbering respectively upwards of two hundred members. One is for the fathers of families, and the other for young men. Each society meets in the chapel upon alternate Thursdays for Mass and instruction. Again, the Jesuits render every assistance that lies in their power to the parochial clergy; and thus the fathers become, now conductors of missions, and now Lenten or Advent preachers.

At the Rue de Sèvres are given retreats, not only to their own brethren and the secular clergy, but also, and on a large scale, to private individuals—men whom care has driven to seek refuge in the contemplation of the treasures laid up for them in heaven.

Jesuits, whose duty calls them to places en route to which Paris becomes a natural resting-place, find a haven in the Rue de Sèvres. The provincial resides here when he is in Paris; and, finally, a few men who, at a moment’s notice, are available to be sent anywhere to meet a sudden emergency, make for the time this most interesting house their home.

In a dark, narrow street in close proximity to the Pantheon—in a street that, in its unlikeness to some other parts of the city, reminds one of the Paris of history—is situated the College of S. Geneviève. This is the chief educational establishment of the order; the other being that of the school of the Immaculate Conception at Vaugirard—a village on the southwest side of Paris.

In concluding this chapter in the life of what, next to holy church itself, must ever be considered the most wonderful organization that the world has ever seen, I cannot do better than append a brief account of the character of the work done in these two houses.

The Ecole S. Geneviève, founded in the year 1854, proposes for its object the preparation of youths for admission into the various professional colleges in France. That the work is a success may be seen in the fact that, in 1872-1873, sixty-four students were actually admitted from thence to the military academy at St. Cyr, while twenty-three more were declared “admissibles”; that the same school sent sixteen boys to the Ecole Centrale, to be educated as engineers, seven to the Ecole Navale, and twenty-three to the Polytechnique; and, lastly, that, exclusive of these, many more have been admitted into other similar establishments in Paris or elsewhere. The aggregate number of students appears, from the statistics put into my hands, to exceed four hundred and fifty.

The present rector of S. Geneviève is the immediate successor of the Père Ducoudray; and it is a noteworthy fact that three out of the five men killed under the Commune were connected with the school; the other two being PP. Caubert and Clerc. The services of the last-named father must have been extremely valuable; for, previous to his admission to the Society of Jesus, he had been for many years a naval officer.

The school of the Immaculate Conception, at Vaugirard, is perhaps as perfect a specimen of its kind as can be found in Europe.

At the present moment, there are upwards of six hundred and forty boys, representing the flower of the French beau monde, receiving at this institution a sound high-class education.

On his entrance, the scholar is at first put through an elementary course, out of which he is drafted into the sixth form, from which he rises to the third, and then completes his education by successive courses of classics, rhetoric, and philosophy.

Thus, to an outsider and to a passer-by in Paris, appears the work of that grand order whose aim we believe to be no less than the motto they have adopted:

Ad majorem Dei gloriam!

SAN MARCO: A REMINISCENCE.

IN all the great cities of the Old World, the cathedral is the nucleus round which gathers the social life of the community. It is a national monument, a historical representative; it keeps in its tombs records more precious to the nation than those treasured in archives and libraries; it is identified with the city’s success or failure, and often bears visible marks of this sympathetic life in its trophies or in its ruins. Of old, the principal church of a city became the mirror of the people’s individuality; it took on the form that best expressed the people’s genius; it was an index to the national character. If this is so with other churches, it is perhaps even more strikingly true of S. Mark’s in Venice.

This unique church, the S. Sophia of the West, and the inheritrix par excellence of Byzantine treasures, is one that, to our fancy, makes a deeper impression on the stranger than S. Peter’s at Rome. To describe it technically; to speak of its uneven floor and crowded, heavy pilasters; to enumerate its columns, and analyze the color of its mosaics, is simply a desecration, besides inevitably implying an untruth. Criticism cannot be anything but an afterthought, even though genuine admiration should not be the first impression of the visitor. A spell is laid upon you at the very outset, and an indescribable feeling of reverence steals over your every sense as you tread the dusky aisles. We have always found it most satisfactory, in visiting either churches or cities, to slowly drink in the spirit of the place, rather than rush into a dissection of its detailed sights; and we are persuaded that this slow, receptive method is the only way in which to enjoy travel of any sort.

Thus, for instance, S. Mark’s became so woven in with our daily life that, without being able to give a single date or statistical fact concerning it, we were yet entirely penetrated with its peculiar beauty, but, above all, by its silent influence.

We went there every morning to early Mass—which, by the bye, is the only way to see a beautiful church on the Continent. You grow to love it, to know its every corner, to feel its peace, to be quite at home in it, to look out for the sunbeam throwing its line of gold over some particular spot on the marble floor, or for the red glow of the sunset to illumine some favorite mosaic. Then, too, you begin to know your fellow-worshippers, and to expect the clamorous hum of devotion with which this old man tells his beads, or to be disappointed if you fail to see the old beggar-woman crouching behind the ponderous door, and stretching out her hand with a ready blessing for the daily alms. S. Mark’s is one of the most peaceful churches in Europe; silence seems natural to it, and not even a great ceremony appears to create any stir there. The midnight Mass, which, by a singular exemption from the ordinary rule, takes place on Christmas eve, at five o’clock in the afternoon (this and the Christmas Mass at Vienna are the only such exceptions), is celebrated with great pomp, and the music is not too full of repose; yet the spirit of the church seems serenely unaltered, and the great brooding silence hangs over the echoes of the pageants, hushing them till the mind wanders away so far from their earthly presence that it is hardly more conscious of them than a man standing on a high mountain would be of the suppressed hum of the city lying at his feet. But another solemnity have we witnessed in this church much more congenial to its spirit, and indeed the most impressive of all Christian ceremonies—the office of Tenebræ. S. Mark’s is never lighted by anything save the golden lamps of its distant shrines, and the tall columns of wax on the high altar. The service on the three evenings of Holy Wednesday and Thursday, and Good Friday, is generally after dark, and every one brings his own light—a cerino, or coil of waxen taper—by which to read his book. This will barely suffice for two persons to read by, so that, from the gallery where we were stationed, we could see the church sown with stars, like the heavens at midnight; while, in the various fantastic recesses above and below our own, called galleries, glimmered a score of similar fitful lights. The attendance was small, and the beauty of the sight thereby increased. The chant, coming from below as the invisible choir breathed out the solemn lamentations, had a weird, stilling effect, like that of the sighing of the wind among the pines, suggesting everything that was strange, far-away, and desolate. We had heard the Miserere of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and likened it to what one might dream the angels to have sung while Christ hung on the cross of Calvary; but this—the same service, the same words, almost the same chant—seemed rather what the watchers round the sepulchre might have whispered amid their sobs, as they left the sacred body of their dead Lord on the evening of the first Good Friday.

Among the few people whose faces were near enough to be recognized were some of our acquaintances of the Venetian salons. They wore the customary dress, black gowns and lace veils falling gracefully around them. One was a great beauty by night, though what looked a soft, cream-colored complexion then would look sallow by day. She was the daughter of a Jew, married to a nominal Catholic, but an actual atheist, and herself practised no religion whatsoever. Here she was, with her beautiful, hopeless eyes fixed on the religious ceremonial with a sort of weary, hungry, perplexed look, while a friend tried earnestly to interest her in the spirit of the ritual.

Don Carlos and his family were there too, he and his brother being mere boys at the time, and more occupied by the care required to keep the cerino from burning down too low than by the solemn ceremonies at which they were assisting. The daily life, if one may so call it, of the Venetian Basilica has, however, more power to charm the memory than its hours of splendid show. We like best to think of it almost empty and quite silent, its high altar seldom used, and its Lady Chapel, Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, and altar of the Crucifix quaintly propped up against the corner of the pilaster, surrounded by the few worshippers whose faithful instincts bid them haunt the same spots day after day. In the early morning, you enter the seemingly deserted church. No hum of prayer is heard; hardly a human form is in sight. Suddenly, to the right of the high chancel, the sound of a little bell is heard, and, from the winding path that leads through chapels and pillars from the sacristy, a priest appears, vested for Mass, and accompanied by his server. From hidden corners rise up silent forms that join his train, and follow him to the altar which he has chosen; a devout congregation is quietly collected, and crowds round the rails, outside and inside, or, where there are no rails, presses up to the priest’s very feet, and often impedes the server’s movements. The latter is not always very reverential, however, and his motions sometimes savor of abruptness; but the people are too simple-minded to be shocked. When the bell should be rung, the boy ensconces himself at the side of the altar, and pulls a string attached to a bell high up above his head; and here, as in most Italian churches, the Domine non sum dignus is not distinguished by a bell at all. Another feature of S. Mark’s is the collector. At every Mass, he comes round, rattling a box in the face of each person, and crying, in a monotonous tone, “For the poor, my brethren,” or, “For the souls in purgatory”; and, as there are many collectors, and the succession of Masses at each of the three or four altars is uninterrupted, it may be judged whether this simple and erratic style of collecting is not rather an infliction than otherwise; yet somehow it fits in with the spirit of the place. S. Mark’s contains no pictures; that is, no masterpieces of those whom the world recognizes as the kings of their art. SS. Giovanni e Paolo, the Jesuit church, that of the Frari, and many others, are rich in these treasures; but San Marco has its matchless mosaics, combining Scriptural, historical, and allegorical subjects of colossal dimensions, with the most fanciful arabesques and purely decorative tracery. The colors, both in the interior, where the low arches seem lined with the golden glow of an everlasting sunset, and on the outer porch, where figures of vast size and groups of bold conception strike the eye, are almost as brilliant to-day as they must have been a thousand years ago.

If there is no chef-d’œuvre of modern art, there is nevertheless something more suggestive to the Catholic mind. The “picture” we grew to love most in all Venice was no Titian or Paul Veronese, nor even a Bellini (though the latter have the fragrance of Beato Angelico about them); but a brown Byzantine Madonna, hidden behind crowns and necklets of heavy gold, and enthroned in a deep, receding shrine—a temple of blazing gems under the massive, overhanging arches of S. Mark’s. The face, as revealed in the unadorned prints of it sold all over Venice, is very beautiful, the features severely regular, and the expression one of infinite majesty and calm. We know more than one of these sombre masterpieces of unknown artists, which no one admires, because no one, as a rule, sees them, but which, though overloaded with precious metals to the detriment of their beauty, and branded contemptuously by sightseers as mere “miraculous images,” are yet very pure models of ancient art, and most interesting relics of early Christianity. For instance, there is one at Warsaw in universal veneration all over Poland, and whose grave, dignified, and grandly serene cast of features raises it as a work of religious art far above the portraits of simpering maidens, buxom peasants, or gorgeous sultanas, whom the world has recognized for nearly four hundred years as the type of the Mother of God. Russia is rich in these Byzantine pictures, and the Greek Church holds them in as great honor as the Catholic.

We seem to have wandered out of Venice, somehow, in this gossip about unrecognized pictures; but the mention of Byzantium in reality brings us back to the lagoons, for it is as familiar to the Venetian as his own republic. Indeed, one would think that Venice had no civilization before she invaded Constantinople in 1204; for everything of any value, artistic or historical, is always traced up to this date. As it is impossible to create a new Venice, so it would be to build a new Basilica of San Marco; the city of the Evangelist stands alone in history, and its cathedral alone in art. It has the rare merit of suggesting nothing if not Christianity; it is more individual than S. Peter’s, and less associated with pageants and festivals; it is no mere imitation or adaptation of the forms of pagan art; it suits the purple sky and brilliant atmosphere of the South, yet without jarring on the sense of the Christianity to whose use it is dedicated; and, if its style is less symbolical than the Gothic, it is at least less servile than the Palladian. The chief impression it has left on us, as well as the only analysis we wish to make of its beauties, is this—that it is the easiest church in Europe in which to pray without distraction.

“MOTHER OF GOD.”

I KNEW, O God! that thou wert great and good, Holy and just, and yet most loving, too; But never did I know thy tenderness Till these sweet words had pierced me through and through.

It seemed so far to lift my heart to thee, I could but fear and tremble as I prayed; Until thy grace made these sweet words disclose The infinite act of love which thou hadst made.

Mother of God! Then Thou art one with us— Our Brother, Lover, Saviour, all in one; And the great distance ‘twixt our souls and thee Was bridged by Mary’s words, “Thus be it done.”

Henceforth, when I would make my act of love, When my full heart would lift itself to thee, Should holy awe and fear weigh down my soul, “Mother of God” upon my lips shall be.

MEMOIRS OF A GOOD FRENCH PRIEST.

IT must not be always that men’s evil manners are writ in brass, their good deeds in water. The one grand, true, and pure wife of Henry VIII., with her strong sense of justice, commended the chronicler of the virtues of her once-potent but then fallen enemy. The history of conquerors, which most attracts the world’s admiring gaze, is but too often a record of crime; but, fiat justitia, with their crimes let their redeeming qualities, if any there be, stand forth, so that the good and the evil may flow down the stream of time in history, as they move in life, together.

We have recently read a work which contains in a few pages a large record of virtue and vice, of good and evil: the actors, however, were different parties—as far apart in their spheres as the spirits on the right and the left hand on the day of doom.

The Memoirs of the Rt. Rev. Simon Gabriel Bruté, with his sketches of scenes connected with the French Revolution, and extracts from his journal by Bishop (now Archbishop) Bayley, is one of a class of works which is deeply interesting in its nature and striking in its contrasts. The glory and shame of France are strangely brought together. The culmination of the neverending contest between the church of Christ, on the one hand, and the world and the gates of hell, on the other, appeared to be reached in the French Revolution. Heaven-born piety and hell-born iniquity, each in its most potential form, seemed to meet in a death-grapple. Astonished and awe-stricken nations looked on as spectators of the combat, as if upon that field hung the fate of Christianity, of revelation, of, in short, the subordination of the creature to the Creator. The struggle indeed was appalling; and the modern followers of that fool who said in his heart, There is no God, often threw up their fool’s-caps, bonnets-d’âne, or bonnets-rouges in token of victory. But the end was not yet, as it is not yet. In that struggle, as in all others for eighteen hundred years, the divine prophecy was vindicated, and the oracles of Satan for a time were silenced, at least until the father of sin could rehabilitate them in other forms. The American Catholic whose memory serves him for a couple of score of years, may remember to have seen at Mount S. Mary’s College, or in Baltimore, a French priest, whose very physiognomy would strongly rivet attention. We remember once, in early college days, passing from Georgetown College, where we were acquiring the humanities, to Mount S. Mary’s on a holiday excursion. We had fresh in mind as the very ideal of a venerable priest good old Father Jerome Dzierozynski, priest, philosopher, scholar, saint, the pastor of the college, and a model for his younger brethren aspiring to Christian perfection. We found his counterpart in the French priest, Father Bruté, at the mountain. His very presence was inspiring. The man of God was plainly discernible in his calm, placid face, which spoke, without words, of holiness, of wisdom, of learning, of the subjection of self and the man of the flesh, of the age, to the spiritual man, the pilgrim to eternity. Our personal recollections of this eminent man, however, go not beyond appearances and first-sight impressions. We are indebted to Archbishop Bayley’s fascinating work for a knowledge of his eventful career. Born and bred in France in a model Catholic family, he witnessed in his boyhood the practical workings of the French Revolution. He had not the honor to undergo exile or martyrdom, but he knew intimately many of the victims of that reign of Satanas; and his young eyes were made to ache with the lurid coruscations of the philosophy of Antichrist, which swept over France as fire sweeps over a prairie.

Losing his father early in life, his education was conducted by a wise and prudent mother, such as is called in Holy Writ “a valiant woman.” He was sent to the best schools of the day in his native city of Rennes, and he was fortunate in having for his teachers priests eminent for piety and learning, several of whom gave up their lives for the faith. For a short time he worked as a practical printer. “In 1793-4,” he writes of himself, “during the height of ‘The Terror,’ my mother made me work in the printing-office to save me from being enrolled in a regiment of children named ‘The Hope of the Country’; and a hopeful set they were.” A regiment of boys was formed, who acted as so many young demons. “My mother was much pressed to allow me to join them, and was terribly alarmed on this account. I remained in the printing-office nearly a year, and became a pretty good compositor.” To the honor of the craft, we may add that his widowed mother had a printing establishment under her own direction, probably derived from her first husband, Francis Vatar, printer to the king and parliament at Rennes, who prided himself on his hereditary art, his ancestors having been printers for many generations.

After this interruption to his studies, he resumed them, and in due time began the study of medicine. His fondness for the profession, his talents, his industry, gave sure indications of eminent success. In 1799, at twenty years of age, he entered the Medical School at Paris. “At the time this occurred,” he says, “I was entirely wrapt up in my medical studies, and preparing for the prize.” This indeed he obtained. He graduated with the highest honors. There were at that time eleven hundred students attending the course; out of these, one hundred and twenty were chosen by concursus as the best; and among this number M. Bruté received the first prize after another examination. An official appointment immediately followed this youthful triumph. But his thoughts were now turned to another field of labor, and to that vocation alone more worthy than medicine of his high endowments. He determined to study for the church. “He was not led to abandon a profession to which he had devoted so many years of assiduous study, and which opened its most brilliant prospects before him,” as Dr. McCaffrey remarks, “from any feelings of disgust. He always honored it as one of the noblest to which a highly gifted and philanthropic man can devote himself. Delightful as his conversation was to all, and to men of science in particular, it was peculiarly so to the student or to the practitioner or professor of medicine. He turned from it only because he had higher and more important objects in view. His eleven hundred classmates in medicine told him that it was easy to find physicians for the body, but the Revolution had made it more difficult to find physicians for the souls of men. The guillotine and prisons and privations of exile had spared but a comparatively small number of the former clergy, and of these many were occupied in foreign missions. Dreadful as had been the ravages of infidelity and impiety, and the almost entire privation of all spiritual succor, an immense number of the French people still remained faithful to their religion, and a new supply of Levites, to fill the places of those who had perished, was called for on every side.”

The medical student who had gone through the Parisian curriculum with a pure heart and a sinless soul proved thereby his title to join the choicest body of Levites. He not only had gone through the course with virginal purity, but he had already made a fight for the faith amidst its most potent enemies. If he resembled Aloysius at Rennes, he showed the spirit of Bayard at Paris. “Not satisfied with professing and openly practising his religion, he entered into a combination with several of his fellow-students, particularly those from his own province, boldly to oppose the false principles to which they were obliged to listen. They chose such subjects for their theses before the class as to enable them to avow their belief in revelation, and to defend its truth. One of the beneficial effects which followed from this course, was that the attention of the government was called to it. Bonaparte, then First Consul, was laboring to restore Christianity in France, as the necessary means of reorganizing society; and the infidel professors were made to confine their teaching to its proper limits.”

It would be well if infidel or atheistical professors at the present day could be restrained to their respective courses of instruction. Some of them seem to think it incumbent on them to proclaim, ex cathedrâ, their irreligious or atheistical convictions. Such men are entirely unfit for their occupations, no matter what talents or learning they may possess, and they ought to be silenced by authority. This may be considered illiberal by some, but let them make a little change in the order, and suppose a Catholic professor of anatomy to give a daily discourse to his pupils on the infallibility of the Pope before mixed classes of Catholics and Protestants, Jews and infidels: would such teachings, we ask, be greeted with liberal approbation? We think not. Then the infidel professor cannot expect a Christian public to consent to his teachings, beyond his proper course. This is a practical question of the day, and all honest men should demand in the teaching of medicine, or of any science or sciences, that the teachers should confine themselves to demonstrative and demonstrable facts. It is the last degree of folly or of impudence to attempt to prove anything of the relations of the soul to the body by the aid of scalpel or microscope. Professors in the Parisian schools still claim the right to teach covert or overt atheism, and they deem interference nothing less than persecution. They are philosophers, and claim free thought. But their opponents say properly (and this matter has been before the French Senate) that it is not the thought of the professors which is the matter in dispute, but their officious teachings. If they are free to think what they please, says an eminent medical writer, M. Garnier, they are not therefore free to profess or to teach all that they think. Animism, spiritism, materialism, are equally intractable to science. In these matters science can prove nothing; the rights of science, then, are neither compromised nor sacrificed by keeping it within the limits defined by its very nature.

All parents and guardians of youth, whatever their faith, or want of it, should protest against professors of medicine making use of their chairs to inculcate upon their pupils that the soul is subordinate to the body, the immortal to the mortal part of man. These are matters which are not now, never were, and never will be under the dominion of human wisdom or learning.

We will now follow Dr. Bruté rapidly in his career as physician in the higher order, that is, for the souls of men. He made his studies in divinity with the intense earnestness of his nature. “Theology was a science for which his mind was admirably fitted. He loved his religion, and it evidently became his delight thoroughly to explore the very foundations of it.” He was ordained priest in 1808, and was for a short time professor of theology in his native city. In 1810, he came to the United States, and began that active career in Baltimore and at Mount S. Mary’s College which made him so favorably known to the clergy and people of this country. “If Mount S. Mary’s, in addition to all the other benefits it has bestowed upon Catholicity in this country, has been in a remarkable degree the nursery of an intelligent, active, zealous priesthood, exactly such as was needed to supply the wants of the church in this country, every one at all acquainted with the history of that institution will allow that the true ecclesiastical spirit was stamped upon it by Bishop Bruté. His humility, piety, and learning made him a model of the Christian priest; and the impression of his virtues made upon both ecclesiastical and lay students surpassed all oral instruction. The Catholic religion alone can produce such men, and hence their example confirms the faith and elevates the character of all who come in contact with them. The name of Bishop Bruté has been, and ever will be, associated with that of Bishop Dubois as common benefactors to the infant church in this country.”

The church in America has obligations to a considerable body of French priests, driven from their own country for the most part by the ruthless madmen who for a season ruled fair France, which obligations can never be repaid and have scarcely been recognized. Even American Catholics often speak of Lafayette and his followers as the only Frenchmen entitled to our gratitude, forgetting entirely the valiant soldiers of the cross from the same country who Christianized our savages in the wilderness, or who astonished our Protestant civilization with their learning, their talents, and their virtues. Speaking of Bishop Cheverus, first Catholic Bishop of Boston, “which of us,” says Dr. W. E. Channing, the most eminent Protestant minister of his time in that city—“which of us would like to have our lives compared with his?” This candid and generous admission might have applied to others as well as to the almost peerless Cheverus, but none could have deserved it more. How truly is the blood of the martyrs the seed of the church!—including in the martyrs all who suffer in person or property for Christ. The French Revolution sent to our shores as fine a body of priests as the world ever saw—learned, pious, accomplished, refined, and highly cultured in every sense, they left an ineffaceable impression upon their successors in the priesthood in this country. In the order of God’s providence, persecution, in fact, has given the greatest impetus to Catholicity in America. The perpetual persecution of the Irish on account of their religion, the recent or actual persecutions by Garibaldi, Victor Emanuel, and Bismarck, all give laborers to this vineyard, where they are so much needed, and where they are doing a world of good a century in advance of an adequate supply of native priests.

In 1834, Dr. Bruté was consecrated as Bishop of Vincennes; in 1839, worn out with much and faithful service, his pure spirit took its departure. In his poor diocese, he had everything to construct, and everybody to instruct, even some Indian tribes, who received him with great joy as a “chief of the black robes,” a priest of “the true prayer.” He had no sinecure dignity. “At home he was at once the bishop, the pastor of the congregation, the professor of theology for his seminary, and a teacher for one of his academies.” These give a small idea of his labors. When the king of terrors (to most men) came, he found the bishop at his post, on duty, like the faithful Roman sentinel at the gates of Pompeii. But there were no terrors for him. “On the morning of the day before his death, he remarked to the clergyman who attended him with unwearied solicitude and affection: ‘My dear child, I have the whole day yet to stay with you; to-morrow with God!’ To another pious friend he used these simple but expressive words: ‘I am going home!’” And when his pure soul was disengaging itself, as it were, from the body, having received all the last rites of the church, he directed the prayers for the departing to be said, which he answered devoutly and fervently to the last; and then he entered upon that eternal life which he had always been contemplating, and for which his whole career had been one long preparation.

We would wish, if space permitted, to give selections from some of the good bishop’s “Brief Notes” of his recollections connected with the persecutions in France in 1793 and the following years, for they show in their simple details the striking contrasts between the lives and deaths of the children of Christ and the children of Antichrist, among the French people of that day. Never before in the history of the church, or in the history of humanity, did virtue and vice, face to face, reach loftier heights or deeper depths.

The aim of the French rulers was to extinguish Christianity. The “age of reason” had arrived, and its advanced fautors determined that the world should recognize it. But the priests stood in the way, and, by some strange mischance, all the honest and meritorious people of the land made common cause with the priests. To bring these people to a just appreciation of reason, the churches were plundered and dismantled, and turned into temples of reason or barracks and stables, and, if possible, viler uses. To take God’s house from him was to deprive him of a dwelling-place in France, and the example of France would be followed everywhere, so that God should be banished from the earth of his own creation. But the priests—the unreasonable, intractable priests—instead of adopting the new lights, would adhere to the doctrines and traditions of past ages. When the churches were closed, they would worship God by stealth, with their followers, in private houses, in the fields, in the woods, offering their pure and unbloody sacrifice on every hill and in every dale and valley of France. To correct this, their existence, and that of those who harbored them, was demanded in bloody sacrifice. “During the progress of the persecution,” says Bishop Bruté, “the greater number of the priests of the diocese had been either guillotined or shot, or transported to the penal colonies. The more aged and infirm were imprisoned in the Castle of St. Michael. Of the few left in deep concealment, some were almost daily discovered, and, according to the law, led with those who had harbored them to the guillotine within twenty-four hours.” Young Bruté often followed the accused to the criminal court, and listened with palpitating heart to the mock trials of priests and people. His instances are deeply touching. The very capitula arrest attention: as “Trial of the priest and the three sisters of La Chapelle S. Aubert, Diocese of Rennes.” The priest, M. Raoul, was summarily convicted and sentenced; he submitted without a murmur, but attempted to offer a plea for the sisters, who sheltered him, when he was immediately silenced. The ladies were then put upon trial, and convicted and sentenced also. One of them had been a nun, and, driven from her convent home, had returned to her sister’s house. She was a woman of spirit, and when under the sentence of death she had a word to say to the court and the spectators. “When the sentence had been pronounced, the nun could not restrain her feelings of indignation. She rose from her seat, snatched from her cap the national cockade, which even the women were obliged to wear during those days of national delusion, and, trampling it under her feet, she addressed alternately the judges and the people with two or three sentences of vehement reproach: ‘Barbarous people,’ she exclaimed, ‘amongst what savage nations has hospitality ever been made a crime punishable with death?’ I cannot now call to mind her other expressions, except that she appealed to the higher tribunal of God, and denounced his judgment against them.... The same day these four victims were immolated upon the fatal guillotine. They were taken, I think, as was often the case, from the tribunal to the scaffold, which remained permanently erected under the windows.” “A priest and peasant, bound together, were led to the ‘Fusilade’ singing the service for the dead.” One morning early, young Bruté was startled from his studies by the notes of the Libera me, Domine, from the Burial Service of the church, sung by some one in the streets. “I understood too well what it all meant, and ran to the door to go out and follow them, agitated and partially frightened by the usual terror which rested on my heart, but at the same time animated by the song of death, for it was the priest who was thus singing his own Libera, and the poor peasant stepped along quickly by his side, looking, as may be supposed, very serious, but without the least appearance of fear. The impression on my mind is that the soldiers, who generally followed their prisoners with jokes and abuse, accompanied these two in silence.”

Priests and peasants and nobles were victims to the impious rage of those days, and even women and children. It is appalling to read the summary account of “children shot and children drowned; women shot and women drowned; priests shot and priests drowned; nobles drowned, and artisans drowned, besides the hosts who were guillotined or sent into exile.”

We cannot draw further from the pages of this most interesting book, but the reader may do so at his leisure. We have thought sometimes in reading it that Victor Emanuel and Bismarck might find its perusal profitable. While writing this, we see by the papers that the Upper House of the Prussian diet has passed a bill authorizing a complete control of the church—that is, of all religious matter—by the state government. In other words, the church must be the king’s creature, or must perish. We shall see. There is traditional policy in this move. In one of Frederic the Great’s letters to Voltaire, he expresses a wish to break up the Catholic Church first, for then, he adds, the Protestant churches will be very easily disposed of.

The modern persecutors might see, if they were not blind, that after all the follies and crimes and slaughters of the French Revolution—and surely they can bring nothing worse or more potent than this—the church has risen again in France in her glory, and that hers is at this day the only one great conservative influence in France, as everywhere else in Christendom. Surely it is plain that, though often doomed to death, she is fated not to die. But how strange the infatuation of princes or people who would wish to blot out Christianity from the face of the earth, or to make it a mere servile tool of tyrants! To blot it out! and what then the history of man? Some philosophic inquirer has suggested the extinction of the sun, and then on this now bright planet of ours universal darkness, intense cold, the congelation of all the waters, the death of all vegetable life, the death of all animal life, and of the last strong man in the midst of an infinitude of horrors!

Even so in the moral world if the church of Christ, by the malice of man, could be extinguished: darkness, crime, and death, death temporal and eternal, would be poor lost man’s only inheritance. But, thanks be to God, we know that the bark of Peter will survive all tempests in the future as in the past, and that she will float over the stormy sea of time in safety to the consummation of ages; for the divine assistance is promised to her for ever.

In conclusion, we beg leave to express the hope that Archbishop Bayley will give to the world a new and enlarged edition of Bishop Bruté’s life, as his materials are by no means exhausted. It will be no detriment to Mr. Clarke’s excellent work to give to many of the deceased prelates, individually, much more extended biographies than that gentleman could possibly give in his instructive pages. And finally, we may express a hope that, when Lady Herbert edits a new edition, she will not forget to give due credit to the distinguished author whose labors she has in some sense so fully appreciated.[194]

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

LECTURES AND SERMONS. By the Very Rev. Thomas N. Burke, O.P. New York: P. M. Haverty. 1873.

This, the second volume, containing thirty-two of F. Burke’s magnificent discourses, has just been issued by his authorized publisher, Mr. Haverty. In neither matter nor form is it inferior to the splendid volume published a year ago. It contains lectures on most of the important questions of the day, and nowhere better than in these lectures may be found a solution to the great problems that the moral and social condition of our age and country present. The fundamental principles of religion, order, and law treasured up in the Summa of S. Thomas, F. Burke has thoroughly mastered and made his own; and, armed with these, he comes forth in the might of his eloquence, prepared to offer a remedy for every disease, intellectual and moral, of the XIXth century. The principles which he advocates and has proclaimed on the house-tops, from the Merrimac to the Mississippi, are just those by which modern society must be saved, if saved at all. His mission has been called a providential one with reference to the Irish in this country; but we believe it to be a providential one with reference to the American people at large. Never before have the genuine principles of human action been so publicly and brilliantly taught in our land; and the good seed, sown broadcast as it has been, cannot but take root and produce fruit in due season.

Even now the conversions to our holy religion, wrought through the instrumentality of F. Burke’s preaching, are many and widespread. But how great and palpable the good he has done amongst his own people! He has aroused their love for faith and fatherland to enthusiasm; he has made them to realize the important influence they are to exert on this continent; he has taught them to feel their dignity; he has told them what is required of them as citizens of the republic; he has pointed out their dangers, and suggested remedies for their disorders. His constant aim has been to instil into the minds of his countrymen every sentiment of religion, patriotism, and honor that could elevate and ennoble a generous race. Since the days of O’Connell, no one man has done so much for the Irish people, and none has received so much of their gratitude and confidence. It is but a short time ago that we heard a poor fellow say he had resolved “never to get drunk again, lest he might disgrace a country that could produce such a man as F. Tom Burke”—a noble sentiment truly, and one that speaks volumes for the man who could inspire it. We seem to be describing the work of a lifetime, and surely what we have said and had reason to say would make a long lifetime illustrious. Yet in very truth are we but enumerating the labors of a few months. What may not critics be able to write in the future, should F. Burke return to us, and resume his glorious work?

THE IRISH RACE IN THE PAST AND IN THE PRESENT. By Rev. Aug. J. Thebaud, S.J. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1873.

F. Thebaud has written us a philosophy of Irish history. He has sought out the characteristics of the Celtic race, and has, we think, discovered them and successfully traced them down from the earliest to the latest annals of that grand old people. He has read Irish history, and reflected on it, and his views, in relation to the Ireland of the past at least, are correct. We are glad that one not an Irishman has written this book; for when an Irishman speaks of his country’s bygone glories, he is pretty generally accused of exaggeration, and the world refuses to be interested in the details of an antique history which it supposes to be in great part the creation of national pride. We have always regretted that Montalembert did not write a history of Ireland, as he once intended to do, and we have never quite forgiven Victor Cousin for the part he took in dissuading the count from carrying out this the cherished scheme of his youth. Had the brilliant author of The Monks of the West compiled the annals of Ireland, the story of Erin’s ancient greatness and civilization would now have its fitting place in the classic lore of Europe. F. Thebaud’s treatment of early Irish history is very satisfactory; he has a real love and admiration for that land—

“History’s sad wonder, whom all lands save one Gaze on through tears, and name with gentler tone.”

Christian Ireland in its golden age is particularly dear to him, and he delights in describing the glories of that Erin, then

“Lamp of the north when half the world was night, Now England’s darkness ‘mid her noon of light.”

In dealing with the events of this period, we think the learned author more happy than in his treatment of modern Irish history, though we are not at all disposed to disagree to any great extent with his views of martyred Ireland’s wrongs and their needs. We, too, believe that

... “Ere long Peace Justice-built the Isle shall cheer.”

From what he says of the present condition of things in that misgoverned country, however, we do think he has not consulted the most reliable authorities on all points; his account of the ignorance and destitution of the poorer classes is certainly somewhat exaggerated. This is about the only thing we find to criticise in a book which is manifestly a labor of love, and executed with an ardor and enthusiasm that love alone can enlist. F. Thebaud’s work is a valuable and highly important contribution to Irish history. To our Irish fellow-citizens it commends itself. To our American and non-Catholic readers who want to form correct views of Ireland and its people, we commend it.

THE LIMERICK VETERAN; OR, THE FOSTER SISTERS. By Agnes M. Stewart. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1873.

This is a historical romance, and a very good one of its kind. Throughout its two hundred and fifty pages thrilling facts and pleasing fiction are well and judiciously blended. The style is really good, and the name of Agnes Stewart is sufficient warrant that the tone is high and unexceptionable. If there were anything in a name, we might be disposed to criticise it in this particular; for, in very truth, the connection between the title and the tale that hangs thereon is slight. The story opens in Scotland, and the bonny Highlands are kept pretty well in view throughout, though the scene shifts to England, France, and Germany, and the curtain falls on a Christmas scene by the frozen St. Lawrence. In a novel such as this we do believe; it amuses, it instructs; from such a book much valuable history may be learned in a pleasing way.

The publishers have done Miss Stewart justice by giving to the public her graceful story in an appropriate form.

SINS OF THE TONGUE. By Monseigneur Landroit, Abp. of Rheims. Boston: P. Donahoe. 1873.

Mgr. Landroit is already favorably known to the English reader by a series of discourses for the use of women living in the world, translated under the title of The Valiant Woman. The present work not only treats of the subject indicated by the title, but also of “Envy and Jealousy,” “Rash Judgments,” “Christian Patience,” and “Grace”; and is intended for those who would naturally derive greater spiritual advantage from thoughtful reading than from formal meditation.

From the unrestful condition of things in this age and country it probably comes that there are fewer vocations to a contemplative life, and less inclination to habits of systematic contemplation, than in older and more settled communities. Hence, works like the present are perhaps more appropriate to those not consecrated to the religious state than many of the ordinary books of meditation. We therefore welcome it as we do all judicious efforts to assist persons in the world to perform the duties to which they may be called, and to resist the temptations by which they may be assailed.

The Marthas are likely always to outnumber the Marys, and should have every assistance at the hands of those capable of leading them in the path of holiness. The church in this and similar ways is ever adapting its aids to the varying circumstances by which her children may be surrounded.

OUT OF SWEET SOLITUDE. By Eleanor C. Donnelly. Philadelphia: Lippincott & Co. 1873.

This modest little volume, a “first book,” gives us confidence that the authoress will fill a useful place in the Catholic literature of America. We say a useful place, for poetry like hers is much in demand in our Catholic homes.

The three divisions of the volume—“Sacred Legends,” “Poems of the Civil War,” and “Miscellaneous Poems”—present a pleasing variety, both of matter and of style. Some of her lyrics are more accurate than others; and some of her descriptions would be stronger with fewer epithets. But her verse is, for the most part, as smooth as simple. And while no one can charge her with affectation, she is certainly not lacking in originality.

There is but a single line on which we shall make a stricture. It occurs in a poem called “The Skeleton at the Feast”: the sixth line of the fifth stanza, p. 77. She speaks of

“The flame Lit for the damned from all eternity.”

Now, God did not create “from eternity”; still less are any of his creatures damned “from eternity.” We therefore pronounce this line a slip of the pen, and beg that it may be altered in the next edition.

In conclusion, we thankfully welcome the authoress into the number of our Catholic poetesses, and hope that ere long she will be again tempted to come to us “out of sweet solitude.”

OLD NEW ENGLAND TRAITS. Edited by George Lunt. New York: Published by Hurd & Houghton. Cambridge: The Riverside Press. 1873.

Any one acquainted with the ancient city of Newburyport will have a special interest in the reminiscences which this very readable book contains. To those who are not, it will give a very perfect idea of the New England of the past, which is even now pretty well preserved in these old seaport towns of Massachusetts. There is not a dry or tedious page in it from beginning to end, and, both in matter and style, it is just the kind of a book for any time of year, but particularly for the summer. At the end, there are a number of ghost stories. Ghosts seem to thrive well in Newburyport, judging from recent developments as well as these more ancient ones, and there can be no doubt that the reputation of Essex County for the preternatural is really very well founded.

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.

From W. G. SIMONS & CO., Richmond: Pastoral Letter on Christian Education. By the Rt. Rev. James Gibbons, D.D. 8vo, paper, pp. 19.

From P. O’SHEA, New York: Essays on Various Subjects. By H. E. Card. Wiseman. Vol. IV. 12mo, pp. 300.

From LEE & SHEPARD, Boston: The Year. By D. C. Colesworthy. 12mo, pp. 120.

From E. O’KEEFE, New York: Third Annual Report of St. Vincent’s Home for Boys, 10 Vine Street, Brooklyn. Paper, 24mo, pp. 16.

From D. APPLETON & CO., New York: Insanity in its Relation to Crime. By W. A. Hammond, M.D. 8vo, pp. 77.—A Review of Prof. Reese’s Review of the Wharton Trial. By W. E. A. Aikin, M.D., LL.D. Paper, 8vo, pp. 20.

From the AUTHOR: Religion in the University: Being a Review of the Subject as agitated in the Legislature of Michigan. By S. B. McCracken. Paper, 8vo, pp. 19.

From the GENERAL THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY, Boston: Eleventh Annual Report, April 21, 1873. Paper, 8vo, pp. 44.

From HOLT & WILLIAMS, New York: Babolain. By Gustave Droz. 18mo, pp. 306.

From BURNS & OATES, London: The Question of Anglican Ordinations Discussed. By E. E. Estcourt, M.A., F.S.A. With Original Documents and Fac-similes. 8vo, pp. xvi.-381.-cxvi.—A Theory of the Fine Arts. By S. M. Lanigan, A.B., T.C.D. 12mo, pp. xiii.-194.—The Prophet of Carmel. By Rev. C. B. Garside, M.A. 18mo, pp. xiii.-348.

From T. & T. CLARK, Edinburgh: The Works of S. Aurelius Augustine—Vol. VII., On the Trinity. Vol. VIII., The Sermon on the Mount, and The Harmony of the Evangelists.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XVII., No. 102.—SEPTEMBER, 1873.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by Rev. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

SHEA’S CHARLEVOIX.

WHEN the history of American Catholic literature comes to be written, the name of John Gilmary Shea will hold one of the most honorable places in the record. So much rough work has been needed to prepare the ground for the American church, so much polemical discussion has been called forth by our peculiar position in the midst of a hostile and prejudiced community, so many problems of philosophy and social science have pressed upon us for consideration, and the demand for books of education and devotion has been so urgent, that few of our writers have found occasion to apply themselves to strictly literary and historical studies or to those branches of criticism which are included in the department of polite letters. And yet how richly this neglected field of research would repay the labors of the Catholic investigator! The early history of many parts of the North American continent is only a chapter in the history of the Catholic Church. The most picturesque characters in the early American annals are the Catholic voyagers of France and Spain, the settlers of Canada, and Florida, and the Pacific coast, and the missionaries who followed them across the ocean, and pushed forward in advance of them into the savage wilderness. How tame and mean appear the quarrels of the Plymouth settlers with hostile Indians, and rival adventurers, and preaching sectaries, and bewitched old women, after one has read of the heroism of a Jogues and a Brebœuf, and the romantic travels of the discoverer of the Mississippi. The settlement of Virginia was a prosaic and commonplace affair beside the settlement of Canada. The monks who accompanied the armies of the Spanish conquerors passed through experiences of the most thrilling kind, whose story has been only imperfectly outlined in the glowing pages of Prescott. Within the limits of the present Union, the missionary has been the chief actor in many an extraordinary scene of dramatic interest, and the hero of many a daring enterprise. Simple-minded F. Mark traversing the desert in search of the seven mythical cities of New Mexico; the gentle Marquette guiding his canoe down the great river of the West, and breathing his last prayer on the shores of the mighty lake; Hennepin, pattern of grotesque mendacity; La Salle, model of a magnanimous commander and a daring explorer—such are among the infinite variety of figures in the early Catholic history of our country. Its later annals are not inferior in interest to the more remote. Even yet the task of the pioneer is not complete, and startling incidents are still common in the chronicles of missionary adventure.

No man has done more than Mr. Shea to preserve the record of all these events and all these personages. For more than twenty years, he has devoted himself to the study of the old materials for American Catholic history. He gave to the world the first authentic and complete narrative of the discovery and exploration of the Mississippi, and brought to light the manuscript narratives of the actors in that most important and striking achievement. He prepared the only connected account of the various Catholic missions among the Indian tribes, from the discovery of the country to the present day. He was one of the joint authors of the only general history of the American church. To these works, and a large number of books of a miscellaneous character, short histories, religious biographies, statistical publications, etc., he has recently added the result of patient and learned research into the Indian languages; he has recovered the grammars and vocabularies prepared by the old missionaries; he has assisted in the preparation of various works on the Indians printed at the cost of the United States government; he has edited an extraordinary variety of historical collections and monographs; and, finally, he has prepared for the press a number of hitherto unpublished narratives, memoirs, and relations in connection with the early French and Spanish settlements. The value of these publications can hardly be overstated. The care and judgment of the editor have been universally recognized by the highest authorities; and though Mr. Shea can hardly expect an adequate pecuniary recompense for his time, his labor, and his outlay, he has been rewarded in a most flattering way by the respect and gratitude of historical students, Catholic and Protestant alike.

His latest work is one of the most laborious of his life, and one of the most splendid in its results. It is a translation, with notes, of the History and General Description of New France, from the French of the Rev. P. F. X. de Charlevoix, S.J. The first of the six sumptuous volumes of this elegant work appeared from the author’s own press in this city in 1866, and the last was issued at the close of 1872. As we shall see further on, Mr. Shea has expended upon the “translation and notes” an extraordinary amount of pains of which the modest title-page affords no hint; but the book was well worth the trouble. No history of America can be written without a constant reference to the labors of F. Charlevoix. He is our best and sometimes our only authority for the transactions in all the French North American settlements. Of many of the scenes that he describes he was an eye-witness. He was a diligent and conscientious student; he had access to important and little-known sources of information; he sympathized with the sentiment of the early French explorers, and caught as by instinct the spirit of those curious expeditions wherein the priest and the peddler marched side by side through the wilderness for the glory of God and of France, and the spread simultaneously of the Gospel and the fur-trade. Born in the north of France in 1682, Charlevoix entered the Society of Jesus, and was sent to the Canada mission when he was about twenty-three years old. He spent four years in America, returning to France in 1709, and teaching philosophy for some time in various colleges of his society. Eleven years later, the king sent him to make a tour among the French settlements of the New World, and a curious account of this adventurous journey is preserved in his Journal of a Voyage to North America, a translation of which was published in London in 1761. He landed at Quebec in October, 1720, visited Montreal and other settlements on the St. Lawrence, and the following spring set out on his remarkable canoe voyage to the Gulf of Mexico. This took him through Lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron, and Michigan. On the 6th of August, 1721, he entered the St. Joseph River, at the southern end of Lake Michigan. Thence by a tedious portage he reached the head-waters of the Kankakee. Towards the end of September, he found himself on the Illinois, and on the 9th of October his frail bark floated on the waters of the Mississippi. Stopping at various posts along the bank, he was nearly three months in reaching New Orleans, whence he embarked in April, 1722, for Santo Domingo. Wrecked on one of the Florida keys, he made his way back to Louisiana in an open boat, and at the end of June took ship again at Biloxi. After touching at Havana, and narrowly escaping another disaster, he made Cape François, in Santo Domingo, and there found a merchant ship, which took him home.

Before starting on this extensive and arduous tour, he had begun a series of histories of all the countries unknown to Europeans previous to the XIVth century, giving to that tolerably comprehensive portion of the universe the general name of the New World. The first instalment of his task, a History and Description of Japan, was printed at Rouen in three volumes in 1715. He had no expectation of completing the whole series of proposed histories. That was an enterprise beyond the powers of one man; but “the same may be said of this,” he remarked, “as of the discovery of America: the worst was done when it was once begun; there is, then, every reason to believe that it will be continued after me, and that, if I have the advantage of suggesting the idea, those who succeed me will have the glory of perfecting it.” The second fruit of the scheme was the History of Santo Domingo, which appeared at Paris in two quarto volumes, in 1730. The third was the History of New France, in three quarto volumes, in 1744; and there was a fourth book, a History of Paraguay, in three quarto volumes, in 1756. F. Charlevoix died in 1761, having been for more than twenty years one of the principal workers on the famous Journal de Trévoux.

Of the four works embraced in his uncompleted series, three are little known on this side of the ocean, except in the libraries of the curious. The History of New France, however, has long enjoyed an American celebrity, through the frequent references to it in the pages of modern historians; and Mr. Shea is not unreasonably surprised that it should so long have gone untranslated. Fidelity is by no means its only merit. It is well planned, and written with a carefulness, simplicity, and good judgment which give it a very respectable, if not a very high, literary character. Its style is not remarkable for eloquence, but it is chaste and direct. It is never ambitious, but it is always agreeable; rarely picturesque, but never dry. Prefixing to his work a comprehensive chronology of European explorations and settlements in the New World (taking that phrase in his own extended application), and an excellent bibliographical account of the numerous authors whom he has consulted, he begins his narrative proper with the voyages of Cortereal and Verazzano to Newfoundland, between 1500 and 1525. It is with the expedition of Jacques Cartier, however, in 1534, that the story of the French settlements in North America properly commences. Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence, visited the site of Montreal, and planned a town there, though he did not succeed in making a permanent establishment. There is a curious illustration in this part of the narrative of the simplicity which gives F. Charlevoix’s book such a peculiar charm. Misled by an unfaithful abridgment of Cartier’s narrative, the good father gently rebukes the traveller for certain marvellous tales which he is unjustly accused of bearing back to France: but there is one strange story to which the reverend historian is evidently more than half disposed to attach credit. An Indian named Donnacona is reported to have told Cartier that in a remote part of the land “were men who had but one leg and thigh, with a very large foot, two hands on the same arm, the waist extremely square, the breast and head flat, and a very small mouth; that still further on he had seen pigmies, and a sea the water of which was fresh. In fine, that, ascending the Saguenay, you reach a country where there are men dressed like us, who live in cities, and have much gold, rubies, and copper.” Now, by ascending the Saguenay, Charlevoix conjectures, and turning west, an Indian might reach Lake Assiniboin, and thence penetrate to New Mexico, where the Spaniards had begun to settle—a conjecture which certainly betrays a rather loose idea of American geography. The pigmies he supposes to be the Esquimaux. But of the men with one leg, he remarks that the story is “very strange.” He does not accept, but he certainly does not reject it. Nay, he cites a long account by an Esquimaux girl, who was in Quebec while he was there in 1720, of a kind of men among her country people “who had only one leg, one thigh, and a very large foot, two hands on the same arm, a broad body, flat head, small eyes, scarcely any nose, and a very small mouth”; they were always in a bad humor, and could remain under water three-quarters of an hour at a time. “As for the monstrous men,” he concludes, “described by the slave of M. de Courtemanche and by Donnacona, and the headless men killed, it is pretended, by an Iroquois hunter a few years since while hunting, it is easy to believe that there is some exaggeration; but it is easier to deny extraordinary facts than to explain them; and, moreover, are we at liberty to reject whatever we cannot explain? Who can pretend to know all the caprices and mysteries of nature?”

From Canada our historian passes suddenly to Florida, which he defines as “all that part of the continent of America lying between the two Mexicos, New France, and North Carolina.” To this part of the new world Admiral de Coligni sent out a colony of Huguenots in 1562 under John de Ribaut, who built a fort at Port Royal, near the site of Beaufort, South Carolina. In all the early settlements of America, there is the same story to be told of avarice and childish folly. The colonists were not settlers, but adventurers. They had come in search of a land where they could grow rich without work, and pick up gold and silver with no more trouble than the occasional killing of a few Indians. They depended for sustenance upon what they brought from France and the provisions they might purchase from the savages. But there was little to be obtained from a race of hunters who were half the year themselves on the brink of starvation, and the fresh supplies promised from home were often delayed. It is almost incredible that no attempt should have been made to cultivate the fertile lands upon which they established themselves; but year after year the same blunder was repeated: winter found the adventurers famishing; and promising colonies were broken up by their reckless improvidence. Such was the fate of Ribaut’s settlement at Port Royal. The commander had gone home to obtain re-enforcements. When the re-enforcements arrived under Laudonniere in 1564, Port Royal had been abandoned. The colonists had built a vessel, caulked the seams with moss, twisted the bark of trees for ropes, used their shirts for sails, and, with a short supply of provisions and a crew composed of soldiers, had put to sea. They suffered terribly. The water gave out, and some died of thirst. After they had eaten their last shoe and their last scrap of leather, a soldier named Lachau offered the sacrifice of his own life to save the rest. They ate Lachau, and drank his blood. Soon afterward, they sighted land, and about the same time fell in with an English vessel.

Laudonniere established himself on the St. John’s River, in Florida. F. Charlevoix tells an interesting story of his curious dealings with the Indians and the dissensions of his disorderly colonists. He seems to have been upon the whole a fair commander, but the fatal mistake of all these adventurers soon brought him to the brink of ruin. Provisions gave out. The expected relief from France was delayed. Fish and game grew scarce. In July, 1567, Laudonniere was trying to patch up his one small vessel to return home, when he was unexpectedly relieved by a visit from Sir John Hawkins with four English ships. Hawkins treated the suffering Frenchmen with great generosity. He gave them bread and wine, replenished their stores of clothing and munitions, offered the whole party a passage home to France, and finally persuaded them to purchase one of his vessels which was better fitted for their use than their own. Laudonniere now hastened his preparations for the voyage, and was actually weighing anchor, when Ribaut entered the river with seven vessels, and set about restoring the dismantled Fort Caroline, and planning an expedition after gold to the distant mountains of Apalache. But this whole chapter is a tale of surprises. Six days after the arrival of Ribaut, another squadron appeared at the mouth of the river. It consisted of six Spanish ships under the command of Don Pedro Menendez, whom Philip II. had despatched to conquer Florida, and drive out the heretics.

The story now becomes a horrible narrative of battle, treachery, and murder. Menendez attacked the French vessels without doing much injury, and then, hastening southward to the spot which he had already selected as the site of a settlement, began the building of St. Augustine. From St. Augustine he marched with five hundred men through the swamps, in the midst of a long and violent storm, surprised Fort Caroline, and put most of the garrison to the sword. At the spot of the execution, Menendez erected a stone with the inscription, “I do this, not as to Frenchmen, but as to Lutherans.” Nearly three years afterwards, Dominic de Gourgues, after a semi-piratical cruise along the coast of Africa and among the West India Islands, crossed over from Cuba to the mainland to avenge the slaughter of his countrymen. He reached the fort unsuspected, and took it by escalade, with the help of a large force of Indians. Then the prisoners were led to the scene of the former massacre, and all hanged upon a tree, with the inscription: “I do this, not as to Spaniards nor as to maranes,[195] but as to traitors, robbers, and murderers.” Such is the story of Dominic de Gourgues, as Charlevoix gives it after contemporary French accounts. No Spanish version of it is known to exist, and Mr. Shea points out in a note the reasons for regarding it with some suspicion. The conqueror could not hold what he had won. Burning the fort, and destroying all the plunder that he was unable to carry away, he hastened back to France; and so ended the history of French Florida.

It was about thirty years after this that the Marquis de la Roche, a gentleman of Brittany, received from Henri IV. a commission as lieutenant-general of the king “in the countries of Canada, Hochelaga, Newfoundland, Labrador, River of the Great Bay [St. Lawrence], Norimbegue, and adjacent lands,” and fitted out a vessel to explore his territory. Landing on Sable Island, ninety miles from the mainland of Nova Scotia (1598), he left there a colony of forty convicts whom he had drawn from the French prisons, coasted awhile along the shores of Acadia (Nova Scotia), without accomplishing anything of value, and then went back to France. Contrary winds prevented his taking off the wretched colony of Sable Island, and it was not until seven years later that the king, hearing of the adventure, sent a ship to their relief. Only twelve remained alive, and these were brought to court in the same guise in which they were found, “covered with sealskin, with hair and beard of a length and disorder that made them resemble the pretended river-gods, and so disfigured as to inspire horror. The king gave them fifty crowns apiece, and sent them home released from all process of law.” The expedition of De Monts and Pontgravé (1604) was more fortunate. It resulted in the settlement of Port Royal (Annapolis) by M. de Poutrincourt, under a grant from M. de Monts, afterwards confirmed by the crown; it brought forward Samuel de Champlain, who was soon to play so distinguished a part in the exploration and settlement of Canada; and it offered a career to the Jesuit missionaries, whose heroism reflected so much glory upon the colony. The king had intimated to M. de Poutrincourt, when he confirmed the grant of Port Royal, that it was proper to invite the Jesuits to the new colony; and, by his majesty’s desire, two priests were selected from the many who volunteered to go. These were F. Peter Biard and F. Enemond Masse. Strange to say, the first difficulties they encountered were from their own countrymen. “M. de Poutrincourt was a very worthy man,” says Charlevoix, “sincerely attached to the Catholic religion; but the calumnies of the so-called Reformers had produced an impression on his mind, and he was fully determined not to take them to Port Royal. He did not, however, show anything of this to the king, who, having given his orders, had no doubt but that they were executed with all speed. The Jesuits thought so; and F. Biard, at the commencement of the year [1608], proceeded to Bordeaux, where he was assured the embarkation would take place. He was much surprised to see no preparation there; and he waited in vain for a whole year. The king, informed of this, reproached M. de Poutrincourt sharply; and the latter pledged his word to the king that he would no longer defer obeying his orders. He actually prepared to go; but, as he said nothing of embarking the missionaries, F. Cotton paid him a visit, to bring him to do so in a friendly way. Poutrincourt begged him to be good enough to postpone it till the following year, as Port Royal was by no means in a condition to receive the fathers. So frivolous a reason was regarded by F. Cotton as a refusal, but he did not deem it expedient to press the matter or inform the king. M. de Poutrincourt accordingly sailed for Acadia; and, with a view of showing the court that the ministry of the Jesuits was not necessary in the conversion of the heathen, he had scarcely arrived before he sent the king a list of twenty-five Indians baptized in haste.” Meanwhile, the king died, and Poutrincourt considered himself thereupon released from his obligation. It was in this difficulty that the Marchioness de Guercheville, whose name is so honorably associated with American adventure, declared herself the protectress of the missions. But the story of the troubles which this powerful advocate had to overcome gives us a curious idea of the manner in which American affairs were regulated at the French court. Biencourt, the son of M. de Poutrincourt, was about sailing for Acadia, and consented to take the missionaries. When the fathers reached Dieppe, Biencourt had changed his mind, or been overruled by his two Huguenot partners, and passage was refused. Mme. de Guercheville had recourse to the queen mother, who gave a peremptory order that the Jesuits should be taken on board. The order was laughed at, and nobody attempted to enforce it. Then Mme. de Guercheville raised a subscription, bought off the two Calvinists, and proceeded to treat with Biencourt. Not finding his title clear, she purchased of M. de Monts all his lapsed privileges, with the purpose of reviving them, and formed a partnership with Biencourt, under which the subsistence of the missionaries was to be drawn from the fishery and fur trade. Thus at last a woman accomplished what the king had failed in, and F. Biard and F. Masse reached the scene of their labors in 1611.

Mme. de Guercheville soon fell out with Poutrincourt, and resolved to found a colony of her own. She despatched a ship under the Sieur de la Saussaye in 1613. The settlers landed on Mount Desert, and there began a settlement, bringing FF. Biard and Masse from Port Royal, and having with them also two other Jesuits, a priest named Quentin, and a lay brother, Du Thet. The narrative of the destruction of this settlement as well as Port Royal by the English free-booting adventurer Argall, from Virginia, is familiar to all American readers. The colony had not yet assumed a regulated form when the Englishman swept down upon it, carried some of the settlers to Virginia, and sent the rest to sea in a small bark. The latter, among whom was F. Masse, were picked up by a French ship, and carried to St. Malo. The others, after much harsh treatment at Jamestown from Sir Thomas Dale, were taken back to Acadia with an expedition sent to complete the demolition of the French posts. Argall performed his task thoroughly, and set sail again for Virginia. Of his three vessels, scattered in a storm, one was lost; another, under his own command, reached Jamestown in safety; the third, bearing Fathers Biard and Quentin (Brother du Thet had been killed in Argall’s first attack), and having one Turnell for captain, was driven to the Azores, and forced to seek shelter at Fayal. Here the Jesuits had only to complain of the outrages to which they had been subjected, and they would have been at once avenged. Turnell was alarmed, and begged them to keep concealed when the officers of the port visited his vessel. “They consented with good grace. The visit over, the English captain had liberty to buy all that he needed, after which he again weighed anchor, and the rest of his voyage was fortunate. But he found himself in a new embarrassment on arriving in England: he had no commission, and, although he represented that he had accidentally been separated from his commander, he was looked upon as a deserter from Virginia, and put in prison, from which he was released only on the testimony of the Jesuits. After this time, he was unwearied in publishing the virtue of the missionaries, twice his liberators, and especially the service they had done him at Fayal, where they returned good for evil as they so generously did, foregoing all the advantages which they might have obtained by making themselves known. Nothing, indeed, was omitted to compensate for them in England, where they were very kindly treated as long as they remained.”

The settlements in Canada proper, however, were now firmly established, and Quebec was rapidly becoming prosperous. The early history of this town, the adventures and discoveries of Champlain, the expeditions of the settlers against the Iroquois, and the surrender of Quebec to the English under Kirk (or Kertk), who was a Frenchman by birth, though an officer in the English service, are told by F. Charlevoix at considerable length. It was in 1629 that Quebec fell, and three years afterwards the whole colony was restored to France by the treaty of St. Germain. Champlain returned with the title of Governor of New France in 1633, and began at once that zealous and enlightened career of missionary labor by which he has won so glorious a fame. For we may well style him a missionary. Entrusted with the temporal government of the young colony, it was not his part to explore the wilderness with crucifix and missal, to venture into the cabins of the savages as a teacher of the Gospel, to brave martyrdom, to suffer unheard-of tortures, even to the stake; but he nevertheless fulfilled an important, an almost indispensable, function in the establishment of the Canada missions. He was the best friend and patron of the Jesuits and other heroes who gave their lives so freely among the Indians. He took care that a number of these devoted priests should be invited to the colony, and that the settlers themselves should give an example of Christian demeanor that might do credit to their teachers. “In a short time,” says Charlevoix, “almost all who composed the new colony were seen to follow the example of their governor, and make an open and sincere profession of piety. The same attention was continued in subsequent years, and there soon arose in this part of America a generation of true Christians, among whom reigned the simplicity of the primitive ages of the church, and whose posterity have not lost sight of the great example left them by their ancestors. The consolation which such a change afforded the laborers appointed to cultivate this transplanted vineyard so sweetened the crosses of the most painful mission ever perhaps established in the New World, that what they wrote to their brethren in France created among them a real eagerness to go and share their labors. The annual Relations which we have of these happy times, and the constant tradition preserved in the country, both attest that there was an indescribable unction attached to this Indian mission which made it preferred to many others infinitely more brilliant and even more fruitful.” Champlain’s career, however, as governor was unhappily too short. He died on Christmas day, in 1635. “He may well be called,” says the historian, “the father of New France. He had good sense, much penetration, very upright views, and no man was ever more skilled in adopting a course in the most complicated affairs. What all admired most in him was his constancy in following up his enterprises; his firmness in the greatest dangers; a courage proof against the most unforeseen reverses and disappointments; ardent and disinterested patriotism; a heart tender and compassionate for the unhappy, and more attentive to the interests of his friends than his own; a high sense of honor, and great probity. His memoirs show that he was not ignorant of anything that one of his profession should know; and we find in him a faithful and sincere historian, an attentively observant traveller, a judicious writer, a good mathematician, and an able mariner. But what crowns all these good qualities is the fact that in his life, as well as in his writings, he shows himself always a truly Christian man, zealous for the service of God, full of candor and religion. He was accustomed to say, what we read in his memoirs, ‘that the salvation of a single soul was worth more than the conquest of an empire, and that kings should seek to extend their domain in heathen countries only to subject them to Christ.’”

We have insensibly gone deeper into these attractive volumes than we intended, and we must pass over the remaining books, which record the growth of the Canadian settlements, the wars with the Indians after Champlain’s death, the hostilities with the English, and the progress of the missions. Neither can we linger over the fascinating story of Marquette’s voyage down the Mississippi, or the expeditions, of La Salle, or the various attempts at colonizing the shores of the Mexican Gulf. What little space remains for us we must give to an examination of a portion of Mr. Shea’s labor which has not yet been duly estimated. He has given much more than a translation of F. Charlevoix’s Histoire. The text is rendered with great care, and we presume with great faithfulness, into simple, graceful, and idiomatic English. The peculiarities of the original, in the orthography of proper names and in other particulars, are all preserved. It is indeed Charlevoix’s work, as exactly as any work can be reproduced in a language different from its author’s. But Mr. Shea has bestowed upon it an editorial supervision which nearly doubles its value. With extraordinary zeal, learning, and intelligence, he has traced almost every statement to its source, collated rare authorities, and in modest and compact foot-notes, whose number must amount to several thousands, has corrected errors, identified localities, and thrown a perfect flood of light upon doubtful passages and controverted statements. The patient industry, the rare judgment, and the unassuming scholarship which Mr. Shea has brought to the execution of this noble task can only be appreciated by one who has studied his work with some care, and to whom familiarity with the subject has taught something of its difficulties. He has not only been at the pains of consulting the authors to whom F. Charlevoix expressly refers, weighing the soundness of F. Charlevoix’s conclusions from their testimony, and correcting his citations, but he has made it a point to discover the authorities whom the good father followed without quoting, and he has often pursued devious statements backward through a score of forgotten books, until he has reached at last the sober truth from which they started. Doing this without parade, without verbosity, and with an icy impartiality, Mr. Shea has approved himself a model editor.

The outward appearance of the six volumes will delight the heart of the fastidious collector. Such beautiful and symmetrical arrangement of the generous pages, such royal elegance of type, such rich and refined tints, such noble margins, and such magnificent paper—every leaf stout enough to stand alone—these things make up the gorgeous apparel in which the work has been dressed, we may say, by Mr. Shea’s own hands. Excellent engravings add not merely to its appearance but its value. There are steel-plate portraits of governors, adventurers, and missionaries; there are fac-similes of autographs; there are copies of curious old maps and plans. Finally, the book is furnished with a copious and systematic index—and so Mr. Shea shows himself conscientious alike as an editor and publisher.

MADAME AGNES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF CHARLES DUBOIS.

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