II. I Introduce My Wife—She Disappears!
“A nice young gentleman you are, Master Clide, to play off such a trick as this on your family!” said Admiral de Winton, shaking my hand so vigorously that I feared he was bent in his indignation on shaking it off. “Come, sir, what excuse have you to offer for yourself?”
“My dear uncle, I sha’n’t attempt any excuse, for the best reason in the world, that I have not a decent one. But here is my wife,” I said, catching sight of her coming up the terrace; “let her plead for me. I leave my case in her hands.”
Isabel stepped in through the open window, and, going straight up to the old gentleman, held out her hands, blushing and smiling with the prettiest little pretence of being ashamed of herself and dreadfully frightened.
“No excuse!” growled the admiral, hollowing out his hands to hold the soft, pink cheeks, then saluting them with a kiss that resounded through the room like the double report of a pistol‐shot. “No excuse indeed! You barefaced hypocrite! How dare you tell me such a crammer? You unmitigated young rascal, what do you mean by it?”
This series of polite inquiries my uncle fired off, holding Isabel all the time at arm’s length, with a hand on each shoulder, and looking straight into her face. She was not the least disconcerted by this singular mode of apostrophe.
“Don’t scold him! Don’t be angry with him! Please don’t! It was all my fault,” she said, and looked up at him as if she particularly wanted to kiss him.
“I’ll horsewhip him! I’ll tie him to the mainmast and flog him!” roared my uncle.
And then came a second volley of pistol‐shots.
“No, you sha’n’t! If you do, I’ll horsewhip you!” declared Isabel, twining her arms round the old sailor’s neck, and stamping her tiny foot at him.
My step‐mother made her appearance at this crisis with Sir Simon Harness. She had driven to meet our guests, but, instead of driving back with them, she and Sir Simon walked up together from the station, and sent on the admiral alone in the carriage.
After bidding him a cordial welcome, I presented Isabel to Sir Simon. She held out her hand. He raised it to his lips, bending his venerable white head before my young wife with that courtly grace that gave a touch of old‐fashioned stiffness to his manner towards women, but which was in reality the genuine expression of chivalrous respect.
Isabel, not apparently satisfied with the stately homage, drew nearer, and, putting up her face, “May I, Clide?” she said.
Sir Simon naturally did not “pause for a reply,” but taking the blushing face in his hands, he imprinted a fatherly kiss on her forehead. To say that I was proud of my wife and delighted with the way she had behaved towards my two friends would be to convey a very inadequate idea of the state of my feelings. I was simply inebriated. It is hardly a figure of speech to say that I did not know whether I was on my head or my heels. I had looked forward to this meeting with an apprehension which, from being undefined, was none the less painful, and the relief I experienced at the successful issue was in proportion great. My step‐mother was evidently quite as surprised, if in a less degree gratified than myself. The afternoon passed delightfully, chatting and walking about the park; my two old friends usurping Isabel completely, making love to her under my eyes in the most unscrupulous manner, quarrelling as to who should have her arm when out walking, and sit next to her when they came in. Isabel flirted with both, utterly regardless of my feelings, and even hinted to me at lunch that my prophecy with regard to Sir Simon ran a fair chance of coming true. She came down to dinner arrayed like a fairy, in a dress that seemed to have been made out of a sunset and trimmed with a rainbow. She had put on all her jewels—those I had chosen for her, and the diamonds that came to me from my mother. She wore pearls round her neck, and a row of diamond stars in her hair; while her arms almost disappeared under the variety of bracelets of every form and date with which she had loaded them. It may have been in questionable taste and not very sensible, but there was an innocent womanly vanity in thus seizing the first available opportunity of showing herself in her finery that I thought perfectly delightful. I could see, too, that the admiral and Sir Simon were pleased at the infantine coquetry, and not a little flattered by it. My step‐ mother alone looked coldly on the proceeding; and while Isabel, sitting between the two old gentlemen, pointed out for their special admiration “this bracelet, with the diamond true‐lover’s knot, that Clide gave me the day after we were engaged, and this blue enamel with the Greek word in pearls that he bought me the day before we came home,” Mrs. de Winton dissected her walnuts, and, setting her face like a flint, kept outside the conversation till the subject changed.
When we assembled in the drawing‐room, Isabel opened a new battery of fascination that was perhaps the most formidable of all. She began to sing. The excitement of the jewels, and the sympathetic audience, and the conscious triumph of the hour, all added, no doubt, to the power and brilliancy of her voice, which sounded richer, fuller, more entrancing than I had ever heard it before. She sang all sorts of songs. The admiral asked for a sea‐song. Isabel knew plenty, comic and dramatic, from “Rule Britannia” down to “A Life on the Ocean Wave,” which she rang out with a rollicking zest and spirit that fairly intoxicated the old sailor.
Sir Simon enjoyed an English ballad and an Irish melody. The siren gave him every one he asked for, old and new. In fact, she surpassed herself in witchery and skill, and one was at a loss which to admire most, the artless grace of the woman or the gifts and accomplishments of the artist. The evening passed rapidly away, and it was past midnight before any one thought of stirring.
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“Clide,” said my step‐mother next morning, as she was leaving the breakfast‐room where Isabel and her guests were loitering over their tea‐ cups, while I read the Times in the window, “I wish to speak to you. Come to me in the library.”
And without waiting for an answer, she walked out. There was no reason why this commonplace invitation should have brought a sensation of cold down my back, and of my heart dropping down into my boots; but unaccountably this double phenomenon was effected in my person. I made a pretence of going through the leaders before I rose, and then, yawning to give myself an air of perfect satiety and ennui, I sauntered out of the breakfast‐ room, and bent my steps towards the audience‐chamber.
“Clide,” began Mrs. de Winton, when I had closed the door and established myself on the hearth‐rug, with my back to the fire, “where did your wife learn singing?”
“Why, in London, I suppose. Where else should she learn it?”
“Did you ask her?” inquired my inquisitor.
“It never occurred to me. Why should it?”
Mrs. de Winton looked at me curiously—not scornfully, as she was accustomed to do when I committed myself to any ultra‐foolish remark. Indeed, I thought her face wore an expression gentler and kinder than I remembered to have seen there since when a child I had seen her look at my father. She said nothing for a minute. Then fixing her eyes on me with a glance that sent my heart right out through my heels:
“I have telegraphed to Simpson to come down by the early train to‐day,” she said.
“The deuce you have!” I exclaimed, and, starting from my impassive attitude, I dropped my coat‐tails, and stepped off the rug as if it had suddenly turned into a hot plate.
“Yes,” continued Mrs. de Winton, quite unmoved by my complimentary ejaculation, “it is my duty, since you are too indifferent to your own interest to take the....”
“Clide, Clide! Where are you?” cried a sweet voice from the terrace, and, running up the slopes, Isabel flattened her nose against the window, peering into the room in search of me. I was so placed that she could not see me, but she saw my step‐mother. Glad to escape from what threatened to be a stormy interview, I flew to the window, opened it, and rejoined my wife.
“Was she scolding you?” asked Isabel, casting a puzzled glance towards the room where I had so unceremoniously “planted” my step‐mother.
“No, darling,” I answered, laughing.
“What was she saying?” inquired Isabel.
“What an inquisitive little puss it is!” I said, partly amused and partly at a nonplus for a satisfactory answer.
“Tell me. I’ll go, if you don’t!” And she prepared to carry out the threat by unlocking her hands and letting go my arm.
But I seized the refractory hands, and held them tight.
“Go!” I said, laughing at her in a most tantalizing way, while she struggled in vain to set herself free.
“Tell me what you were talking about. I insist on knowing, Clide!” repeated Isabel, stamping her foot like a naughty child.
I began to dread a repetition of the other morning. Such an exhibition within hearing of my uncle and Sir Simon would have been so mortifying to my pride that I was ready to sign away my lawful authority for the rest of my married life rather than undergo it; so pretending not to notice the gathering thunder‐clouds:
“My lovely tyrant!” I said, caressing her with the sweetest of smiles, as we walked past the drawing‐room window, “you don’t suspect me of having a secret my wife should not share? I was only chaffing you just now for fun, you looked so mystified. But the fact is, I was put out by the old lady’s telling me she expected Simpson down here to‐day.”
“And who is Simpson?” inquired Isabel.
“The family lawyer.”
“Ah! Did you tell her to send for him?”
“I tell her! Why, child, if I had, I shouldn’t have been put out to hear he was coming.”
The question was unpleasantly suggestive. It implied a suspicion in her mind, which something in my tone resented, probably, for she added quickly:
“Oh! of course not. I didn’t mean that.”
Then we went on a few steps without speaking.
“Simpson’s a capital fellow,” I resumed, breaking the pause that was rather awkward. “I’m very fond of him, and shouldn’t the least object to his coming down here at any other time; only just now it’s a bore. We wanted to have my uncle and Sir Simon all to ourselves. However, I dare say you’ll like Simpson too when you see him, though he is of the race of Philistines. If he’s a shrewd lawyer, he’s a trusty friend and as honest as the sun. No fear of my ‘doing’ my heiress wife in the settlements,” I continued laughingly, “or cheating her out of any of her lawful rights, while old Dominie Simpson has the whip‐hand over me!”
“He’s to be here to‐day, you said?” she remarked interrogatively, as we entered the house.
“Yes. If he comes by the early train, he may be in time for dinner,” I replied.
Mr. Simpson did come by the early train, and he was in time for dinner. He was even an hour and a half beforehand with it, and spent most of the intervening time closeted with my step‐mother in her private apartment.
My wife appeared in a second edition of sunset and rainbow, and flashed and sparkled with jewels as on the previous evening.
She received our old friend very graciously, drawing just the right line of demarcation between her friendly graciousness to him and the daughter‐ like familiarity of her manner towards Sir Simon and her uncle. Dinner passed off very merrily; but when we rejoined the ladies in the drawing‐ room, I was surprised to find Isabel fast asleep in the depths of a monumental arm‐chair. She jumped up at the sound of my voice, and, rubbing her eyes, said she was ashamed to be caught napping, but she was so tired!
“Hollo, Simpson, this is a sorry lookout for you!” exclaimed the admiral. “We’ve been telling him to get ready his legal soul to be charmed and devoured by the siren.”
“Oh! I am so sorry,” said Isabel, looking at the old lawyer as if nothing in this world could give her half so much pleasure as to charm away his soul on the spot; “but these naughty gentlemen kept me up so late last night, and made me sing so much, that I have not a note in my voice to‐ night, and I’m just dead with sleep.”
Simpson looked wofully disappointed.
“My pretty pet,” said the admiral, drawing her to him and stroking her head as if she had been a kitten, “then you sha’n’t sing!”
“If you should lie down for half an hour, dearest,” I said, “do you think that would rest you, and you might be able to give us just one song?”
I was anxious that Simpson should hear her. He sang a very good song himself, and his heart seemed set on it.
“Perhaps,” she said, brightening up. “I’ll try, at any rate.”
I gave her my arm, and we went up‐stairs together to her room.
“Don’t come in, or else we’ll begin to talk, and that will wake me up,” she said, seeing me about to enter; “and I’m so dead with sleep I’m sure I shall be off in five minutes, if you leave me.”
I did as she wished, and returned to the drawing‐room, where I found my step‐mother in conclave with the three men on more practical matters than songs and sirens.
Simpson had been summoned for the sole purpose of discussing and settling what ought in the proper course of things to have been discussed and settled before my marriage, and Sir Simon Harness was just as anxious as Mrs. de Winton that everything should be made straight and clear with regard to Isabel’s fortune and my due control over it. The admiral alone was indifferent about it, and exhibited a sailor‐like contempt for the whole affair—in fact, intimated that it was out of all sense and reason and morality that I should have got a penny of fortune with such a wife.
“I call it immoral, sir,” he declared, scowling at me from under his bushy eyebrows; “you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“And so I am, my dear uncle,” I replied hastily. “And that’s just why I hate having the subject attacked in this precipitate way, as if I wanted to grab up her money the moment I could lay my hands upon it.”
“Then you can lay your hands upon it?” observed Simpson quietly.
“If I choose,” I said; “my wife is of age, and....”
“Of age!” echoed the admiral, throwing up his hands in amaze. “Why, I should have given the child fifteen at most!”
“She looks young,” I remarked coolly, while interiorly I was bursting with conceit; “but she is of age, so there is no reason in the world why I should bother myself or her about this confounded fortune; besides, I don’t care a rap if I never see a penny of it!”
“Bravo, Clide! That’s right, my boy!” cried my uncle, clapping me soundly on the back. “You’re a chip of the old block, and it does my heart good to hear you. Why, when I was a youngster, ...”
“De Winton,” interrupted Sir Simon, “don’t you think you had better retire to the piano? Simpson has not come down all the way from London to be entertained with the follies of your youth. It’s most important that we should have his opinion about these matters; and if you can’t hold your tongue or talk sense, you had better make yourself scarce.”
“Talk on,” said the admiral; “I won’t hinder you.” And so they did. I sat there, feeling as if I were on my trial for some sort of misdemeanor, the nature of which was unknown to me, but the consequences of which would be probably appalling if the misdemeanor could be brought home to me. Sir Simon and my step‐mother were judge and jury, Simpson was counsel for some mythical antagonist, and the admiral stood by in the capacity of a neutral but benevolent spectator. Both counsel and judge had been made acquainted by Mrs. de Winton with all she had to tell. How much or how little that might be, in Mrs. de Winton’s opinion, I could not say. But clearly on some shallow inductive evidence she had made out a case vaguely unfavorable for my wife. No one accused her of anything. Not a word was said that my irritable pride could take hold of and resent. They spoke of her as a child whose innocence and ignorance made it doubly incumbent on them to legislate for and protect, since I was unfit for the duty, while my morbid delicacy they ignored as beneath contempt.
“We must keep him out of it altogether, I see,” observed Sir Simon when the conversation had lasted about half an hour. “Leave me to deal with the child. She won’t suspect me of having married her for her money.”
There was no gainsaying this. Still, I was entering a protest against the way in which my wishes were being set at naught, when tea was brought in and cut me short.
“Go and see if Isabel be awake, Clide,” said my uncle, glad to put an end to the subject; “but don’t disturb her if she’s asleep. She’s not to be worried for old fogies like us, mind.”
I ran up the stairs lightly, and opened the door as stealthily as a thief. The light was out. “Isabel!” I said in a low voice. No answer.
I closed the door as noiselessly as I had opened it, and returned to the drawing‐room.
“She’s as fast asleep as a baby, uncle,” I said. “So I followed your advice, and left her to sleep it out.”
“Poor little pet! We kept her at it too long last night. You must not do this sort of thing again, Clide,” observed Sir Simon. “It’s a delicate flower that you’ve got there, and you must take care of it.”
I expressed my hearty concurrence in this opinion and advice.
Isabel’s absence made a great blank in the evening; but as my three friends had not met for a considerable time, and I had not seen them for more than a year, we had a great deal to say to each other, and there was no lack of conversation. Mrs. de Winton remained with us till eleven, when she withdrew, leaving us to discuss punch and politics by ourselves. It was past midnight when we separated. I went into my dressing‐room. The candles were lighted, but, contrary to his custom, Stanton, my man, was not there. I rang the bell; but while my hand was still on the rope, the sound of his voice reached me through the door—not the outer door, but the door leading into my wife’s room. He was speaking in a loud, argumentative tone, and was stuttering violently, which he always did when excited. I flung open the door, and beheld him standing in the middle of the room with Susette, my wife’s maid, and Mrs. de Winton, who was wrapped in a dressing‐gown and her feet bare, as if she had been called suddenly out of bed, and had rushed in in terrified haste.
“Clide!”
“Monsieur!”
“Sir ...” exclaimed the three in one voice when they saw me.
“Good God! what is the matter? Isabel!”
I flew to the bed and drew back the curtains.
The bed was empty.
My wife was gone!
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Here Clide’s journal breaks off. A long gap ensues, and we must fill it up from the recollections of others. The scene that followed the discovery of his young wife’s flight was not to be described. First, it was incredulity that filled the old Moat. “Gone! Fled! Nonsense!” protested Admiral de Winton, walking up and down the corridor, where he had rushed out in semi‐ nocturnal attire when Stanton had burst into his room with the dreadful intelligence. The old sailor was scarcely to be recognized in the déshabillé of his coatless and wigless person, as he blustered loudly, his hands in his pockets, zigzagging to and fro as if he were pacing the quarter‐deck and expostulating angrily with a surly crew.
Sir Simon Harness was calmer. He did not contradict his friend’s vehement assertion that it was all a trick of Isabel’s to terrify us; he even made a show of pooh‐poohing the notion of a flight as absurd, ridiculous, not to be entertained for a moment. But there was not that heartiness in his voice or manner that carries conviction to others. Mrs. de Winton also made a semblance of chiming in with the admiral’s view, but it was a palpable failure. Mr. Simpson was the only one who did not try to act his part in the kindly comedy. He was fully convinced that it was no comedy, but a most miserable drama that was beginning for the son of his old friend and client. He had mistrusted Isabel from the first moment he fixed his keen, legal vision on her. Mrs. de Winton had, it is true, inoculated him beforehand with a good share of her own mistrust, and he came to the scrutiny with a jaundiced eye; prejudiced, and predetermined not to be fascinated or beguiled out of his severest judgment. He regarded hers as a case of which he was to take a strictly legal view, and which was to be investigated, sifted, and proved before he would endorse it. It was a very odd case on the face of it; but Benjamin Simpson had had many odd cases to deal with in the course of his experience, and he flattered himself he was not to be baffled by a child scarcely out of her teens. She might be very clever, and succeed in hoodwinking a rich young gentleman into marrying her, on the strength of a fictitious story of misery and a still more fictitious one of heiresship; but she was not likely to stand Simpson’s cross‐examination long without breaking down. Such ungallant reflections as these had been passing through the lawyer’s brain while he sipped his claret and watched the fair face that sat opposite to him at the dinner‐ table, glancing at him with eyes that flashed more brightly than her jewels. He had made up his mind, as he looked at her, that she was a delusion; she would disappear sooner or later. The news of her flight was therefore only a surprise by its suddenness. Clide was rushing all over the basement story, calling out Isabel’s name into every room, while Mrs. de Winton and her own and Isabel’s maid were pursuing a similar search in the upper part of the house. The rambling old mansion was echoing from end to end with opening and shutting of doors and cries of the fugitive’s name; but no answer was heard except the echoes of the voices and the doors.
“My dear boy,” said the admiral, pausing on his imaginary quarterdeck, as Clide came up the stairs, “I’ll stake my head on it, the sly little puss is playing a game of hide‐and‐seek with us, and laughing fit to kill herself in some cupboard or other, while we are kicking up this row; take my word for it, the best thing we can do is to go quietly to our own beds, and before long she’ll come out of her hiding‐place.”
Clide muttered an impatient “stuff and nonsense!” Was she likely to perish herself such a night as this playing hide‐and‐seek for their amusement—she that could not bear a breath of cold? Even crossing through a fireless room she would shiver like an aspen. The admiral grunted something about “deserving to be whipped,” and turned to his zigzag promenade again.
Stanton and some of the other men‐servants had gone out to scour the park and the gardens; they had been absent now long enough to have discovered something, if there was anything to discover, but the stars made no answer to their calling. “Madame! Mistress!” they shouted, till at last they gave it up, and retraced their steps to the house. Clide had been going to the window in a restless way, looking out into the night, and listening as if he expected to hear the silence send him back some sign. It was impossible to say whether he believed the least bit in the hide‐and‐seek theory, whether he had a lingering hope of hearing Isabel call out to him or appear from some corner, or whether he was just in that condition of mind that precludes alike sitting still or doing something. He might be excited by hope, or he might be stupefied by despair. He was as white as ashes, and came and went with the quick, unsteady gait of a man who has lost his self‐command, and is swayed only by the force of some terrible emotion. Clide’s face was a fine, manly one; it would have been noble but for the weakness of the chin and a certain tremulous movement of the lower lip—perhaps of both; for the upper one was shaded by a light‐brown moustache that prevented you seeing whether it had the firmness that would have redeemed the lower one. The eyes were expressive, rather sleepy when the face was in repose; but they woke up with flashes of lightning when he was excited, and transfigured the whole countenance into one of energy and power. There was no need to be a physiognomist to judge of the character of such a face. The most unskilled observer could read it like a book. There were all the elements of a stormy life there—passive strength, and passions that needed only a spark to kindle them into a flame; a man who, as he was taken, would be as easily led as a lamb or as intractable as a young hyena. He had started in life with the fixed purpose of steering clear of storms, of saving himself trouble and avoiding fuss. Poor Clide! Life, he fancied, had a lake of oil at the entrance of the wide sea where storms blew and waves roared angrily, and he had made up his mind to anchor in the lake, and never venture beyond its peaceful margin.
The servants had come back—those that had been scouring the park—and the others, who had been slamming doors all through the house, were congregating in twos and threes upon the stairs leading to the broad landing off which their young mistress’ room stood, its door wide open, with a dismal, vacant air about it already.
“I see her! There she is!” exclaimed Clide. He had been staring for some minutes out of the window, and suddenly bounded down the great oak stairs, and out in the path, making for a clump of laurel‐trees far down near the water. The admiral, Sir Simon, Simpson, and Mrs. de Winton pressed into the embrasure of the window, the servants peeping over their heads to catch a sight of the figure he was pursuing; but they saw nothing except the winter trees, that stood like silver against the sky, while their straggling shadows lay black upon the lawn. Still Clide bounded on, calling out Isabel! Isabel! as he ran, and still no sound answered him; the thud of his footfall on the frosty grass came sharply distinct in the silence.
“The boy is dazed!” muttered his uncle; “it was a shadow he saw. But, no! By Jove, there she is!” Clide was now close upon the laurels, that looked like a black mound in the moonlight. The group in the window saw a white, crouching figure rise slowly at his approach; he stopped, uttered a cry of disappointment, and turned drearily back towards the house.
“What is it? Who is it?” shouted several voices; but before Clide answered a moonbeam lighted up the figure of a deer, as it glided lightly over the sward, and disappeared into the distant copse.
Instead of entering the house at once, Clide wandered round towards the stables. It occurred to him that something in that region might suggest a clew to the mode of his wife’s escape. He was quickly undeceived. Every door was locked. There was no sign of any horse having disturbed the slumbers of its companions.
“There is no use in your passing the night out of doors,” said Sir Simon, who came to see where Clide had gone. “Come in, and let us put our heads together to see what is to be done. I’m inclined to believe with De Winton that it is a trick, and that the foolish child is amusing herself at seeing us all out of doors searching for her.”
Whether this was honest or not, Clide felt it was meant in kindness. He let his old friend draw his arm within his and lead him back into the house. It was lighted up as for an impromptu illumination; every servant, male and female, was afoot, and they had busied themselves in and out of all the up‐stair rooms that for years had been untenanted; and as it was necessary to do something, they lighted candles.
“Suppose it is not a trick!” said Clide, looking into Sir Simon’s face with a terrible question in his eyes.
“That’s what we have got to find out,” replied the baronet evasively. “Meantime, come up and let us hear what the others have to say.”
They had nothing to say. Presently Mrs. de Winton remarked:
“I wonder what dress she had on? If she kept on her jewels, and that light gauze one, with the low body and short sleeves, she wore at dinner, she can’t have gone far.”
They, went into the empty room to investigate. The jewels were gone, every one she had worn; there were the empty cases. But the light gauze dress was there hanging in the wardrobe, as if her maid had carefully put it away. What she had put on to replace it was the next point which Mr. Simpson insisted on clearing up. All the elegant dresses of the young bride’s trousseau were tossed out of drawers and wardrobes by Susette—Susette had been engaged for her by Clide himself after their marriage—and counted over, till one was found missing in the roll: the claret‐colored silk in which she had travelled down from London, and had never worn since. It was the most appropriate dress of all she had for a midnight flight, and, being dark, would escape observation. Mr. Simpson seized immediately on this, “making a point” of it in his legal way, that so exasperated Clide he could have flown at the lawyer’s throat and strangled him on the spot. He resisted the impulse, and turned away, inviting Mrs. de Winton by a sign to go with him. He walked into his own dressing‐room, and, when his step‐mother had followed him, he closed the door, and took a turn in the room with a quick, passionate step.
“What in the name of heaven can it be?” he said, stopping abruptly and coming close up to her, as she stood by the mantel‐piece.
“She is gone,” answered his step‐mother. “I hardly doubted it for an instant. I have been expecting some such catastrophe for several days past. If you ask me why, I cannot tell you. I somehow never trusted.... My dear Clide,” she continued in an earnest tone of kindness, quite unlike her usual cold manner to him, “I wish with all my heart I could do something or say something to comfort you or help you. Can you throw no light at all on it from your own knowledge of things? Is there nothing in what you know, or in what you do not know, about her antecedents and connections to help you to form some guess? Where can she have gone to, and who has she gone with?”
Clide clenched his hand, and moved away with an expression of anguish that was dreadful.
“Gone to!” he repeated suddenly. “Why, what fools we are not to have seen to that at once! But it’s not too late....” He pulled out his watch.... “It’s just three‐quarters of an hour since we missed her. Sir Simon and I will saddle a couple of horses and ride both ways, for Glanivold and Lanfarl. If she is making for either, we may overtake her.”
He was going to the door, but Mrs. de Winton laid her hand on his arm. “Not three‐quarters of an hour since we missed her, but she may be gone more than three hours. It was scarcely eight o’clock when she came up‐ stairs to lie down, and now it’s ten minutes past twelve. Supposing she’s gone to the station....”
“Nonsense!” broke in Clide; “the station is three hours’ walk from this. She could no more do it than an infant.”
“I’m only supposing; one must suppose something,” replied his step‐ mother patiently. “The train leaves at a quarter to twelve; so if that were her object, it is too late to stop her.”
“There’s something too absurd in the idea! It’s simply impossible!” declared Clide with a vehemence that carried no sense of conviction with it—rather the contrary. “It’s absurd to contemplate it,” he repeated; “but if you would sleep easier for having the thing certified, I’ll jump into the saddle, and ride to the station and inquire.”
“Inquire what? Consider what you are going to do, Clide,” said Mrs. de Winton, holding him back firmly—“raise a hue and cry after your wife as if she were a runaway thief! Suppose it turns out after all to be a trick, and that we see her emerge out of some closet or corner before you come back; how will you look after sending it over the country that your wife disappeared one night? Do you imagine the world will believe the story of the game of hide‐and‐seek?”
Before he could reply Sir Simon and the admiral burst into the room.
“We found this on her dressing‐table,” said the admiral, handing his nephew a note. Clide took it. A cold chill ran through his blood. He tore open the letter. It ran thus:
“Clide, I am going to leave you. I don’t ask you to forgive me. You can never do that. But God help me! I shall suffer for having so wickedly deceived you. I should not have been worthy of you, even if I had been as true as I have been false. But I loved you, and I shall never love anybody else. Don’t try to find me. You will never find me. Good‐by, Clide. Forget me and be happy.
“Your wicked but remorseful and loving
Isabel.”
The letter dropped from the young man’s hand, and he fell to the ground with a cry.
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We return to Clide’s journal:
The sun was shining over the sea—the strong‐waved sea that washes the northern coast of France, the country of legends and cider, and gray ruins and chivalry, and all that survives in the France of to‐day of the France of long ago, the “plaisant pays de France” that poets sang to Marie Stuart in her happy days of young queenhood. There to the right, as the steamer paddled towards the port, stood the cliff where William of Normandy harangued his Norsemen before they embarked with him to snatch from Harold by force the crown he had not been able by fraud to prevent his assuming. Dieppe lay twinkling in the sunlight below, a town of gossip and carved ivory and many odors. As we entered the harbor, a strain of wild, plaintive music came floating towards us from the shore. It was the hymn of the fishermen’s wives, pulling the fishing smacks along the pier. Children were toddling by the side of the mothers, and clutching by the rope with their small fingers, while their shrill trebles piped in chorus with the elders. A pretty picture, if I had been in a mood to admire it. But the gloom within quenched all the brightness without.
The boat was steered alongside the quay, where half the town, it seemed to me, had assembled to jeer at our pea‐green faces, as we emerged from our separate purgatories and staggered up the gangway. I never feel so thorough a misanthrope as when I see my fellow‐creatures enjoying the humiliation of my steamboat misery, and hear them chuckling over me as I pass along the plank that leads from deck to dry land. On this particular occasion I remember with what a vehemence of hatred I resented their inhumanity, and I assumed as defiant an air as was compatible with my abject bodily and mental condition, as I marched on with my fellow‐ victims, and passed between two hedges of eager, staring eyes. My uncle was with me. But he was not abject. He was far removed from such a wretched infirmity as sea‐sickness, and nothing but his kindheartedness prevented him from joining with the chucklers who were making merry at our expense. It was almost an aggravation of my own suffering to see the intensity of his sympathy, the way in which he was perpetually mounting guard beside me to ward off any random shaft that the chance remarks of others every now and then aimed at me.
I had now spent six weary months prosecuting my search, the most extraordinary and unfortunate that ever man was engaged in, and up to the day I started for Dieppe I had failed to obtain the smallest clew. I had left nothing untried. I had stimulated the activity of Scotland Yard by reckless liberality; I had set the whole detective force in motion, but to no purpose.
I had had recourse to the mysterious column in the Times for months together; but the agony of feeling that my appeals to Isabel to “come back to her husband, or communicate with him by letter,” was making all the breakfast‐tables in the kingdom laugh, brought no response from the fugitive herself. All this time my uncle seconded me by his exertions and supported me by his kindness. I think I should have gone mad, if it had not been for him. He never tired of my lamentations, my long, sullen fits of gloom, the wearisome refrain of my self‐reproach, my endless wondering at the behavior of Isabel, and my cursing and swearing at the stupidity of the Scotland Yard people. He bore with me as patiently as a mother with a sick child. My step‐mother had talked him into her belief that Isabel had been on the stage, and that the most likely place to hear of her would be amongst managers and play‐actors. There was something utterly revolting to me in this notion, and I burst out into such uncontrollable anger one day when my uncle was arguing in favor of it with a degree of sense that was quite unanswerable, that he determined never to broach the supposition again to me. This did not prevent him from following up the idea by employing agents in every direction to hunt the theatres both of London and the provincial towns. Meanwhile, I was secretly doing the same. I could not look the thing bravely in the face, even with him; but I had in my innermost heart a dread, amounting at times to certainty, that he was right, and that if ever I found my wife it would be in the green‐room or on the stage. I discovered afterwards that my dear old uncle knew perfectly well the game I was playing, but he left me under the delusion that he believed in my disbelief, and so spared me the shame I morbidly shrank from. More than once a false alarm led me to fancy that these were realized, and that she was in the hands of a manager, and then my sensation was one of poignant misery, almost of despair. While I knew nothing I might yet hope. My feelings resembled that of the French miser who, while looking for the will that if found would rob him of a legacy, confessed naively: “Je cherche en priant Dieu de ne pas trouver.”
I was sitting at breakfast in my lodgings in Piccadilly one morning when my uncle came suddenly in, and said abruptly:
“You told me once that the sign by which the police could positively identify her was a silver tooth?”
“Yes,” I replied, and my heart thumped against my ribs; “a silver tooth in the left jaw, rather far back.”
“Did it never occur to you to make inquiries amongst the dentists?”
“No, that never occurred to me! But now that you mention it, it seems very strange that it should not. I quite remember her speaking to me of a clever one who had put in the silver tooth for her; how he had at first been obstinate and annoyed about it, and then when it was done how pleased he was with it. How stupid of me not to have thought of it before!” I cried in vexation; “but to‐morrow I will begin and set inquiries on foot in this direction.”
“You needn’t trouble about it,” said my uncle; “I’ve found the man who did it.”
“You have!” I cried. “And he has seen her! He has told you something! For heaven’s sake, uncle, speak at once. What does the man know?”
“No great things,” answered my uncle, stepping from the hearth‐rug, where he had been standing with his back to the clock, and flinging himself into an arm‐chair. “It seems that your step‐mother’s fancy was the right one after all; the child was brought up for public singing, and she was here ten days ago. For aught this dentist can tell, she may be here still; but I think not. She came to him to have something done to this identical silver tooth. It was hurting her, and she was in a great state about it, because she had just got an engagement to sing at a provincial theatre this season; she didn’t say where, but the last time he saw her—she went to him for several days running—she was fidgetting about the weather—you remember we had some stiffish gales last week—and wondering what sort of passage the people would have who were crossing the Channel with the wind so high. He could give me no idea what port she had in her mind, or in fact anything but just what I tell you. Well, I thought it was as well to make inquiries before I set you on the go again, so I telegraphed to the police at all the French ports, and just a minute ago I got this from Dieppe.”
He handed the telegram to me: “Beautiful young woman, answers to description. Landed on Saturday; sings to‐night. Hôtel Royal. Elderly man with her.” There was not a doubt in my mind but that this was Isabel. The elderly man must be the villain who passed himself off as her uncle. I said so; my uncle agreed with me.
“The dentist fellow described him just as you do,” he continued—“a gruff old man, with a brown coat and broad‐brimmed hat, and a disagreeable snuffle when he talked. He used to go with her a year ago, when she got the silver tooth made, and he was with her the other day. And now, my boy, when are we to start for Dieppe? Let’s look at the time‐table.”
We started by the tidal train, and reached Dieppe about five P.M. that evening. It was the season, and every hotel was brimful of English and French fashion, come to bathe itself in the briny wave of that strong salt sea. We went straight to the Hôtel Royal, but the landlord had not even a garret where he could put up a bed for us. The lodging‐houses in the whole length of the Rue Aguado were overflowing, and we were finally driven to explore the Faubourg de la Barre, where we were thankful to be taken in by a garrulous old landlady, who showed us two small rooms on the first floor. I was not in a frame of mind to quarrel with the accommodation, but I heard the admiral relieving himself in strong vernacular on the corkscrew staircase.
We deposited our light impedimenta in these lodgings, and then went out to see what information was to be gathered concerning the object of our journey. The first thing we beheld on entering the Grande Rue was a placard announcing “La Sonnambula” for that evening; the prima donna was to be a “gifted young soprano débutante, Signorina Graziella.” We went to the box‐office; every place was taken, and we had only a prospect of standing‐room in the space between the first tier and the balcony. The prima donna had been heralded by such a flourish of trumpets that the whole population was eager to hear her—so the box‐keeper informed us.
By this time it was six o’clock; but I was fed by something stronger than meat, and it never occurred to me that since my breakfast, which had been suspended before I was half through it, I had tasted no food. My uncle’s sympathy, however, being of the healthiest kind, was not proof against the demands of nature, and he suggested that it was time to think of dinner. I was ashamed of having so entirely forgotten his comfort in my own absorbing preoccupation, and proposed that we should go to the table‐ d’hôte of the Hôtel Royal, which was served at six. I would have eaten merely to keep him company; but the first spoonful of soup seemed to choke me. The brave old sailor was near losing temper with me at last, and vowed that he would wash his hands of me if I didn’t eat my dinner. He had roughed it on many a heavy sea, and in nine cases out of ten it was his hearty appetite that kept him afloat and pulled him through. In any case, he would not admit fasting to be an element in sentiment with rational human beings. He called for a bottle of Château Lafitte, and insisted on my helping him to empty it. I did my best, and the result was that before dinner was over the generous wine repaid me for the effort, and enabled me to take, if not a more hopeful, at any rate a less utterly disconsolate, view of life, and of the particular chapter of it I was now passing through. It had a still kinder effect on my uncle; his heart soon warmed by the juice of the red grape to such an extent that he talked of my miserable position cheerfully, as if it had been the most ordinary occurrence, and as if there was no reason why I should despond about it at all. He persisted in treating Isabel as a naughty child who had never been taught submission to the rules of life, and broke through them the moment she found they trammelled her. It was no unprecedented event for an excitable young thing to go mad about the stage; there were, on the contrary, plenty of instances of it. He could count them on his fingers—young ladies who had gone quite mad about it, and who had calmed down, when the freak was over, into excellent wives and mothers. Why should not this silly little puss do the same? I did not dare remind him of those terrible words, written in her own hand: “If I were as true as I have been false.”
It was a solace to hear him rambling on in his good‐natured, foolish talk. Only when he repeated with stout emphasis for the tenth time that she was herself the victim and dupe of the designing old scoundrel who called her his niece, I ventured to remark: “But Simpson says....” “Simpson is an ass!” snarled my uncle, and I at once assented, and declared my belief that Simpson was an ass.
The moment we had finished our Château Lafitte we rose and left the crowded room, where new‐comers were still pouring in to seize upon every seat as it was vacated. I had been casting uneasy glances towards the door, after first quickly scanning the three hundred heads that were bobbing up and down over as many soup‐plates when we entered; but my fears were vain. Isabel was not likely to run such a risk, if she wished—as evidently she did wish—to remain undiscovered. I overheard some persons near us discussing the appearance of the prima donna, who, they observed, never showed herself off the stage. Many curious idlers had wasted hours lolling about the hotel door, in hopes of seeing her come out to walk or bathe; but since she had been in Dieppe—four days now—no one had caught a glimpse of her. They little dreamed, as they bandied this gossip with one another, that they were stabbing a heart with every word. The persistent avoidance of notice was but too significant to me of the prima donna’s identity. It wanted yet half an hour of the time for the theatre, and my uncle said we might as well spend it inhaling the fresh breeze that was blowing from the north, borne in by the advancing tide. He linked his arm in mine, and we sauntered down to the beach. The waves were breaking in low thunder‐sobs upon the shingles, and all the town that was not dining was out of doors watching them. The Etablissement was crowded, and the music of the band that was playing there came floating towards us with every roll of the waves; but the hum of the chattering crowd rose distinctly above the sobbing of the sea and the murmur of the more distant orchestra. I was too excited, too absorbed in my own thoughts, to realize distinctly anything around me, but I quite well remember how I was impressed in a vague yet vivid way by the contrast between the sad, majestic tide heaving and surging on one side, and the human stream rippling to and fro on the other, dressed out in such tawdry gear, and simpering and chattering and subsiding like the frothy foam on the billows. I can remember, too, how I turned, irritated and sick, from the sight of it to the prettier, purer one of children playing on the sward beside the beach. The peals of their innocent laughter did not jar upon me; there was no discord between it and the dirge‐like sound of the water washing the shore. All this passed and repassed before me like something in a dream.
But the time was hurrying on, and now I was impatient to see my doom with my own eyes, or to know that the reprieve was prolonged, and that I might yet cling to a plank of hope.
“I think it’s time we were going,” I remarked, pulling out my watch; “the crowd is thinning, and I suppose it is bound in the same direction.” We were late, as I expected; every spot was filled in the little theatre when we arrived, and the performance had begun. As the box‐keeper opened the door to admit us to our standing‐post on the first tier, we were almost thrown back by the roar of applause that burst upon our ears; it rose and fell like a mighty gust of wind, and seemed literally to make the ground shake under our feet and the walls tremble round us. For a moment I was stunned. There was a lull, and then we went in. The singer had left the stage, but the air was still vibrating with the melody of her voice and of the rapturous echoes it had awakened. A fine barytone was confiding his despair and his hopes to the audience, but it fell idly on their ears after what had gone before. The Sonnambula appeared again; the first notes were greeted by another salvo of bravos, louder, more impassioned and prolonged, than the first; again and again the plaudits rose, handkerchiefs fluttered, and hands clapped—the house was electrified. She could bear it no longer; overcome by emotion, she held out her arms to the spectators in an entreating gesture that seemed to say: “Enough! Spare me; I can bear no more!” It was either an impulse of childlike nature or the most finished piece of art ever seen on the stage. Whatever it was, the effect was tremendous. I suppose it could not really have been so, but I would have sworn that the house rocked. It was a sustained roll of human thunder from the pit to the gallery, and from the gallery to the pit. Isabel—for it was she—made another passionate response with the same childlike, bewitching grace, and rushed off the scene. I was rooted to the spot, not daring to look at my uncle; not thinking of him, of anything. I was like a man in a nightmare, held fast in the grasp of a spectre, longing to call for help, but powerless to utter a sound.
The manager came forward and addressed a few words of expostulation to the audience; implored them to control their ecstasies a little for the sake of the sensitive and gifted being who had called them forth. He was nervous and at the same time triumphant. He was answered by a loud buzz of assent. The Sonnambula once more came forth, and this time a deep, suppressed murmur was the only interruption. The dress, the glare, the gaslight, the strange way the lustrous coils of her black hair were arranged—tumbled in a sort of studied tangle all over the forehead—while a veil, half on, half off, concealed part of the face, the entire transformation of the mise‐en‐scène, in fact, might easily have disguised her identity from eyes less preternaturally keen than mine; but my glance had scarcely fallen on the frail, shrouded figure, as it glided in from the background, than I knew that I beheld my wife; beheld her clasped—gracious heavens! yes, I saw it, and stood there motionless and dumb—clasped by the man who was howling out some idiotic lamentations. She stepped forward, and began to sing. Her head was first slightly bowed over her breast, and her hands clasped and hanging. The first bars were warbled out in a kind of bird‐like whisper, as if she were in a dream; but little by little they grew higher, more sonorous, until, carried away by the power of the music and her own magnificent interpretation of it, she flung back her head, and let the gossamer cloud fall from it, revealing the unshrouded contour of the face, upturned, inspired, all alight with the triumph of the hour, while the bell‐like notes rang out with a breadth and pathos that melted and stirred every heart in that vast crowd like touches of fire. It was a vision of beauty that defies all words. I neither spoke nor moved while the song lasted; but when the last chord died out, and the pent‐up hearts of the listeners broke forth in new peals that seemed to sweep over the songstress in a flood of joy and triumph, I awoke and came to my senses.
“Come away!” I gasped, and turned to move out. But the words stuck in my throat. My uncle had caught the delirium, and was cheering and bravoing like a maniac. “Glorious! Grand, by Jove! Encore! Splendid!” He was shouting like a madman, whirling his hat and stamping. His brown face was young again. I never beheld such a transformation in any human countenance.
“Are you mad, sir?” I shrieked into his ear, while I clutched his arm.
I suppose he was mad; I know he kept on the same frantic shouts and clappings for several minutes, not paying any more heed to me than to the floor he was so vigorously stamping. I was frightened at last. I thought anguish and shame for me had driven him out of his mind; so, taking him gently by the arm, I said I wanted to speak to him. He let me push him on before me, and we got out. He was still much excited, and neither of us spoke till we were in the open air.
“My dear boy,” he said suddenly, with a shamefaced look, “I couldn’t help it for the life of me! By Jove, but it was the grandest thing I ever heard in my life. The house reeled round you. I would stake my head there wasn’t a sane man in it but yourself!”
I laughed bitterly. The irony of the words was dreadful. “Sane?” I cried. “You think I was sane? I thank heaven I behaved like a sane man; but if I had been within reach of that ruffian’s throat, I’d have dashed his brains out as ruthlessly as any escaped maniac from Bedlam. I would do it now, if I had him!”
My uncle stopped and looked at me. He was thoroughly sobered, and I could see that he was terrified. He told me long afterwards that he never could have believed passion could transfigure a face as it did mine; he said I had murder written in my eyes as plainly as ever it was written on a printed page. And I believe him. I felt I could have committed murder at that moment. I would have killed that man, if I had held him, if the gallows had been there to hang me the next hour. I have never felt the same towards murderers since that moment. It was an awful revelation to me of the hidden springs of crime that may lie deep down in a man’s heart, and never be suspected even by himself, until the touch that can wake them into deadly life has come. I can never think of that evening without an humbling sense of my own innate wickedness, of the benign mercy that overruled that frightful impulse. Given the immediate opportunity and the absence of the supreme, supervening goodness that stood between me and myself, and I should have been a murderer. The gulf that separates each one of us from crime is narrower than we imagine. The discovery of this truth is humbling, but perhaps none the less salutary for that.
“Come along, Clide; come along with me,” my uncle said in the soothing tone one uses to a fractious child. “It’s all my fault. I ought to have known better than to let you go there at all; I ought to have gone by myself. I’m no better than a blubbering old idiot to you, my boy.”
I went with him passively; we walked to our lodgings without speaking. I shall never forget the kindness of my uncle all through that night. He was as patient and as gentle with me as a woman, bearing with me as tenderly as a mother could have done. I could not rest, and I would not let him rest. I called for café noir, and I kept drinking cup after cup of it until, added to the stronger stimulant that was setting my blood on fire, I almost worked myself into a brain fever, bursting out into paroxysms of childish rebellion, and then lapsing into fits of dumb despair. I had first insisted on rushing off to the hotel and lying in wait for Isabel, and compelling her there and then either to return to me or to part from me for ever; but my uncle was inexorable in opposing this, and I knew by his tone that he was not to be trifled with. There was a something about him in certain moods that made resistance to his will as impossible as wrestling with an elephant. I gave in, and allowed him to give his reasons for preventing my taking a step which, result how it might, was sure to be a most humiliating one for me; not only or chiefly as a husband, but as a De Winton. My uncle’s anxiety lest the old name should suffer by the event threw his sympathy for my individual sorrow comparatively into the shade. While my wife’s flight was known only to my immediate household, my step‐ mother—whose pride and touchiness about the honor of a De Winton was almost as morbid as his own—and the three tried friends of my dear father’s youth, it was just possible that it might remain a secret beyond that small circle, and he clung to this hope as tenaciously as I did to the hope of recovering my wife. The De Wintons were a proud race, and justly so. We had nobler things to be proud of than the primary one of ancient, and I may venture to say illustrious, lineage: we could boast with truth that there was no bar sinister on the old escutcheon; our men had never known cowardice, nor our women shame; no maiden of our house had dishonored a father’s white hairs, or wife brought a blot upon her husband’s name. I was the last of our line so far, and the thought that it should die out under a cloud of shame with me was bitter with the bitterness of death to the admiral; for he was at heart as proud as a Plantagenet, with all his free and easy talk, and his jovial, jolly‐tar manner to everybody, especially to his inferiors. Noblesse oblige was engraven on the inmost core of his honest heart; and he could not conceive a De Winton feeling less acutely on the point than he did himself. He had never been married; this partially accounted, perhaps, for his inability to merge the De Winton in the husband. It is possible that, if I had never been married, I should have comprehended his stern abstract view of the case, and have felt with him that the husband’s misery was as nothing compared to the blow dealt at the pride of a De Winton. As it was, I could not feel this. I could have seen the whole clan of the De Wintons and their escutcheon in the bottom of the Red Sea, if I could have rescued myself from the anguish of renouncing for ever the young wife who had so cruelly charmed and blighted my life. I was driven to make this unworthy avowal on my uncle’s suggesting that, assuming it were still possible for me to forgive her, she might lay it down as a condition of our reunion that she was to pursue her career on the stage. He merely threw out the idea as a wild notion that crossed his thoughts for a moment; but when I hinted at the possibility of yielding to this painful and humiliating condition rather than renounce Isabel for ever, he flew into such a frenzy of indignation that to calm him I believe I was cowardly enough to swallow my words, and declare that they had not been spoken in earnest. It was some time, however, before he subsided from the agitation they caused him. The idea of alluding, even in jest, to the possibility of a play‐actress flaunting our name upon the boards of the theatre was too dreadful to be contemplated without unmitigated horror. If I let her go her mad career alone, the chances were that this disgrace would be spared us. Isabel had proved clearly enough so far that she desired secrecy to the full as much as we did; but if she continued on the stage as my wife, secrecy became impossible. She might play under the assumed name she now bore, but the true one would soon be blazoned abroad, do what we all might to conceal it. The managers who speculated on her voice would be quick to discover it, and make capital out of it. The admiral was so strong in his denunciation of the madness of the whole thing that he convinced me he was right. This little incident left him more than ever determined to keep me as much as possible in the background, and I so far acknowledged the wisdom of his views as to consent to let him go by himself to try and see Isabel in the morning.
It proved a fruitless mission. The concierge said that the signorina had not left her room yet; but the servant, in answer to my uncle’s ring at her door, informed him that she had gone out for an early drive—it was not eight o’clock—and that she would not be in until dinner‐hour. Would monsieur take the trouble to call later? Monsieur said he would, and he did; but he was then informed that the signorina had taken a chill in her drive, and had gone to bed. My uncle came home in great wrath; he believed no more in the chill than he had believed in the drive, and he was for writing there and then to Isabel, telling her so, and demanding an interview without more ado, using firm language and hinting at sterner measures if she refused. I entreated him not to do this. I don’t know whether in the bottom of my heart I believed the servant’s story, but I persuaded myself and then him that I did; that it was only natural that a tender, delicate‐fibred creature like her should have been done up after the excitement of last evening; and that we had better leave her in peace for a day. He pooh‐poohed this contemptuously: the excitement was just what she liked in the business; it was what play‐actors, men and women, all alike lived on. He humored me, however, and consented to put off the letter till the next day. Meantime, something might turn up. I might meet her uncle myself, and button‐hole the scoundrel on the spot. He must walk out some time or other, and I was determined to be on the watch. I paced up and down before the hotel for three weary hours, glancing up continually at the windows. I knew from my uncle what floor Isabel occupied. Once I fancied I caught sight of the fellow’s face looking out for a moment, and then hurriedly withdrawn. Was it only fancy, or had he really seen me, and drawn back to escape my seeing him? I lounged into the coffee‐room, and adroitly elicited from one of the waiters that the signorina was keeping very quiet, so as to avoid any disappointment for the forthcoming representation; she was to sing again in two nights, and no one was to be admitted to see her in the interval. Orders to this effect had been given to the concierge, who was to deny all visitors on the plea of the signorina’s state of nervous debility, which made the slightest excitement off the stage fatal to her. When I repeated this to the admiral, he set his brown face in a scowl, and we very nearly quarrelled outright before he again yielded to my resistance, and agreed to wait two days more, and see whether she kept her engagement for the next performance. On the morning of the second day we both went out together to the baths. As we were passing through the Etablissement gardens, a young man came up to a group of people walking ahead of us, and gave some news that provoked sudden surprise, apparently of no pleasant nature; for we heard the words, “Abominable sell!” “What an extraordinary affair!” repeated with angry emphasis. We had not heard a word of what the young man had said, but the broken comments that reached us seemed, as if by some magnetic influence, to inform us of their meaning. The admiral, in his off‐hand, sailor way, walked up to the party, and asked if any accident had happened on the coast. “Oh! no; no accident,” the bearer of the news said, “but a most disagreeable thing for everybody. Graziella has bolted, no one knows when or how; her rooms were found vacant an hour ago, and there was not a trace of her or the fellow who was with her. The Hôtel Royal was in a tremendous commotion about it; the landlord had been down to the station and to the quay, but there was no trace of them at either place. The landlord believed they had eloped during the night, by some highway or by‐way, so as to avoid detection; but why or wherefore was the mystery. They had paid their bill. It was a horrible sell, for the little creature was the trump‐card of the season—a second Malibran.”
I knew as well as if I had followed my uncle, and heard the intelligence with my own ears, what he had to tell me when he turned back, and came up to me, intending to break it gently. It seemed utterly useless after this to go to the hotel with the hope of gaining further particulars, but I urged at the same time that it was possible the landlord himself might be a party to the affair, and that, if he had been bought over to hold his tongue, he might be bought to loosen it. I could not count on the necessary command over myself to speak or to listen to others speaking of the event at this stage, so I yielded to my uncle’s wish, and went home; he accompanied me to the door, for he judged by my looks that I was not fit to be left to go back alone. He then started off to the Rue Aguado. He found the place in an uproar about the flight, but no one could throw a particle of light on the time, the manner, or the motive of it. The concierge remembered seeing a lady, small and slight, and with a very elastic step, walk rapidly out of the house late on the previous evening, dressed in the deepest mourning, with a widow’s crape veil, and holding her handkerchief to her eyes, as if crying bitterly; he had remarked her at the time, and thought she had been visiting some one in the hotel, and that she was in fresh mourning for her husband, poor thing! Everybody agreed that this must have been La Graziella in disguise. But beyond this not the smallest clew was found that could direct the pursuit of the fugitives. Their luggage had been carried off as mysteriously as themselves; no one had seen it removed. This induced the suspicion that they must have had an accomplice on the premises. The landlord, however, had a precedent to fall back on—a swindler who had lived at his expense for three weeks, and then decamped one fine morning, bag and baggage, having carried them all off himself, disguised as a porter, while several travellers were under way in the courtyard with their separate lots of luggage, and porters were hurrying in and out with them.
For two days after this event, which checkmated every movement on our part, we did nothing but wander about Dieppe, watching helplessly for some information that could have directed us what to do. My uncle was constantly down on the quay and at the railway station, questioning the sailors and the officials, and always coming back just as void of information as he went. He was more irascible than ever now about the honor of the De Wintons, and would not allow me to interfere directly or indirectly. I resented this tyranny; but the fact of my interference having already proved so disastrous gave him the whip‐hand over me, and I felt it was wiser in my own interest to subside and let him act. He was actively seconded in his endeavors to track the fugitives by the manager of the theatre, who was resolved—so we heard on all sides—to spare neither trouble nor expense in recapturing his prize. The collapse of such a prima donna was a serious loss to him; he had gone to considerable expense in preparing for her début, and it had been so brilliant as to ensure the promise of an overflowing house to the end of the season. On one side my uncle was gratified at the intelligence and energy displayed by the manager; but on the other hand it put him in a ferment of terror. What if, in his search after Graziella, he should discover who she was and what name she bore! The bare thought of this almost drove him frantic. The manager’s opinion, it would seem, was that she had escaped in a fishing‐ smack. This was the most likely mode of flight for any one, indeed, to adopt from a seaport town like Dieppe; no preliminaries were required in the way of tickets or passports, and the fugitives might steer themselves to any coast they pleased, and land unobserved where it suited them. It was useless, however, for us to leave Dieppe until we heard something. While the manager was vigorously prosecuting the search on his side, my uncle was busy on ours. He suggested that it would be well to make an exploring expedition amongst the hamlets on the cliffs‐groups of huts scattered at short intervals over the long range of the falaises overhanging the sea, and inhabited by a scanty and miserable population.
We had felt it necessary to take a few safe agents of the police into our confidence; and before setting to work among the gens de falaise, as they are called by the dwellers on the plain, we consulted them as to the best mode of proceeding, and asked some information as to the sort of people we had to deal with. The police advised us to leave the attempt alone. They said the “folk of the cliffs” were so simple that their name was a by‐word for stupidity down below. It required little short of a surgical operation to convey a new idea of the simplest kind into their brain. There was a story current in the town of how, not so very long ago, a gang of robbers prowled about the neighborhood, and made it expedient for the mayor to issue a proclamation, wherein it was notified that nobody would be allowed to enter the gates after night‐fall without a lantern. The notice was placarded all over the walls, and this is how it worked with the gens de falaise: Ding‐dong came a ring at the gate one evening, and the sentry called out: “Qui vive?”
“Gens de falaise!” (Pronounced fa_w_laise.)
“Have you a lantern?”
“Eh, oui!”
“Is there a candle in it?”
“Eh, non! We were not told to!”
“Well, now you’re told to; be off and get one!”
Next evening ding‐dong come the travellers again. “Qui vive?”
“Gens de falaise!”
“Have you a lantern?”
“Eh, oui!”
“And a candle in it?”
“Eh, oui?”
“Is it lighted?”
“Eh, non! We were not told to.”
“Well, now you’re told to; go back and light it.”
Away went the gens de falaise again, and finally returned a third time to the charge with a lantern and a candle in it, and lighted.
This was not very encouraging to persons who wanted to question intelligent observers. We tried it, however, but soon found that rumor had not maligned the simple dwellers on the cliffs, and that nothing was to be gleaned from their dull, unobservant eyes.
Four days passed, and still we were in the same dense darkness. The suspense and inaction became unendurable to me.
“Uncle,” I said, “I can stand this no longer. I will run up to Paris, and set the lynx‐eyes of the police there on the lookout for us. Perhaps it will be of no use; but anything is better than waiting here doing nothing.”
My uncle fell in with the idea at once. I set off to Paris, and left him at Dieppe, where, in truth, it seemed more likely that information of some sort must transpire sooner or later.
To Be Continued.
The Colonization Of New South Wales By Great Britain. Concluded
It is obvious, then, that, if the remarkable prosperity which has befallen the English Colonies in Australia is to be ascribed, in any degree, to the sagacity of the government that sent out the first expedition, or of those who then and subsequently presided over it, we must look for it in the perfection of the reformatory system, with a view to which the original constitution of the colony was exclusively framed. The idea of making the colonization of a newly discovered territory of prodigious resources subservient to the reformation of as many as possible of the criminals of an over‐populated country is a conception of the noblest philanthropy; as the attempt to use a new and promising colony for the mere purpose of getting rid anyhow of the dangerous classes would be an act of guilty folly, the result of an indolent and heartless selfishness, such as even the most heartless and the most selfish of oligarchies should blush to have perpetrated. For the prosecution of the former object more care and pains should have been expended than under ordinary circumstances in sending out to the new settlement a colony fully equipped with all that the mother‐country had to give it. The reformed, as they stepped forth from their cells and shackles, once more masters of their own actions, free agents, reinvested with reason’s noblest prerogative—the liberty of choosing good and rejecting evil—should have found a sound and healthy society with which to mingle. They should have found themselves at once amidst a society based on those principles of religion, law, and justice which characterize even the feeblest form of Christian civilization. Such a society they should have found immediately outside their prison‐walls, into which they might glide, as it were, unperceived, and from which they should gradually and insensibly take their tone. What man in his sober senses could have anticipated any thorough and permanent reformation of criminals in a society consisting exclusively, after making exception of the officials and the military guard, of the very criminals themselves? In reading the inaugural address of the first governor, we naturally conclude that the government which organized the expedition was deeply impressed with the necessity of an opposite course. But the illusion is soon dispelled. We discover to our astonishment that the infant colony took out with it no one condition of a civilized society. Of law there was simply none. Even the formalities of martial law, when, soon after the settlement of the penal colony, it was thought expedient to have recourse to them, were found to be impracticable, because of some technical difficulty which there had not been the sagacity to foresee and provide against. Whatever there was of justice was wholly dependent on the caprice and dispositions of individuals. Incredible as it may appear, it is nevertheless the fact that, after the retirement of the first governor, the administration of the colony was entrusted for three years to the hands of the officers of the 102d Regiment. Unfit for such a responsibility as were the sea‐ captains from amongst whom the first four governors were selected, officers of the army were yet more so. The previous habits and training of English regimental officers are such as to disqualify them, generally speaking, for judicial functions. But the unfitness of military men in England for this office was much greater at that period than at the present day, as they were more illiterate. The government of a colony transferred to a regimental mess‐room forms indeed a humiliating contrast to the glowing periods of Commander Phillip. Mr. Therry tells us (p. 69):
“The first four governors of New South Wales, Phillip, Hunter, King, and Bligh, exercised a rule (and this includes the mess‐room interregnum) which partook much of the character of the government of a large jail or penitentiary.”
Two years and a half after the disembarkation of the first batch of convicts fresh instructions arrived from the home government respecting the allotment of land. By these instructions, the advantages already enjoyed by the emancipists were extended to the privates and non‐ commissioned officers of the military guard on the spot, but no provision whatsoever was made for free emigrants from the mother‐country. So that, when the sixth governor, Macquarie, “considered that the colony was selected as a depot for convicts; that the land properly belonged to them, as they emerged from their condition of servitude, and that emigrants were intruders on the soil,” we can only conclude that he interpreted the policy of the government at home more correctly than the more enthusiastic sailor who first presided over it. In spite of the singular incapacity displayed in the first organization of the settlement at Sydney, the following illustration of the state of law and society therein twenty years after its establishment, would be incredible if we had it on less trustworthy authority than that of Mr. Therry. He tells us (p. 74) that, during the rule of one Capt. Bligh, 1806‐8, “the judge‐advocate, Atkins, was a person of no professional mark, and was, besides, of a very disreputable character.” The governor reported of him to the Secretary of State that “he had been known to pronounce sentence of death when intoxicated”! With Atkins was associated a convict named Crossley, who had been transported for forging a will, and for perjury, and who had been convicted of swindling in the colony.
The result of such a state of things was as unavoidable as it was fatal. If the reformatory system in the penal colony had been as wise and efficacious as it was lamentably, nay, wickedly, the reverse, such of the convicts as yielded to the nobler motives of civil life and the claims of conscience should have been able to mix unnoticed with the sounder part of the community. Bygones should have been really bygones. The past should have been simply ignored. No allusion to it should have been tolerated. The expiated crime should have been buried out of sight and recollection, so long as there was no relapse. There should have been no such class as an emancipist class. The reformatory institution should have remained as a thing apart, sending from time to time its contingent of convalescents to be incorporated with the healthy body politic.
Instead of this, as the colony increased, the moneyed and influential class, the leading class, in a colony intended to reproduce the glories of England in the fifth great division of the world, consisted of emancipated convicts. No pains taken to perpetuate the memory of these people’s disgrace could have attained so undesirable an object more effectually. They stood out a distinctly marked order in the state. They became landed proprietors, magistrates, high government officials, even legal functionaries. Instead of a decent veil of oblivion being thrown over their antecedents, they were, as in a Methodist experience, even ostentatiously displayed. It almost constituted a boast, and was worn as though it were a decoration of honor. When, subsequently, through the encouragement of one or two of the governors and other causes, the tide of emigration set in from the mother‐country another moneyed and influential class arose of untainted reputation. A bitter rivalry between the two was the immediate consequence. The emancipists excited no sympathy or compassion for the lingering memory of a misfortune which their subsequent lives might be supposed to have retrieved, but which, instead of an obliterated brand, was ostentatiously retained as the badge of a powerful class, which became thus an object of contempt to the more respectable new‐comers. The crimes for which they had been punished, and of which they should, therefore, no longer have borne the burden, reappeared as their accusers in the intercourse of social life. Society snatched up the sword which the law had in mercy laid aside; a remitted punishment was exacted in another form; and the benevolent aim of rescuing the worst class of criminals from irremediable ruin by a reformatory process, if it were ever seriously entertained, was wholly frustrated. For scarcely had the infant settlement, through the gradual influx of immigrants, begun to assume the appearance of a colony, when the original sin of its constitution appeared in the form of an evil, fatal not only to the well‐being, but even to the very existence of a free community. Instead of any effort being made to heal or, at least, to alleviate this evil by some consistent line of policy, it was aggravated by the capricious preference of one or other of the rival classes by successive governors, according to their several idiosyncrasies. An evil of this nature could end only with the extinction of one or other of the antagonistic classes, or the dissolution of the colony; unless indeed the whole reformatory system were remodelled on an entirely different plan. The problem was solved by the adoption of the former alternative. The natural advantages of the country and the commercial energy of the Anglo‐Saxon race proved, at last, too strong for a reformatory system which was not only crude and faulty to the utmost degree, but was literally destructive of its own end and object. After a long struggle against obstacles greater than ever before hindered the development of vast natural resources, the colony prevailed over the prison, and the entail of emancipation was finally cut off by the abolition of transportation in the year 1840.
Turn we now to the penal portion of this quite unique organization for the reformation of criminals. Here, it may be, we shall be able to trace some indications, at least, of that humane sympathy, that sorrow for a fellow‐ creature’s fall and anxiety for his restoration, which appeals to whatever of good may be lingering in the heart of the criminal, not to mention the higher and more tender charities which religion inspires. No gentler instrument of cure would appear to have suggested itself to the minds of the members of the English government of 1788 than the lash!—the lash in the hands of sots and ruffians!
“I was once present in the police office in Sydney when a convict was sentenced to fifty lashes for not taking off his hat to a magistrate as he met him on the road.”
Of Capt. P. C. King, who administered the government from 1800 to 1806, Mr. Therry writes:
“He was a man of rough manners, and prone to indulge in offensive expressions borrowed from the language then in vogue in the navy.... His temper was irascible and wayward. At one time he assumed a tone of arrogant and unyielding dictation; at another, he indulged in jokes unsuited to the dignity of his position.”
Of Capt. Bligh, who succeeded King, Judge Therry tells us that his
“despotic conduct as commander of the Bounty had driven the crew to mutiny. Yet he who had proved his incapacity for ruling a small ship’s company was made absolute ruler of a colony so critically circumstanced as that of New South Wales.... He was the same rude, despotic man, whether treading the quarter‐deck of the Bounty or pacing his reception‐room in Government House at Sydney.” “Throughout the colony,” continues the judge, “the uncontrolled use of the lash was resorted to, as an incessant and almost sole instrument of punishment, and too often those who inflicted this degrading punishment regarded themselves as irresponsible agents, and kept no record of their darkest deeds.”
But when the backs and the consciences of the unhappy victims of an English reformatory process had become alike hardened to this demoralizing torture, a perverse ingenuity had devised in Norfolk Island a place of penal torment calculated to destroy in its victims the last vestiges of humanity. To human beings thus circumstanced the scaffold became rather an object of desire than of dread. And we learn from Mr. Therry that during the years 1826, 1827, and 1830 no less than one hundred and fifty‐three persons were hung out of a population of fifty thousand.
But we have not yet fathomed the lowest depth of imbecility and of guilty indifference to the commonest dictates of prudence and humanity exhibited in this nefarious scheme for the reformation, forsooth, of criminals.
Incredible as it may appear, it is nevertheless true, that by the authors of the scheme, although their lips were full of the professions we have quoted, the influence of religion as an agent of reformation was simply ignored. It had not been their original intention to send out any minister at all of their religion with the expedition they had planned. It was owing to the remonstrance of a dignitary of the Established sect that one was, at the last moment, appointed. This appointment, however, does not appear to have been made with any view of bringing the influence of religion to bear on the unfortunate criminals. To them the rudest objects of self‐interest appear to have been the only motives of reformation held out. Dr. Porteous—such was his name—would have displayed more than the ordinary apathy of his class as to any objects of a merely spiritual interest, and a less than ordinary keenness of perception as to its material interests, if he had allowed a large colonial expedition to leave the shores of the mother‐country without any provision whatsoever being made for the celebration of the worship of the Established religion in the distant land to which it was bound. We are told by Mr. Flanagan that a priest of some Spanish ships, which visited the colony in 1793, “observing that a church had not yet been built, lifted up his eyes with astonishment, and declared that, had the place been settled by his nation, a house would have been erected for God before any house had been built for men” (Hist. of N. S. W., vol. 1. p. 95). In 1791 a fresh batch of convicts, two thousand and fifty in number, arrived at Sydney, making the sum total of that portion of the population two thousand eight hundred and twenty‐eight. Yet, for these, for the large staff of officials, the military guard, and the few free settlers, the only minister of religion for six years after the foundation of the colony was this churchless chaplain, and the only religious influences accessible to that multitude of unfortunates was the form of Sabbatical prayer adopted by his sect. The one master cause of the inhumanity of the whole scheme was the complete and profound disregard of religious influences engendered in the minds of its authors by that embodiment of religious indifference and lifeless formalism, the established sect in England.
In few, if in any, exiled convicts have the finer sensibilities of our common nature been utterly extinguished. In nearly all, charred and unsightly as may their whole natures have become, diligent and patient labor will come at last to some unquenched fragment of the precious jewel; remote and all but lost, but waiting only for one smallest crevice to be opened through the superincumbent mass of gloom and despair, to spring in light, like a resurrection, to the surface, and fling its delivered lustre to the sun. In nearly all, he who should tenderly but perseveringly dig through the filth and refuse which a highly artificial and evilly constituted state of society has heaped upon its outcasts, would assuredly come at last to some faint trickle of the living fountain, which death only wholly dries up, ready to find its level, and even longing to be released. How many of those sad ship‐loads, when the shores of their native country for ever faded from their view, succumbed to the anguish of some, were it only one, rudely riven tie, and, in the nearest feeling to despair possible out of the place of reprobation, thrilled with a heart’s agony of which the severest bodily pain is but a feeble symbol! Cruel to inhumanity would be the jailer who should refuse to a prisoner in his dungeon the consolation of one ray of the light of day. But who, with the hearts of men, could have forbidden to those most miserable of their fellow‐creatures an entrance to the angels of religion? Who would not have used every effort to secure their ministrations? The Catholic Church, and she alone, could have brought the light of hope within those darkened souls. She alone could have taken from despair that painful past and that ghastly present, have awakened within those hardened consciences the echoes of a nobler being, have folded around the poor outcasts her infinite charities, and enwreathed them in their embrace. She alone could have recalled them through the tears of compunction to the consciousness that they were still men, and might yet be saints; and, like the memory of childhood gliding round the frightful abyss that separated them from innocence, have beckoned, and encouraged, and helped them up the toilsome steep of penance, to the place where conquerors, who have narrowly escaped with their lives, receive their kingdoms and their crowns.
Yet was this mere tribute to the humanity of those forlorn ones wholly withheld from them. The rigors of penal discipline, increasing in severity with the progressive depravity of their unhappy victims, reduced them at length to a condition by comparison of which the lot of the sorriest brute that was ever becudgelled by a ruffian owner was enviable. What a depth of misery, and, worse still, what a bitter consciousness of it, is revealed in the keen reproach of one of them: “When I came here, I had the heart of a man in me, but you have plucked it out, and planted the heart of a brute in its stead!” To talk to such men of reformation could only have been a ghastly jest. Not so much as even a moral motive appears to have been suggested to them. Nothing but the unlovely object of worldly self‐ advantage.
Of such a system there could be but one result. No longer do we experience any surprise at finding that the aborigines, who were to have been civilized, and who, at first, evinced the most friendly disposition towards the new settlers, were shot down and even poisoned by the squatters, soldiers, emigrant adventurers, and emancipists, the standard of whose morality appears to have been about equally high; that men in the highest judicial stations were notoriously immoral; that amongst the most prosperous and respectable of Sydney tradesmen were receivers of stolen goods; that in the time of one governor,
“the marriage ceremony fell into neglect, and dissolute habits soon prevailed; rum became the regular and principal article of traffic, and was universally drunk to excess”;
and that, when he left the colony in 1800, “it was then in a state of deep demoralization” (Therry, p. 71); that, under the rule of his successor, to quote Mr. Therry’s own description:
“The licentiousness that had prevailed in the time of Hunter was carried to the highest pitch. Not only was undisguised concubinage thought no shame, but the sale of wives was not an unfrequent practice. A present owner of broad acres and large herds in New South Wales is the offspring of a union strangely brought about by the purchase of a wife from her husband for four gallons of rum” (p. 72).
Lamentable as must have been the condition of a reformatory colony wherein the religious sentiment and all concern for a future life were entirely disregarded, its effects were more terrible to the Catholic portion of the convicts than to their Protestant fellow‐criminals. The latter, born blind, were not sensible of the blessing of which they were deprived. To them religion was a matter of the merest unconcern. The parson was one of the gentlefolk, nothing more. He made no claim of spiritual power. It was not likely that they should invest him with it. They felt no need of him in death, any more than they had throughout their lives. Indeed, they had all along been taught that it was the special birthright of an Englishman to die as independently as he had lived. It must be owned, therefore, that, as far as they were concerned, no privation was experienced nor any practical loss occasioned by the circumstance that only one Protestant minister was appointed in the colony during six years, and for another six years only two.
How different the case of the Catholic portion of the convicts! For them to be deprived of priestly ministration was a loss all but irreparable. The clear and rigid dogmatism of the church places the three future states of existence before her children with a positiveness and reality which the mysterious power of evil may enable them to brave, but never to ignore. The intermediate state of temporal punishment forbids the most loaded with crimes to abandon hope, even at the moment of dissolution. But for this salvation the sacraments are ordinarily essential, of which the priests, and only the priests, are the dispensers. To deprive, thus, of priestly ministrations those poor creatures who stood most in need of them, to drag them to despair and final impenitence—the only sin from whose guilt the sacraments are powerless to rescue the sinner—was a cruelty which would have been diabolical if it had been intentional.
About ten years after the settlement of the colony, the number of Catholic convicts was greatly increased by large deportations from Ireland after the unsuccessful insurrection of 1798. But they were a very different class of men from ordinary convicts. They were superior to the ordinary political derelicts. If the most brutal and insulting tyranny that ever goaded a people to rebellion can justify an insurrection against established authorities, that justification they had to the full. Those Irish exiles of ’98 were no more criminal than the ministry that arraigned them or the judges who pronounced their doom. The finer sensibilities of these men had not been blunted nor their domestic affection stifled by low associations and long habits of crime. They were, for the most part, men of blameless manners, and of a people remarkable for virtue. To such men the rude snapping asunder of the fondest heart‐ties, the being dragged away for ever from the old spot of home, endeared by all blissful and innocent memories, from the familiar scenes, the beloved faces, the cherished friends, the heart‐owned relatives, young and aged, from the graves of their ancestors, and the country of their birth, to be shipped off as criminals to the uttermost parts of the earth, with their country’s deadly enemies for their jailers, must have been a fate from which death would have been hailed as a deliverer. To deprive those unfortunate patriots of the consolations and benedictions of their religion was indeed to make them empty the cup of sorrow to its bitterest dregs. In the year 1829, about forty years after the commencement of transportation from Ireland, they numbered nearly ten thousand souls. Yet, we are informed by Mr. Therry,
“up to that time they were dependent solely on such ministrations as could be rendered by a single priest, and for a considerable portion of that period there was no priest in the colony.”
How different would have been the organization of the expedition, how far different its results, if the church had still owned England’s heart, and her statesmen had been Catholics! The most worldly and ill‐living of such would not have dreamed of equipping a colony without making full provision for the celebration of Christian worship and the ministrations of the church. It would have been their first care. Had they designed to make the colony subservient to the noble object of reforming those unfortunates whom society had cast out of its pale, nothing would have been advertently left undone to bring all the salutary influences of religion to bear upon them, and to place at their service every one of its supernatural aids. What is the church, in her actual working in the affairs of men, but a divinely organized reformatory system? Now a fundamental principle of that system is that forgiven crime is buried out of sight and out of mind. When the minister of the divine pardon has opened the doors of the eternal prison, and has stricken off the deadly fetters from the self‐condemning penitent, he who was just now kneeling at his side in bonds and death, together with all the crimes he has committed, are alike forgotten by him. He is to him quite a new and other man. And with the Christian benediction he sends him forth reinvested with the royalty of his birth and his consanguinity to God, to mingle, mayhap, if he correspond to the grace given, with the most virtuous on the earth, as though he had never broken its peace or given scandal to his brethren. Men are what their religion makes them. And no Catholic statesman would have sent out a convict colony to a distant shore without providing for such as would be reformed a destination where the past might be at once forgotten and repaired. The angels of the Gospel, inflamed with the noblest charity that ever dawned over the everlasting hills on an ice‐bound world, would have been scarcely ever absent from the prison cells, never weary of importuning their inmates to save themselves, and to reclaim their place amongst their fellows by a reformation which would at the same time restore them to their hopes as immortal men. Far from permitting to them every license of lust, and the indulgence of every criminal passion which did not interfere with jail discipline; by their moral reformation, and by it alone, would they have attempted their reformation as citizens. They would have been ever at hand to aid them with priestly counsels and the supernatural grace of the sacraments in those frequent falls and relapses of which nearly every history of reformation consists. And those who were sufficiently reformed to be able to conform thenceforth to the easy standard of public virtue would have found, in the new career to which they were committed, precisely the same divine system, with its supernatural aids and exhaustless charities ready to carry on in their behalf the work of restoration, through the love of man, to the reward of God.
Even in the case of those pitiable beings, in whose crime‐clogged souls the loving accents of religion appeared to awake no echoes, never would the indiscriminating and wholesale torture of the lash have been summoned to its unholy and brutalizing work to deepen still more their moral degradation and place their reformation for ever out of hope. Restrained as they were from doing further mischief to society, the church, whose heart, as of a human mother, yearns with most fondness towards the most vicious of her children, would never have abandoned, still less have ill‐ treated, the poor outcasts. She would have hoped against hope. Nor would she for one moment have ceased her importunities, her ministrations, and her prayers, until final impenitence had taken away the unhappy beings for ever from the counsels of mercy, or human obduracy had capitulated, at the hour of death, to the exhaustless love of God.
The Veil Withdrawn
Translated, By Permission, From The French Of Mme. Craven, Author Of “A Sister’s Story,” “Fleurange,” Etc.
XXXIX.
The following day Lando, at an unusually early hour, entered the little sitting‐room next my chamber where I commonly remained in the morning. He looked so much graver than usual that I thought he had come to tell me there was some obstacle in the way of his matrimonial prospects. But it was once more of my affairs, and not of his, he wished to speak.
“Dear cousin,” said he without any preamble, “I come at this unusual hour because I wish to see you alone. I have something important to tell you.”
“Something that concerns you, Lando?”
“No, it concerns you and Lorenzo.”
My heart gave a leap. What was he about to tell me? What new hope was to be dashed to the ground?
“Great goodness!” said I, giving immediate utterance to the only object of my mortal terror, “have you come to tell me Donna Faustina is at Naples, and Lorenzo has left me again?”
“Donna Faustina? Oh! no. Would to heaven it were merely a question of her, and that you had nothing more serious to apprehend on Lorenzo’s part than another foolish journey, were she to lead him beyond the Black Sea! No, it is not a question of your husband’s heart, which preoccupies you more than he deserves, but of his property and yours.”
I breathed once more as I heard these words, and my relief was so visible that Lando was out of patience.
“How singular and unpractical women are!” exclaimed he. “Here you are apparently grown calm because I have reassured you on a point less important in reality than the affair in question.”
“I ought to be the judge of that, ought I not, Lando?” said I gravely.
“Of course. I will not discuss their merits with you. But remember, my dear cousin, if I am correctly informed, it is a question of losing all you possess! Lorenzo has been playing to a frightful degree! He made such good resolutions before me, as he was leaving Paris, that he does me the honor of concealing himself as much from me as from you. He had gone quite far enough before he went to Milan; but, since his return—influenced, I suppose, by a mad wish of diverting his mind from other things, and perhaps of repairing the breaches that had begun to alarm even him—he has added stock‐gambling to the rest. Some one heard him say the other day that he expected to triple his fortune, or lose all he possessed. One of the two was indeed to happen. My dear cousin!... he has not tripled it, and the other alternative is seriously to be feared.”
I listened with attention, but likewise with a calmness that was not merely exterior.
“You do not seem to understand,” said he with more impatience than before, “that you are in danger of losing everything you have? Yes, everything!... What would you say, for example,” continued he, looking around, “if you were to see all the magnificence that now surrounds you, and to which you are accustomed, disappear; if this house and all the precious objects it contains were to vanish for ever from your sight?”
“I should say.... But it is of little consequence what I should say or think in such a case. For the moment nothing is lost, and, when our lawsuit in Sicily is once gained, all fear of ruin will be chimerical. Allow me, therefore, to decline meanwhile participating in your fears.”
“Yes, I know you are certain of gaining your cause, as it is in your father’s hands. But if some radical change does not take place in Lorenzo’s habits, the immense fortune that awaits him will share the fate of that he has just squandered.”
“Therefore, Lando, as soon as the lawsuit is decided, I have formed the plan of inducing him to undertake one of those long journeys to some distant land, such as he has made so many of, and to take me with him. We shall soon come to a region where cards are unknown, and where he will never hear of dice, roulette, or of stocks.”
“Nor of Donna Faustina, either, eh, cousin?” said he, laughing. “But you are not in earnest about banishing yourself in this way for an indefinite period, leaving the civilized world, and sharing the life he leads in these interminable journeys?”
“I shall not hesitate a single instant, I assure you,” replied I warmly. “I shall esteem myself the happiest woman in the world if I can induce him to accede to my wish.”
“Then,” replied he with emotion, “you can really save him; for he now needs a powerful distraction, a complete and radical change, that will really give a new turn to his whole life. Nothing less than this can save him. But you are admirable, Cousin Ginevra, it must be confessed.”
“Wherein, Lando, I beg? In the course of a year you will consider my conduct very natural, and I hope Teresina will be of the same opinion.”
“Perhaps so. But I assure you I intend to take a very different course from Lorenzo. I have done many foolish things, heaven knows; but there is a limit to everything, and I hope never to follow his example.”
“Enough, Lando; you hurt my feelings and distress me.”
He stopped, and soon after went away, leaving me preoccupied with what he had told me, though I was not troubled. Oh! what life, what repose, I found in the secret love that had been made manifest to me! The excitement of my first moment of transport had died away, but I had not become indifferent. I clearly saw the gathering clouds. I felt I was surrounded by dangers of all kinds; but I had nothing of the vague fear often produced by anxiety with respect to the future. What could happen to me? What tempests, what dangers, had I to fear with the clear, unmistakable assurance of an unfailing support, constant assistance, and a love ever faithful and vigilant, and more tender than any human affection—a love that is infinite, which no earthly love can be? We sleep in peace on the stormiest sea when we are sure of the hand that guides us. How much more when we know that hand controls the waves themselves, and can still them at its will!
This conversation with Lando only served to increase my desire to leave Naples, and it was with real joy I saw the day of our departure arrive at last. I was joyfully making my preparations at an early hour in my room, which Lorenzo very seldom entered now, when he suddenly made his appearance. Of course I was doubly moved. But as soon as I glanced at his pale, agitated face, I knew he had come to impart some terrible news. But I only thought of what Lando had communicated, and exclaimed:
“Speak without any fear, Lorenzo. I have courage enough to hear it all.”
But when he replied, it was my turn to grow pale; I uttered a cry of anguish, and fell at his feet, overcome with horror and grief.
My father was no more! At the very hour when he was arranging the final documents for his cause, on the very spot where he so long kept me at his side, he had fallen dead. No one was with him. At the sound of his fall the old servant, who always remained in the next room, hurried to his assistance, but in vain. Nothing could recall him to life!
This blow was terrible—terrible in itself and in its effect on my hopes. In the first place, it put an immediate stop to all my new plans. Lorenzo felt it more necessary than ever to go to Sicily, but now absolutely refused to take me with him. He did not seem to understand how I could desire to go. In his eyes, the sole motive for such a journey no longer existed. I should now only expose myself to the most harrowing grief, which it was his duty to spare me. I did not dare insist on going, for fear of irritating him at a moment when the very pity I inspired might increase the dawn of returning affection I thought I discovered. Besides, I had but little time for reflection. Only a few hours intervened between the arrival of this fatal news and Lorenzo’s departure, which left me alone, abandoned to my grief and the bitterness of a disappointment I had not anticipated in the least, mingled with the remembrance of Lorenzo’s inexplicable farewell!
It was evident he attributed my tears solely to filial emotion. I had seen him go away so many times without shedding any, that he had no reason to suppose his departure this time caused them to flow almost as much as the calamity that had befallen me. He even seemed surprised that I should insist on accompanying him to the boat and remaining with him till the last minute.
He had no idea how I longed to be permitted to forgive him on my knees; how I wished to implore permission to aid him in breaking the fearful bonds that fettered his noble faculties; to tear off, so to speak, the mask that seemed to change the very expression of his face! Oh! how I longed to save him. How I longed to bring this soul, so closely linked with mine, to itself! The strong desire I once felt, that had been extinguished by jealousy, frivolity, and temptation, now sprang up again with a new force that was never to be destroyed. I was ready for any sacrifice in order to have it realized—yes, even for that of knowing my sacrifice for ever ignored! Not that I did not aspire to win his heart once more! It belonged to me by the same divine right that had given mine to him. I wished to claim it, and I felt that this desire, however ardent it might be, by no means diminished the divine flame within that now kindled all my desires—those of earth as well as those of heaven!
He did not, alas! have any suspicion of all this. And yet, when I raised my eyes in bidding him farewell, he perhaps saw the look of affection and sorrowful regret I was unable to repress; for he looked at me an instant with an expression which made me suddenly thrill with hope! One would have almost said an electric spark enabled our souls to comprehend each other without the aid of words. But this moment was as fleeting as that spark—more transitory than the quickest flash that leaves the night as dark as before!
His face became graver than ever; his brow more gloomy and anxious, as if some terrible thought had been awakened. He continued to gaze at me, as he put up the little straw hat I wore, and, pushing back my hair with the caressing air of protection once so familiar, he kissed my forehead and cheek, and, pressing me a moment against his heart, he uttered these strange words: “Whatever happens, I wish you to be happy, Ginevra. Promise me you will!...”
I had been at home a long time, and seen the last trace of smoke from the steamboat disappear between Capri and the coast beyond Sorrento, without having resolution enough to leave that side of the terrace which commanded the most distant view of the sea. I remained with my eyes fastened on the horizon, looking at the waves, agitated by the mournful sirocco, whose dull, sad moans afar off add so much to the gloom felt at Naples when the bright sun and blue sky are obscured. Elsewhere bad weather is nothing surprising, but at Naples it always astonishes and creates anxiety, as if it were abnormal, as the sudden gravity of a smiling face affects and alarms us more than that of one naturally austere.
I remained, therefore, in my seat, dwelling on my recent hopes, my sudden disappointment and its distressing cause, on Lorenzo’s departure without me, his look, his mysterious words, and his affectionate manner as he bade me farewell.
Oh! why, at whatever cost, had I not gone with him? And then I followed him in thought to the dear place I was never to behold again—to the old palace at Messina where I had passed my childhood, happy and idolized, under the eye of her who always seemed to me like some heavenly vision. Beside her I saw my father—“my beloved father.” I uttered these last words aloud, looking, with eyes full of tears, towards the wild gloomy sea that separated me from him in death as it had in life.
At that instant I heard Lando’s voice beside me. He had approached without my hearing him. He had a kind heart that redeemed many of his faults, and had come to pity and console me in his way.
“My poor cousin! I am over‐whelmed.... What a frightful, irreparable misfortune! I feel as if it concerned me almost as much as you.”
After a moment’s pause he continued:
“And what is to be done now? In three days that great trial is to take place and your cause is to be decided! What advocate, good heavens! can be found that can, I will not say equal, but replace, the able and illustrious Fabrizio dei Monti?”
XL.
The first days of mourning, anxiety, and expectation were spent almost entirely alone. I only left the house to go to the convent, and saw no one at home but Stella and my aunt, who, though she resembled her brother but little, loved him tenderly, and was inconsolable at his loss.
A week passed by, and I began to be surprised at not having received any news from Lorenzo. The lawsuit must be over. It was time for him to return, or, at least, for me to receive a letter from him. But none had come, and I remained in this state of suspense a length of time that was inexplicable. At last I received two lines written in haste, not from him, but from my brother:
“I shall arrive the day after this note, and will then tell you everything. Do not lose courage.
“MARIO.”
Lando was present when this note arrived, and I read it aloud.
“O heavens!” he exclaimed, “you have lost your cause! That is evident. He tells you so plainly enough!... And I cannot see what he can have worse to tell you.”
He kept on talking for some time, but I did not listen to him. I read the note over and over again. Why had not Lorenzo written? Why was Mario coming, and why did he not say Lorenzo was to accompany him? Why did he not even mention his name?... I did not dare acknowledge to myself the terrible fear that passed through my mind; but I recalled his mysterious words, his look, his voice, and his whole manner when he bade me farewell, and everything assumed an ominous look. A possibility flashed across my mind which I did not dare dwell on for fear of losing my reason, and, with it, the blessed remembrance that was the only support of my life! I suffered that night as I had not suffered since the hours of grief and remorse that followed the death of my mother!
The next day, at a late hour, I at last perceived the boat from Sicily slowly coming up the bay, struggling against a violent out‐wind; for, after a long continuation of fine weather, now came a succession of dismal, stormy days, such as often cast a gloom over the end of spring at Naples. My first impulse was to go to meet Mario at the landing; but I changed my mind, and concluded to remain at home, that I might be alone when I should receive the news he was bringing me.
I found it difficult, however, to control my impatience, for I had to wait nearly an hour longer. But at last I heard his step on the stairs; then my door opened, and he made his appearance. What I experienced when I saw he was really alone showed to what an extent I had flattered myself Lorenzo would return with him. I gazed at him without stirring from my seat, without the strength to ask a single question. He came to me, took me in his arms with more tenderness than he had ever shown in his life, and when he kissed me I saw his eyes were filled with tears.
“Lorenzo! Where is Lorenzo?” I exclaimed as soon as I could speak.
“Be calm, sister,” said he—“be calm, I beg of you.... I will tell you the whole truth without the slightest evasion.”
“But before anything else, tell me where Lorenzo is, and why he did not come with you.”
“Ginevra, I cannot tell you, for I do not know yet. I am quite as ignorant as you what has become of him.”
At this reply the beating of my heart became so violent that I thought I should faint away; but I struggled to overcome the anguish that seized me, and said in a hoarse voice:
“At least, tell me all you know, Mario, without delay or reticence.”
Mario drew from his pocket a letter carefully sealed, but still seemed to hesitate about giving it to me. But I recognized the writing, and cut short all explanation by snatching it from his hands, and ran to a seat in the most retired corner of the room, where I could read it at my ease, and my brother could not guess its contents by my face till it should suit me to communicate them.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
“Ginevra, you will doubtless have learned, before opening this letter, that I have lost my cause—in other words, that I am ruined, irrevocably ruined. I had a presentiment of this when the only one who could bring it to a favorable issue was taken away by death at the critical moment; and when I embraced you at my departure, I felt convinced I was bidding you adieu for ever.... Whatever I may be, this word will no doubt startle you. Though the loss of a very bad husband is by no means irreparable, you will shudder, I am sure, at the thought of all so desperate a state of affairs may render me capable of, and the most fearful of extremities has already crossed your mind, I have no doubt. Well, you are not wrong. I confess it was my intention, and you may be glad to know it was you who caused me to change it. Yes, Ginevra, the thought of you occurred to my mind, and I was unwilling to add another horrible remembrance to those I had already left you, and render a catastrophe, already sufficiently terrible, still more tragical. It would, however, have restored you to liberty, and permitted your young life to resume its course and find a happiness I can no longer promise you. This thought furnished an additional reason to all those suggested by despair; but the sweet, suppliant look you gave me, the inexplicable, celestial expression you wore when we separated, arrested me. The remembrance of that look still haunts me. What did you wish to say to me, Ginevra? What had you to ask me? What could be the prayer that seemed to hover on your lips! I can repair nothing now. The past is no longer in my power, and the future is blighted. The captivating charm of your beauty has not been powerful enough to enable me to overcome myself. It is now too late, as you see yourself. All is over. My faults have led to the most fatal consequences. I have only to endure them, whatever they may be. I resign myself to the struggle, then. The very word stimulates me, for to struggle is to labor, and work I love to excess! Why did I not give my whole soul up to it instead of other things! Ah! if the past could only be restored!... But let us return to the present. I will work, then; yes, work, Ginevra, to gain my livelihood. However great a sybarite I have appeared, and am, I am equal to it. I can and will labor, but far from you—separated from you. Thanks to your brother’s generosity and the means still at my disposal, which will be communicated to you, this great reverse will entail no privation on you. This is my only hope, my only comfort; for, after having clouded the fairest portion of your life, to invite you to participate in the bitterness of my misfortunes would make me despise myself and fill me with despair. Be happy, therefore, if you do not wish me to put an end to my life. And now adieu. This word is used for a brief absence, for the separation of a day. What will be the length of ours?... A lifelong one, apparently.... May my life be short, that I may not long deprive you of your freedom!
“Ginevra, you are young, you are beautiful. You are calculated to love and please, and, however unfaithful and inconstant I have been, I am jealous! But I leave you without fear, under the protection of that something mysterious and incomprehensible within you that is a safeguard to your youth and beauty! I have forfeited the right to love and protect you, but I know and venerate you as a holy, angelic being. Ginevra, I ought to say, I wish I could say, forgive me; but that word is vain when it is a question of the irreparable. I shall do better, then, to say—forget me!
LORENZO.”
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
While I was reading this letter with eager interest, Mario remained in the place where I left him, his face buried in his hands, absorbed in sad reflections. I approached him. He instantly looked up.
“Well, sister,” said he anxiously, “have you any idea from this letter where Lorenzo has gone?”
“No.”
“No?... And yet you look calm and relieved. What other good news could there be in the letter?”
What good news!... I was really embarrassed to know what reply to make to his question. I was relieved, to be sure. My heart beat with a certain joy, but it would not do to say so; nor could I have made Mario comprehend the reason, for nothing, in fact, could be more serious than my position.
“No good news,” I replied. “His letter contains nothing cheering, assuredly, for it announces the loss of his lawsuit, which your note had prepared me for. And Lorenzo seems to bid me an eternal fare‐well, as if he imagined I should allow him to separate my life entirely from his! That remains to be decided. But in order to know what I ought to do, you must tell me everything that has happened, Mario, without any restriction.”
Mario had hoped to be able to avoid telling me the whole truth, but at this appeal made no further attempt at concealment, and was grateful to me for the courage which lightened so painful a duty.
Lorenzo arrived at Messina, persuaded in advance that my father’s death was the signal of his ruin. But when the cause was decided against him, he remained apparently very calm. During the evening he had a long conversation with Mario, in which he occupied himself in making arrangements that would secure my comfort, placing at my disposal all he had left, and accepting the generous offer of my brother, who now refused to profit by the renunciation of my right to a portion of my father’s property which I had made at the time of my marriage. Lorenzo, during this conversation, repeatedly expressed the desire this storm might pass over my head without affecting me.
The following morning Mario received a package containing the substance of this conversation, regularly signed and sealed, and a sealed letter addressed to me, without any other explanation. My brother waited till the hour appointed by Lorenzo the night before for a meeting, but he did not make his appearance; and when Mario went in search of him, he learned he had taken his departure in the night without leaving any trace of the direction he had taken. Two boats had left Messina during the night, one for the Levant, and the other for America. But, notwithstanding all the precautions taken by Lorenzo to prevent any one from knowing which way he had gone, Mario thought he had embarked on the latter of these two boats.
Lorenzo had ordered the steward that had always been in his employ to aid my brother in the execution of his wishes and whatever was to be done in consequence, either in Sicily or Naples. But he had not revealed to him, any more than to me or my brother, his personal affairs, or the place to which he was going.
After listening to this account with the utmost attention, I requested Mario to leave me alone a few hours, that I might reflect on all I had heard, and consider at my leisure what course I ought to pursue. I felt indeed the need of collecting my thoughts in solitude and silence; but above all ... oh! above all! I longed to be alone, that I might fall on my knees and bless God!
Yes, bless him with transport! The fear, the horrible, intolerable fear, that had taken hold of my mind, was for ever removed by the contents of Lorenzo’s letter. Regret, if not repentance, for his faults was betrayed in every line he wrote. The manly energy of his character, too, was manifest throughout. As to what related to me, I felt touched, and more proud of the tender, confiding, respectful interest he expressed, than of all the passionate fervor of his former language. And I blessed heaven for not being unworthy of it. Finally, finally, the words, “I will work to gain my livelihood,” made my heart leap with joy; for I saw it put an end to the dangerous, indolent, pernicious life of the past, and held out a hope of regeneration and salvation—a salvation physical, moral, present, future, eternal! It really seemed impossible to feel such a hope could be paid for too dearly!
I remembered, however, that I should have to discuss my affairs with Mario, and perhaps with Lando also, whose heart was extremely moved by this catastrophe; and I endeavored, before meeting them again, to moderate a joy that would have appeared inexplicable, and, at the very time when I was more reasonable than I had ever been in my life, would have rendered me in their estimation extravagant in my notions, and without any practical sense as to the things of the world.
XLI.
When I saw Mario again, therefore, I thanked him affectionately for his generosity, but declared I would not accept the restoration of the inheritance I had renounced at the time of my marriage with the Duca di Valenzano. Livia had done the same on entering the convent. Mario was, and should remain, my father’s only heir. I was determined not to allow any change in this arrangement. I had great difficulty in overcoming his resistance; and when I could not help remarking that the sacrifices which awaited me would cost me but little, he stopped me by saying I had not yet made the trial, and insisted I should take no immediate resolution with regard to the matter.
“Very well,” said I, “if it is your wish, we will discuss the point at a later day. Let us confine our attention for the moment to what is of much more importance. You know very well we cannot long remain ignorant where Lorenzo is, and as soon as we know I shall go to him.”
“Go to him?”
“Do you doubt it?”
Mario looked at me with surprise, and was silent for an instant. Then he said:
“Sister, Lorenzo’s conduct has been so notorious that, notwithstanding the solicitude I acknowledge he manifested for you at our last interview, no one would be astonished at your remaining among your friends and availing yourself of the means he has used to deliver you from the consequences of his folly.”
“Accept this beautiful villa, which he wishes to except from the sale of his property?... Surround myself with the comforts you have together provided me with, and leave him—him!—alone, poor, struggling against the difficulties of beginning a new life?... Really, Mario, if you believe I would consent to this, it is a proof that, though you are less severe than you once were to your poor little sister, you are not altogether just to her.”
Mario took my hand, and kissed it with emotion.
“Pardon me, Ginevra; I confess I did not think you were so generous or so courageous!”
Courageous!... I was not so much so as he thought. A hope had risen in my heart which would have rendered poverty itself easy to endure, and even in such a case I should not have been an object of pity. But here there was no question of poverty. My sight was clearer than that of Mario or Lando, and I was, in fact, more sensible than either of my two advisers. It was only a question, at most, of a temporary embarrassment. Lorenzo’s land, the valuable objects accumulated in his different houses, and the sale of all my diamonds, would suffice, and more than suffice, to fill the pit dug by his extravagance, however deep it might be. Besides, his talents alone, as soon as he chose to turn them to account, excluded all fear of actual poverty. The mere name of Lorenzo with which he signed all his productions had long been familiar to the art‐world, and consequently he would not be obliged to strive for a position.
It was merely a question, therefore, of the relinquishment of all this display, this magnificence, this overwhelming profusion of superfluities, and all the luxuries of life that now surrounded me. Ah! I did not dare tell them what I thought of such sacrifices! I did not dare speak of my indifference, which greatly facilitated their task, however, and still less did I dare reveal the cause, for fear of being accused of madness, and that at a time when they should have considered it a proof of the beneficial effects of supernatural influences on ordinary life. I contented myself, therefore, with merely explaining the reason why my situation seemed to me by no means desperate. They were relieved to see me take things in such a way, and from that moment the necessary changes, so painful, in their estimation, were undertaken without any delay, though without haste, without fear, without concealment, and all the so‐called great sacrifices began to be accomplished.
It would be difficult to render an account of all I experienced during the following days and weeks. All I can say is that I felt as if my shackles and barriers one by one were removed, and at every step I breathed a purer air!... Does this mean I had become a saint, aspiring to heroic sacrifices and utter renunciation? Assuredly not. I repeat it, I could have no illusion of this kind. I clearly comprehended that this catastrophe, which seemed so terrible to others, which Lorenzo considered beyond my strength to bear, and would have thrown him into an excess of despair, only tore off the brilliant exterior of my life. But I had often experienced a confused, persistent desire at various times and places to be freed from this outer husk, and I now began to understand a thousand things that heretofore had been inexplicable in the bottom of my soul.
The magnificence that surrounded me belonged, however, to my station, and all this display was not without reason or excuse; but I felt it impeded my course, and, as a pious, profound soul(180) has said of happiness itself, in striving to attain the true end, it only served to lengthen the way!
There was, then, neither courage nor resignation in this case. I was reasonable and satisfied, as every human being is who in an exchange feels he has gained a thousand times more than he has lost! The only anxiety I now felt was to discover the place to which Lorenzo had betaken himself. I did not in the least believe he had gone either to the Levant or America, but every means seemed to have been used by him to defeat our efforts to discover him. One of the two boats that left Messina the night of his departure was to touch at Marseilles on the way. Reflection and instinct both assured me he had proceeded no further, but from that place had gone where he could most easily resume his labors and begin his new life. In this respect Rome or Paris would have equally suited him, but it seemed improbable he had returned to Italy. It was therefore to Paris I directed my search, and I wrote Mme. de Kergy to aid me in finding him.
Perhaps I should have hesitated had Gilbert been at home; but he was absent, absent for a year, and before his return I should have time to reflect on the course I ought to pursue, perhaps ask the advice of his mother herself, to whom, meanwhile, I made known my present situation, my wishes, my projects, and the extreme anxiety to which I hoped with her assistance to put an end.
It was not long before I received a reply, and it was much more favorable than I had ventured to hope. Her large, affectionate heart seemed not only to comprehend fully what I had merely given her an outline of, but to have penetrated to the bottom of mine, and divined even what I had not attempted to say. I felt I had in her a powerful support. Her inquiries were promptly and successfully made, and the result was what I had foreseen. Lorenzo was really in Paris, in an obscure corner of the Faubourg Saint‐Germain. He had narrow quarters adjoining a large studio, where he had already begun to work. “His celebrity is too great for him to remain long concealed,” wrote Mme. de Kergy; “besides, the very thing he is aiming at would prevent all possibility of his remaining long incognito. Several of his friends have already found him out and called to see him, but he has only consented to receive one of them, whose counsels and assistance are indispensable. This gentleman is also a friend of ours. I have learned through him that as soon as your husband gets under way in his work, he intends to enter into communication with those he has left, and probably with you, my dear Ginevra; but he persists in his intention of remaining by himself, and not allowing you to share his lot. He thinks he has arranged everything so you can continue to live very nearly the same as before, with the exception of his presence, which, he says, he has done nothing to make you desire. You will have some difficulty in overcoming his obstinacy in this respect; you will find it hard to induce one who is so sensible of his wrongs towards you to accept the heavy burden of gratitude. All the sacrifices he imposes on himself will cost him far less than to consent to those you are so ready to make for him. Men are all so. Be patient, therefore; be prudent, and have sufficient thoughtfulness and feeling to manifest your generosity in such a way that he will perceive it as little as possible....”
It was the easier to follow Mme. de Kergy’s advice that the course she wished me to pursue would be strictly sincere. I wrote him, therefore, without affectation or restraint, what my heart dictated, but I wrote in vain; my first and second letters remained unanswered. The third drew forth a reply, but it contained a refusal of my wishes which betrayed all the motives indicated by my aged friend. Alas! to make others accept forgiveness is often a thousand times more difficult than to obtain it ourselves!
I was not discouraged, however. I made preparations for my departure, as if he had sent for me, and I awaited impatiently the time, without the least doubt as to its arrival, determined to find some means of hastening it, should the delay be too much prolonged.
XLII.
While so much apparent, as well as real, gloom was gathering around my path, there was no diminution in the interior brightness of my soul; which was only manifested, however, by an activity, and at the same time tranquillity, that greatly surprised my brother and all my friends, especially my aunt, whose agitation was extreme.
I will not say that Donna Clelia felt in the least that pleasure at the misfortunes of others attributed by a great satirist to all mankind, but the change in our respective situations which now afforded her an opportunity of pitying and protecting instead of envying me, was by no means displeasing to her pride or kindness of heart.
She offered me the most unlimited hospitality. She wished to establish me in her palazzo on the Toledo, and give up the largest of her spacious drawing‐rooms to my sole use. She did not comprehend how I could remain in my house when it was being stripped of all the magnificence that had placed me, in her eyes, on the very pinnacle of happiness. But I refused to the last to leave my chamber and the terrace, with its incomparable view, the privation of which I should have felt more than anything else. I remained, therefore, in the corner (a very spacious one, however) of my beautiful home I had reserved for myself, encouraged by Stella, who, without surprise or wonder, comprehended my motives, and assisted me in making preparations for my departure. She always brought Angiolina with her, which added to our enjoyment; for she continually hovered around, enlivening us with her prattle. So, in spite of the sadness of my position, I was able, without much effort, to rise above my dejection and gloom.
Weeks passed away, however, and, though I had not renounced the hope of overcoming Lorenzo’s obstinacy, I began to grow impatient, and was thinking of starting without his consent; for it seemed to me, when once near him, he could not refuse to see me. This uncertainty was the most painful feature of my present situation, and the rainy season, meanwhile, added its depressing influence to all the rest. But to disturb my peace of mind and diminish my courage would have required a trial more severe and painful than that.
The sky once more became clear, and we were at length able to return to the terrace, from which we had so long been banished by the rain. The clumps of verdure in the garden, the perfume of the flowers, the blueness of the mountains, sea, and sky—in short, all nature seemed to atone by her unusual brilliancy for having been so long forced to veil her beautiful face. But Stella, instead of being charmed and transported, as usual, with the prospect, looked gravely and silently around for some time, then, with a sudden explosion of grief, threw herself on my neck.
“Ginevra, what will become of Angiolina and me when you are gone?... Ah! I ought to love nobody in the world but her!”
She sat down on one of the benches on the terrace, and took up the child, who had not left us an instant during the day, to play, as she usually did. And when Angiolina, with her eyes full of tears, begged her to prevent her dear Zia Gina from going away, all Stella’s firmness gave way for an instant, and she burst into tears.
Oh! how strongly I then felt, in my turn, the difference there is between the sacrifice of exterior objects and the interior sacrifices that rend the soul! The infinite love that tempers all the sufferings of this world exempts no one from these trials. I might even say it increases them, for it enlarges the capacity of our affection and pity: it makes us fully realize what suffering is, and gives it its true meaning.
I could not, therefore, look at Stella in her present mood without being overcome by a sadness I had never felt before at the thought of our separation. Her tears, which she was generally so well able to suppress, continued to flow, as she rocked her child in silence. She remained thus without uttering a word, even in reply to my questions, until little Angiolina, after quietly weeping a long time, fell into a heavy, profound sleep in her mother’s arms.
It was the first time I had ever known Stella to lose courage. Mine failed me at the sight, and this hour—the last we were to pass together on the terrace so full of pleasant associations, and so often trod by Angiolina’s little feet—this hour was sad beyond all expression, and in appearance beyond all reason. The serenity of the soul, like the sky of Italy, is thus obscured at times by clouds that trouble and afflict the more because the light they veil is habitually so bright and serene! Neither Stella nor I, however, were disposed to believe in presentiments. Besides, our sadness was too well founded to be surprising. Nevertheless, something darker hovered over us than we foresaw at the moment: the morrow already threw its gloom over this last evening!
The sun was going down. Stella suddenly started from her reverie and awoke Angiolina. It was time to take her home. But the child’s eyes, generally so bright, were now heavy. She hardly opened them when I approached to embrace her. Her little mouth made a slight movement to return my kiss, and she fell asleep again immediately. Her mother, surprised, and somewhat alarmed at her unwonted languor, hastily wrapped a shawl around her to protect her as much as possible from the evening air, and carried her away.
The following day, of sorrowful memory, rose bright and radiant for me; for when I awoke, I found a letter from Lorenzo awaiting me—a letter which put an end to all my perplexities, and justified, beyond all my hopes, the confidence with which I had expected it.
“Ginevra, you have prevailed. I venture at last to beg your forgiveness, for your letters have inspired the hope of some day meriting it. I no longer fear, therefore, to meet you again. Come! It is my wish. I am waiting for you.
“LORENZO.”
These last lines contained the surest promise of happiness I had ever received in my life, and I kissed them with tears. I longed to start that very hour, and it will not seem surprising now that I looked around the sumptuous dwelling I was about to leave for ever without regret, and even at the enchanting prospect my eyes were never weary of gazing at! It was by no means these exterior objects that inspired the deep, unalterable joy of my soul. I did not owe to them the vision of happiness I thought I now caught the first ray of. My only regret, therefore, was that I could not start as soon as I wished. All my preparations were made, and I longed to take my departure at once. But I had to wait three days before the first boat on which I could embark would leave for Marseilles—a delay that seemed so long! Alas! I was far from foreseeing how painful and short I should find them!
Stella had passed every day with me for the last few weeks, and I now awaited her arrival to communicate my joy. But the usual hour for her to come had gone by. She did not appear. I was surprised at this delay, and, instead of waiting any longer, I proceeded on foot to her house, which was only at a short distance from mine. The previous evening had left me no anxiety, and its sadness had been dispersed with the joy of the morning.
When I arrived, I found the door open. No servant was there to announce me. I went through the gallery, a large drawing‐room, and a cabinet, without meeting a person. At length I came to Stella’s chamber, where Angiolina also slept in a little bed beside her mother’s. I entered.... Oh! how shall I describe the sight that met my eyes! How express all my feelings of amazement, pity, affection, and grief!
My dear, unhappy Stella was seated in the middle of the room with her child extended on her knees, pale, motionless, and apparently without life!
She did not shed a tear; she did not utter a word. She raised an instant her large eyes, which were unusually dilated, and looked at me. What a look! O God! it expressed the grief that mothers alone can feel, and which no other on earth can surpass!... I fell on my knees beside her. Angiolina still breathed, but she was dying. She opened her beautiful eyes a moment.... A look of recognition crossed them.... They turned from her mother to me, and from me to her mother, and then grew dim. A convulsive shudder ran over her, and it was all over. The angel was in heaven. The mother was bereft, for this life, of her only child!...
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
The longest years cannot efface the memory of such an hour, and time, which at last subdues all grief, never gave me the courage to dwell on this. Mothers who have been pierced by such a sword cannot speak of it; others dare not. The woman who has no child, in the presence of one who has just lost hers, can only bend in silence and respect before the sovereign majesty of grief!
I will merely state, with respect to what preceded, that the drowsiness of the child the night before was a symptom of the violent malady which suddenly attacked her in the middle of the night. After abating towards day, it came on again an hour later, and kept increasing without any relaxation to the end.
As for me, who had given Angiolina the place that had remained vacant in my heart, the excess of my grief enabled me to form an estimate of hers whose heart was filled with far greater anguish at being so suddenly robbed of her all by death. I shuddered at the thought of a sorrow greater than mine, and did not dare dwell on my own troubles in the presence of a grief that cast into the shade all the sufferings I had ever witnessed before. What a remedy for the imaginary or exaggerated woes of life it is to suddenly be brought to witness the reality of the most terrible of misfortunes!
What a price was I now to pay for the journey I had so long looked forward to—the reunion I had longed for with so many prayers and obtained by so many efforts!
To leave Stella in her affliction was a trial I had not anticipated, and one which the most imperious duty alone could have induced me to consent to. I had to do it, however, but not till I had succeeded in gratifying the only remaining wish of her broken heart—“to leave the world for a few months, that she might be alone, free to abandon herself entirely to the dear, angelic memory of her lost joy....”
Stella uttered no complaint. Her grief was mute. But she had expressed this desire, and it was granted. Livia obtained a place of retreat for her in a part of her convent that was not cloistered. It was there I left her, in the shadow of that sweet sanctuary, near the tenderest, strongest heart she could have to lean on, in presence of the magnificent prospect before her, and beneath the brilliant canopy of that glorious sky, beyond which she could follow in spirit the treasure she had been deprived of, but which she felt sure of some day finding again!
XLIII.
I was filled with solemn emotion when, having taken leave of my brother and all the friends who had accompanied me on board, I at length found myself alone with Ottavia on the deck of the boat, gazing at the receding mountains, hills, villas, and the smiling, flowery shores of the Bay of Naples as they vanished away. Two years had scarcely flown since the day when this prospect met my eyes for the first time. But during this short period so many different feelings had agitated my heart, and so many events had crossed my path, that the time seemed as long as a whole life.
Joys and sorrows, ardent hopes and bitter deceptions, severe trials, dangerous temptations, a deadly struggle, grace—to crown all! grace luminous and wonderful—had all succeeded each other in my soul. And to all these remembrances was now added the new sorrow which set on these last days a mournful, heartrending seal! The death of a child, it is true, would seem to the indifferent to seriously wound no heart but its mother’s. Mine, however, bled profusely, and the sudden death of the angelic little creature I had so much loved, as well as the separation that so soon took place, cast an inexpressible gloom over the hour of departure I had so eagerly longed for, and which I had obtained at the price of sacrifices which till now had not seemed worthy of being counted. Truly, the words already quoted do not apply less to earthly affections than to the divine love that overrules them and includes them all: “There is no living in love without some pain or sorrow.” This is indubitable. The more tender the affection, the more exquisite the suffering it entails. But by way of recompense, in proportion as these cruel wounds are multiplied, the never‐failing supreme love affords a remedy by revealing itself more and more fully, and thereby supplying the place of all these vanished joys. This love alone assures the promise, the pledge, of their restoration and immortal duration!
Therefore, whatever the sadness of this hour; whatever the desolation of heart with which I gazed at the convent on yonder height where I had just parted from Stella and my sister with so many tears—in short, whatever the emotions of all kinds that seemed combined to overwhelm me, I felt, in spite of them, I lived a truer, freer life than when for the first time, surrounded with illusions and deceitful hopes, I crossed this bay in all the intoxication of radiant happiness!
These thoughts, and many others of a similar nature, passed through my mind while the boat was rapidly cleaving the waves, and little by little the last outline of the coast of Italy faded away and finally disappeared from my eyes for ever.
Night came on, the stars appeared, but I remained in the place where I was, without being able to make up my mind to leave it.
This solitude of the sea—more profound than any other—speaks to the soul a language peculiar to itself. I listened to it with undivided attention, blessing God for having inclined me to hear his voice, to give heed to no other during the period of inaction and repose which separated the portion of my life just closed from that which was about to commence under new and unknown circumstances.
I did not stop at Marseilles, for I was impatient to arrive at my journey’s end. And yet, in spite of the summons I was now obeying, I was not without anxiety as to the reception I should meet with. I knew the mobility of Lorenzo’s feelings, and that the letter I had so recently received from him was not a sure guarantee of the disposition in which I should find him. In fact, when I met him on my arrival at the station, I did not at first know what to think. He was pale, agitated, and gloomy, and could scarcely hide the suffering his face expressed much more clearly than joy at seeing me again. I felt the arm tremble on which I was leaning, and I remained silent, confounded, and anxious. He hurried me through the crowd, placed me in a carriage, made Ottavia take a seat beside me, then closed the door with an air of constraint, saying he wished to arrive before me.
At first I was astonished at finding myself so suddenly separated from him, after barely seeing him for a moment. But I saw, by the embarrassment and painful agitation he manifested, what was passing in his mind, and was extremely affected. Poor Lorenzo! it was not in this way he had once led his young bride beneath his roof. This was not the future he then took pleasure in depicting, or what he had promised. The immense change of fortune he had undergone was now for the first time to be realized by the wife he had outraged, and from whom he did not dare expect an affection which would overlook all and render every sacrifice light. I felt he regretted now that he had consented to my coming.
After a long drive we at last came to the end of a street at the extremity of the Faubourg Saint‐Germain, where we entered a small court, and the carriage stopped before a door of very unpretending appearance.
But the house to which it gave access, covered on the outside with climbing plants that concealed the reddish tint of the walls, had a picturesque appearance seldom found in any house in Paris, large or small. Lorenzo, with his artistic eye, had discovered it, and understood also how it should be arranged interiorly. Consequently, when he ushered me into a salon opening into a little parterre filled with flowers, beyond which rose the trees of an adjacent garden, which made it seem like some rural solitude; when he took me all over the ground‐floor, where everything was simple, but nothing vulgar; when on all sides I found evidences both of his taste and his solicitude for me; above all, when I saw in his cabinet and studio all the indications that he had resumed his habits of assiduous labor and serious study, so great a joy filled my heart and beamed from my eyes that he could no longer feel any doubt, and I saw the cloud that veiled his brow totally disappear.
“Is it possible?... Is it true?” said he. “You are satisfied, Ginevra? And I can welcome your presence without remorse?”
I was affected to tears.
“I assure you,” said I, with a sincerity of accent that could not be mistaken, “this so‐called great catastrophe has only taken away the things I did not care for: it gives me here all I love, and nearly everything I desire.”
I looked at him hesitatingly, not yet knowing how far to go. But his look inspired me with courage, and I continued, with emotion:
“Tell me, in your turn, that you regret nothing, that my presence suffices, and I pledge you my word, Lorenzo, this hour will be the happiest of my life.”
Instead of replying directly, he knelt down beside the little divan where I was sitting, and I saw his eyes beaming with the expression that once used to flash from them for an instant, not uncertain and transitory as then, but calm, stable, and profound.
“Ginevra,” said he, “in assuring you to‐day that my reason has been restored to me, that I have for ever recovered from my detestable aberration, that I again look upon you as I did when you first effaced every other image, that I love you as much, yes, a thousand times more than ever, this is not saying enough, this is not telling you what you would perhaps listen to far more gladly than all this.”
I opened my eyes and looked steadily towards him. He felt my soul was trying to read his, and he continued in a low, agitated tone:
“You have made me love in you what is better than yourself. Listen to me.... Long years of indifference had effaced the memory of divine things I had been taught in my childhood. Did you think they could ever be recalled? I had never felt the slightest desire. It is you, Ginevra, who caused their return. Can you realize it?”
O my God! this hour was too happy for earth! It left me only one wish more. It realized to the fullest extent all the cherished dreams of the past, and made me touch at last the summit (alas! always threatening and uncertain) of earthly happiness! No cloud has ever obscured the bright, blessed remembrance! No suffering, no trial, has ever checked the effusion of gratitude I still feel, and which will be eternal!
It will not be difficult to understand that, in this new state of things, our life speedily and sweetly resumed its course. Strange to say, this calm, simple life, exempt from splendor, luxury, and worldly éclat, was the precise realization of the secret desire I had always cherished in my soul, the signification of which had been revealed to me in that great day of grace which I may call that of my true birth!
It would, therefore, have been an absurdity to speak of sacrifice in the situation in which I now found myself. But Lorenzo did not yet see things in the same light.
“I acknowledge,” said he one day, after some weeks had passed by—“I acknowledge we lack nothing essential, that the waifs from our wreck even afford us a comfortable support, but I wish more than that for you, my Ginevra. I must work for the means of restoring all my folly has deprived you of. The public receives my productions with marked favor. They have all been sold at a fabulous price, except one which I will never part with. Let me alone, therefore, and I promise you the day shall arrive when I will place on your brow a diadem even more brilliant than the one you have lost.”
I made a quick gesture, and was about to express the repugnance such a prospect inspired. But I stopped. It was better, no matter in what way, he should be stimulated by some object to be attained by the laborious efforts to which he devoted all his faculties. I allowed him, therefore, to dream of the jewels he would adorn me with, and enlarge on his plans for the future, while I was sitting beside him in his studio, sometimes reading to him, and sometimes becoming his model again. Whenever he spoke in this way, I smiled without trying to oppose him.
Mme. de Kergy and Diana hastened to see me the day after my arrival. We continued to meet almost daily, and I found in their delightful society the strongest support, the wisest counsels, and an affection which inspired almost unlimited confidence.
As to Gilbert, he was still absent, and not expected to return till the autumn of the following year.
When his mother gave me this information, my first feeling was one of relief. It seemed to me my relations with his family were simplified by his absence, and I could defer all thought as to what I should do at his return. But, when I saw my dear, venerable friend secretly wipe away a tear as she spoke of her son; when she added in a trembling voice that such a separation at her age was a severe trial which afflicted her more than any she had ever known; when Diana afterwards came to tell me with a full heart that Gilbert’s absence was shortening her mother’s days, oh! then my heart sank with profound sorrow, and I felt an ardent, painful desire to repair the evil I had caused—an evil which (whatever may be said) is never altogether involuntary!
Ah! if women would only consider how far their fatal influence sometimes extends, even those who add hardness of heart to their desire to please would become indifferent to the wish. They scarcely hesitate sometimes to sacrifice a man’s career, his abilities, his whole existence. Vanity and pride take pleasure in ravages of this kind. But if their eyes could behold the firesides they quench the light of, the maternal hearts they sadden, the families whose sweet joys they destroy, their trophies would seem bloody, and they might be brought to comprehend the words of the Psalmist which I had humbly learned to repeat: Ab occultis meis munda me, et ab alienis parce servo tuo.
Lorenzo’s celebrity increased by the productions he now exhibited to the public. The singularity of our position in returning to Paris, under circumstances so different from those which surrounded us when we made our first appearance in the grand monde, drew upon us the attention of this very world which would have enticed us from our retreat. But, thank Heaven! I did not have to exert my influence over Lorenzo to induce him to decline it. His pride would have been sufficient, had not his whole time been absorbed in his labors, and it was even with difficulty he consented to accompany me one evening to the Hôtel de Kergy.
From that time, however, he willingly repeated his visits, attracted by Mme. de Kergy’s dignified cordiality and simplicity of manner as well as by the charm of the intellectual circle of which her salon was the centre—a charm he would have always appreciated had he not been under the influence of another attraction. Now there was no counteracting influence, and he took fresh pleasure every evening in going there to repose after the fatigue of the day and seek something more beneficial to his mind than mere recreation.
A person endowed with noble gifts, who returns to the right path after long going astray, experiences an immense consolation in finding himself in his true element. It would, therefore, be impossible to tell how great Lorenzo’s joy now was, or how eloquently he was able to express it. And nothing could express the feelings with which I listened to him!
The only shadow of my life at this time was my separation from Stella. A thousand times did I urge her to join me, as she was no longer under any obligation to remain at Naples. I felt that the only possible solace for her broken heart would be to leave the place where she had suffered so much; her courageous soul would find a salutary aliment in the great charitable movement at Paris, at that time in all the vigor of its first impulse, given a few years before. I therefore continually urged her to come, but I begged her in vain. An invincible repugnance to leave the place of refuge where she had hidden her grief prevented her from yielding to my wishes.
Thus passed days, weeks, months, yes, even a whole year and more of happiness. The satisfactory life I had dreamed of was now a reality, and the world I once fancied I could reveal to Lorenzo unaided he had discovered himself. It had been revealed to him by trials, humiliation, and labor. The absolute change in his habits, which Lando had once indicated as the only remedy, had, as he had foreseen, produced a beneficial, efficacious, and lasting effect.
But we know one of the anomalies of the human heart is to expect and long for happiness as its right, and yet to be incapable of possessing it a single day in its plenitude without trembling, as if conscious it was not in the nature of things here below for it to endure a long time.
Lorenzo experienced more than most people this melancholy of happiness, which was often increased by too profound a regret for the errors of his life. It partook of the vehemence of his character, and it was sometimes difficult to overcome the sadness awakened by the remembrance of the past.
“Ginevra,” said he one day, “I am far too happy for a man who merits it so little.”
He said this with a gloomy expression. It was the beginning of spring. The air was soft, the sky clear, the lilacs of our little garden were in bloom, and we sat there inhaling the perfume. He repeated:
“Yes, my life is now too happy—too happy, I feel, to be of long duration.” A remark somewhat trite, which is often thrown like a veil over the too excessive brightness of earthly happiness! But I could not repress a shudder as I listened to it. And yet what was there to fear ... to desire ... to refuse ... when I felt the present and the future were in the hands of Him whom I loved more than anything here below?
To Be Concluded Next Month.
A Bit Of Modern Thought On Matter
We have now accomplished the first portion of our task, by establishing on good philosophical and physical grounds the fundamental truths regarding the essence and the properties of material substance as such. We might, therefore, take up the second part of our treatise, and begin our investigation about the nature of the metaphysical constituents of matter and their necessary relations, in order to ascertain how far the principles of the scholastic doctrine on matter can nowadays be maintained consistently with the principles of natural science. But we think it necessary, before we enter into the study of such a difficult subject, to caution our readers against some productions of modern thinkers, whose speculations on the nature of material things confound all philosophy, and tend by their sophistry to popularize the most pernicious errors. The number of such productions is daily increasing, owing to the efforts of powerful societies, and the philosophical imbecility of the scientific press and of its patrons. The heap of intellectual rubbish thus accumulated, both in Europe and in America, is quite prodigious; to sweep it all away would be like purging the Augean stable—a task which some new Hercules may yet undertake. We shall confine ourselves to a small portion of that task, by scattering to the winds some plausible quibbles we have lately met with in an American scientific magazine.
J. B. Stallo is the author of a series of articles published in the Popular Science Monthly under the title “The Primary Concepts of Modern Physical Science.” He is a clever writer; but his conclusions, owing to a lack of sound philosophy, are not always correct. Some of them are altogether unfounded, others demonstrably false; and many of them, while attempting to revolutionize science, tend to foster downright scepticism. We shall single out a few of those propositions which clash with the common doctrines of modern physics no less than with the common principles of metaphysics; and we hope to show, by their refutation, the incomparable superiority of our old over his new philosophy.
Indestructibility of matter.—“The indestructibility of matter,” says the writer,(181) “is an unquestionable truth. But in what sense, and upon what grounds, is this indestructibility predicated of matter? The unanimous answer of the atomists is: Experience teaches that all the changes to which matter is subject are but variations of form, and that amid these variations there is an unvarying constant—the mass or quantity of matter. The constancy of the mass is attested by the balance, which shows that neither fusion nor sublimation, neither generation nor corruption, can add to, or detract from, the weight of a body subjected to experiment. When a pound of carbon is burned, the balance demonstrates the continuous existence of this pound in the carbonic acid, which is the product of combustion, and from which the original weight of carbon may be recovered. The quantity of matter is measured by its weight, and this weight is unchangeable.”
So far all is right; but he continues: “Such is the fact familiar to every one, and its interpretation equally familiar. To test the correctness of this interpretation we may be permitted slightly to vary the method of verifying it. Instead of burning the pound of carbon, let us simply carry it to the summit of a mountain, or remove it to a lower latitude; is its weight still the same? Relatively it is; it will still balance the original counterpoise. But the absolute weight is no longer the same.... It is thus evident that the constancy, upon the observation of which the assertion of the indestructibility of matter is based, is simply the constancy of a relation, and that the ordinary statement of the fact is crude and inadequate. Indeed, while it is true that the weight of a body is a measure of its mass, this is but a single case of the more general fact that the masses of bodies are inversely as the velocities imparted to them by the action of the same force, or, more generally still, inversely as the accelerations produced in them by the same force. In the case of gravity, the forces of attraction are directly proportional to the masses, so that the action of the forces (weight) is the simplest measure of the relation between any two masses as such; but in any inquiry relating to the validity of the atomic theory, it is necessary to bear in mind that this weight is not the equivalent, or rather the presentation, of an absolute substantive entity in one of the bodies (the body weighed), but the mere expression of a relation between two bodies mutually attracting each other. And it is further necessary to remember that this weight may be indefinitely reduced, without any diminution in the mass of the body weighed, by a mere change of its position in reference to the body between which and the body weighed the relation subsists.”
The aim of the author is, as we shall see, to prove that “there are and can be no absolute constants of mass”; hence he endeavors at the very outset to shake our opposite conviction by showing that there is no absolute measure of masses. Such is the drift of the passage we have transcribed.
But we beg to remark that absolute quantities may be known to be absolute independently of any absolute measurement. Three kinds of quantity are conceivable: intensive quantity, which is measured by degrees; dimensive quantity, which is measured by distances; and numerical quantity, which is measured by discrete units. Of course dimensive quantity is altogether relative, inasmuch as it entirely consists of relations, and cannot be measured but by relative and arbitrary measures; but intensive quantity, though measured by arbitrary degrees, is altogether absolute, because it consists of a reality whose value is independent of correlative terms. And in the same manner numerical quantity is altogether absolute, because it consists of absolute units, by which it can be measured, absolutely speaking, though we may fail to reach such units, and are then obliged to measure it by some other standard. Now, the mass, or the quantity of matter in a body, is a numerical quantity; for it consists of a number of primitive units, independent of one another for their essence and for their existence, and therefore absolute in regard to their substantial being. Consequently, every mass of matter has an absolute value corresponding to the number of absolute units it contains; and thus every mass of matter is “an absolute constant of mass.” It is true that we have no means of ascertaining the absolute number of primitive units contained in a given mass; hence we are constrained to measure the quantity of matter by a relative measure—that is, by comparing it with an equal volume of another substance, whose density and weight we assume as the measure of other densities and weights. But does our ignorance of the absolute number of primitive units contained in a given mass interfere with their real existence? or, can our method of measuring change the nature of the thing measured?
We are told that “the weight of a body may be indefinitely reduced without any diminution in the mass of the body weighed.” Would not this show that, contrary to the author’s opinion, the body weighed possesses “an absolute constant of mass”? We are told at the same time that “the weight of a body is a measure of its mass.” This cannot be true, unless, while the mass remains unchanged, the weight also remains unchanged. Hence the author’s idea of carrying the pound of carbon to the summit of a mountain in order to diminish its weight, is inconsistent with the law of measurement, which forbids the employment of two weights and measures for measuring one and the same quantity.
The atomists measure the quantity of matter by its weight, because they know that every particle of matter is subject to gravitation, and therefore that the weights, all other things being equal, are proportionate to the number of primitive particles contained in the bodies. Thus, if a body contains a number, m, of primitive particles, and each of these particles is subject to the gravitation, g, while another body contains a number, m´, of primitive particles subject to the same gravitation, the ratio of the weights of the two bodies will be the same as the ratio of the two masses; for
mg : m´g : : m : m´;
and if the two bodies were carried to the summit of a mountain, where the gravitation is reduced to g´, the weights would indeed be changed, but their ratio would remain unaltered, and we would still have
mg´ : m´g´ : : m : m´.
Hence, whether we weigh two bodies in the valley or at the summit of the mountain, so long as we keep the same unit of gravitation for both, the ratio of their masses remains the same. This shows that the quantity of matter existing in those bodies implies “a constant of mass” independent of the intensity of gravitation, and that the ratio of the two masses is the ratio of two “absolute” quantities—that is, of two numbers of primitive material units.
It is not true, therefore, that the weight is not “the presentation of an absolute substantive entity,” as the author pretends. Weight implies mass and gravitation, and presents the one as subject to the other. Now, the mass is an “absolute substantive entity,” as we have shown. Nor is it true that weight is “the mere expression of a relation between two bodies mutually attracting each other,” as the author imagines. The pound of carbon is a pound not because of an attraction exercised by the carbon upon the earth, but merely because of the attraction exercised by the earth on the mass of the carbon. Were it otherwise, the mathematical expression of weight should contain, besides the mass of the body weighed and the action of gravity upon it, a third quantity representing the action of the body upon the earth, and the gravitation of the earth towards the body.
The writer proceeds: “Masses find their true and only measure in the action of forces, and the quantitative persistence of the effect of this action is the simple and accurate expression of the fact which is ordinarily described as the indestructibility of matter. It is obvious that this persistence is in no sense explained or accounted for by the atomic theory” (p. 708).
We admit that, owing to our inability to determine the absolute number of primitive elements in a body, we resort to the persistence of the weight in order to ascertain the persistence of a certain quantity of matter in the body. But this does not show that the action of forces is the “only measure” of masses. A mass is a number of material units; its true measure is one of such units, and it is only in order to determine the relative number of such units in different bodies that we have recourse to their weights. It is not the quantity of matter that follows the weight of the body, but it is the weight of the body that follows the quantity of matter; and therefore, although we determine the relative quantities of matter by the relation of their weights, it is not the weight that measures the quantity of matter, but it is the quantity of matter that measures the weight. In other terms, the persistence of the mass is merely known through the persistence of the weight, but the persistence of the weight is itself a consequence of the persistence of the mass. Hence the persistence of the mass is perfectly accounted for by the atomic theory, notwithstanding Mr. Stallo’s contrary assertion.
He says: “The hypothesis of ultimate indestructible atoms is not a necessary implication of the persistence of weight, and can at best account for the indestructibility of matter if it can be shown that there is an absolute limit to the compressibility of matter—in other words, that there is an absolutely least volume for every determinate mass” (p. 708). Both parts of this proposition are false. The first is false, because the weight of a body is the result of the gravitation of all its particles; and, therefore, it cannot persist without the persistence of the gravitating particles. The second part also is false, because the persistence of the weight implies the persistence of the mass independently of all considerations concerning a limit of compressibility or an absolute minimum of volume. Hence, whatever the author may say to the contrary, it is quite certain of scientific certainty that there can be, and there is, in all bodies, “an absolute constant of mass.”
Atomic theory.—The writer objects to the atomic theory on the ground that it does not explain impenetrability, and that it misconceives the nature of reality. He begins by remarking that “the proposition, according to which a space occupied by one body cannot be occupied by another, implies the assumption that space is an absolute, self‐measuring entity, and the further assumption that there is a least space which a given body will absolutely fill so as to exclude any other body” (p. 709). We think that the proposition implies nothing of the kind. The space occupied by one body cannot naturally be occupied by another, because all bodies are made up of molecules which at very small distances repel one another with actions of greater and greater intensities, thus preventing compenetration, while successfully struggling for the preservation of their own individuality. This the molecules can do, whether space can be filled or not, and whether space is a self‐measuring entity or not. Hence the remark of the author has no foundation.
But he continues: “The atomic theory has become next to valueless as an explanation of the impenetrability of matter, since it has been pressed into the service of the undulatory theory of light, heat, etc., and assumed the form in which it is now held by the majority of physicists. According to this form of the theory, the atoms are either mere points, wholly without extension, or their dimensions are infinitely small as compared with the distances between them, whatever be the state of aggregation of the substances into which they enter. In this view, the resistance which a body, i.e., a system of atoms, offers to the intrusion of another body is due not to the rigidity or unchangeability of volume of the individual atoms, but to the relation between the attractive and repulsive forces with which they are supposed to be endowed. There are physicists holding this view, who are of opinion that the atomic constitution of matter is consistent with its compenetrability—among them M. Cauchy, who in his Sept Leçons de physique générale (ed. Moigno, Paris, 1868, p. 38), after defining atoms as material points without extension, uses this language: ‘Thus, this property of matter, which we call impenetrability, is explained when we consider the atoms as material points exerting on each other attractions and repulsions which vary with the distances that separate them.... From this it follows that, if it pleased the Author of nature simply to modify the laws according to which the atoms attract or repel each other, we might instantly see the hardest bodies penetrate each other, the smallest particles of matter occupy immense spaces, or the largest masses reduce themselves to the smallest volumes, the entire universe concentrating itself, as it were, in a single point’ ” (p. 710).
We think that the author’s notion of the form in which the atomic theory is now held by physicists is not quite correct. The chemical atoms are now considered as dynamical systems of material points, so that the atomic theory is now scarcely distinguishable from the molecular theory. That such a theory “has become next to valueless as an explanation of the impenetrability of matter” is not true. Of course two primitive elements of matter, if attractive, would, according to the theory, as we understand it, pass through one another; as nothing can oppose their progress except repulsion, which is not to be thought of in the case of attractive elements. But the case is different with molecules; for every molecule of any special substance contains a number of repulsive elements, and possesses a repulsive envelope(182) which resists most effectually all attempt at compenetration on the part of other molecules. Hence the impenetrability of bodies (not of matter, as the author says) is a simple result of the molecular constitution of bodies, as explained in the atomic theory of the modern chemists.
That the resistance which a body offers to the intrusion of another body is due “not to the rigidity or unchangeability of volume of individual atoms, but to the relation between the attractive and repulsive forces with which they are supposed to be endowed,” is an obvious truth. We do not see by what kind of reasoning the author can infer from it that “the atomic theory has become next to valueless as an explanation of impenetrability.” We rather maintain that the theory is correct, and that no other theory has yet been found which explains impenetrability without assuming much that philosophy condemns. As to M. Cauchy’s views, we remark that, when he defines atoms as “material points without extension,” he does not speak of the chemical atoms, or equivalents, but of the primitive elements of which such atoms or equivalents are composed.
The author says: “The assumption of atoms of different specific gravities proves to be not only futile, but absurd. Its manifest theoretical ineptitude is found to mask the most fatal inconsistencies. According to the mechanical conception which underlies the whole atomic hypothesis, differences of weight are differences of density; and differences of density are differences of distance between the particles contained in a given space. Now, in the atom there is no multiplicity of particles and no void space; hence differences of density or weight are impossible in the case of atoms” (p. 715).
This conclusion would be quite inevitable, if it were true that the atom of the chemists contains no multiplicity of particles and no void space; but the truth is that chemical atoms are nothing but equivalents, or molecules—that is, dynamical systems of material points intercepting void space. Hence the author’s argument has no foundation. The very fact that men of science unanimously agree in attributing to different atoms a different weight, should have warned Mr. Stallo that the word “atom” could not be considered by them as a simple material point.
The author in his second article (November, 1873) argues against the actio in distans. We have given his words in one of our own articles, where we undertook to show that actio in distans cannot be impugned with any good argument.(183) The author, however, we are glad to see, honestly acknowledges that “the transfer of motion from one body to another by impact is no less incomprehensible than the actio in distans” (p. 96); which shows that, after having rejected the action at a distance, he is at a loss how to account for any communication or propagation of movement. A little later he quotes a passage of Faraday, which we have given in another place, and in which the English professor considers the atoms as consisting of a mere sphere of power, with a central point having no dimensions. Then he gives his own view of the subject in the following words:
“The true root of all these errors is a total misconception of the nature of reality. All the reality we know is not only spatially finite, but limited in all its aspects; its whole existence lies in relation and contrast, as I shall show more at length in the next article. We know nothing of force, except by its contrast with mass, or (what is the same thing) inertia; and conversely, as I have already pointed out in my first article, we know nothing of mass except by its relation to force. Mass, inertia (or, as it is sometimes, though inaccurately, called, matter per se), is indistinguishable from absolute nothingness; for matter reveals its presence, or evinces its reality, only by its action, its force, its tension, or motion. But, on the other hand, mere force is equally nothing; for, if we reduce the mass upon which a given force, however small, acts, until it vanishes—or, mathematically expressed, until it becomes infinitely small—the consequence is that the velocity of the resulting motion is infinitely great, and that the ‘thing’ (if under these circumstances a thing can still be spoken of) is at any given moment neither here nor there, but everywhere—that is, there is no real presence. It is impossible, therefore, to construct matter by a mere synthesis of forces.... The true formula of matter is mass × force, or inertia × force” (p. 103).
The author is greatly mistaken in assuming that those who consider the atoms (primitive elements) as centres of force totally misconceive the nature of reality. That Faraday, notwithstanding his saying that “the substance consists of the powers,” admits with the power the matter also, is evident from his very mention of the centre of the powers; for such a centre is nothing else than the matter, as we have proved above. He says, indeed, that the nucleus of the atom “vanishes”; but by “nucleus” he means the bulk or the continuous material extension of the atom. This bulk, says he, must vanish, inasmuch as the centre of the powers must be a mere unextended point. He therefore denies, not the matter, but only its intrinsic extension.
Mr. Stallo volunteers to show us “the true root” of all our errors. According to him, we totally misconceive the nature of reality. “All the reality we know,” he says, “is not only spatially finite, but limited in all its aspects.” About this we will not quarrel, for we admit that all created substances are limited; yet we would ask the author whether he thinks that the range of universal attraction has any known limit in space; and, if so, we would further ask where it is; for we admit our full ignorance of its existence. “We know nothing of force,” he continues, “except by its contrast with mass, or, what is the same thing, inertia.” Our readers know that mass and inertia are not the same thing; the mass is a quantity of matter, while inertia is the incapability of self‐motion. A writer who can confound the two as identical is not competent to correct our errors and to teach us the nature of reality. As to the contrast of force with mass, we have no objection; yet, while speaking of the nature of things, we would prefer to contrast matter with form rather than force with mass. The term force applies to the production of phenomena, and is usually confounded with action and with movement, neither of which is a constituent of substance; whilst the term mass expresses any quantity of matter from a single element up to a mountain; and thus it does not exhibit with precision the matter due to the primitive material substance.
“Mass, or matter per se, is indistinguishable from absolute nothingness.” Of course, matter per se—that is, without form—cannot exist. In the same manner “mere force is equally nothing”—that is, the material form, which is the principle of action, has no separate existence without its matter. This every one admits, though not on the grounds suggested by Mr. Stallo. “If we reduce,” says he, “the mass upon which a given force, however small, acts, until it vanishes—or, mathematically expressed, until it becomes infinitely small—the consequence is that the velocity of the resulting motion is infinitely great.” We deny this consequence, as well as the supposition from which it is inferred. Masses are numbers of material elements, or units. When such units are reached, the division is at an end, because those primitive units are without dimensions. Hence the extreme limit of the reduction of masses is not an infinitesimal quantity of mass, as the author imagines, but an absolute finite unit; for this unit, when repeated a finite number of times, gives us a finite quantity of mass. But, even supposing that the hypothesis of the author might be entertained (and it must be entertained by all those who consider matter as materially continuous), his consequence would still be false. For, let there be a continuous atom having finite dimensions. If such an atom is acted on, say by gravity, it will acquire a finite velocity. Now, it is evident that, when the atom has a finite velocity, every infinitesimal portion of it will have a finite velocity. Therefore the action which produces a finite velocity in the finite mass of the atom, produces a finite velocity in the infinitesimal masses of which the atom is assumed to consist. The error of the author arises from his confounding quantity of movement with action. A quantity of movement is a product of a mass into its velocity; and evidently the product cannot remain constant, unless the velocity increases in the same ratio as the mass decreases. The action, on the contrary, is directly proportional to the mass; and therefore, in the author’s hypothesis, the consequence should have been the very opposite of that which he enounces; that is, the velocity acquired by an infinitesimal mass would still be finite instead of infinitely great. But, as we have said, the hypothesis itself is inadmissible, because only continuous quantity can be reduced to infinitesimals, whilst masses are not continuous but discrete quantities.
That it is impossible “to construct matter by a mere synthesis of forces” is undeniable; but there was no need of arguing a point which no one contests. The author should rather have given us his ground for asserting that “the true formula of matter is mass multiplied by force.” This assertion can by no means be made good. All physicists know that mass multiplied by force represents nothing but a quantity of movement; and the author will not pretend, we presume, that matter is a quantity of movement. The true formula of matter is its essential definition; and it is not a mathematical but a metaphysical product, or rather a metaphysical ratio, as we have shown in another place. Material substance is matter actuated by its substantial form, and nothing else.
The author continues thus: “We now have before us in full view one of the fundamental fallacies of the atomic theory. This fallacy consists in the delusion that the conceptual constituents of matter can be grasped as separate and real entities. The corpuscular atomists take the element of inertia, and treat it as real by itself: while Boscovich, Faraday, and all those who define atoms as centres of force, seek to realize the corresponding element, force, as an entity by itself. In both cases elements of reality are mistaken for kinds of reality” (p. 103).
It is rather singular that a man who is so little at home in questions about matter should undertake to point out the fallacies and delusions of the best informed. Is it true that Boscovich, Faraday, and others of the same school, consider force as an entity by itself? And is it true that the corpuscular atomists treat the element of inertia as real by itself? There is much to be said against corpuscular atomists for other reasons, but they cannot surely be accused of maintaining that the element of inertia—that is, the mass of the atom—can exist separately without any inherent power, as they uniformly teach that their atoms are endowed with resisting powers. The accusation brought against Boscovich, Faraday, and others, is still more glaringly unjust. They do not seek to realize force “as an entity by itself”; on the contrary, when they define the atoms as centres of force, they manifestly teach that both the force and its centre are indispensable for the constitution of a primitive atom. And, since by the word force they mean the principle of activity (the form), and in the centre they recognize the principle of passivity (the matter), we cannot but conclude that the accusation has no ground, and that the fallacy and the delusion is on the side of Mr. Stallo himself.
Moreover, is it true that mass and force, or, to speak more accurately, the matter and the form, are nothing more than “the conceptual constituents” of material substance? This the author assumes as the base of his argumentation; yet it is plain that, if the constituents of a thing are only conceptual, the thing they constitute cannot be anything else than a conceptual being—that is, a being of reason. We must therefore either deny the reality of matter or concede that its constituents are more than conceptual. Could not the author perceive that, if mass is a mere concept, and force another mere concept, their alliance gives nothing but two concepts, and that the reality of the external world becomes a dream?
We live in times when men of a certain class presume to discuss metaphysical subjects without previous study and without a sufficient acquaintance with the first notions of metaphysics. One of these first notions is that all real being has real constituents. Such constituents, when known to us, are the object of our conceptions, and consequently they may become conceptual; but they do not cease to be real outside of our mind. Were we to conceive matter as separated from its form, or form as deprived of its matter, nothing real would correspond to our conception; for nowhere can real matter be found without a form, or a real form without its matter. Hence form without matter and matter without form are at best beings of reason. But when we conceive the matter as it is under its form, or the form as it is terminated to its matter, we evidently conceive the real constituents of material substance as they are in nature—that is, as metaphysical realities contained in the physical being. Does it follow that “elements of reality,” as the author objects, “are mistaken for kinds of reality”? By no means. The constituents of physical reality are themselves metaphysical realities, but they are not exactly two kinds of reality, because they belong both to the same essence which cannot be of two kinds. Hence the matter and the substantial form, or, in general, act and potency, notwithstanding their real metaphysical opposition and distinction, are one essence, one kind, and one being. But let us go back to our author.
In his third article (December, 1873) he says: “The ordinary mechanical explanation of the molecular states of matter, or states of aggregation, on the basis of the atomic theory, proceeds on the assumption that the molecular states are produced by the conflict of antagonistic central forces—molecular attraction and repulsion—the preponderance of the one or the other of which gives rise to the solid and gaseous forms, while their balance or equilibrium results in the liquid state. The utter futility of this explanation is apparent at a glance. Even waiving the considerations presented by Herbert Spencer (First Principles, p. 60 et seq.), that, in view of the necessary variation of the attractive and repulsive forces in the inverse ratio of the squares of the distances, the constituent atoms of a body, if they are in equilibrio at any particular distance, must be equally in equilibrio at all other distances, and that their density or state, therefore, must be invariable; and admitting that the increase or diminution of the repulsive force, heat, may render the preponderance of either force, and thus the change of density or state of aggregation, possible, what becomes of the liquid state as corresponding to the exact balance of these two forces in the absence of external coercion? The exact balance of the two opposing forces is a mere mathematical limit, which must be passed with the slightest preponderance of either force over the other. All bodies being subject to continual changes of temperature, the equilibrium can at best be but momentary; it must of necessity be of the most labile kind” (p. 223).
This argument against the atomic theory would be very good, if its premises were not deceptive. Mr. Stallo, unfortunately, relies too much on the terminology of physical writers, which is not always correct. Thus, it is not true that the solid form is the result of an actual preponderance of attraction between the molecules. If attraction prevailed, the molecules would not remain in their relative position, but would move in the direction of the attraction. The truth is that molecules, whether in the solid or in the liquid form, are in equilibrium of position; accordingly, neither attraction nor repulsion actually prevails between them.
Their position of equilibrium is determined by their own constitution, and may change; for the molecules admit of accidental changes in their constitution. Hence the distance of relative equilibrium is not necessarily constant, but changes with the change of state of each molecule. This shows that bodies, whether solid or liquid, can retain their solid or liquid form while subjected to considerable molecular changes, and that therefore neither the solid nor the liquid form is necessarily impaired by “the changes of temperature” or other molecular movements. The molecules of bodies attract each other when their distance is great, and repel each other when their distance has become very small; whence we immediately infer that there is for every kind of molecules a distance which marks the limit of their mutual attraction and repulsion, and that at such a distance the molecules must find their position of equilibrium. A body will be solid when, its molecules being in the position of relative equilibrium, from a small increase of their distance an attraction arises, which does not allow of the molecules being easily separated or arranged in a different order around one another. A body will be liquid when, its molecules being in the position of relative equilibrium, from a small increase of their distance a weak attraction arises, which allows of the molecules being easily separated or easily arranged, without separation, in a different manner around one another. A body will be expansive and fluid when its free molecules are at a distance sensibly less than that of relative equilibrium, and therefore repel each other, and are in need of exterior pressure to be kept at such a distance. But we must not forget that the distance of relative equilibrium varies with the intrinsic dynamical variation of the molecules, and that therefore “the exact balance of the two opposing forces is not a mere mathematical limit,” but is comprised between two mathematical limits determined by the amount of the variations of which each species of molecules is susceptible before settling into a different form.
Having thus disposed of the main argument by which the author wished to show “the utter futility” of the ordinary mechanical explanation of the molecular states of matter on the basis of the atomic theory, we may add a few words concerning Herbert Spencer’s argument alluded to by the author. The law of actions inversely proportional to the squares of the distances is true for each primitive element of matter, but it is not applicable to molecules acting at molecular distances, as we have proved in another place.(184) Hence Spencer’s argument, which assumes the contrary, is entirely worthless. On the other hand, were the argument admissible, we do not see how the proposition, “The constituent atoms of a body, if they are in equilibrio at any particular distance, must be equally in equilibrio at all other distances,” can justify the conclusion that “their density or state must be invariable.” It seems to us that a change of molecular distances must entail a change of density; but, of course, we are behind our age.
Relativity of material realities.—“It has been a favorite tenet, not only of metaphysicians, but of physicists as well, that reality is cognizable only as absolute, permanent, and invariable, or, as the metaphysicians of the XVIth and XVIIth centuries expressed it, sub specie æterni et abroluti. This proposition,” Mr. Stallo continues, “like so many others which have served as pillars of imposing metaphysical structures, is the precise opposite of the truth” (p. 223). Do you understand, reader? Metaphysicians and physicists of all centuries count for nothing; they were blind, every one of them; but a great luminary has appeared at last, a Mr. J. B. Stallo, whose superior wisdom, if not philosophical infallibility, opens a new era of thought, and dispels the darkness which has been thickening around us up to the present day. Yet even the sun has spots; and Mr. Stallo will permit us to remark that his statement of the metaphysical doctrine of the ancients is not altogether correct. They did not teach “that reality is cognizable only as absolute, permanent, and invariable”; they well knew and taught that there were realities cognizable, both relative and changeable. Substance, of course, was considered by them, and it is still considered by us, as an absolute reality; but they never imagined that the essence of such a reality was cognizable except through its constituent principles as related to one another, and therefore through an intelligible relation. This relation, as intelligible, was considered necessary and invariable, but, as an actual reality in nature, was considered contingent and changeable; the intelligible essence of things was known sub specie æterni, but their existence was known sub specie contingentis. Now, on what ground does Mr. Stallo impugn this doctrine? How does he prove that it is “the precise opposite of truth”? Alas! we should be exceedingly simple were we to expect proofs. Progress consists nowadays of stout assertions on the part of the writer, and of a silly credulity on that of most readers. Hence our author, instead of proving what he had rashly asserted, gives us a strain of other assertions equally rash and ridiculously absurd.
He says: “All material reality is, in its nature, not absolute, but essentially relative. All material reality depends upon determination; and determination is essentially limitation, as even Spinoza well knew. A thing ‘in and by itself’ is an impossibility” (ibid.) Spinoza! a great authority indeed! But we should like to know how the proposition, “Determination is essentially limitation,” can lead to the conclusion that “a thing in itself and by itself is an impossibility.” To make a logical connection between the two propositions, it would be necessary to assume that “nothing finite can be in itself and by itself.” But the assumption is so foolish that even Spinoza, who based on it his revolting system of Pantheism, could never support it except by a false definition of substance, and by giving to the phrases “in itself” and “by itself” an extravagant interpretation, which proved, if not his malice and bad faith, at least his profound philosophical ignorance. Let Mr. Stallo consult any good philosophical treatise on this subject, and he will see how stolid a man must be to fall a victim to the gross sophistry of the Jewish dogmatizer.
What shall we say of the other assertion, “All material reality is, in its nature, not absolute, but essentially relative”? Can anything be relative without at the same time being absolute? Can relation exist without two absolute terms? Relativity connects one absolute thing with another; the things thus connected acquire a relative mode of being, but they do not for that lose their absolute being. Thus Mr. Stallo may be an American citizen without ceasing to be a man, though he cannot be a citizen without being endued with a relation not involved in his nature as roan. So, also, husband and wife are essentially relative; yet we hope the author will not say that the relative Husband annihilates the absolute Man, or that the relative Wife excludes the absolute Woman.
These remarks apply to all relations, whether merely accidental or founded in the essence of things. Pantheists imagine that creatures cannot have any absolute being, because their being is essentially dependent, and therefore relative. They should consider that a creature is a created being—that is, a being related to its Creator. Such a creature, inasmuch as it is a being, is; and inasmuch as it is related, connotes its Maker. Now, to be and to connote are not identical. The first means existence, the second dependence; the first is perfectly complete in the creature itself, the second is incomplete without a correlative term; and therefore the creature is in possession of absolute being, while it is endued with an essential relativity. Take away the absolute being; nothing will remain of which any relativity may be predicated.
Perhaps the author, when pronouncing that “all material reality is in its nature essentially relative,” alludes to the essential constitution of material realities, and to the essential relation of matter and form. If such is his meaning, the utmost he can claim is that the reality of the form is essentially connected with the matter, and the reality of the matter essentially connected with the form. This every one will concede; but no one will infer that therefore the reality which results from the conspiration of matter and form is not an absolute reality. For as the matter and the form are the principles of one essence, and as their mutual relativity connotes nothing extrinsic to the same essence, but finds in it its adequate consummation, it is evident that the resulting reality is intrinsically complete, and subsistent in its individuality. Hence this resulting reality is an absolute reality; and only as such can it become the subject of relativity, and acquire the denomination of relative.
Our author, entirely taken up by Spinoza’s views, proceeds in the following strain: “All quality is relation; all action is reaction; all force is antagonism; all measure is a ratio between terms neither of which is absolute; every objectively real thing is a term in numberless series of mutual implications, and its reality outside of these series is utterly inconceivable. A material entity, absolute in any of its aspects, would be nothing less than a finite infinitude. There is no absolute material quality, no absolute material substance, no absolute physical unit, no absolutely simple physical entity, no absolute constant, no absolute standard either of quantity or quality, no absolute motion, no absolute rest, no absolute time, no absolute space.... There is and can be no physical real thing which is absolutely simple” (p. 225).
This string of blunders needs no refutation, as no reader who has a modicum of common sense can be deceived by what is evidently false. Yet, as to the assertion that “there is and can be no physical real thing which is absolutely simple,” it must be observed that there are two kinds of simplicity, as there are two kinds of composition. A being is physically simple when it is free from physical composition; whilst it is metaphysically simple, if it has no metaphysical components. Now, God alone is free from metaphysical as well as physical composition; and therefore God alone is absolutely simple. Hence, created beings, though physically simple, are always metaphysically compound.
What follows is a curious specimen of Mr. Stallo’s philosophical resources. He says: “Leibnitz places at the head of his Monadology the principle that there must be simple substances, because there are compound substances. Necesse est, he says, dari substantias simplices, quia dantur compositæ. This enthymeme, though it has been long since exploded in metaphysics, is still regarded by many physicists as proof of the real existence of absolutely simple constituents of matter. Nevertheless, it is obvious that it is nothing but a vicious paralogism—a fallacy of the class known in logic as fallacies of the suppressed relative. The existence of a compound substance certainly proves the existence of component parts, which, relatively to this substance, are simple. But it proves nothing whatever as to the simplicity of these parts in themselves” (p. 226).
Our reader will ask when and how Leibnitz’ enthymeme has been “exploded.” We shall inform him that it has not been exploded, though the attempt has often been made; because in the whole arsenal of metaphysics no powder could be found that would produce the explosion. The enthymeme, therefore, is as good and unanswerable now as it was in Leibnitz’ time; and it will be as good and unanswerable hereafter, notwithstanding Mr. Stallo’s efforts against it. He says that “it is nothing but a vicious paralogism”; but he himself, while endeavoring to prove this latter assertion, resorts to a paralogism (vicious, of course) which we may call “fallacy of the suppressed absolute.” The existence of a compound proves the existence of its component parts, as the author admits. These parts are either compound or simple. If simple, then there are simple substances. If compound, then they have components; and these parts are again either compound or simple. We must therefore either admit simple substances, or continue our analysis by further subdivisions of the compound substance without any chance of ever coming to an end. But if the analysis cannot come to an end, the compound has no first components; and thus it will be false that “the existence of a compound substance proves the existence of the component parts.” The fallacy of the author consists in stopping his analysis of the compound before he has reached the first components. If the parts he has reached are still compound substances, why does he not examine their composition and point out their components? For no other reason, we presume, than that he did not wish to meet with an absolute substantial unit, which he was sure to find at the end of the process. His argument is therefore nothing but a despicable fraud.
In his fourth article (January, 1874) Mr. Stallo remarks that “the recent doctrine of the correlation and mutual convertibility of the physical forces, as a part of the theory of the conservation of energy, has shaken, if not destroyed, the conception of a multiplicity of independent original forces” (p. 350). Of course, there are men whose convictions can be shaken, or even destroyed, by the sophistic generalizations of the modern school; but there are men also whose convictions rest on too solid a ground to be destroyed or shaken; and these latter have ere now challenged the abettors of the “recent doctrine” to clear up their case with something like logical precision—a thing which modern thinkers must have found impossible, since they have constantly ignored the challenge. We have proved elsewhere(185) that “the mutual convertibility of physical forces,” as understood by the champions of the theory, confounds movement with action and the effects with their causes. The facts on which the theory is based are true; but the theory itself is false, for it attributes to the powers by which the phenomena are produced what exclusively belongs to “the phenomena”, besides deforming the nature of the phenomena themselves by denying the production and extinction of movement. It is plain that such a theory can have no weight in philosophy; and it is no less plain that no philosopher will, for the sake of the new theory, renounce his firm conviction concerning “the multiplicity of independent original forces.”
“I have endeavored,” says the author, “to show that there are no absolute constants of mass; that both the hypothesis of corpuscular atoms and that of centres of forces are growths of a confusion of the intellect, which mistakes conceptual elements of matter for real elements; that these elements—force and mass, or force and inertia—are not only inseparable, as is conceded by the more thoughtful among modern physicists, but that neither of these elements has any reality as such, each of them being simply the conceptual correlate of the other, and thus the condition both of its realization in thought and of its objectivation to sense” (p. 350).
As we have already discussed all the points which the author vainly endeavored to establish, we shall only remind the reader that the matter and the form have no separate existence; and therefore have no reality in nature, unless they are together. The author, therefore, is right when affirming that neither of them has any reality as such; but he is wrong in inferring that they have no reality as united. As action has no reality without passion, nor passion without action, so also matter has no reality without form, nor form without matter; but as action producing passion is real, so also is a form actuating matter; and as passion is no less real than the action whence it proceeds, so matter also is no less real than the form by which it is actuated. Both are, of course, only metaphysical realities.
The author says: “The mathematical treatment of mechanical problems, from the nature of the methods, necessitates the fiction that force and mass are separate and distinct terms” (p. 351). By no means. It is not the nature of the methods, but the nature of the things that compels the distinction of the two terms. Their distinction, therefore, is not a “fiction.” But the author’s remark has no bearing on the question of the constitution of matter; for mechanical forces are not substantial forms.
He adds: “A material object is in every one of its aspects but one term of a relation; its whole being is a presupposition of correlates without.... Every change of a body, therefore, presupposes a corresponding change in its correlates. If the state of any material object could be changed without a corresponding change of state in other objects without, this object would, to that extent, become absolute. But this is utterly unthinkable, and therefore utterly impossible, as we have already seen.... Mechanically speaking, all force, properly so‐called—i.e., all potential energy—is energy of position.... Whatever energy is spent in actual motion is gained in position; ... thus we are led to the principle of the conservation of energy” (p. 351).
This is a heap of absurdities. If a material object is the term of a relation, it is absolute in itself, as we have shown. Again, the change of a body presupposes only the exertion of active power, and not the change of another body, as the author imagines. That the absolute is unthinkable he has failed to prove. Lastly, mechanical force, properly so‐called, is the product of a mass into its velocity, whilst “energy of position” is a myth.(186)
But the author says: “Force is a mere inference from the motion itself under the universal conditions of reality, and its measure, therefore, is simply the effect for which it is postulated as a cause; it has no other existence. The only reality of force and of its action is the correspondence between the physical phenomena in conformity to the principle of the essential relativity of all material existence. That force has no independent reality is so plain and obvious that it has been proposed by some thinkers to abolish the term force, like the term cause, altogether. However desirable this might be in some respects, it is impossible, for the reason that the concept force, when properly interpreted in terms of experience, is valid; and, if its name were abolished, it would instantly reappear under another name.... The reality of force is purely conceptual; ... it is not a distinct and individual tangible or intangible entity” (p. 354).
Here the author treats us to a luxury of contradictions. Force is “a mere inference from motion,” yet it causes motion; for it is active. Hence the causality is a mere inference of its effect. It is therefore the effect that gives existence to its cause, and the cause “has no other existence” than that which may be imbibed in the effect for which it is postulated. What, then, becomes of the “force, properly so‐called”—that is, of the potential energy, or of the energy of position, which has no actual effect? Again, “the reality of force, is purely conceptual.” This means that the reality of force is unreal; which would just amount to saying that Mr. Stallo’s intellect is unintelligent or that his writings are unwritten. Again, the “reality of force and of its action is the correspondence between the physical phenomena”; but, if the reality of force is merely conceptual, the correspondence between the physical phenomena must be merely conceptual; which would prove that the concept “force,” when properly interpreted in terms of experience, is not valid, though the author maintains the contrary. Moreover, what can the author mean by “the action of force”? Is this action real or unreal? If unreal, it is no action at all; and if real, it implies a real active power. We defy Mr. Stallo to conceive a real action of an unreal force. We are informed that “some thinkers” wish to abolish the term “force,” like the term “cause,” and we are told that this proves how plain and obvious it is that force has no independent reality. This, however, proves only that some so‐called “thinkers” are either lunatics or knaves. After all, if force is purely conceptual, as the author pretends, its reality must be denied without any restriction. Why, then, does he deny merely that force has an “independent” reality? Has it any “dependent” reality if it is “purely conceptual”?
But we must come to an end. Mr. Stallo’s conclusion is that “the very conception of force depends upon the relation between two terms at least,” and that therefore “a constant central force, as belonging to an individual atom in and by itself, is an impossibility” (p. 355). In this argument the term “force” is used equivocally. It stands for active power in the consequence, while it stands for action or for movement in the antecedent. Hence the conclusion is worthless. “I have shown,” says he, “that there are and can be no absolute constants of mass. And it is evident now that there are similarly no constant central forces belonging to, or inherent in, constants of mass as such” (p. 356). We say in our turn: No, Mr. Stallo, you have not shown what you imagine; and, if anything is evident, it is not that there are no constant central forces, but that philosophical questions cannot be solved without good logic and a clear knowledge of metaphysical principles.