THE CURSE OF SACRILEGE.
[In the suburbs of the ancient and curious city of Angers in France is a beautiful chateau, situated in the midst of extensive and fertile grounds. The chapel contains some very remarkable pieces of statuary, now nearly eight hundred years old. The place was formerly a convent of monks, and wrested from them during the great revolution. The family into whose possession it came, has ever since been afflicted with the sudden death and insanity of its members. The death of the last male heir, a youth of great promise, which occurred but a few years ago, is described in the following verses.]
A youth of twenty summers
Sat at his mother's knee;
Ne'er saw you a youth more noble,
Nor fairer dame than she.
Half-reclining he swept the lute-strings,
Murmuring an olden rhyme;
While the clock in the castle tower
Rang out a morning chime:
"In the bright and happy spring-time
Ring the bells merrily;
When the dead leaves fall in autumn,
Then toll the bell for me."
The face of the lady-mother,
Writhed as with sudden pain:
"Oh! sing not, my son, so sadly,
Choose thou a happier strain."
Sang the youth, "When the summer sunshine
Falls o'er the lake and lea,
And the corn is springing upward,
Then you'll remember me."
The matron smiled on the singer:
"My dear and my only one
When I shall not remember,
The light will forget the sun."
Yet her eyes smiled not, but were standing,
Brimful of glimmering tears,
Tell-tales of secret anguish,
Dead hopes and living fears.
For he was the heir, and the only
Child of the house of La Barre;
A name that was known for its sorrows,
By all, both near and far.
Lay in a charming valley
Its rich and fair domain;
But a curse seemed to hang around it,
Worse than the curse of Cain.
For this was a holy convent
Of monks in olden time;
From God men had dared to wrest it,
Nor recked the awful crime.
The mild men of God were driven
Houseless and homeless afar:
And he who rifled their cloister,
Became the Lord of La Barre.
But a curse came down on his household,
That time did not abate:
And ne'er did the mourning hatchment
Pass from the castle gate
The Lord of La Barre fell suddenly
Dead in his banquet-hall;
And madness seized his first-born,
Bearing the funeral pall.
Calamity sudden and fearful.
Haunted the sacred place.
Striking the lords and their children,
And blighting their hapless race.
One is thrown from his saddle,
Dashing his brains on the ground;
One in his bridal chamber.
Dead by his bride is found;
One is caught by the mill-wheel.
And cruelly torn in twain;
One is lost in the forest,
Ne'er to return again.
Death-traps for wolves, the herdsmen
Set in the woods with care;
The wolves devour the master,
Caught in the fatal snare.
Killed by the forkèd lightnings;
Drowned in the flowing Loire;
Crushed by some falling timbers;
Conquered and slain in war.
Idiots and still-born children,
Come as the first-born heirs.
Those are seized with madness,
Whom death a few years spares.
Thus did they all inherit
A curse with the rich domain,
Who dared on the holy convent
To lay their hands profane.
The autumn winds are blowing
Across the lake and lea,
As the youth of twenty summers
Sings at his mother's knee.
He ceased, and from him casting
His lute upon the floor,
Listened, as sounds from the court-yard
Came through the open door.
Hearing the dogs' loud barking,
As their keeper his bugle wound;
"To-day I go a hunting,"
Said he, "with hawk and hound."
The rustling of dead leaves only
Heard the Lady of La Barre,
And thought of her lordly husband
Drowned in the flowing Loire.
The autumn winds were moaning
Among the yellow trees,
"Stay, Ernest," said she sadly,
"My soul is ill at ease.
"Shadows of dire mischances
Fall on my widowed heart;
I could not live if danger
Thy life from mine should part."
"Fear not," said he, while laughing
He kissed her sad fair face;
"I hear the hounds' loud baying
All eager for the chase.
"Over the hill by the river
I'll bring the quarry down,
And homeward pluck the roses
To weave for thee a crown."
"The rose-crown, my child, will wither,
'Tis but a passing toy;
But thou art the crown of thy mother--
Her only life and joy.
"Follow the hunt to-morrow--
With me, love, stay to-day;
For dark and sad forebodings
My anxious heart affray."
The autumn winds are blowing,
The dead leaves downward fall,
The lawn and flowers covering
Like a funeral pall.
But he heedeth not the warning,
And hies with haste away.
The lady seeks the chapel,
With heavy heart, to pray.
"May God and his blessed Mother
Spare me my only one.
Yet teach me and strengthen me ever
To say, Thy will be done!"
Well may the lady tremble,
Hearing the wind again;
The dead leaves are falling in showers
Like to a summer rain.
Hark! a sound from the court-yard
Blanches the lady's cheek--
The huntsmen call not surely
In such a fearful shriek!
Say, "Thy will be done," O lady!
As thou e'en now hast said,
For the last of thy race is lying
Stark in the court-yard, dead.
Translated from the Spanish
PERICO THE SAD; OR,
THE ALVAREDA FAMILY.
CHAPTER VIII.
Autumn had shortened the days, and winter was knocking at the door with fingers of ice. It was the hour when laborers return to their homes, and the sun casts a last cold glance upon the earth he is abandoning.
Perico came slowly, preceded by his ass, and followed by Melampo, who rivalled his ancient friend and companion in gravity. The latter still remembered with horror the entry of the French, though six years had passed since; for the flight of her masters caused her the wildest gallop she had taken in her whole life. She had not yet recovered from the fatigue.
When they entered their street, two little children, brother and sister, ran to meet Perico, but at the moment they reached him, the deep and solemn sound of a bell called to prayer. Perico stood still and uncovered his head. The ass and the dog, that from long habit knew the sound, stopped also, and the little ones remained immovable. When their father had concluded the prayers of the mystery of the annunciation, the children drew near and said--
"Your hand, father."
"May God make you good!" answered Perico, blessing his children.
The boy, who was impatient to be mounted on the ass, asked his father why people must be still when the bell rung for prayer.
"Don't you remember," said his sister Angela, "what Aunt Elvira tells us, that when it strikes this hour dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, our guardian angels stand still, and if we go on then, we shall be alone--without them?"
"That is true, sister," answered the boy, giving, with all his little might, a blow to the ass upon which his father had placed him, a blow of which, fortunately, the patient creature took not the least notice.
Six years had passed since the occurrence of the sorrowful events we have related. To make the remembrance of them still more sorrowful, the unhappy Marcela, who witnessed from her hiding-place the insult to her [{661}] father, the terrible vengeance taken by her brother, and the flight of the latter, had gone mad.
No tidings of Ventura had ever been received, and all believed that he was dead. Notwithstanding, in their tenderness for Elvira and their friendship for Pedro, the others spoke to them in the words of a hope which did not exist in their own hearts.
Time, the great dissolvent, in which joys and griefs alike are lost--as in water disappear both the sugar and the salt--had made those memories, if not less bitter, at least more endurable. Only from Pedro's lips, instead of his lively songs and habitual jokes, was often heard, "My poor son! my poor daughter!"
Elvira, alone, was excepted from this influence of time. She was wasting in silence, like those light clouds in the sky, which, instead of falling to the earth in noisy torrents, rise softly and gradually until they are lost from sight. She never complained, nor did the name of Ventura, of him upon whom she had looked as the companion the church would give her, pass her lips.
"A worm is gnawing at her heart," said Anna to her son; "the rest do not see it, but it is not hidden from me."
"But, mother," he answered, "where do you see it? She complains perhaps?"
"No, my son, no: but, Perico, a mother hears the voice of the dumb daughter," replied Anna with sadness.
Rita and Perico were happy, because Perico, with his loving heart, his sweet temper, and his conciliatory character, made the happiness of both. A year after their marriage, Rita had given birth to twins. On that occasion, she was at death's door, and owed her life to the tender care of her husband and his family. She remained for a long time feeble and ailing, but at the moment in which we take up the thread of our story, she was entirely restored, and the roses of youth and health bloomed more brightly than ever upon her countenance.
When they were reunited that evening, Maria exclaimed: "Blessed mother, what a fearful storm we had last night! I was so frightened that my very bed shook with me! I recalled all my sins and confessed them to God. I prayed so much that I think I must have awakened all the saints: and I prayed loud, for I have always heard say that the lightning loses its power from where the voice of praying reaches. To the Moors! To the Moors! I said to the tempest, go to the Moors, that they may be converted and tremble at the wrath of God! Not until day-break, when I saw the rainbow, was I consoled: for it is the sign God gives to man that he will not punish the world with another flood. Why do men not fear when they see these warnings of God!"
"And why would you have them tremble, mother, for a thing which is natural," said Rita.
"Natural!" retorted Maria. "Perhaps you will also tell me that pestilence and war are natural! Do you know what the lightning is? For I heard a farmer say that it is a fragment of the air set on fire by the wrath of God. And where does not the air enter? And where is the place the wrath of God does not reach? And the thunder--the thunder, said a certain preacher, is the voice of God in his magnificence; and that God is to be feared above all when it thunders."
"The rain has been welcome, Mamma Maria, for the ground is thirsty," said Perico.
"The ground is always thirsty," observed Rita, "as thirsty as a sot."
"Father," said Angela, "hear what I sung to-day when I saw the pewets running to the pools," and the little girl began to sing:
"Open your windows, God of Christians!
Let the rain come down,
See the Blessed Virgin comes riding
From the inn of the little town;
Riding a horse of snowy whiteness.
Over the fields so brown,
Lighting all the fields with the brightness
Of the glory which shines around.
Blessing the fields, the fields of the king:
Ring from the big church, let all the bells ring!"
Angel, not wishing to let his sister, who was the brighter of the two, gain the palm--instantly said: "And I, father, sung:
'Rain, my God,
I ask it from my heart.
Have pity on me,
For I am little, and I ask for bread.'"
"Enough, enough," cried Rita, "you are as noisy as two cicadas, and more tiresome than frogs."
"May we play a game, mother?" said the boy.
"Play with the cat's tail," responded Rita.
"Mamma Maria," said the girl, "I will say the catechism to you, if you will tell us a story. Now hear me: 'The enemies of the soul are three, the devil, the world, and the flesh.'"
"I like that enemy," said the boy.
"Hush, little one; it don't mean the flesh in the stew."
"What then?" asked the boy.
"Learn the words now," answered his grandmother, "and when you know more, apply what you have learned. For the present, I will tell you that your flesh, that is to say, your appetite, tempts you to be so gluttonous, and that gluttony is a mortal sin."
"They are seven," said the girl quickly, and recited them.
"I, Mamma Maria," said Angel, "know the Three Persons, the Father who is God, the Son who is God, and the Holy Ghost, who is a dove."
"How stupid you are!" exclaimed his mother.
"Daughter," remarked Maria, "no one is born instructed. Child," she continued, "the Dove is a symbol, the Holy Spirit is God, the same as the Father and the Son."
Each child pulling at its grandmother as it spoke:
"I know the commandments of God," said one.
"And I, those of the church," said the other.
"I the sacraments."
"And I the gifts of the Holy Spirit."
"I--"
"Enough, and too much," exclaimed Rita; "you are going to say the whole catechism; or perhaps this is an infant school! What a pleasant diversion!"
"Is it possible," said Maria, grieved, for she had been in her glory listening to the children, "is it possible, Rita, that you do not love to hear the word of God, and that it does not delight you in the mouths of your children? I remember how I cried for joy, the first time you said the whole of Our Father."
"That is so," said Rita; "you are capable of crying at a fandango."
The poor mother did not answer; but, turning to the children, said: "I am so pleased with you because you know the catechism so well, that I am going to tell you the prettiest story I know."
The children seated themselves on a low bench in front of their grandmother, who began her story thus:
"When the angel warned the holy patriarch Joseph to flee into Egypt, the saint got his little ass and set the mother and child upon it. Then they started on their journey through woods and briery fields. Once, when they were in the thickest part of a forest, the lady was afraid because the way was so dark and lonesome. By and by they came to a cave. Out of it ran a band of robbers and surrounded the holy family. When the mother and child were going to get down from the ass, the captain of the band, whose name was Demas, looked at the child; as he looked, his heart smote him, and he turned to his companions and said: 'Whoever touches as much as a thread of this lady's garment will have me to do with,' and then he said to the holy pair: 'The night is coming on stormy; follow me, and I will shelter you.' They went with the robber, and he gave them to eat and drink, and the holy pair accepted what he offered them, for God himself receives the worship of all the bad as well as [{663}] the good. And for this reason, children, never cease to pray, even though you should be in mortal sin; for this robber, when at last he was taken and condemned to die, found repentance and pardon on the cross itself, which served him for expiation, as it served our Lord for sacrifice. He was converted and was the first of all to enter into glory, as Christ promised him when he was dying for him." Meantime, the wind howled without in prolonged gusts. The doors shook, moved by an invisible hand. The old orange-tree murmured in the court, as if remonstrating with the wind for disturbing its calm.
"Listen," said Perico, "the very nettles will be swept from the ground."
"And how it rains!" added Pedro. "The clouds are torn to bits. The river is going to overflow the fields."
"Did you see how the clouds ran this afternoon?" said Angela to her brother. "They looked like greyhounds."
"Yes," answered the boy, "and where were they going?"
"To the sea for water."
"Is there so much water in the sea?"
"Yes indeed, and more than there is in Uncle Pedro's pond."
"The voice of the wind seems to me like the voice of the evil spirit, that comes leading fear by the hand," said Maria.
"You are always frightened, mother," remarked Rita. "I don't know when your spirit will rest. Look here, lazy-bones," she proceeded, giving a push to the boy who had reclined against her, "lean upon what you have eaten."
The child, being half asleep, lost his balance. Elvira gave a cry, and Perico, springing forward, caught him in his arms. Anna dropped her distaff, but took it up again without a word.
"If you ever lose your son," said Pedro, indignant, "you will not weep for him as I do for mine. You have that advantage over me."
"She is so quick, so hasty," said Maria, always ready to excuse and slow to blame, "that she keeps me in hot water."
"So, then, Mamma Maria," Perico hastened to say, "yon are afraid of everything--and witches?"
"No; oh! no, my son! The church forbids the belief in witches and enchanters. I fear those things which God permits to punish men, and, above all, when they are supernatural."
"Are there any such things? Have you seen any?" asked Rita.
"If there are any? And do you doubt that there are extraordinary things?"
"Not at all. One of them is the day you do not preach me a sermon. But the supernatural I don't believe in. I am like Saint Thomas."
"And you glory in it! It is a wonder you do not say also that you are like Saint Peter in that in which he failed!"
"But, madam, have you seen anything of the kind, or is it only because you can swallow everything, like a shark?"
"It is the same, to all intents, as if I had seen it."
"Aunt, what was it?" asked Elvira.
"My child," said the good old woman, turning toward her niece, "in the first place, that which happened to the Countess of Villaoran. Her ladyship herself told it to me when we were superintending her estate of Quintos. This lady had the pious custom of having a mass said for condemned criminals at the very hour they were being executed. When the infamous Villico was in those parts, committing so much iniquity, she allowed herself to say that if he should be taken, she would not send to have a mass said for him, as she had for others. And when he was executed, she kept her word.
"Not long alter, one night when she was sleeping quietly, she was awakened by a pitiful voice near the head of her bed, calling her by name. She sat up in bed terrified, but saw [{664}] nothing, though the lamp was burning on the table. Presently she heard the same voice, even more pitiful than at first, calling her from the yard, and before she had fairly recovered from her surprise, she heard it a third time, and from a great distance, calling her name. She cried out so loudly that those who were in the house ran to her room, and found her pale and terrified. But no one else had heard the voice.
"On the following day, hardly were the candles lighted in the churches when a mass was being offered for the poor felon, and the countess, on her knees before the altar was praying with fervor and penitence, for the clemency of God, which is not like that of men, excludes none. And now Rita, what do you think?"
"I think she dreamed it."
"Goodness, goodness! what incredulity," said Uncle Pedro. "Rita will be like that Tucero, who, the preachers say, separated from the church."
"Ave Maria! Do not say that, Pedro," exclaimed Maria, "even in exaggeration! Mercy! you may well say, what perverseness, for she talks so just to be contrary."
A noise in the direction of the door which opened into the back-yard, caused Maria's lips to close suddenly.
"What is that?" she said.
"Nothing, Mamma Maria," answered Perico, laughing; "what would it be? The wind which goes about to-night moving everything."
"Mother," said Angela, "hold me in your lap, as father does Angel, for I am afraid."
"This is too much," exclaimed Rita, who was in bad humor. "Go along and sit on the lap of earth, and don't come back till you bring grandchildren."
"I should like to know," said Pedro, "if those who laugh at that which others fear have never felt dread."
"Perico! Perico!" cried Maria, in terror, "there is a noise in the yard."
"Mamma Maria, you are excited and frightened. Don't you hear that it is the water in the gutter?"
"I, for my part," said Pedro, in a low voice, as if to himself, "ever since there was a stain of blood in my house--"
"Pedro! Pedro! are we always to go back to that? Why will you make yourself wretched? Of what use is it to return to the past, for which there is no remedy?" said Anna.
"The truth is, Anna, what I suffer at times overwhelms me, and I must give it vent. Often at night, when I am alone in my house, it falls upon me. Anna, believe me, many a night, when all is still and sleep flies from me, I see him; yes, I see him--the grenadier my son slew. I see him just as I saw him alive, in his grey capote and fur cap, rise out of the well and come into the room where he was killed, to look for the stains of his own blood. I sec him before my eyes, tall, motionless, terrible."
At this moment the door opened, and a figure, tall, motionless, terrible, with a grey capote and a grenadier's cap stood upon the threshold.
All remained for an instant confounded and fixed in their places.
"God protect us!" exclaimed Maria. Angel clung to his father's breast, Angela to the skirts of her grandmother.
"Ventura!" murmured Elvira, as her eyes closed and her head fell upon her mother's bosom.
The woman for whom there had been no forgetfulness, had recognized him.
Pedro rose impetuously and would have fallen, the poor old man not having strength to sustain himself; but Ventura, who had thrown off his cap and capote, sprung forward and caught him in his arms. The scene which followed, a scene of confusion, of broken words, of exclamations of surprise and delight, of tears and fervent thanks to heaven, is more easily comprehended than described.
When Ventura had freed himself from the embrace of his father, who was long in undoing his arms from [{665}] the neck of the son whom he could hardly persuade himself he held in them, he fixed his eyes upon Elvira. She was still supported by her mother, who held to her nostrils a handkerchief wet with vinegar. But she was no longer the Elvira he had left at his departure. Pale, attenuated, changed, she appeared as if bidding farewell to life. Ventura's brilliant eyes became softened and saddened with an expression of deep feeling, and, with the frank sincerity of a countryman, he said to her:
"Have you been sick, Elvira? You do not look like yourself."
"Now she will be better," exclaimed Pedro, in whom joy had awakened some of the old festive teasing humor. "Your absence, Ventura, and not hearing from you, nothing less, has brought her to this. Why, in heaven's name, did you not send us a letter, to tell us where you were?"
"Why, our sergeant wrote at least six for me," replied Ventura, "and besides, I have been in France, I have been a prisoner. All that is long to tell--But how well you look, Rita," he said, regarding the latter, who, from the moment he entered, had not taken her eyes from the gallant youth, whom the moustache, the uniform, and the military bearing became so well. "Bless me! but you have become a fine woman! The good care Perico takes of you--and you Perico, always digging? Are these your children? How handsome they are! God bless them! Hey! come here, I am not a Frenchman nor a bluebeard."
Ventura sat down to caress the children. Maria, coming behind him at this moment, caught his head in her hands, and covered his face with tears and kisses--Ventura in the mean while saying, "Maria, how much you have prayed for me! I suppose you have made a hundred novenas, and more than a thousand promises."
"Yes, my son, and to-morrow I shall sell my best hen, to have said in Saint Anna's chapel the thanksgiving mass I have promised."
"Aunt Anna is the one who has nothing to say," observed Ventura. "Are you not glad to see me, madam?"
"Yes my son, yes; I was minding my Elvira. God knows," she continued, observing the pallid countenance of her child, "how glad I am of your return, and what thanks I give him for it, if it is for the best."
"And why not," exclaimed Pedro, "for the best? for all except my kids and your fowls, which are going to give up the ghost within a month, the time it will take to publish the bans."
"Don't be so hasty," answered Anna, smiling, "a wedding, neighbor, is not a fritter to be turned, tossed, and fried in a moment."
"Well, 'every owl to his own olive,'" said Pedro after a while. "Good people, there is a wicket in the street that is tired of being solitary."
"To-night, Uncle Pedro," said Rita, laughing, "the horrors will go to the bottom of the well with the Frenchman, never to return."
"Amen, amen. I hope so," responded the good old man.
CHAPTER IX.
The next evening, Ventura brought with him to their reunion a small black water-dog, called Tambor. Never before had a strange dog been permitted at one of those meetings, so that he had hardly entered, wagging his tail, well washed, well combed, and with all the confidence of an exquisite, when Melampo, who held these graces to be of very little consequence, and an idler in lowest estimation, flew at him with might and main, and with a single blow of his paw flattened the creature; but without the remotest ambition to affect in this action, either the attitude or the air of the lion of Waterloo.
"In the first place," said Perico, "will you tell me, Ventura, how you managed to appear here yesterday, as if you had leaked through the roof, without any one's opening the door to you?"
"Well, it is difficult to guess," answered Ventura. "When I arrived I went to the house, and Aunty Curra, to whom my father gives a home for taking care of him, opened the door, and to get here sooner, and take you all by surprise, I jumped over the wall of the yard, as I used to when I was a boy."
"I was sure last night," observed Maria, "that I heard the door of the enclosure, and some one walking in the yard."
"Now,"' said Perico, "tell us what has happened to you. Have you been wounded?'
"He has been wounded," cried Uncle Pedro. "Look at his breast, and you win see a hole, which is the scar left by a ball that he received there, and that did not lay him dead, thanks to this button which deadened its force. See how it is flattened and hollowed out like the pan of a fire-lock. Look at his arm; look at the wound--"
"And what matter, father," interrupted Ventura, "since they are cured now?"
"When I ran," he continued, "I took my course down river, reached Sanlácar, and embarked for Cadiz. There I enlisted in the regiment of guards commanded by the Duke del Infantado. I struck up a friendship with a young man of noble family, who was serving as a private, and we loved each other like brothers. We soon embarked for Tarifa, for the purpose of approaching the French in the rear, while the English attacked them in front. The result was the battle of Barrosa, from which the French fled to Jerez, and we took possession of their camp.
"In the midst of the fight, I said to my friend, 'Come, let us take from that Frenchman the eagle he carries so proudly, it is continually vexing my eyes, come;' and without recommending ourselves to God, we threw ourselves upon the bearer, killed him, and took the ugly bird; but as we turned we found ourselves surrounded by Frenchmen, friends of the eagle. 'Comrades,' said we, 'it's of no use; as for the bird, he is caged and shall not go out even if Pepe Botellas [Footnote 169] or Napoleon himself, the big thief, should come for him.'
[Footnote 169: Pepe Botellas, Bottle Joe; Joseph Napoleon was so called by the people, because, they said, he used to get drunk.]
"We set it up against a wild olive, and placed ourselves before it, and now, we said, Come and get him--and they came, for those demons, the worse the cause the more impetuous they are. They killed my poor friend, and had nearly killed me, for they were many. What I felt at the thought of losing the bird! but it was the will of heaven that it should never sing the mambrui [Footnote 170] in French, for our men came and drove them back. They conducted me with my trophy before the colonel, who said that I had behaved well, and should receive the cross of San Fernando, for having captured the eagle. 'I did not capture it, my colonel,' I answered, 'it was my friend, the young noble, who is killed. And I fainted. When came to, I found myself in the hospital and without the cross."
[Footnote 170: Mambrui, a humorous military song, popular among the Spanish soldiers.]
"That was your own fault," said Rita. "Why did you tell the colonel it was not you?"
Ventura looked at her as if he could not comprehend what she was saying.
"You did your duty," said Pedro.
A tear ran down Elvira's cheek.
"I was hardly convalescent when we embarked for Huelra, and I found myself in the battle of Albuera against the division of Marshal Soult. I was soon after taken prisoner; made my escape, and joined the army of Granada, commanded by the Duke del Paryne, in which I remained, pursuing the enemy beyond the Pyrenees. Then I returned to Madrid, where I have been waiting until now for my dismissal."
"Goodness! Ventura," said Maria, in astonishment, "you have been further than the storks fly!"
"I--no," answered Ventura, "but I know one, and he indeed, he had been with General La Romana, far in the north, where the ground is covered with snow so deep that people are sometimes buried under it."
"Maria Santissima! said Maria, shuddering.
"But they are good people, they do not carry knives."
"God bless them!" exclaimed Maria.
"In that land there is no oil, and they eat black bread."
"A poor country for me," observed Anna, "for I must always eat the best bread, if I eat nothing else."
"What kind of gazpachos [Footnote 171] can they make with black bread, and without oil?" asked Maria, quite horrified.
[Footnote 171: Gazpacho. Dish made of bread, oil, onions, vinegar, salt and red-pepper mixed together in water.]
"They do not eat gazpacho," replied Ventura.
"Then what do they eat?"
"They eat potatoes and milk,", he answered.
"Much good may it do them, and benefit their stomachs."
"The worst is, Aunt Maria, that in all that land there are neither monks nor nuns."
"What are you telling me, my son?"
"What you hear. There are very few churches, and those look like hospitals that have been plundered, for they are without chapels, without altars, without images, and without the blessed sacrament."
"Mercy, mercy!" exclaimed all, except Maria, who remained as if turned to stone with surprise. But presently crossing her hands, she exclaimed, with satisfied fervor.
"Ah my sunshine! Ah my white bread! My church! My blessed Mother! My country, my faith, and my God in his sacrament! Happy a thousand times, I, who have been born, and through divine mercy, shall die here! Thank God, my son, that yon did not go to that country, a land of heretics! How dreadful!"
"And is heresy catching, mother, like the itch?" asked Rita ironically.
"I do not say that, God forbid," answered the good Maria; "but--"
"Everything is catching, except beauty," said Pedro, "and one is better off in his own country. I will bet my hands that those who have been there, will bring us nothing good."
"What do not the poor soldiers have to pass through!" sighed Elvira.
"That must be the reason why I have always been so fond of them," added Maria. "That, and because they defend the faith of Christ. And therefore, I am also very devoted to San Fernando, that pious and valiant leader. I have him framed in my parlor, and around him on the wall, I have stuck little paper soldiers, thinking it would be pleasing to the saint, who all his life saw himself surrounded by soldiers. When Rita was about twelve years old, I went to Sevilla, and she gave me a shilling to buy her a little comb. I passed by the shop of an old man who had a lot of little paper soldiers exposed for sale. What a guard for my saint, I thought; but my quarters were all spent. I had nothing left but Rita's shilling. The price of the set was a shilling. Go along, said I to myself, it is better that Rita should do without the bauble than my saint without his guard; and I bought them. I told Rita, and it was the truth, that my money did not hold out. The next day when I was taking them out to stick them up around the picture of the king, Rita came into the room. 'So then,' she said, 'you had money enough to buy these dirty soldiers, and not enough for my little comb,' and she snatched them from my hands to throw them out of the window. 'Child,' I screamed, 'you are throwing my heart into the street with the soldiers!' And seeing that she paid me no attention, I caught up the broom and beat her. The only time I ever beat her in my life."
"It would have been better for you," said Pedro, "if you had left the marks of your fingers upon her sometimes."
"Who can please you, Uncle Pedro?" said Rita. "My mother erred in not chastising her child, and I err in not spoiling mine."
"Daughter!" replied Pedro, "neither Hei! till they run away, nor Whoa! till they stop short."
"But since you like soldiers so much, mother," proceeded Rita, "why did you take such trouble to prevent my cousin Miguel from becoming one?"
"I love soldiers because they suffer and pass through so much, and for the same reason, I wished to save my nephew."
"How I laughed then!" continued Rita, directing her conversation to Ventura. "Her grace burned lights to all the saints while the lots were being drawn. As she had not candlesticks, she stuck empty shells to the walls with cement; put wicks in them; filled them with oil, and began to pray. While she was praying, in came Miguel's mother, and told her that he had been drafted. My mother, on hearing that, put out the lights, as if to say to the saints, 'Stay in the dark now, I need you no longer!'"
"How you talk, Rita," answered the good Maria. "I trust that God does not so judge our hearts. I resigned myself, my daughter. I resigned myself, because he had made known his pleasure, and when God will not, the saints cannot."
CHAPTER X.
The joy of Elvira was as brief as it had been keen. What can escape the eyes of one who loves? Is it not known that there are things, which, like the wind of Guadarrama, though scarce a breath, yet kill. Before either Rita or Ventura had acknowledged even to their own consciousness, the mutual attraction which they exercised upon each other, Elvira was offering to God, for the second time, the pangs of her lost love. This time, however, without a remote hope. The prudent and patient girl looked upon a rupture as the sure forerunner of some catastrophe, and, like a martyr, endured without daring to repulse them, the evidences of an affection as pale and feeble as she was herself; an affection that was vanishing before the vivid flame of a new love, which already sparkled, active, brilliant, and beautiful like the object that inspired it. While the visits at the grating became every night colder and less' prolonged, there was no occasion that did not, by gesture, look, or word, bring into contact those two beings, who, like moths, took pleasure in approaching the flame, drawn by an instinctive impulse, which they obeyed, but did not pause to define; of which no one warned them, because among the people, a married woman unfaithful to her duties, or a lover neglectful of his, is an anomaly; and one which, in the family whose history we are relating, would have been looked upon as incredible to the point of impossibility. But Rita acknowledged no rein, and the life of a soldier had been a school of evil habits to Ventura. One day Perico, on setting out for the field, found Elvira in the yard, and said to her:
"Here is money, sister, to buy yourself colored dresses. You have fulfilled your promise to wear the habit of our Lady of Sorrows till Ventura came back, and now I wish to see your face, your dress--everything about you gay."
Elvira answered, with difficulty repressing her tears:
"Keep your money, brother, every day I feel myself worse. It is better for me to think of making my peace with God, than of buying wedding clothes, or of changing the colors which are to wrap me in the coffin."
"Do not say that, sister!" exclaimed Perico. "You break my heart! It has become a habit with you to be melancholy. When you and Ventura are as happy as Rita and I, when you have two little ones like these of ours, to occupy you, your apprehensions will fly away. Come," he added, catching the children, "come and play with your aunt."
Elvira's eyes followed her brother. Her heart was torn with grief; grief all the more agonized and profound for being repressed. She considered that a complaint from her would be like an indiscreet cry of alarm at an inevitable misfortune.
"Aunt," said Angel, "nothing can keep Melampo when father goes."
"He does what he ought, like the good dog he is," answered Elvira.
"And why is he called Melampo?" the child continued, with that zeal for asking questions which older people ridicule, instead of respecting and encouraging.
"He is called so," answered Elvira, "because Melampo is the name of one of the dogs that went to Bethlehem with the shepherds to see the child Jesus. There were three of them, Melampo, Cubilon, and Tobina, and the dogs that bear these names never go mad."
"Aunt," said Angela, running after a little bird, "I can't catch this swallow."
"That is not a swallow. Swallows do not come till spring, and these you must never catch nor molest."
"Why not, aunt?"
"Because they are friends to man, they confide in him and make their nests under his eaves. They are the birds that pulled the thorns out of the Saviour's crown when he hung upon the cross."
At this moment Angel fell and began to cry. Rita rushed impetuously out of her room and snatched him up, exclaiming:
"What has he done to himself? what is the matter with mother's glory?" Wiping his face, which was dirty, with her apron, she continued:
"What is the matter? Sweet little face, covered with mud. Bless his pretty eyes and his mouth, and his poor little hands!"
And covering him with kisses, passionate caresses, she took him and his sister into her mother's house. Returning presently she went into the back-yard to wash.
It has already been said that this yard was next to that of uncle Pedro, separated from it by a low wall.
Rita according to the popular custom began to sing.
Among the people of Andalucia, one can hardly be found whose memory is not a treasury of couplets; and these are so varied that it would be difficult to suggest an idea, for the expression of which a suitable verse would not immediately be found.
A fine voice, well modulated and dear, answered Rita from the adjoining yard; in this manner a musical colloquy was carried on, concluded by the male voice in this couplet, which indicated the wings that the preceding one had given to his desires:
"With no loss of time,
To succeed I intend;
Without sigh to the air,
Or complaint to the wind."
In the mean time Elvira sat sewing beside her mother. Her sweet and placid countenance betrayed none of the pain and anguish of her heart. Nevertheless, Anna looked at her with the penetrating eyes of a mother, and thought, "Will the hopes fail which I placed in Ventura's return? Does our Lord want her for himself?"
At this moment the children rushed in, wild with delight.
"Mamma Anna! Aunt Elvira!" they shouted. "Uncle Pedro says the ass had a little colt last night. She is in the stable with it, and we did not know it here. Come and see it! come and see it!"
And one pulling at the grandmother and the other at the aunt, they went, to the yard and threw the door wide open.
What a two-edged dagger for the heart of Anna, the honorable woman, the loving mother! Ventura was there with Rita!
Quick as lightning Ventura stepped upon the wheel of a cart which stood close to the wall, and with one spring disappeared.
Rita, enraged, continued her washing, and with unparalleled effrontery began to sing:
"No mother-in-law plagued Eve;
No sister-in-law worried Adam;
Nor caused their souls to grieve,
For in Eden they never had them."
The children had run on to the stable without stopping. Anna led her daughter, almost fainting, into the house, and there upon the bosom of her mother, from whom the cause of her grief was no longer a secret, Elvira burst into sobs.
"And you knew it," said her mother; "silent martyr to prudence. Weep, yes, weep, for tears are like the blood which flows from wounds, and renders them less mortal. I knew what she was and warned him. I knew that reprobation must follow the union of kindred blood, and I told him so. He would not listen. It would have been better to let him go to the war. But the heart errs as well as the understanding."
In the mean time the impudent woman went on singing:
"Mothers-in-law, and sisters-in-law,
See a cargo passing go;
What a famous load 'twould be.
For Satan's regions down below."
CHAPTER XI.
After a night of sleepless anguish, Anna rose, apparently more tranquil; drawing some slight hope from the determination she had taken to speak with Rita; show her the precipice toward which she was running blindly, and persuade her to recede.
Anna had a dignity that would have impressed any one in whom the noble quality of respect had not been suffocated by pride--the worst enemy of man because the most daring; no other like it elevates itself in the presence of virtue; no other is so obstinate and so lordly; no other so hides perversity under forms of goodness; no other so falsifies ideas and qualifies and condemns as servile that sentiment of respect which entered into the world with the first benediction of God. Pride sometimes wishes to elevate itself into dignity, but without success, for dignity never seeks to set itself up at the cost of another, but leaves and maintains everything in its own place; its attitude being even more noble when it honors than when it is honored. Dignity owes its place neither to riches nor knowledge, and least of all is it indebted to pride. It is the simple reflection of an elevated soul which feels its strength. It is natural, like the flush of health; not put on like the color of those who paint. But there are beings who place themselves above everything else, and rest with portentous composure upon a fake and insecure base, parading an intrepidity and an arrogance which they do not assume who rest on the firm rock of infallible justice and eternal truth. Rita, treading a crooked path with fearless step and serene countenance, was one of these beings.
The good sense of the villager, who felt profoundly what we have expressed, and understood perfectly the character of both women, defined it better in their concise laconism when, in speaking of Anna, they said, "Aunt Anna teaches without talking;" and of Rita, "She fears neither God nor the devil."
Rita was sewing when Anna entered. The latter deliberately drew the bolt of the door and sat down facing her daughter-in-law.
"You already know, Rita," she said calmly, "That I was never pleased with your marriage."
"And have you come to receive my thanks?"
Without noticing the question Anna continued:
"I had penetrated your character."
"It was not necessary to be a seer to do that," replied Rita, "I am perfectly open and frank. I say what I think."
"The evil is not in saying what you think, but in thinking what you say."
"It is plain that it would be better for me to play the dead fox, or still water, like some who appear flakes of snow, but are in reality grains of salt."
This was a fling at Elvira which Anna fully understood, but of which she took no notice, and proceeded.
"Notwithstanding, I was deceived. I had not entirely fathomed you."
"Go on," said Rita, "there is a squall to-day."
"I never thought that what has come to pass would happen."
"Now it escapes and rains pitchforks," said Rita.
"Since," proceeded Anna, "you do not fear to deceive my son--"
"Ho, is that the matter?" said Rita coolly.
"And kill my poor daughter--"
"That will do," interrupted Rita, "there is where the shoe pinches; because Ventura does not want to marry a spectre, that to go out has to ask permission of the gravedigger, I must answer for it. And for no other reason than because he is gay and likes better to jest with one who is cheerful like me than to drink herb-tea with her, can I help it?"
Anna allowed Rita to conclude, her countenance showing no alteration except a mortal paleness.
"Rita," she said, when the latter had finished, "a woman cannot be false to her marriage vows with impunity."
"What are you saying!" exclaimed Rita, springing to her feet and throwing away her work, her cheeks and eyes on fire. "What have you said, madam? I fake to my marriage vows? To that which your eyes did not see you have brought in your hand! I false! I! You have always borne me ill-will, like a mother-in-law in fact, and a bad mother-in-law, but I never knew before that the saint-eaters bore such testimony."
"I do not say that you are so," replied Anna, in the same grave and moderate tone which she had observed from the beginning, "but that you are in the way, that you are going to be false if God does not prevent it by opening your eyes."
"Now, as formerly, and always a prophetess, Jonah in person, and" (she added between her teeth) "may the whale swallow you also."
"Yes, Rita, yes," said Anna, "and I have come--"
"To threaten me?" asked Rita, with an air of bold defiance.
"No, Rita, no, my daughter; I have come to beg of you in the name of God, for the love of my son, for the sake of your children, and for your own sake, to consider what you are doing, to examine your heart while there is yet time."
"Did Perico send you?"
"No, my dear son suspects nothing, God forbid that we should awaken a sleeping lion."
"Well, then, why do you put yourself into so wide a garment? Go along! The one who is being hanged does not feel it but the witness feels it! Perico, madam, is not and never has been jealous; neither does he suspect the fingers of his guests, or go in quest of trouble. He is no dirty hypocrite, crying to heaven because people joke, and he does not bully because somebody draws a few buckets of water for his wife when she is washing. Do you think that I shall lose my soul for that?"
"Rita, Rita, do not trifle with men."
"Nor you with women. Good heavens! it would seem that I am scandalizing the town."
"Consider, Rita," continued Anna with increased severity, "that with men an affront is often the cause of bloodshed."
"You would bathe in rose-water," responded Rita "if matters seemed to be running a little toward the fulfilment of those predictions of yours about kindred blood not harmonizing, and others of the same kind, by which you wished to prevent your son from marrying; and you were disappointed; [{672}] and you will be now if you attempt, as I see you are attempting, to make trouble between us. I know what I am doing; Perico is a lover of quiet, and knows the wife he has. Leave us in peace, and we will live so, if you do not heat your son's skull by your meddling; you take care of the wedding finery of your daughter, the flower of the family."
At this string of taunts and insults, the prudent long-suffering of that respectable matron, wavered for an instant; but the angel of patience that God sends to women from the moment they become mothers, to help them bear their crosses, vanquished, and Anna went out, looking at Rita with a sad smile, in which there was as much or more compassion than contempt.
The worthy woman remained in a state of depression and anguish, on account of the failure of the step she had taken, and determined to open her heart to Pedro, in order to have him send his son away. Finally there was a guard wanting at the estate on which Ventura had served, and he was called to fill the place. This absence, though interrupted by frequent visits to the village, gave some respite to the afflicted Anna, who said to herself, "a day of life is life."
CHAPTER XII.
In the mean time the happy Christmas holidays arrived. They had arranged for the children a beautiful birth-place, which occupied the whole front of the parlor, covering it with aromatic pistachio, rosemary, lavender, and other odorous plants and leaves. Perico brought these things from the field with all the pleasure of a lover bringing flowers to his bride.
On Christmas day, Perico heard mass early, and went to take a walk to his wheat-field, having been told that there were goats in the neighborhood.
He returned home about ten o'clock, and found the children alone.
"How glad we are, father, that you have come," they shouted, running joyfully toward him. "They have all gone and left us."
"Where then are Mamma Anna, and Aunt Elvira?"
"They went to high mass."
"Who staid with you?"
"Mother."
"And where is she?"
"How do we know? We were in the parlor with her grace, dancing before the birth-place. Ventura came in, and mother told us to go somewhere else with the music, for it made her head ache, and when we were going out Ventura told her, I heard it, father, that she did right to put the door between, for the little angels of God were the devil's little witnesses. Is it true, father, are we the devil's little witnesses?"
To whom has it not happened, at some time in his life, in great or in less important circumstances, that a single word has been the key to open and explain; the torch to illuminate the present and the past; to bring out of oblivion and light up a train of circumstances and incidents which had transpired unperceived, but which now unite, to form an opinion, to fix a conviction or to root a belief? Such was the effect upon Perico of the words, which the decree of expiation seemed to have put into the mouth of innocence.
Late, but terrible, the truth presented itself to the eyes which good faith had kept closed, and doubt took possession of the heart so healthy and so shielded by honor that a suspicion had never entered it.
"Father, father!" cried the children, seeing him tremble and turn pale. Perico did not hear them.
"Mamma Anna," they exclaimed, as the latter entered, "hurry, father is sick!"
As he heard his mother enter, Perico turned his perplexed eyes toward her, and seemed to read again in her severe countenance the terrible sentence she had once pronounced upon a future from which her loving foresight would have preserved him: "A bad daughter will be a bad wife." Overwhelmed, he rushed out of the house, muttering a pretext for his flight which no one understood.
Anna put her head out of the window, and felt relieved as she saw that he went toward the fields.
"Could any one have told him that goats have broken into the wheat?"
"It is very likely, mother; he suspected it yesterday," answered Elvira. But dinner-time came, and Perico did not appear.
It was strange, on Christmas day; but to country people, who have no fixed hours, it was not alarming.
In the evening Maria arrived at the usual time.
"Did Ventura not come to the village to-day?" asked Anna.
"Yes," answered Pedro, "but there is an entertainment, and his friends carried him off. He has always been so fond of dancing that he would at any time leave his dinner, for a fandango."
"And Rita," said Elvira, "was she not at your house. Aunt Maria?"
"She came there, my daughter, but wanted to go with a neighbor to the entertainment. I told her she had better stay at home, but as she never minds me--"
"And you told her right, Maria," added Pedro, "an honest woman's place is in the house."
They were oppressed and silent when Perico abruptly entered.
The light was so deadened by the lamp-shade that they did not perceive the complete transformation of his face. Dark lines, which appeared the effect of long days of sickness, encircled his burning eyes, and his lips were red and parched like those of a person in a fever. He threw a rapid glance around, and abruptly asked, "Where is Rita?"
All remained silent; at length Maria said timidly,
"My son, she went for a little while to the feast with a neighbor--she must be here soon--she took it into her head--and as it was Christmas day--"
Without answering a word, Perico turned suddenly, and left the room. His mother rose quickly and followed, but did not overtake him.
"I tell you, Maria," said Pedro, "that Perico ought to beat her well. I would not say a word to stop him."
"Don't talk so, Pedro," answered Maria, "Perico is not the one to strike a woman. My poor little girl! we shall see. What harm is there in giving two or three hops? Old folks, Pedro, should not forget that they have been young."
At this moment Anna entered, trembling.
"Pedro," she said, "go to the feast!"
"I?" answered Pedro; "you are cool! I am out of all patience with that same feast. If Perico warms his wife's ribs, he will be well employed; she shall not dry her tears upon my pocket-handkerchief."
"Pedro, go to the feast!" said Anna again, but this time with such an accent of distress, that Pedro turned his head and sat staring at her.
Anna caught him by the arm, obliged him to rise, drew him aside, and spoke a few rapid words to him in a low voice.
The old man as he listened gave a half-suppressed cry, clasped his hands across his forehead, caught up his hat and hastily left the house.
CHAPTER XIII.
Ventura and Rita were dancing at the feast, animated by that which mounts to heads wanting in age or wanting in sense; by that which blinds the eyes of reason, silences prudence, and puts respect to flight; that is to say, wine; a love entirely material, a voluptuous dance, executed without restraint, amid foolish drunken applauses.
In truth they were a comely pair. Rita moved her charming head, adorned with flowers, and tossed her person to and fro with that inimitable grace of her province, which is at will modest or free. Her black eyes shone like polished jet, and her fingers agitated the castanets in defiant provocation. She had in Ventura a partner well suited to her. Never was the fandango danced with more grace and sprightliness.
The excited singers improvised (according to custom) couplets in praise of the brilliant pair:
"Throw roses, red roses,
The belle of the ball,
For her beauty and grace
She merits them all
And to-night in the feast,
By public acclaim.
To her and Ventura
Is given the palm."
During the last changes when the clappings and cheers were redoubled, Perico arrived and stopped upon the threshold.
Occupied as all were with the dance, no one noticed his arrival, and Ventura conducting Rita to a room where there were refreshments passed close beside him as he stood in shadow, without being aware of his presence. As they passed he heard words between them which confirmed the whole extent of his misfortune; all the infamy of the wife he loved so fondly, of the mother of his children; all the treachery of a friend and brother.
The blow was so terrible that the unhappy man remained for a moment stunned; but recovering himself, he followed them.
Rita stood before a small mirror arranging the flowers that adorned her head.
"Withered," said Ventura, "why do you put on roses? Is it not known that they always die of envy on the head of a handsome woman?"
"Look here, Ventura," said one of his friends, "you appear to like the forbidden fruit better than any other."
"I," responded Ventura, "like good fruit though it be forbidden."
"That is an indignity," said a friend of Perico's.
One of those present took the speaker by the arm, and said to him, as he drew him aside.
"Hush, man! don't you see that he is drunk? Who gave you a candle for this funeral? What is it to you if Perico, who is the one interested, consents?"
"Who dares to say that Perico Alvareda consents to an indignity?" said the latter presenting himself in the middle of the room, as pale as if risen from a bier.
At the sound of her husband's voice, Rita slid like a serpent among the bystanders and disappeared.
"He comes in good time to look after his wife," said some hair-brained youths, who formed a sort of retinue to the brilliant dancer and valiant young soldier, bursting into a laugh.
"Sirs," said Perico, crossing his arms upon his breast with a look of suppressed rage, "have I a monkey show in my face?"
"That or something else which provokes laughter," answered Ventura, at which all laughed.
"It is lucky for you," retorted Perico, in a choked voice, "that I am not armed."
"Shut your mouth!" exclaimed Ventura, with a rude laugh. "How bold the pet lamb is getting! Leave off bravado, pious youth; don't be picking quarrels, but go home and wipe your children's noses."
At these words Perico precipitated himself upon Ventura. The latter recoiled before the sudden shock, but immediately recovered himself, and with the strength and agility which were natural to him, seized Perico by the middle, threw him to the ground, and put his knee upon his breast.
Fortunately Perico did not carry a knife, and Ventura did not draw his; but instead the latter clenched both hands upon Perico's throat, repeating furiously:
"You! You! that I can tear to pieces with three fingers; do you lay your hands upon me? You! a killer of locusts, a coward, a chicken, brought up under your mother's wing. You to me! to me!"
At this instant Pedro entered.
"Ventura!" he shouted, "Ventura! What are you doing? what are you doing, madman?"
At the sight of his father, Ventura loosed his grasp upon Perico and stood up.
"You are drunk," continued Pedro, beside himself with indignation and grief. "You are drunk, and with evil wine. [Footnote 172] Go home," he added pushing Ventura by the shoulder, "go home, and go on before me."
[Footnote 172: "Drunk with evil wine," said when the drunken person is ill-tempered.]
Ventura obeyed without answering, for with Pedro's words, it was not alone the voice of his father that reached his ears, it was the voice of reason, of conscience, of his own heart. His noble instincts were awakened, and he blushed for the affair which had just taken place, and for the cause which had occasioned it. Therefore he lowered his head as in the presence of all he respected, and went out, followed by his father.
In the mean while they had raised Perico, who was gradually recovering from the vertigo caused by the pressure of Ventura's fingers.
He passed his hand across his forehead, cast upon those who surrounded him the glance of a wounded and manacled lion, and left the room, saying in a hollow voice,
"He has destroyed us both."
As Ventura had gone, accompanied by his father, those present allowed Perico to leave without opposition.
"This is not the end," said one, shaking his head.
"That is clear," said another. "First deceived, and afterward beaten; who is the saint that could bear it?"
Perico went home muttering in disjointed and broken sentences--"Chicken!" "Coward!" "Something in my face which provokes laughter!" "And he tells me so, he!" "Pet lamb!" "No one cast a doubt upon my honor until you spat upon it and trampled it under your feet! Oh! we shall see!" He entered his room and seized his gun.
"Father!" called the little voice of Angela from the next apartment, "father, we are alone."
"You will be yet more alone," murmured Perico, without answering her.
The children's voices kept on calling "Father, father!"
"You have no father!" shouted Perico, and went out into the court. He placed his gun against the trunk of the orange-tree, in order to take out ammunition to load it, but, as if the ancient protector of the family repulsed the weapon, it slid and fell to the ground. The leaves of the tree murmured mournfully. Were they moved by some dismal presentiment?
Perico was leaving the court when he found himself face to face with his mother, who, made watchful by her inquietude, had heard her son enter.
"Where are you going, Perico?" she asked.
"To the field. I have told you already that there were goats around."
"Did you go to the feast?"
"Yes."
"And Rita?"
"Was not there. Mamma Maria dotes."
Anna breathed more freely; still, the unusual roughness of her son's tone and the asperity of his replies surprised the already alarmed mother.
"Don't go now to the field, my child," she said in a supplicating voice.
"Not go to the field, and why?"
"Because I feel in my heart that you ought not, and you know that my heart is true."
"Yes, I know it!" he answered, with such acerbity and bitterness that Anna began to fear that although he might not have found Rita at the feast, he had, nevertheless, his suspicions.
"Well, then, since you know it, do not go," she said.
"Madam," answered Perico, "women sometimes exasperate men by trying to govern them. They say that I have been brought up under your wing. I intend now to fly alone," and he went toward the gate.
"Is this my son?" cried the poor mother. "Something is the matter with him! Something is wrong!"
As Perico opened the gate, his faithful companion, the good Melampo, came to his side.
"Go back!" said Perico, giving him a kick.
The poor animal, little used to ill treatment, fell back astonished, but immediately, and with that absence of resentment which makes the dog a model of abnegation in his affection, as well as of fidelity, darted to the gate in order to follow his master. It was already shut. Then he began to howl mournfully, as if to prove the truth of the instinct of these animals when they announce a catastrophe by their lamentations.
CHAPTER XIV.
On the following day, when sleep had dispelled from Ventura's brain the remaining fumes that confused his reason, he rose as deeply ashamed as he was sincerely penitent. He, therefore, listened to the just and sensible charges which his father made against his proceedings, past and present, without contradicting them.
"All you say is true, father," he answered, "and I can only tell you that I did not know what I was doing, but I feel it enough now! The wine, the cursed wine! I will ask Perico's pardon before all the village. I owe it more to myself than even to him I have offended."
"You promise, then, to ask his pardon?"
"A hundred times, father."
"You will marry Elvira?"
"With all my heart."
"And treat her well?"
"By this cross," said Ventura making the sign with his fingers.
"You and she will go to Alcalá?"
"Yes, sir, if it were to Peñon." [Footnote 173]
[Footnote 173: Gibraltar, in other words, to the end of the world.]
Pedro looked at him a moment with deep emotion, and said:
"Well, then, God bless you, my son."
Both went to Anna's in search of Perico, but he had gone out, Anna told them. At sight of them, but still more on noticing the joy and satisfaction which shone in Pedro's face, Anna's vague but distressing fears were tranquillized, and, more than all, Ventura's manner filled her with hope, for she saw that he approached Elvira and talked to her with interest and tenderness, while Pedro said, with a mysterious air and winking toward Ventura, "That young fellow is in a hurry to be married. You mustn't take so long to prepare the wedding things, neighbor; young people are not so sluggish as we old ones."
They soon left, Ventura for the hacienda at which he was employed; Pedro, who was going to his wheat-field, accompanied him, their road being the same. The wheat was very fine, not full of weeds.
"The weeds are awake," said Ventura.
"Give them time," replied Pedro, "and they will vanquish the wheat, because they are the legitimate offspring of the soil. The wheat is its foster child. But, with the favor of God, wheat will not be lacking in the house for us and for more that may come."
They separated and Ventura disappeared in the olive-grove. Pedro remained looking after him.
"Not even a king," he said to himself, "has a son like mine. Nor is there his equal in all Spain. If he is noble in person, he is more noble in soul."
Ventura had advanced but few steps into the grove when he saw Perico at a little distance, coming from behind a tree with his gun.
"I have something in my face, thanks to you," he shouted, "that provokes laughter. I have also something in my hand that stops laughter. I am a coward and a killer of locusts, but I know how to rid myself of the reproach you have put upon me."
"Perico, what are you doing?" cried Ventura, running toward him to arrest the action. But the shot had been sent on its dreadful errand, and Ventura fell mortally wounded. Pedro heard the report and started.
"What is that?" he exclaimed, "but what would it be?" he added upon reflection. "Ventura has perhaps shot a partridge. It sounded near. I will go and see."
He hurriedly follows the path his son has taken, sees a form lying upon the ground; approaches it--God of earth and heaven! It is a wounded man! and that man is his son! The poor old man falls down beside him.
"Father," Ventura says, "I have some strength left; calm yourself and help me get to the hacienda; it is not far and let them send for a confessor, for I wish to die like a Christian."
The God of pity gives strength to the poor old man. He raises his son, who, leaning upon his shoulder walks a few steps, repressing the groans which anguish wrings from his breast.
At the hacienda, they hear a pitiful voice calling for succor; all run out and see, coming along the path, the unfortunate father supporting upon his shoulder his dying son. They meet and surround them.
"A priest! a priest!" moans the exhausted voice of Ventura.
A suitable person, mounted on the fleetest horse, leaves for the village.
"The surgeon, bring the surgeon!" calls the father.
"And the magistrate!" adds the superintendent.
In this manner passes an hour of agony and dread.
But now they hear the swift approach of horses' feet, and the messenger comes accompanied by the priest. The aid which arrives first is that of religion.
The priest enters, carrying in his bosom the sacred host. All prostrate themselves. The wretched father finds relief in tears.
They leave the priest with the dying man, and through the house, broken only by the sobs of Pedro, reigns a solemn silence.
The minister of God comes out of the room. A sweet calm has spread itself over the face of the reconciled. The surgeon enters, probes the wound, and turns silently with a sad movement of his head toward those who are standing by. Pedro awaiting, with hands convulsively clasped, the sentence of the man of science, falls to the floor, and they carry him away.
"Sir magistrate," the surgeon says, "he is not capable of making a declaration, he is dying."
These words rouse Ventura. With that energy which is natural to him, he opens his eyes and says distinctly: "Ask, for I can still answer."
The scribe prepares his materials and the magistrate asks:
"What has been the cause of your death?"
"I myself," distinctly replied Ventura.
"Who shot you?"
"One whom I have forgiven."
"You then forgive your murderer?"
"Before God and man."
These were his last words.
The priest presses his hand and says, "Let us recite the creed." All kneel, and the guardian angel embraces as a sister, even before hearing the divine sentence, the parting soul of him who died forgiving his murderer.
CHAPTER XV.
The women were together in Anna's parlor, and although not one of them, except Rita, knew of the events of the night before, they sat in oppressive silence, for even Maria was wanting in her accustomed loquacity.
"I don't know why," she said at last, "nor what is the matter with me, but my heart to-day feels as though it could not stay in its place."
"It is the same with me," said Elvira, "I cannot breathe freely. I feel as if a stone lay on my heart. Perhaps it is the air. Is it going to rain, Aunt Maria?"
"My poor child," thought Anna, "the remedy comes too late. Earth is calling her body and heaven her soul."
"Well, I feel just as usual," said Rita, who was in reality the one that could hardly sit still for uneasiness.
Angela had made her a rag baby, which she was rocking in a hollow tile by way of cradle, and the painful silence which followed these few words was only broken by the gentle voice of the little girl as she sung, in the sweet and monotonous nursery melody to which some mothers lend such simple enchantment, and such infinite tenderness, these words:
"I hold thee in my arms,
And never cease to think.
What would become of thee, my angel,
If I should be taken from thee.
The little angels of heaven--"
The childish song was interrupted by a heavy solemn stroke of the church bell. Its vibration died away in the air slowly and gradually, as if mounting to other regions.
"His Majesty!" said all, rising to their feet.
Anna prayed aloud for the one who was about to receive the last sacraments.
"For whom can it be?" said Maria. "I do not know of any one that is dangerously sick in the place."
Rita looked out of the window and asked of a woman that was passing, who was the sick person?
"I do not know," she answered, "but it is some one out of the village."
Another woman cried as she approached, "Mercy! it is a murder, for the magistrate and the surgeon have followed the priest as fast as they could!"
"God help him!" they all exclaimed, with that profound and terrible emotion which is excited by those awful words, a murder!
"And who can it be?" asked Rita.
"No one knows," answered the woman.
Then the bell tolled for the passing soul; solemn stroke; stroke of awe; voice of the church, which announces to men that a brother is striving in weariness, anguish, and dismay, and is going to appear before the dread tribunal--momentous voice, by which the church says to the restless multitude, deep in frivolous interests which it deems important, and in fleeting passions which it dreams will be eternal: Stand still a moment in respect for death, in consideration of your fellow-being who is about to disappear from the earth, as you will disappear tomorrow.
They remained plunged in silence, but nevertheless deeply moved, as happens sometimes with the sea, when its surface is calm, but its bosom heaves with those deep interior waves which sailors call a ground-swell.
And not they alone. The whole village was in consternation, for death by the hand of violence always appalls, since the curse which God pronounced upon Cain continues, and will continue, in undiminished solemnity throughout all generations.
"How long the time is!" said Maria, at length. "It seems as if the day stood still."
"And as if the sun were nailed in the sky," added Elvira. "Suspense is so painful. Perhaps robbers have done it."
"It may have been unintentional," answered Maria.
"Mamma Anna, who has killed a man, and what made him do it?" asked the little Angela.
"Who can tell," replied Anna, "what is the cause, or whose the daring hand that has anticipated that of God in extinguishing a torch which he lighted."
At that instant they heard a distant rumor. People moved by curiosity are running through the street, and confused exclamations of astonishment and pity reach their ears.
"What is it?" asked Rita, approaching the window.
"They are bringing the dead man this way," was the answer.
Elvira felt herself irresistibly impelled to look out.
"Come away, Elvira," said her mother, "you know that you cannot bear the sight of a corpse."
Elvira did not hear her, for the crowd, that drawn by curiosity, sympathy, or friendship, had surrounded the body and its attendants, was coming near. Anna and Maria, also placed themselves at the grating. The corpse approached, lying across a horse and covered with a sheet. An old man follows it, supported by two persons. His head is bowed upon his breast. They look at him--merciful God! it is Pedro! and they utter a simultaneous cry.
Pedro hears it, lifts his head and sees Rita. Despair and indignation give him strength. He frees himself violently from the arms that sustain him, and precipitates himself toward the horse, exclaiming: "Look at your work, heartless woman! Perico killed him." Saying this, he lifts the sheet and exposes the body of Ventura, pale, bloody, and with a deep wound in the breast.
From the Dublin University Magazine.
IRISH FOLK BOOKS OF THE LAST CENTURY.
In the eighteenth century Ireland did not possess the boon of Commissioners to prepare useful and interesting school books. However, as the mass of the peasantry wished to give their children the only education they could command, namely, that afforded by the hedge schools, and as young and old liked reading stories and popular histories, or at least hearing them read, some Dublin, Cork, and Limerick printers assumed the duties neglected by senators, and published "Primers," "Reading-made-easie's," "Child's-new-play-thing," and the widely diffused "Universal Spelling Book" of the magisterial Daniel Fenning, for mere educational purposes. These were "adorned with cuts," but the transition from stage to stage was too abrupt, and the concluding portions of the early books were as difficult as that of the "Universal Spelling Book" itself, which the author, in order to render it less practically useful, had encumbered with a dry and difficult grammar placed in the centre of the volume.
Two Dublin publishers, Pat. Wogan, of Merchants' quay, and William Jones, 75 Thomas street, were the educational and miscellaneous Alduses of the day, and considered themselves as lights burning in a dark place for the literary guidance of their countrymen and countrywomen, of the shop-keeping, farmer, and peasant classes. In the frontispiece of some editions of the spelling-book grew the tree of knowledge, laden with fruit, each marked with some letter, and ardent climbers plucking away. Beneath was placed this inscription:
"The tree of knowledge here you see.
The fruit of which is A, B, C.
But if you neglect it like idle drones,
You'll not be respected by William Jones."
That portion of the work containing "spells" and explanations was thoroughly studied by the pupils. The long class was arranged in line in the evening, every one contributed a brass pin, and the boy or girl found best in the lesson, and most successful at the hard "spells" given him or her by the others, and most adroit in defeating them at the same exercise, got all the pins except two, the portion of the second in rank, (the queen,) and one, the perquisite of the third, (the prince. )
Every neighborhood was searched carefully for any stray copies of Entick's or Sheridan's small square dictionaries, (pronounced Dixhenry's by the eager students,) for hard spells and difficult explanations to aid them in their evening tournaments.
The grave Mr. Fenning was censuruble for admitting into some editions the following jest (probably imported from Joe Miller) among his edifying fables and narratives:
"A gay young fellow once asked a parson for a guinea, but was stiffly refused. 'Then,' said he, give me at least a crown.' 'I will not give thee a farthing,' answered the clergyman. 'Well, father,' said the rake, 'let me have your blessing at all events.' 'Oh I yes: kneel down, my son, and receive it with humility.' 'Nay,' said the other, 'I will not accept it, for were it worth a farthing you would not have offered it.'"
We cannot, however, quit the school-books without mention of the really valuable treatise on arithmetic, composed by Elias Vorster, a Dutchman naturalized in Cork, and subsequently improved by John Gough, of Meath street, one of the society of Friends. "Book-keeping by Double Entry," written by Dowling and Jackson, was so judiciously arranged that it is still looked on as a standard work.
The same followers longo intervallo of Stephens and Elzevir published, besides prayer and other devout books, a series of stories and histories, and literary treatises such as they were, printed with worn type, on bad grey paper, cheaply bound in sheep-skin, and sold by the peddlers through the country at a tester (6-1/2d.) each. Of history, voyages, etc., the peddler's basket was provided with "Hugh Reilly's History of Ireland," "Adventures of Sir Francis Drake," "The Battle of Aughrim," and "Siege of Londonderry," (the two latter being dramas,) "Life and Adventures of James Freney the Robber," "The Irish Rogues and Rapparees," "The Trojan Wars," and "Troy's Destruction," "The Life of Baron Trenck," and "The Nine Worthies--Three Jews, Three Heathens, and Three Christians."
The fictional department embraced, chiefly in an abridged state, "The Arabian Nights," "The History of Don Quixote," "Gulliver's Travels," "Esop's Fables," "Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," "Robin Hood's Garland," "The Seven Champions of Christendom," "The History of Valentine and Orson," "The Seven Wise Masters and Mistresses of Rome," "Royal Fairy Tales," etc., etc.
In the department of the Belles Lettres may be classed, "Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son," "The Academy of Compliments," "The Fashionable Letter Writer," "Hocus Pocus, or the Whole Art of Legerdemain," "Joe Miller's Jest Book," etc.
The list would not be complete without mention of the books of ballads. These were sold in sheets, each forming 8 pages, 18mo, and adorned with cuts, never germain to the ballads they illustrated. Some of these sheets contained only one production, the "Yarmouth Tragedy," or some early English ballad sadly disfigured. One related how a "servant-man" was accused by an envious liveried brother, of being a confirmed card-player. On being examined he obtained a complete victory over the informer, convincing his master that what he, the master, called cards, was to him a prayer-book, a catechism, a calendar, and what not. The different numbers reminded him of the six days of the creation, the seven churches of Asia, the ten commandments, the twelve Apostles, etc. The [{681}] king recalled to him the duty he owed that supreme magistrate, the ace of hearts, the love due to God and our neighbor. "How, is it," said the master, "that you have always passed over the knave in your reckoning?" "Ah! I wished to speak no ill of that crooked disciple that went to backbite me to your honor." The reader anticipates the victory of the ingenious rogue.
The purchasers of these sheets sewed them as well as they could in a book form, but they were so thumbed and abused, that it is at this date nearly impossible to procure one of those repertories of song printed toward the close of the last or the beginning of the present century.
Of all these works that we delight in most at present, (it was not so when we were young,) is the unmatched "Academy of Compliments," which was the favorite of boys and girls just beginning to think of marriage, or its charming preliminary, courtship. Very feelingly did the writer in his preface insist on the necessity of eloquence. "Even quick and attractive wit," as he thoughtfully observed, "is often foiled for want of words, and makes a man or woman seem a statute or one dumb." He candidly acknowledges that several treatises like his have been published, "but he assures the courteous reader that none have arrived to the perfection of this, for good language and diversion."
This is the receipt for accosting a lady, and entering into conversation; with her:
"I believe Nature brought you forth to be a scourge to lovers, for she hath been so prodigal of her favor toward you, that it renders you as admirable as you are amiable."
Another form:
"Your presence is so dear to me, your conversation so honest, and your humour so pleasing, that I could desire to be with you perpetually."
The author directs a slight departure from this form, in case the gentleman has never seen the lady before, and yet has fallen passionately in love with her.
"If you accuse me of temerity, you must lay your own beauty in fault, with which I am so taken, that my heart is ravished from me, and wholly subjected to you."
Decent people would scarcely thank us for troubling them with many of the "witty questions and answers for the improvement of conversation." A few must be quoted, however, with discreet selection.
"Q. What said the tiler to the man when he fell through the rafters of his house?
"A. Well done, faith; I like such an assistant as thou art, who can go through his work so quickly.
"Q. What said the tailor's boy to the gentleman who, on his presenting his bill, said tartly, he was not running away?
"A. If you are not, sir, I am sorry to say my master is.
"Q. Why is a soldier said to be of such great antiquity?
"A. Because he keeps up the old fashions when the first bed was upon the bare ground."
THE BATTLE OF AUGHRIM.
It may appear strange that "The Battle of Aughrim," written by an adherent to the Hanoverian succession, should so long have continued a popular volume among the Roman Catholic peasantry. This has, perhaps, been due to the respectful style in which the author treated the officers of Irish extraction. All his contempt and dislike were levelled at St. Ruth, the French General, and his masters, English James and French Louis. Though the style of the rhymed play is turgid enough, there are in it occasional passages of considerable vigor and beauty, and a brisk movement in the conduct of the piece; and sentimental youth have an opportunity of shedding a tear over the ill starred love of Godfrey and Jemima. It was scarcely fair of the author to represent St. Ruth as a stabber in cold blood, but hear the moving periods he makes Sarsfield utter:
"O heavens! can nature bear the shocking sound
Of death or slavery on our native ground.
Why was I nurtured of a noble race,
And taught to stare destruction in the face?
Why was I not laid out a useless scrub,
And formed for some poor hungry peasant's cub.
To hedge and ditch, and with unwearied toil
To cultivate for grain a fertile soil,
To watch my flocks, and range my pastures through,
With all my locks wet with the morning dew,
Rather than being great, give up my fame,
And lose the ground I never can regain?"
Those Irishmen, who, like ourselves, have read and enjoyed this drama in early boyhood, before the birth of the critical faculty, will find it out of their power to divest themselves of early impressions when endeavoring to form a just estimate of its merits. We vainly strive to forget the image of a comely and intelligent country housewife, spiritedly reciting the interview of the Irish and English officers after the day was decided, and bravely holding out the tongs at the point where Sarsfield presents his weapon. Talmash, Mackay, and Sir Charles Godfrey confront the Irish chiefs, Dorrington, O'Neil, and Sarsfield, and Talmash courteously addresses them.
"Take quarters, gentlemen, and yield on sight.
Or otherwise prepare to stand the fight.
Yet pray, take pity on yourselves and yield.
For blood enough has stained the sanguine field.
'Tis Britain's glory, you yourselves can tell,
To use the vanquished hospitably well.
Sarsfield-- Urge not a thought, proud victor, if you dare.
So far beneath the dignity of war.
I am a peer, and Sarsfield is my name.
And where this sword can reach I dare maintain.
Life I contemn, and death I recommend;
He breathes not vital air who'd make me bend
My neck to bondage, so, proud foe, decline
The length of this, (extending his sword,) because the spot is mine.
Talmash. --If you are Sarsfield, as you bravely show,
You're that brave hero whom I longed to know,
And wished to thank you on the reeking plain
For that great feat of blowing up our train.
Then mark, my lord, for what I here contend;
'Tis Britain's holy church I now defend.
Great William's right, and Mary's crown, these three.
Sarsfield. --Why, then fall on--Louis and James for me.
(They fight. )
Sarsfield's declaration ends the animated discussion rather lamely; but what poet has maintained a uniform grandeur or dignity? The writer was a certain Robert Ashton. The play when printed was dedicated, circa 1756, to Lord Carteret, and if peasant tradition can be trusted, it was only acted once. The Jacobite and Hanoverian gentlemen in the pit drew their swords on one another, probably at the scene just quoted, and bloodshed ensued. This is not confirmed by the written annals of the time.
"The Siege of Londonderry" was, and still is bound up with "The Battle of Aughrim," but there is nothing whatever in it to recommend it to the sympathies of the populace. There is nothing but mismanagement and bad feeling on the part of the native officers from beginning to end; and if fear or disloyalty shows itself in one of the besieged, his very wife cudgels him for it.
There is something very naïve and old-fashioned in the observation inserted at the end of the list of the dramatis personae:
"Cartel agreed upon--No exchange of prisoners, but hang and quarter on both sides."
DON BELLIANIS OF GREECE; OR THE HONOR OF CHIVALRY.
The re-perusal of portions of this early favorite of ours has not been attended with much pleasure or edification. There is a sad want of style, accompanied by a complete disregard of syntax, orthography, and punctuation. The objects to be attained are so many and so useless, one adventure branches off into so many others, and there arc so many knights and giants to be overcome, and emperors so carelessly leave their empresses in the dark woods exposed to so many dangers, while they go themselves to achieve some new and futile exploit that the narrative has scarcely more continuity and consistence than a dream.
The author had ten times as many separate sets of adventures to conduct simultaneously as ever had the estimable G. P. R. James. So he was frequently obliged to suspend one series, and take up another, a mode of composition which all novelists who read this article, are advised to eschew. Leaving Don Bellianis investing the emperor of Trebizond, who stoutly disputed the possession of the fair Florisbella's hand with him, he proceeds to tell what happened at the joustings of Antioch in consequence of the happy union of Don Brianel and the peerless Aurora. Thither came [{683}] Peter, the knight of the Keys, from Ireland. He was son to the king of Monster, and, being anxious to seek foreign adventures, embarked at Carlingford, and performed prodigies of valor in Britain and France, and then sailed for Constantinople. Being within sight of that city, a storm forced his ship away and drove it to Sardinia, where Peter won the heart of the fair princess, Magdalena, by his success in the tournament, and his beauty of features when he removed his helmet after the exercise. The princess has a claim upon our indulgence, for as the text has it, "he looked like Mars and Venus together." The knights of those happy times being as distinguished for modesty as courage, the princess ran no risk in desiring an interview with the peerless Peter, and they vowed constancy to each other till death.
A neighboring king demanding the hand of the lady for his son, the lovers decamp, and find themselves on a strange island in a day or two. Peter having given the princess a red purse containing some jewels, she happened to let it fall by her, and it was at once picked up by a vulture, on the supposition of its being a piece of raw meat. Flying with it to a tree overhanging the river, and finding his mistake, he dropped it into the water, and there it lay on the sandy bottom in sight of the lovers.
The knight, arming himself with a long bough, and getting into the boat, would have fished up the purse, only for the circumstance of being unprovided with oars. The tide having turned, he was carried out to sea, and by the time he had got rid of his armor he was nearly out of sight of the poor princess, now left shrieking behind, who was conveyed away after a day and a night's suffering, in a ship bound for Ireland, where she took refuge in a nunnery, and in time became its superioress. This was near the palace of her lover's parents, and to match this strange coincidence by another equally strange, their cook, one day preparing a codfish for dinner, discovered within it the identical purse of jewels carried away by their son, and lost in the manner described in the distant Mediterranean. They gave him up then for lost, but he was merely searching through the world for his mistress, jousting at Antioch, killing a stray giant here or there, and rescuing from the stake at Windsor an innocent countess accused of a faux pas--all these merely to keep his hand in practice. Don Clarineo with whom he had fraternized at Antioch is also engaged on the same quest, and comes to Ireland in the course of his rambles. In that early time Owen Roe O'Neill was chief king, MacGuire, father of Peter, was king of Munster as before stated, Owen Con O'Neill and Owen MacO'Brien ruled two of the other provinces, but the territory claimed by each is not pointed out. The compiler was probably not well up in the old chronicles; he would else have given O'Brien the territory of Munster, and settled MacGuire somewhere near Loch Erin.
Be that as it may, the reigning king of Ulster refusing his fair daughter to the prince of Connaught, was minded to bestow her on the terrible giant Fluerston, whose inhospitable abode was in the mountains of Carlingford. The father of the rejected prince determined to resist this "family compact," sent out knights and squires to impress every knight errant they met into his service. Being rather more earnest than polite on meeting with Don Clarineo, he slew about a score of them, and after he succeeded in learning their business with him he was inclined to slay another score for their stupidity in not being more explicit at the beginning, whereas he would have devoted ten lives if he had them to the cause of prince versus giant.
Having easily massacred the Carlingford ogre, he began to bestir himself in his quest for the lost princess, and so quitted the Connaught court which according to our author was held at that era in Dublin, and his [{684}] loyalty was suitably rewarded in discovering his own true love.
It was originally written in Spanish, and part translated into French by Claude de Beuil, and published by Du Bray, Paris, 1625 in an 8vo.
THE NEW HISTORY OF THE TROJAN WARRIORS AND TROY'S DESTRUCTION.
The compiler of this Burton did not share in Homer's excusable prejudices in favor of his countrymen; he was a Trojan to the backbone. This might be excused in compliment to the noble and patriotic Hector, but he disturbs commonly received notions of family relationship among the ancients, a thing not to be pardoned.
After proposing the true histories of Hercules, Theseus, the destruction of Ilion, and other equally authentic facts, he proceeds to relate--
"How Brute, King of the Trojans, arrived in Britain, and conquered Albion and his giants, building a new Troy where London now stands, in memory of which the effigies of two giants in Guildhall were set up, with many other remarkable and very famous passages, to revive antiquity out of the dust, and give those that shall peruse this elaborate work, a true knowledge of what passed in ancient times, so that they may be able readily to discourse of things that had been obliterated from the memories of most people, and gain a certainty of the famous deeds of the renowned worthies or the world."
Our truthful historian then relates with many corrections of the legendary accounts of the lying Greeks, the histories of Hercules, Theseus, Orpheus, Jason, and the other Ante-Trojan heroes; and either through mere whim, or better information, tells us that Proserpine at the time she was snatched away to hell, was the bride of the enamored Orpheus, and the wicked King Pluto putting armor on his equally wicked followers--the giant Cerberus and others--and festal garments over the armor, carried her away despite the resistance of the bridal party. Orpheus obtained her, as mentioned by the fabulists, but looking back, Cerberus, who was close behind arrested her progress, and the unfortunate husband returned to upper air half-dead. Thereupon Theseus and Pirithous tried the adventure, but the giant Cerberus slew the last named, and would have slain Theseus, but Hercules closely following, gave the giant such a knock of his club as left him lying in a swoon for some hours. Advancing to the throne of the black tyrant, he administered another crushing blow on his helm, and leaving him for dead, conducted the trembling but delighted Proserpine to her mother and husband in the pleasant vales of Sicily, and "if they didn't live happy that we may!" As for the traitor Cerberus, he was presented to Hippodamia, the disconsolate widow of the murdered Pirithous, who found a melancholy satisfaction in putting him to death after first subjecting him to well-deserved tortures.
In the rest of the history of Hercules our compiler does not think it necessary to depart from the statements of the early writers. He gives him indeed as second wife, Joel, daughter of King Pricus, neither of whose names we recollect.
Our authority being keenly alive to the injustice done by Homer to the Trojans, corrects his statements on sundry occasions. Well disposed as we are to rectify prejudices, he has not convinced us that the knights on both sides, mounted, armed in plate, and setting their strong spears in rest, charged each other in full career in the manner of Cranstoun and William of Deloraine. These are his words:
"Hector and Achilles advanced in the front of either army, and ran at each other with great fury with their spears, giving such a shock as made the earth to tremble, with which Achilles was thrown from his horse; whereupon the noble Hector scorning to kill a dismounted man, passed on, making lanes through the enemy's troops, and paving his way with dead bodies, so that in a fearful manner they fled before him.
[{685}]
"By this time Achilles being remounted by his Myrmidons, a second time encountered the victorious Hector, who notwithstanding his utmost efforts, again bore him to the earth, and went on making a dreadful havoc as before."
It is probable that this account of the death of Hector will prove the least digestible of his emendations to the admirers of the early Greek poets. The version here given appears to depend on the sole authority of our compiler, and we do not feel here at liberty to interpose in the literary quarrel sure to arise on the publication of this article:
"Hector, having taken prisoner Menesteus, Duke of Athens, who had on a curious silver armor, he was conveying him out of the battle when thinking himself secure, and being overheated with action, he threw his shield behind him, and left his bosom bare.
"Achilles, spying this opportunity, ran with all his might his spear at the breast of the hero, which piercing his armor, entered his undaunted heart, and he fell down dead to the earth. And this not satisfying the ungenerous Greek, he fastened his dead body to the tail of his horse, and dragged him three times round the city of Troy in revenge for the many foils and disgraces he had received of him."
The rest of the narrative corresponds tolerably with the old accounts, but we have not heart to accompany the author through the burning of Troy, the adventures of Eneas, and those of Brutus in his descent on Britain, and his victory over Albion, Gog, and Magog. Besides, the death of the "Guardian Dog of Troy" has disturbed our equanimity, for we acknowledge as great an esteem for Hector and as strong a dislike to the ruthless Achilles, as was ever entertained by the compiler of the "New History of the Trojan Wars."
The prejudices of the romancers of the middle and later ages in favor of the Trojans were probably due to the history of the war supposed to have been written by Dares, a Phrygian priest mentioned by Homer. It is in Greek, and the work of some ingenious person of comparatively recent times. It was translated by Postel into French, and published in Paris 1553. The first edition in Greek came out at Milan in 1477. Another spurious book on the same subject in Latin, was attributed to Dictys, a follower of Idomeneus, King of Crete. The first edition of it was printed at Mayence, but without date.
THE IRISH ROGUES AND RAPPAREES.
The literary caterers for our peasantry, young and old, hare been blamed for submitting to their inspection the lives of celebrated highwaymen, tories, and "rapparees." Without undertaking their defence we cannot help pointing out a volume appropriated to gentry of the same class in the Family Library issued by John Murray, whom no one could for a moment suspect of seeking to corrupt the morals of families or individuals. We find in Burns' and Lambert's cheap popular books, another given up to these minions without an apprehension of demoralization ensuing among the poor or the young who may happen to read it. So it is probable that J. Cosgrave contemplated no harm to his generation by publishing his "Irish Rogues and Rapparees." It were to be wished that the motto selected for his work had either some attic salt or common-sense to recommend it:
"Behold here's truth in every page expressed;
O'Darby's all a sham in fiction dressed,
Save what from hence his treacherous master stole,
To serve a knavish turn, and act the fool."
The reader will please not confound the terms "tory" and "rapparee." The tories, though that generic for Irish robbers is as old as Elizabeth, are yet most familiarly known as legacies left us by the Cromwellian wars, and chiefly consisted of those rascals who, pretending to assist the parliamentary cause, plundered the mere Irish farmers, and every one of both sides who had anything worth taking. They were a detestable fraternity. The rapparees were the Irish outlaws in the Jacobite and Williamite wars, including many a scoundrel no doubt, but many also who, while they supported themselves in outlawry, at the expense of those who in their eyes were disaffected to the rightful king, yet kept their hands unstained by [{686}] vulgar theft or needless bloodshed. Many who at first kept to the hills and the bogs as mere outlaws, and exacted voluntary and involuntary black mail for mere support, according as the assessed folk were Jacobites or Williamites, gradually acquired a taste for the excitement and license of their exceptional life, and became bona fide plunderers, preferring (all other things being equal) to wasting the Sassenach rather than the Gael, and that was all.
Such a gentleman-outlaw was Redmond Count O'Hanlon, who flourished after the conclusion of the Cromwellian wars. Redmond was worthy of a place beside Robin Hood and Rob Roy, and has been made the hero of two stories, one by William Carleton and the other by W. Bernard M'Cabe.
We now proceed to quote a few of the exploits of those troublesome individuals of high and low degree, who disturbed their country in the end of seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth century and furnished amusement to the peasantry and their children, during the golden days of the peddlers.
The great Captain Power of the South travelled northward to meet and try the skill of Redmond, and they had a shrewd encounter with broadswords for nearly half an hour, neither gaining a decided advantage. They swore to befriend each other in all future needs, and, in consequence, Redmond rescued his brother from the soldiers when they were conducting him to execution.
Power coming into Leinster, lodged at the house of a small farmer, whom he observed to be very dejected all the evening. On inquiry he found that his landlord and the sheriff were expected to make a seizure next day for rent and arrears amounting to £60. After some further discourse, Power offered to lend him the sum on his note of hand, and the offer was gratefully accepted. Next day the farmer, after much parleying, acknowledged that he had £60 given him to keep, and that he would produce it rather than have his little property distrained, and trust to God's goodness to be enabled to put it together again. The landlord, after sufficiently abusing him, gave him a receipt in full, and, parting company with the sheriff's posse, returned home. In a lonely part of the way, he was set on by Power and robbed of the £60 and his watch and other valuables. In a day or two the robber called on the farmer, said he was going away, and the promissory note would be of no use to him. So he took it out and tore it in pieces.
How the unreflecting hearts of the fireside group glow over such quasi-generous deeds of robbers, and how little they think on the selfish and abandoned and iniquitous portions of the lives of their favorites! "Bah! they took from the rich that could afford it, and gave to the poor that wanted it. Dickens a bit o' me 'ud betray Redmond O'Hanlon or Captain Power if I got a stocken' o' goold by it."
Strong John MacPherson is admitted among the Irish worthies by Mr. J. Cosgrave, though he was more probably a Highlandman. There was much of the milk of human kindness about strong John. If a horseman would not lend, (John merely requested a loan,) he never used the ugly words "stand and deliver," he pulled him off his horse and gave him a squeeze. If that failed, he carried him away from the highway, giving the horse his liberty, and rifled him in some quiet nook. Being set on one night by a crowd in an inn kitchen, he threw the hostess over his shoulder, and no better shield could be. Making his escape, he laid her on the ground, set his foot apparently on her body--it was only on her gown, however--and extorted twenty pieces from her friends before he released her.
Strong John was in no instance guilty of murder. He never even struck but in self-defence, and always betook himself to defence by a woman when practicable. He met the usual destiny of his tribe about 1678.
Will Peters, born among the romantic scenery of the Slieve Bloom mountains, might have lived and died a respectable man, or at least have acquired the fame of a highwayman, had it not been for two trifling impediments. His father was a receiver of stolen cattle, which, being commonly kept in a neighboring field, whose owner remained out of sight, the crime could not be brought home to him. The other mischance consisted in his staying at school only till he had mastered "Reynard the Fox." It was the opinion of Mr. J. Cosgrave that if he had got through "Don Bellianis," the "Seven Champions," and "Troy's Destruction," he would have arrived at the honors of the high-road. After a few mistakes in his cattle-stealing apprenticeship, he became acquainted with the renowned "Charley of the Horse," and thus made use of him. He was placed in durance for stealing a sorrel horse with a bald face and one white foot, and committed to Carlow jail, the horse being intrusted to the care of the jailer. Peters' pere, on hearing of the ugly mistake, revealed the family sorrow to the great Cahir, and he being fully informed of the marks, color, etc., of the beast, sent a trusty squire of his to the assize town a few days before the trial, mounted on a mare with the same marks as those above noted. The jailer's man took the horse down to the Barrow's edge every morning to drink, and the agent, making his acquaintance, invited him to take a glass at a neighboring "shebeen" the morning before the trial. While they were refreshing themselves, the squire's double mounted on the mare approached where the horse was tied outside, substituted his own beast, and rode off on the other. The refreshed man, on coming out, observed nothing changed, and rode the new-comer home to the stable.
The trial coming on, the prosecutor swore home to his property, but Mr. William Peters said he was as innocent of the theft as the lord lieutenant. "My lord," said he, "ax him, if you plase, what did I steal from him." The answer came out that was expected, "a sorrel horse, such and such marks." "It wasn't a sorrel mare you lost?" "No." "My lord, will you plase to send for the baste, and if it's a horse, let me be swung, as high as Gildheroy." The animal was sent for, the whole court burst into a roar, and Will Peters demanded compensation, but did not get it.
Being taken up again he was executed, as far as hanging for fifteen minutes could effect it. However, being at once taken away by his people, he was resuscitated. Once more he was seized and conveyed to Kilmainham, whence he escaped rather than be transported.
Being at last secured in Kilkenny for running away with a roll of tobacco from a poor huckster-woman, he was once more placed on the drop and hung.
Such were the unedifying subjects presented to the consideration of the young in Mr. J. Cosgrave's collection. He certainly had no evil in his mind when composing it, but its moral effect was at best questionable. It would be a book very ill suited for rustic fire-side reading in our day. The same may be said of the "Wars of Troy," though no indication of evil intention is apparent. We subjoin the names of those books that still continue in print. Why they should still find buyers seems strange, when such care is expended in supplying useful, pleasant, and harmless reading for the lower classes. However, any evil inherent in them is slight compared to that of some of the London halfpenny and penny journals. The following still form portions of the peddler's stock: "The Academy of Compliments," "The Arabian Nights," "The Battle of Aughrim," "Esop," "Gulliver," "O'Reilly's Ireland," "Hocus Pocus," "Irish Rogues," "James Freney," "Robin Hood's Garland," "Seven Champions," "Tales of the Fairies," "The Trojan Wars," "Valentine and Orson," and the "Seven Wise Masters and Mistresses of Rome," some of them absolutely harmless.
In the whole collection, there was not one volume racy of the Irish soil, or calculated to excite love of the country, or interest in its ancient history, or literature, or legends. The eighteenth century was certainly a dreary one in many respects. Formality, affectation, and cynicism prevailed in the manners and literature of the upper classes, and the lower classes were left to their own devices for mental improvement. It says something for the sense of modesty inherent in the Celtic character, that there were so few books of a gross or evil character among their popular literature.
Translated from the French.
ASSES, DOGS, CATS, ETC
I.
I am not a member of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, but I deserve to be; for no one has praised the worthy efforts of these gentlemen more than I have; and no one sees with greater satisfaction, how justice sometimes gets hold of those brutal drivers who wreak their uncontrolled anger upon their poor steeds, guilty only of not being able to help themselves. And if, even, in place of their being condemned to pay a paltry fine, they were paid back in kind for the undeserved blows which these afflicted animals receive from their hands, I for one would make not the slightest objection.
It would be contrary to the progress and civilization of the nineteenth century, I agree, but it would not be contrary to justice, civilized or uncivilized.
However, who knows how things may turn out? Considering the miseries and sufferings of those uncomplaining creatures when they are unfortunate enough to get under the lash of the unfeeling boors who ought to be in their place, it would not surprise me over much, if it should turn out that--
That--what?
Wait a moment, I'll tell you. One day, as I happened to be out walking along a certain road, I noticed an ass tied to a post, around which, within the full length of his rope, there was not a single blade of grass to crop. The poor fellow was slabsided, and his skin scraped, and half tanned by the frequent application of bark on the living wood; evidently getting few caresses of a softer kind, but enjoying in the most complete sense of the word, "the right to work." Naturally, I stopped a moment to bid him good-day and ask after his ass-ship's health, after which I plucked a fine thistle growing within tantalizing reach of his rope, and gave it to him. He gobbled it down with great gusto.
"How do you like that, my old chap?" said I to him, mechanically.
"First rate," said he, "hand us another."
I jumped back in astonishment.
"What! you can talk, can you, my Bucephalus, and in English too? That is something new."
"Not so new as you think, my dear sir, for I will let you into a little bit of a secret. Ass as I am, and as you see me to be, I was a man in my time and a butcher by trade. I had an ass that I treated most scurvily, just as they do me now; giving him his bellyful of blows and kicks, but of very little [{689}] else. Poor Jack--that was his name--kept Lent all the year round, it being in the interest of my customers, as I often said to myself, to quiet the qualms of conscience when I gave him but half what he could eat. Let him stuff himself said I, and he will get fat and lazy, the meat will come late to the cook, the cook will be late with the dinner, and the hungry family will lose their temper, and I shall lose their custom, while good doses of the oil of strap will help his digestion wonderfully, and keep him lively. However, this last end was not attained, for the poor ass kicked the traces--professional term, you understand--and went to the bone-boilers before his time. When it came to my turn to tie up--again professional--and go off the cart, my soul was condemned to go into an ass's body to suffer for a certain time the punishment of retaliation. Drubbing for drubbing, kicks of hobnailed shoes for kicks of peg boots, I got what I gave, and good measure too, I assure yon. Do you see that half starved, thin-flanked old horse over there? Well, he is a companion in misery to me. In his time he was a hack-driver, and many a time in his fits of anger and drunkenness, he made an anvil of the backbone or the jaws of his horses. Only in those times, now and then, you understand, but those times happened often enough, say once an hour or so, every day. As to hay and oats, he tried to teach them, but without success, to go without those articles of luxury. When his turn came to pay up old debts, his soul was condemned to go into that sorry old carcass, in which he passes many a miserable quarter of an hour. He is a ragpicker's property now. How do you like that specimen of 'the noblest conquest that man has ever made'? As to me, Sawney, at your service, I think the end of my punishment is not far off. It was given me to understand that when a benevolent gentleman would offer me a thistle for friendship's sake, it would end, and it is to you I owe this act of kindness, my dear Mr. Miller."
"Good again, you are a wiser ass than I took you for. How do you know my name, master Sawney?"
"This way, sir. The other day I chanced to be tied to a post, near a hedge, on the other side of which, in a meadow, some folks were having a little picnic on the grass. After a while a tall lady in spectacles took out some papers and began to read for the company. She seemed to be reading, from what I could make out, in some magazine or other. I soon understood that the subject was asses, and then of course I cocked up my ears to their full height. It was true, it was about us, abused and misunderstood beasts that we are. The articles read by the tall lady were so full of kindness, and contained such flattering remarks upon our species, that it almost brought the tears to my eyes. The name signed to those articles was Jeremiah Miller. Oh! said I to myself, that is a man whom one could call a man. There is one at least who understands us and loves us; I promise myself that if I ever have the good fortune to meet him I will give him--in lieu of anything better--my blessing. You see that when you spoke to me just now so kindly, I said to myself, I wonder if this be not Mr. Jeremiah Miller, and then I called you by that name, and I see that I have just hit it."
"But"--my reader will say "of course you don't tell this story for a true one! You would never have the face to ask us to believe that this brayer actually spoke to you?"
And, pray, why not? But, after all it is possible I fell asleep on a mossy bank, in a meadow, near where an ass was tied, and that I dreamed what I have told you. But dreams with the eyes shut are not always so very unlike the dreams we sometimes have when our eyes are open. As for myself, whenever I see a poor beast of burden brutally maltreated by another beast, who strikes and kicks as if he [{690}] meant murder, I allow my fancy to be tickled with a vision of this latter brute obliged to creep into the skin of a horse or ass, and take his turn at being unjustly whipped, without having any attention paid to his bray or his neigh of expostulation or defence. You see that I am in every respect worthy of figuring among the members of the society for the prevention, etc., etc., but--
II.
But--I hold to the great principles of '76, and first of all to that of equality. If we must have a law for the protection of domestic animals against the men who torment them, I would like to see a law devised to protect men against the animals who are a pest to poor humanity, for the shoe sometimes gets on the other foot.
For example; look at that pack of dogs of all sizes, of all tastes, (I mean human,) and in every stage of canine civilization, which their masters permit to run at large in the streets of our city, even in the worst of the dog days, without counting the free and independent dogs who know no master but themselves. You have a friend who is a diligent reader of the chapter of accidents in the daily papers. He tells you about this or that dog who was seen running mad, that he had bitten two or three persons, one of whom has since died of hydrophobia, and adds with a peculiar relish that "the dangerous animal is still at large!" These gentlemen--I mean the owners of the dogs--are provokingly careless and indifferent about the muck which their dogs are running in the midst of a population biteable to any extent. You are kindly informed that if you happen to get bitten by some suspicious-looking cur--and what cur is not of a suspicious character in these days--it will be necessary to squeeze the wound, wash it, then cauterize it with a red hot iron, or cut it out, and then, etc., etc. These are most excellent recipes, I have no doubt, but I think I know of a better, which would be to prevent the bites altogether.
But, you say, there is the proclamation of his Honor, the Mayor, and there is the police, etc., etc. Dogs at large are to be muzzled or held by a chain. Oh! yes; very fine, indeed, when they are. The proclamation is very good, but since the dog owners pay so little heed to it, it is not surprising that the dogs themselves pay no more respect to it than they do to the proclamations of patent medicines pasted on the lamp-posts or fences. As to the country places outside of the city, whither we of the heated streets and close shops fly to get a breath of fresh air, and a moment of repose--there you will see fat men and thin ladies who never dream, either asleep or awake, of muzzling their favorite bull-dogs, lap-dogs, pointers, setters, tan terriers or greyhounds. Muzzle their dogs! that would make the poor dogs, and their owners too, very uncomfortable. A pretty piece of impudence indeed for a village constable to presume to carry out the law against the dog, errant in delicto, which is the property of a Mr. or a Mrs. or a Miss who is a "somebody," as if they were nobodies. Mr. Constable knows better than that, and so does Mr. Puffer, the magistrate.
Besides, there is a learned doctor of the society for the prevention, etc., who deplores with astonishment mingled with grief, etc., etc., that any one should be so inhumane as to gag "man's companion and friend" for the sake of the prevention of a few despicable cases of hydrophobia. He has never been bitten by a mad dog, and don't expect to be. He does not see why anybody else need expect to be.
Then there are our nurses and the children, whose daily promenade is embittered by the sight and often the attacks of some Snarleyow. "It was as good as a play," says Snarleyow's master; "Snarley nearly frightened them to death, I thought I should die of laughter to see them [{691}] scamper. It was great fun for Snarley." Very well, gentlemen, there is also something which is great fun for me too, and that is to kick Snarley whenever he presumes to be too "playful" with me or my particular friends the children.
Protect your "friends of man" if you will, gentlemen, but don't let them interfere with my friends, or---
III.
Permit me here to make a digression, which is not altogether one;
Man is defined, a reasonable animal.
Now the question arises whether woman is included in this definition. Don't get angry, ladies--the horrid men, you know, are so curious!
IV.
From the friend of man let us pass to the subject of the friend of woman. And here I find myself face to face with a celebrated document which produced such a deep, or rather such a lively impression upon the public, a few weeks since. Who is there in the whole five parts of the world that has not heard of the noted "cat trial"? That learned decision and sentence given by Squire Pouter, justice of the peace in Dullville, is yet ringing in my ears, by which were avenged, as far as a fine from five cents to a dollar could avenge, a litter of fifteen cats illegally drowned. Illegally!--that at least was the opinion of the wise magistrate, who rendered his judgment at great length, and after his well known comprehensive style, citing his authors, complimenting the one, and refuting the others, bringing under contribution the code of Justinian, the English common law, the state statutes, and the discussions of the Legislature at Albany. In short, our modern Solon decided as follows: The cat, in its nature, is both a domestic and wild animal. As a wild animal, it is true, it is lawful game for the hunter; but, as a domestic animal, it has a right to live, and is under the august protection of the law. Now, since the wild part of its nature revolts against captivity, it has a right to come and go according to its instinctive desire for daily exercise, and housekeepers are not bound in conscience to make a raid upon them in their tender feline infancy under pretence that some day or other they will make a raid upon their pantry. Raids of prevention in the times of peace are unheard of in the history of the republic. Therefore they are condemned (the raiders, in the present case, not the cats) to pay such and such fines, for the benefit of the fifteen victims, or their heirs or assigns. Yes, indeed, this splendid judgment made a good deal of noise, and well it might. I, who am speaking to you reside in my own house, and have no evil intentions toward any one, but--there are three cats who come each evening from as many points of the compass for the purpose of making strategic attacks upon my eatables. Infinite are the precautions that I am forced to take to save my daily bread from the enemy. I must keep up an incessant fight, and a running fire, not to speak of the difficulty I experience in vain attempts to sleep with one eye open and my ear, which is not on the pillow, on the alert. I will not speak of their defiant caterwauling and spiteful spitting when they find my barricades impassable; it is too painful a subject for me to dwell upon.
Who are the victims of oppression, most eminent and sage magistrate? Is civilized man positively to be given over in the name of the society for the prevention, etc., as a victim to the instincts and caprices of cats? Not at all, not at all, O illustrious Pouter! I will see you and the cats--well--some distance, if not further, first. Bring on your grimalkins, for my soul burns to avenge the rights of man!
It is not all. Here, for example, next door, lives Miss Lambkin; age unknown. She, by some unexplained perversion of taste, is keeping something in her house which is either an old sheep or a middle-aged goat. This cud-chewer, who lapses into ennui despite the charms of its mistress, bleats incessantly three times a minute, several thousands of times in the twenty-four hours. Is such an eternal see-saw of sound bearable? Is not my life a burden to me? Is not my liberty to think, to play my violin, to take my usual nap after dinner abridged by the liberty of Miss Lambkin's detestable foster child? And if I happen to be sick, or suffering from the tooth-ache or the headache, or melancholy, or perchance am sentimental, this beast, I suppose, must not be thwarted in its monotonous sing-song. Mister Pouter, is there liberty for wolves? for most assuredly I shall soon play the part of one!
I have not finished yet. Since the first of May a family has come to live in the house on the other side of mine. With father, mother and furniture comes a tall, wasp-waisted damsel who now passes hours, yes, hours banging upon an aged piano. It is her method of bleating, and it is full as amusing as the other, if not a little less. Will the president of the society for the prevention, etc., inform us if there is any protection for aged pianos? A society for the protection of men and pianos would find in me one of its most eloquent orators, diffuse writers, and active members. I would have all wandering Jews of unmuzzled dogs executed on the spot, knocked on the head or drowned, at choice. These at least have not the fifty cents in their pockets to pay for a living release.
As to the cats, I intend to memorialize the supreme court to declare the decision of our immortal justice of the peace non-constitutional. I wish it to be "legal" to kill, drown, or otherwise destroy any cat or cats found on strange premises, understood, of course that they are to be buried at the killer's expense, and the government not to be made liable to pay handsomely for public obsequies with military procession.
Bleating goats, or sheep, or parrots, et tutti quanti, to be invited to keep still, and not to speak until spoken to.
Lastly, as to the piano-bangers, I acknowledge the case is a little delicate, and any remedy whatsoever has its difficulties. I am not malicious, and am inclined to the side of resignation and toleration. For after all, you know, they are ladies, and when you say that, it is enough. Without association you cannot accomplish anything nowadays; and where in the world could be found a sufficient number of men to form a society for their protection against them. After that, I do not see that it is necessary I should say anything further.
From the Dublin University Magazine
CAROL FROM CANCIONERO.
"Vista ciegs, luz occura"--Cancionero General. Valencia, 1511.
Lightsome darkness, seeing blindness.
Life in death, and grief in gladness,
Cruelty in guise of kindness,
Doubtful laughter, joyful sadness,
Honeyed gall, embittered sweetness,
Peace whose warfare never endeth,
Love, the type of incompleteness,
Proffers joy, but sorrow sendeth.
Translated from the French
THE PEARL NECKLACE.
There lived at Cordova, many years ago, an old Jew who had three passions: he loved science, he loved gold, he loved his only child, who bore the sweet name of Rachel. He loved science, not for its own sake, not because it was the means of the acquisition of truth, but for himself, that is to say, through pride.
He loved gold, a little perhaps because it was gold, very much because it gave him the means of providing luxuries for his darling child, greatly also because without it he could not have made the costly experiments necessary in the pursuit of science.
He loved his daughter alone, with the pure and disinterested, but passionate tenderness of paternal love. In a word he was a savant, a father, a Jew.
His name was Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah, and he practised medicine. He wrought such wonderful cures that very soon his fame spread throughout Spain, and from all parts of the kingdom the people came in crowds to consult him. He received his patients in the afternoon. In the morning he slept, it was said; but how his nights were passed none knew, and many were the speculations concerning it. This only was known, that they were passed in a secret chamber, of which he alone possessed the key, and it had been observed that this mysterious apartment was sometimes illuminated with many-colored flames, blue, or red, or green, while a dense smoke issued from the chimney.
The police of the kingdom at length resolved to penetrate the mystery, which seemed to them very suspicions. Everything is suspicious to the police of all countries.
One evening, Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah saw two dark, grave men watching his house. He listened and heard these words of sinister import:
"To-morrow, at dawn, we will know whether this wretch is a money-coiner or a magician."
The conscience of the poor old Jew did not reproach him, for his life was pure and innocent; but he had had great experience of the world, and held as on axiom that innocence is worth absolutely nothing in a court of justice. He went still further, he considered it an aggravating circumstance. He often quoted the old Arabian proverb: "If I were accused of having stolen and pocketed the grand mosque at Mecca, I would immediately run off as fast as I could." He said that justice was a game of cards--and he was no player.
What misanthropic ideas! How different would his conclusions have been had he lived nowadays! However, as he had not the happiness of living in that Eden of justice, France of 1866, he put the philosophy of the proverb into practice, and left Cordova that very night, taking with him all his treasures. The next morning at dawn the two dark, grave men, found an uninhabited, dismantled dwelling; which made them still more dark and grave.
II.
Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah, disguised as a merchant and mounted on a strong mule, passed rapidly through Spain. On either side of his saddle, and securely fastened to it was a long wicker [{694}] basket, in the shape of a cradle. Ben-Ha-Zelah looked from time to time at these baskets with satisfaction, mingled with sadness, and then urged on his mule, casting many a backward glance, to be quite sure he was not pursued. In one of the baskets were his treasures and his books; in the other slept peacefully the young daughter of the fugitive. Having reached a small seaport town, the old Jew took passage in a vessel which was about to sail for Egypt.
Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah had often heard of the caliph Achmet Reschid, who was celebrated throughout the East for his love of science, and the high consideration in which he held scientific men. As for impostors, charlatans and empirics, he held them in sovereign contempt and took real pleasure in impaling them.
This good prince reigned in Cairo. Thither Ben-Ha-Zelah bent his steps; for he believed himself, and with reason, to be a true savant.
The profound and extensive acquirements of the old Jew, together with his astonishing skill in everything appertaining to the healing art, soon made him as famous in Cairo as he had been in Cordova, and he was at once made court physician.
The caliph Achmet Reschid was never weary of admiring the almost universal knowledge of the old man, and often invited him to the palace to converse with him for hours upon the secrets and marvels of nature. Suddenly a terrible plague broke out in the city, and threatened to decimate the population. Ben-Ha-Zelah compounded a wonderful lotion, which cured six times in seven. He contended that in nothing could evil be conquered in a greater proportion than this; that a seventh was a minimum of disorder, of sorrow, of vice, in the imperfect organization of this world, and that when the proportion of evil in the human body, in the soul, in society, in nature, had been reduced to a seventh, all the progress possible in this world had been made.
However that may be, he was summoned one night in great haste to the palace; the wife and son of the caliph were stricken down by the pestilence. Ben-Ha-Zelah applied the miraculous lotion and the son was restored to health--but the wife died.
The caliph Achmet Reschid was overcome with gratitude for so signal a service and throwing himself into the arms of the old physician, exclaimed: "Venerable old man I to thee I owe the life of my son and my happiness! As a proof of my gratitude, I appoint thee Grand Vizier!"
The old Jew prostrated himself on the ground before his generous benefactor.
"Yes," continued the caliph, who had a truly noble heart; "yes, I need a friend in whom I can confide, as I have, one after another, beheaded all those whom I had in a moment of impulse honored with that title."
"Thanks, mighty caliph!" humbly replied Ben-Ha-Zelah. "How shall I find fitting words to thank my gracious prince for such unmerited condescension! Surely never did kindness like this rejoice the earth!"
"Thou sayest well and truly, child of Jacob," answered the puissant caliph.
Time, far from diminishing the love of the caliph for Ben-Ha-Zelah, only increased it. The jealousy of the courtiers had always succeeded in poisoning the mind of the caliph against any one on whom he had conferred the dignity of Grand Vizier; but the prudence of the old Jew baffled all their schemes, and Achmet Reschid had learned how to guard against calumniators. At the first word breathed against the new favorite that benevolent prince and faithful friend ordered the rash slanderer to be beheaded, and very soon the courtiers vied with each other in their praises of the Grand Vizier. The good caliph, seeing the harmony of feeling among his people with regard to the new favorite, congratulated himself on his firmness.
"I knew very well," said he, "that the whole court would at last do him justice. I talk of him with every one and no man says aught against him."
III.
As for Ben-Ha-Zelah, he seemed to be perfectly indifferent to the immense power which his favor with the caliph gave him in the state. In vain did the courtiers try to entangle him in the intrigues of the court. In vain did the noblemen of the kingdom, in hopes of gaining his protection, lay costly gifts at his feet. He gently refused them all. Devoid of ambition, and prudent to excess, the old Jew withdrew as much as possible from public affairs. He even begged the caliph to excuse his attendance at the palace, except at certain hours of the day, that he might devote himself more uninterruptedly to scientific pursuits. The love of the caliph grow day by day, and the courtiers as well as the common people, seeing the humility and disinterestedness of the Grand Vizier, acknowledged him to be indeed a sage.
At court, as everywhere else, he was clad in a coarse brown robe, and was in no way distinguishable from the crowd, had not the intellectual expression of his face, and the strange brilliancy of his eyes, revealed at a glance a superior mind. He might often be seen in the streets of Cairo, carrying in his own hands the metals, stones or medicinal plants, which he bought in the bazaars, or gathered in his solitary rambles. Wherever he went he heard his own praise; but never did he in any way betray that it was agreeable to him.
"No one is so poor and humble," said the common people to each other, "as the Grand Vizier of our high and mighty caliph."
The truth was, however, that with the exception of Achmet Reschid, no one in Cairo possessed such vast riches as the "poor" Vizier; but after the manner of the Jews he carefully concealed them, and lived in a very modest mansion situated outside the walls of the city. This humble dwelling was completely hidden by the palm and cedar trees which surrounded it, and for still greater security was enclosed by a high wall.
In this quiet and mysterious retreat, where he admitted no guests, he had centered all that made his life; there dwelt his child, the young Rachel, just budding into womanhood.
When, after passing weary hours in the unmeaning ceremonial of the court, he reached his garden gate, and stealthily opened it, his usually impassive face was suddenly illumined as with a sunbeam. It was as if he had passed from death unto life.
His daughter, clad like a queen of the east, ran to meet him, and embraced him so tenderly that it seemed as if a portion of her young life was breathed into the worn and exhausted frame of the aged father. Ben-Ha-Zelah forgot his sorrows and his cares, and seemed to revive as with the breath of spring. "I gave thee life, my daughter; thou dost restore it to me!" murmured the old man.
Rachel was just entering her sixteenth year. Her hair was of the beautiful golden color which people love. Her eyes, her voice, her smile, her bearing, carried with them an irresistible charm. She looked, it was a ray of light; she spoke, it was a strain of music; she smiled, it was the opening of a gate of Paradise. Her heart was pure and innocent as was that of the Rachel of old, whom Jacob loved. Can we wonder that the heart of her father was bound up in her? Who indeed, could help loving a being so pure and bright?
IV.
Ben-Ha-Zelah was old, but his was a vigorous old age--and the young daughter and aged father, as they walked under the grand old trees of the garden, made a beautiful picture. The long white head, piercing eyes, [{696}] eagle nose, and broad brow of the old man, formed a striking contrast to his humble dress, and when no longer under constraint, it revealed a mysterious and profound satisfaction in his own personality and intelligence. There was so much pride that there was no place for vanity in his soul.
What cared he for the admiration or contempt of others, the vain clamors of the multitude, whom he considered infinitely his inferiors? When he said to himself, "I am Ben-Ha-Zelah," the rest of the world no longer existed for him.
His pride was like that of Lucifer: it was not relative but absolute; he contemplated himself with a terrible satisfaction. Thence his disdain for all the miserable trifles which gratify the self-love of inferior men. The pride of seeming comes when the pride of being is not absolute.
Whence then came the gigantic pride of the old Jew?
Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah was the most learned man of his time.
He had carried his investigations far beyond those of the most scientific men of the age; he was well versed in physics, mechanics, dynamics, arithmetic, music, astronomy, medicine, surgery, and botany; but the science he most loved, was that which, at first known under the name of alchemy, was destined to become the greatest science of modern times--chemistry.
He passed night after night shut up in his laboratory, as he had formerly done at Cordova, seeking to penetrate one after the other all the mysteries of nature. There, bending over his glowing furnaces, surrounded with retorts and crucibles of strange shapes, filled with metals in a state of fusion, by all sorts of instruments and alembics, old Ben-Ha-Zelah interrogated matter and demanded the mystery of its essence; he pursued it from form to form, he tore it with red-hot pincers; he melted it in the glowing fires of his furnaces; he made it solid only to reduce it again to a liquid state, decomposing it a hundred times in a hundred different ways. He tortured it, as does the lawyer the prisoner at the bar, that he may wring from him his most hidden secrets.
Matter, thus pursued by the indefatigable alchemist, had revealed more than one of its mysterious laws, which he had made useful in the practice of his profession, so that he was considered in Cairo little less than a demi-god. However, in his labors he sought not the good of his fellow-men, but the barren satisfaction of the passion which was consuming him, the pride of knowledge; he sought to penetrate the secrets of the most high God. The promise of the tempter to our first parents; Eritis sicut dei, scientes, "You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil," had penetrated his soul; and he desired to plant in his garden that fatal tree to which the first-born of our race stretched out their guilty hands. Like his ancestor Jacob, he wrestled with Jehovah.
One can readily understand that the old man, absorbed in this gigantic struggle, was dead to all vanity, so far as men were concerned. He had reached such dizzy heights that he had almost lost sight of them. To him they were like the brute beasts which crossed his path; he believed them to be of an inferior nature to him, who had been gifted with such vast genius--such indefatigable industry. His high thoughts were not for such miserable pigmies.
Sometimes seating himself in dreamy mood in his garden, at the foot of a grand old cedar, his favorite seat, and taking in his hand a pebble, a blade of grass or a flower he was plunged in profound meditation.
What makes this "a body" thought he. This "body" is brown, heavy, hard, square, or has many other properties which come under my notice. But it is evident that neither the color, weight, cohesion, nor form constitute its essence. They are its manner of beings--not its being. If I modify it, destroy it even, it will still [{697}] be the same body, and I shall, after all, have only attacked its manner of being; the essence which heretofore has always escaped me--the soul of the body, if I may say so--will have suffered no change. It is as if I were suddenly to become hunchback, lame, idiotic--I would still be the same man. I must discover the substance quod sub stat; in the first place, what causes this to be; in the second place, what constitutes it a body; and finally, what makes it this particular body which I hold in my hand and not another.
The problem was formidable; it was the mystery of the omnipotence of the God who created the world, and nevertheless this unknown Prometheus shrank not from the task, and flattered himself he could wring from created matter the secrets of its Creator.
In his experiments' Ben-Ha-Zelah had started with the axiom that all bodies were formed from certain elements which were invariable, but combined in different ways. Moreover, his researches had proved to him that many elements, formerly believed to be primary, were composed of different elements into which they might again be readily resolved. So that seeing their number decrease as his investigations became more abstruse and his analyses more delicate, he had arrived at the conclusion that there existed an original and absolute substance of which all bodies, even those apparently the most different, were only variations.
He affirmed the identity of the base under the infinite variety of the forms. This primary substance which he considered as coëternal with God, was, he thought, that on which Jehovah breathed in the beginning, and in his Satanic pride he believed two things--first that the Almighty had combined the atoms of matter in so wondrously complex a manner only to conceal from man the secret of its creation--and secondly, that the Rabbi-Ben-Ha-Zelah would be able to baffle the precautions of the Almighty, and by analysis after analysis, at length succeed in finding the simple primary substance from which all things were originally formed.
Such were the thoughts which continually filled his mind--such the gigantic plan he had conceived. Again and again he said to himself that by taking from a body one after the other its contingent qualities, as one takes the bark from a nut, he would succeed at length in penetrating its most hidden depths, to that matter essence from which was made, as he believed, all that existed in the universe.
He had inscribed on the door of his laboratory Materia, mater. And as soon as he should be able to imprison in his alembics this primary matter he could at will, disposing it after certain forms, make in turn bronze, stone, wood, or gold. Nay more, he hoped to surprise with the same blow the mystery of life--and then, thought he in his impious pride, I shall be a creator, like unto Him before whom every knee bends in adoration. I shall be God! Eritis sicut dei.
The old man, lost in the vain search for the absolute basis of matter, little suspected that the final word of all science is; "The essence of matter is immaterial."
However, he devoted himself most zealously to the great work he had undertaken, and passed night after night in the recesses of his laboratory which would have reminded one of the entrance to the infernal regions but for the sweet presence of the young and lovely Rachel, who glided in and out, bringing order out of confusion, and in the evening beguiled the long hours by singing to her father snatches of the old Hebrew songs of which such touching and beautiful fragments have come down to us.
V.
One night, Ben-Ha-Zelah, regardless of fatigue, was still bending over his glowing furnaces. For more than a week he had allowed himself no sleep, nor had he permitted his eyes to wander from the vast crucible which had been heated to white beat for six consecutive months. He had discovered phenomena hitherto unknown. His bony hands clutched convulsively the handle of the bellows, and his eager, care-worn face was illuminated with a two-fold radiance, that from the purple light of the furnace and from the interior flame which consumed his soul. He was motionless from intensity of emotion. At last then he was about to attain the aim and desire of his whole life!
The primary substance, the absolute essence of matter, he was about to seize it--to be its lord. The old man still watched; a whitish vapor rose slowly from the crucible; matter decomposed in this crucible seemed to be a prey to a fearful travail--to struggle in an internal conflict.
The old man raised his tall form to its full height and at that moment appeared like a second Lucifer. He shouted in triumph, "I have created!"
Then rushing to the casement he gazed upward to the starry heavens, not in prayer, but in defiance.
"I have created!" he repeated, "I have created! I have conquered! I am the equal of God!"
A noise, slight in reality, but to the excited senses of Ben-Ha-Zelah, louder than the crash of thunder, was heard behind him. He turned with agitated countenance. The crucible, unwatched during his delirium of pride, had fallen, and was shivered to atoms. All was lost; the creation of him who aspired to an equality with the Most High was but a heap of ashes.
Ben-Ha-Zelah was stunned by this unlooked-for calamity. He fell back fainting, as if, while he rashly sought to penetrate the mystery of life, pale death, entering his dwelling had touched him with her sombre wing.
VI.
When consciousness returned, the fire of the furnace, which had been fed with so much care for six weary months, was extinguished. Through the open casement he saw myriads of stars blazing in the firmament. The majestic silence of the night hovered over the unchanged immensity.
The old man was seized with an indefinable terror. He understood that he was punished for his pride, and he had a presentiment that the sudden failure of the labor and research of so many years was but the beginning of his punishment. It seemed to him that in the midst of the thick darkness the living God had looked into the depths of his guilty soul and had stretched out his all-powerful hand to smite him. Suddenly, as by a revelation, there came to him a knowledge of the point where God was about to strike him.
"My child! my child!" cried he, in a voice broken by terror and remorse.
He ran to the chamber of his daughter.
The old man opened the door gently, taking, in spite of his terror, a thousand paternal precautions not to awaken the sleeper. The trembling light of a small alabaster lamp cast its faint rays about the apartment. Gently he drew back the curtains of the bed and gazed fondly upon his child.
Rachel slept profoundly, her breathing was as peaceful as innocence. Ben-Ha-Zelah looked upon the sweet, calm face with a transport of delight. The tranquillity of this peaceful sleep of childhood was communicated to him, and for a moment stilled the agitation of his soul.
He leaned fondly over the sleeping form; listened joyfully to the calm breathing of his darling child, to the regular beating of her heart; then stooping, imprinted a kiss of fatherly love on the beautiful brow.
Rachel remained immovable, and her sleep was unbroken. "It is strange she has not awakened," said the old man to himself looking at her again. "Sleep is so like death."
As he allowed this thought to take form a vague terror took possession of him.
"Bah! she sleeps! I hear her breathing," said he aloud.
The secret indefinable fear which he could not banish, and for which he could not account, still remained; he could no longer contain himself.
"Rachel!"' cried he in a loud voice. The young girl slept on.
"Rachel! my child!" he cried again, at the same time shaking her gently by the arm.
Still the calm sleep was unbroken; and the peaceful breathing which at first had delighted the fond father now seemed like a fatal spell.
"Rachel! Rachel!"
He took her in his arms; he placed her on a couch; he tried to make her walk; and in vain essayed with his trembling fingers to open the sealed eyelids.
The young girl slept on; her respiration as calm, and the rhythm of her heart still preserved its frightful monotone. All the efforts of the despairing father were vain. Day dawned, night came, the next day, and weeks and months, and Rachel awoke not.
VII.
The distracted father, remembering that he was a physician, sought in medical science a remedy for this strange malady. He tried every known medicine, he essayed new ones; but nothing could break the fearful sleep. He no longer went to the palace of the caliph, but his days and nights were passed in his laboratory as they had formerly been at Cordova; his researches, however, were no longer to feed his pride. Sorrow concentrated his mighty genius on one thought--to discover a remedy for his idolized child. Bitterly did be expiate the old anxieties of his pride by the torturing perplexities of this new sorrow.
More than six months passed thus. A last and desperate remedy to which he had recourse, had, like all the others failed; Ben-Ha-Zelah on a night like that on which this weight of sorrow had come upon him, was in his laboratory bending as ever over his retorts. He had made every research, every experiment that genius, quickened by affection, could suggest, and had failed in all. Rachel still slept. Then the broken-hearted old man, convinced of his own impotence, let fall his arms at his sides and burst into tears.
At that moment he heard a voice which seemed to come at once from the depths of immensity, and from the inmost recesses of his own heart.
"All thy efforts are vain," said the voice. "Thou wilt cure thy child, only by passing about her neck, a pearl necklace, not the pearls which bountiful nature gives, and God makes, but pearls which thou thyself hast fashioned. Thou thoughtest thyself the equal of God, the equal of Him who created the world; and he punishes thee, by condemning thee to create only a few pearls, and he is willing to lend thee all the riches and treasures of his beautiful world. Go and seek! And when thou hast made enough of these pearls to fill the box beside thee, make a necklace of them. Put it on the neck of thy child, and she will awake."
It was not an illusion. The old man had seen no one, but the box was there beside him. It was a little box, of a wood unknown to him, which exhaled a delicious odor. On the lid inscribed in letters of gold, was a Hebrew word, meaning "Treasure of God."
Ben-Ha-Zelah, re-kindled the fires of his furnaces and again applied himself to explore the arcana of alchemy. He took from his coffers all the pearls he possessed, and after having analyzed them, tried in vain to form them again; but the secret of omnipotence which he attempted to grasp, fled from him. He decomposed precious stones and succeeded only in making a gross calcareous substance. Again and again he flattered himself, he had penetrated the mystery of the Creator; but all his hopes ended in nothingness. [{700}] Nature, which he had once attempted to conquer to satisfy his pride as a savant, he now wooed in vain to still the passionate yearnings of his fatherly heart.
One day he said to himself: "My knowledge is very little; and with the very little I know, I shall never succeed in solving this problem, and nevertheless it is possible!"
The voice which spoke to me is a voice which does not deceive.
Then an inspiration came to him which lighted with a pale ray of hope, the sorrowful face long unused to happiness. The idea occurred to him, that if he should go and study the shells of the Persian gulf where pearls are formed, he might succeed in winning from nature the mystery which he had so much interest in learning.
He set out the next morning on his long and wearisome journey, leaving his child to the faithful care of the old Jewish slave who had been so many years in his service, and in whom he reposed the most perfect confidence. She had been the nurse of Rachel, and loved her almost with a mother's love. He spent two months in studying the pearl oyster of the Persian gulf; but there, as in his laboratory, all his efforts were vain.
Providence, thought he, (he no longer said "nature,") Providence has secrets which will never be known to mortals!
Convinced of the utter folly of his painful researches--anxious, moreover, to see his poor child again. He sadly turned his face homeward.
VIII.
As he slowly and sadly pursued his way toward Egypt, he saw on the second day of his journey across the desert, a group in the distance, apparently just in his route; continuing to advance, he saw a dead camel covered with blood, beside him the dead body of a knight, pierced with sabre-strokes; on the road-side a woman, apparently dying, holding in her arms a young infant.
Ben-Ha-Zelah, moved with compassion, approached and accosted the woman. She told him that in crossing the desert with her husband and child, they had been attacked by brigands, who had killed her husband, left her mortally wounded, and had rifled them of all their treasures; even their water-bottles--more precious than all in the desert.
"I am dying," said she, "but my bitterest sorrow is in leaving my poor little babe, who must perish thus alone in the desert."
The poor mother for one moment thought of asking the kind old man to take her child, but she saw that one of his water-bottles had been broken by some accident, and that he had hardly enough water to cross the desert.
Ben-Ha-Zelah had had the same thought, but he calculated the quantity of water remaining to him, and and to himself that it was impossible.
The woman was dying.
There, in the presence of the mother's despair, with the wail of the infant so soon to be an orphan, in his ears, he thought of his own child.
"Woman," said he, "I will take your babe, and will care for him as for my own. I will save his life, even at the cost of my own."
The mother died, invoking blessings on his head.
Ben-Ha-Zelah resumed his journey across the desert, placing before him on the saddle, the infant, who at first wept, then laughed in infantile glee, then amused himself by teasing the patient nurse, pulling his beard, or tangling the reins of the camel. The old man who had become as gentle as a mother, sought every means which affection could suggest to amuse the helpless little creature, so strangely given to his charge--sometimes with the gold tassels of his bridle, sometimes with his bright fire-arms, sometimes by rattling in his ears the gold sequins in his purse. Again he would sing to him a lullaby, long-forgotten. [{701}] The child was pleased with each new amusement devised by the old savant, but it was only for a few moments, and was again looking about for something he had not yet seen.
How much we all resemble children!
Poor old Ben-Ha-Zelah knew not what to do to satisfy this restless craving for amusement. Suddenly he thought of the beautiful little box, which the child had not seen, and drew it out from the folds of his robe.
The child eagerly grasped this new plaything and turned it about in every possible way.
To the amazement of the old Jew, there was a slight sound, as of some small object rolling about in the box.
The child shouted with delight. The old man was breathless and trembling. He grasped the box convulsively from the hands of the infant, who held it out to him, smiling. He opened it. His blood froze in his veins, with an emotion not of terror but of joy and hope.
He beheld in the box a pearl, pure and more beautiful than any he had ever seen.
Speechless with emotion he could only raise his eyes to heaven in a wordless prayer of gratitude.
Then he heard a voice which seemed to fill the immensity of the desert, and nevertheless, was as low and sweet as the loving murmur of a fond mother.
"O Ben-Ha-Zelah! every tear which thou shalt dry, is a pearl which thou dost create."
Ben-Ha-Zelah looked about him. All around him was the desert. Before him, in his arms, the little babe, suddenly grown calm, and smiling in his face.
A few more days and his journey through the desert was ended. But many were the privations he endured that the helpless little infant, now so dear to him, might not want.
Ben-Ha-Zelah was rich, and now he was good. His goodness made use of his riches to dry the tears of misfortune--there are as many, alas! in this world of suffering, as there are dewdrops on a summers morning-- and very soon his box was quite full.
When he again saw his child, the mysterious sleep was unbroken. She came not to welcome him, but he put the pearl necklace about her beautiful throat, and she awoke, smiling.
"Oh! what a lovely necklace, papa," she cried.
"It is the first I have ever given thee, my darling," said the happy father, "but I hope it may not be the last. My pearl-casket is now empty, but I trust in God that I may fill it many times before I die."
[ORIGINAL.]