WHO IS TO EDUCATE OUR CHILDREN?

Every day that passes over our heads and witnesses the rapid increase of the population of the country adds to the interest which attaches to the reciprocal rights and duties existing between the state and the citizen, as far as the question of the proper education of our children is concerned. It has become a matter of the most vital importance, superior to mere party consideration in the success of this or that faction of politicians; for in the proper appreciation of its magnitude and in its judicious and permanent settlement may be said to lie not only the future welfare of this republic, but the supremacy of Christianity itself on this broad continent. The history of the church from its very foundation is full of instances of the decay of religion and morality in one country simultaneously with their growth or revival in another. It was thus that the faith, grown weak in the farther East, found so many earnest professors in Italy, and when Gaul and the Spanish peninsula succumbed to their pagan conquerors, the light of the Gospel was transferred to the islands of Britain and Ireland, and brightened into an effulgence which, in a few centuries, penetrated the darkest recesses of the then semi-barbarized continent. In Europe to-day, the church, assailed on one side by Cæsarism and on the other by the secret societies, can hardly hold her own, notwithstanding the justice of her cause and the zeal and learning of her champions; and it would seem to be one of the mysterious designs of Providence that the theatre of her triumphs and conquests is, for a time at least, to be transferred to the fresher and more vigorous New World. The astonishing growth of Catholicity in America in our own day is an evidence of this, but our present victories will be barren of any good results if we neglect the proper education of our children, who, as we gradually pass away, are destined to take our places for good or evil.

The time has come when the question, Who is to educate our children?

should be definitively answered. Pulpits, forums, and the press, in their respective spheres, have discussed the matter from almost every stand-point, and some of the ablest thinkers, particularly in the Eastern States, have devoted their time and erudition to the elimination of order out of the chaos of crude and transcendental opinions which of late have filled the pamphlets and books of so many writers in Europe and America on the subject of education. Theories innumerable have been advanced, and historical precedents quoted in favor of particular systems, without much approach to unanimity, and still the problem remains as ever unsolved.

Amongst other expressions of opinion on this all-important subject, we have before us a long and very elaborate essay in the Congregational Quarterly of Boston, strongly in favor of the continuance of the public-school system as received in that classical city, and as earnestly endeavoring to demonstrate that, unless the Bible, “without note or comment,” prayers, hymns, and piety, be taught in the state schools in conformity to the statute of 1826, these institutions will become worse than useless, and should be discountenanced. In the language of the writer: “The school system which requires the ethics can receive them only as indissolubly one with the religion, and the state that cannot sustain a statute like the Massachusetts law of 1826, which requires the principles of piety as well as those of morality to be taught, cannot sustain a common school system.”

As a counterpoise to our New England contemporary, we find in the last number of the American Educational Monthly, a magazine published in this city, as stout a defence of secular education, while exhibiting a decided preference for the removal from our public schools of the Bible and the

discontinuance of all teaching of a religious character. Its arguments on these points, if less subtle, are more practical than those of the Congregational, and some of the facts it adduces in support of its views are thus plainly stated:

“It is well to repeat here what was said in the beginning: that knowledge is not virtue itself, but only the handmaid of virtue. This is the lesson of Connecticut statistics—a state having a first-class university as well as the usual network of common schools: in every nine and seven-tenths marriages there is sure to be one divorce. Ohio, which has no university comparable to Yale, and whose common schools are presumably no better than Connecticut’s, has but one divorce in twenty-four marriages in a much larger population. There are graduates of common schools who make it their business to procure divorces by observing prescribed forms, yet without the knowledge of one or other of the parties—contrary to the spirit of the law.”

From the contemplation of these and other results of our common schools, in which piety and morality are supposed to be taught, the writer in the Monthly concludes that it is better for us to “leave devotional instruction to those whose business it is—to parents and clergymen.”

Another writer, the editor of one of the most widely circulated of our sectarian weekly newspapers, also a decided advocate of the public school system as at present existing, puts forward among others the following novel argument for its perpetuity:

“We hold, therefore, that it is unnecessary and unwise to disperse or redistribute our common school pupils in accordance with the dogmatic or ecclesiastical leanings of their parents respectively—that the inconvenience and cost of so doing would immensely overbalance its benefits. We should need far more schools; yet our children would have to travel much further to reach one of the preferred theological stripe than at present.

We do not decide that soundness of faith is of little consequence—far from it; we only insist that provision is already made for theological instruction apart from our common schools, and that there is no need of making such provision within them. The Roman Catholic and the Protestant coincide with respect to spelling and grammar; the Trinitarian and the Unitarian are in perfect accord as to mathematics, at least in their application to all mundane affairs. Then, why not allow them to read and cipher from the same text-books on week-days, and learn theology in their respective churches and Sunday-schools on the Lord’s day? This seems to us the dictate of economy, convenience, and good sense.”

Nearly every week similar effusions appear in the columns of the so-called religious press, in which are enunciated opinions and speculations as absurd as the above, and yet as varied as the clashing sects they profess to represent. On one point alone, and that a very suspicious one, are they agreed—in a general determination to reduce the children of the Catholics of this country under the sway of a system of public instruction which parents can neither encourage nor countenance. On the minor features of this system, with their usual want of unity, they widely dissent one from the other.

Now, whence this confusion of ideas about one of the plainest and most vital requirements of a free Christian people—education? Does it not lie in the utter misapprehension of what education really is? In pagan times, education was supposed to be the accumulation of knowledge for its own sake or for the superiority it conferred on its possessor over his less instructed fellows. It was of the earth, earthy. From a Christian point of view, its aim, primarily and principally, is to facilitate, by proper training and instruction, the attainment of our true happiness—the knowledge and observance of the

laws of God here and eternal happiness hereafter. To the pagan, this world was everything, and consequently he utilized his knowledge for worldly advantage alone. For the Christian, education is merely a means to a great end, and, as eternal bliss is infinitely greater than any temporal enjoyment to him, the training of the soul, the immortal part, in the ways of religion is of paramount and incomparable importance. Secular education, when properly applied, should not be undervalued, inasmuch as we have duties in this life to be performed, to ourselves, our country, and our fellow-man; but it should be tempered and permeated, so to speak, with religious instruction, so that the learner, as his mental faculties expand with his years, may be gradually but constantly led to the knowledge of those divine truths which the church teaches her children, and his character thus be insensibly formed on a true Christian basis. If we admit, as every professing Christian is bound to do, that man’s chiefest object in life is the salvation of his soul, if “the knowledge of God is the beginning of wisdom,” it is the merest folly to suppose that this knowledge, so all-important in itself, can properly be imparted to our children after ordinary school-hours, when the young mind is fatigued and needs repose or recreation, or on one day out of seven, when so many distractions occur to call off the attention of most children. This would be to make religion distasteful, if not odious, to our boys and girls, and lead them to dread the recurrence of a day which, to them at least, should be one of gladness and innocent enjoyment. We do not underrate the value of parental advice and example, or ignore the benefits conferred on our rising population by pastoral instructions and Sunday-school training, but

we assert the day-schools should also take their part in supplying food to the ever-expanding and question-asking minds of the American youth.

The formation of character, one of the great objects of education, should be conducted on principles somewhat similar to those of domestic economy. We do not eat all the sweets at one time and the sours at another, the solids at one meal and the dessert at the next, but by a judicious admixture of both produce a savory and salutary combination which gives health and strength to the body. It may be said that mere secular education—such as geology, geometry, history, natural philosophy, botany, astronomy, etc., as taught in our common schools—presents no opportunity for moral instruction. Nothing can be more fallacious. That great master of dramatic literature, Shakespeare, whose knowledge of the springs of human action has seldom been equalled, has told us that we can find books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. Properly directed, the anatomy of the smallest insect, equally with the contemplation of the vast firmament with its countless planets and stars, may become a silent and involuntary prayer to the Creator of all things. There is not a force, physical or deduced, that is revealed to the mind of youth that ought not to be made to bear with it some conception of the unseen Power that presides over and governs the universe, and the teacher who neglects to place before the minds of his pupils the moral to be drawn from those symbols of the Creator’s almightiness does but half his work, and that the less nobler part. Leaving dogma and doctrine aside, are the generality of our public school teachers capable or disposed to thus draw from nature the beautiful lessons of God’s

wisdom and power—lessons which no book can adequately teach, but which should be before one’s eyes from infancy to the grave?

Some persons speak of religion in connection with the education of youth as if it were a mere matter of sentiment or a holiday pastime, to be occasionally indulged in when the more serious duties of money-making and political advancement have been complied with. On the contrary, it is a matter of everyday life, controlling and guiding our intercourse with mankind individually as well as collectively, and as we are responsible for our actions every conscious moment of our life, so should it in one form or another be associated with our every pursuit and act. If this be true among full-grown men and women, is it not apparent that any system of youthful training that would dissociate religion from secular studies in early life would send into the world vicious or ignorant adults, who would either ignore altogether the practice of honesty, truthfulness, and morality, or who in their ignorance would make these great attributes of Christianity subserve their worldly interests and passions? Education, therefore, that would exclude religious instruction from our children during their hours of study, which is half of their young lives, is not education at all, at least in the Christian sense of the word. It may make them expert financiers or glib politicians, but it cannot make them upright, truthful, and benevolent citizens. In this regard, we agree with the writer in the Congregational when he says, “We call attention in the outset to the immense difficulty, if it be not the absolute impossibility, of separating religious instruction from any practical system of public education.”

But we do not coincide with him

in his estimate of the right and duty of the state to provide this education. Granted that religion is an essential element in education, who is the proper authority to inculcate it? Clearly not the state, for, in our theory of government, the state knows no religion, nor under any pretence can it lay claim to any apostolic authority to preach and teach the Gospel to the nations. That is a power far anterior to and above all existing governments. That the state is or ought to be religious in the character of its acts cannot be denied, but this character should be derived from the teachings of the church to its individual members, and gives it no power to prescribe to the church what she should teach or allow to be taught, for the authority of the teaching church is from God, and that of the state from man. It is true that the common law framed by our Catholic ancestors recognized the laws of the church, as far as public morality and the observance of Sundays and holidays were concerned, as part of the law of the land, but it was never intended that the state should be placed above the church in matters spiritual, much less to make it the teacher and expounder of her doctrines. This innovation was one of the fruits of the “Reformation,” which, while professing to liberate the minds of men from spiritual thraldom and the authority of the popes, actually subjected their consciences and forms of faith to the whim of parliaments and the arbitrary dicta of local lay tyrants. Even to this day, the House of Lords in England, composed as it is mostly of laymen, and those, too, not remarkable for their piety or morality, is the court of last resort to determine and decide what are and what are not the doctrines taught by our Holy Redeemer.

If the state claim the right to educate

our children, that right cannot be derived from the natural law; for the state, being an artificial organization, cannot in its corporate capacity have any natural law. On the contrary, the natural law bestows the possession, care, and custody of the child on the parent, and the duty thus imposed cannot be relinquished or delegated without a manifest infraction of the first principles of that law. Besides, the state is only constituted to do for the citizen what he, from his want of ability, means, or strength, cannot do for himself. Its office is simply the administration of justice, retributive and distributive, and the enactment of laws to facilitate that object. All outside of that is simply usurpation, which may, and generally does, degenerate into tyranny. Whenever a state invades private reserved rights and oversteps the bounds of its legitimate duties, law and justice are not only brought into contempt, but enactments in themselves abstractly just are despised and evaded. The futile attempts to enforce certain sumptuary laws in this and other countries prove this conclusively.

Nor does the state derive its power to educate our children as it sees fit from the will of the people as expressed in the fundamental laws of the land. In the Declaration of Independence, it is clearly stated that among the inalienable rights of mankind are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, who that has been blessed with children does not know that the care and custody, education and maintenance, of his offspring constitute the greatest happiness of his life, compared with which riches, honors, and fame dwindle into insignificance? One of the most powerful arguments against Southern slavery, now happily for ever abolished, was that it separated the child from its parent: but what is the value

of freedom to me if, as the Congregational suggests, I must see my child forced into a common school, to listen to the reading of a Bible which I believe, at best, to be a mutilated and perverted copy of the Holy Scriptures, and be obliged to repeat prayers and hymns that too often, alas! are but blasphemies against the holy name of him who died on the cross for man’s redemption? In one case the body alone suffered, in the other the eternal salvation of immortal souls is imperilled. Even the framers of the constitution, that noble document about which so much is said and so little understood, having surveyed their work, and finding it defective in respect to providing guarantees for the perfect freedom of religion, hastened by an amendment to supply the deficiency. “Congress,” they ordained, “shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,”[100] and our own state, on November 3, 1846, by its constitution, emphatically declares that “the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall for ever be allowed in this state to all mankind.” (Art. I. sec. 3.)

Does the state derive its authority to teach religion to our children from God? If so, where is its authority? The writer in the Congregational evidently considers the Bible an authority on matters of faith and discipline. Yet we fail to find in the inspired writings any authority for the state of Massachusetts, or any other purely political corporation, to teach the doctrines of Christ. But, if the state have a right so to teach, it has a right also to decide what shall be taught, and this, of course, must depend on the character

of the officials through whom the state for the time being acts; for as yet, unlike other and more favored Protestant countries, we have no fixed state religion, and must depend on the popular electoral vote for our faith and ideas of morality. We would like the advocates of religious teaching in schools, “the Bible, prayers, hymns, and piety,” to be more explicit on this point. Are our children to be taught religion according to the parliamentary doctrine of the Church of England, or the total depravity notions of the followers of Calvin; are they to be obliged to deny the divinity of Christ with the Unitarians, and eternal punishments with the Universalists? Are we, in fact, bringing children into the world to be liable any day to be indoctrinated into the vagaries of Methodism, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, Muggletonianism, Mormonism, or any other of the thousand “isms” born of that fruitful mother of dissent, the much vaunted Reformation? Or are we to have them treated to a dose of each and every one in turn as the political wheel brings their professors to the surface? The idea seems perfectly absurd, and yet it is the logical consequence of the Congergational’s position that the state can teach religion in its schools; for the state, being liable to be controlled at any time by any of the believers in the “isms,” must of necessity teach its own ism, and, having the sovereign authority, who can dispute its choice? But, says the writer in the Congregational, and those who agree with him, we do not violate the rights of conscience, we only advocate the reading of the Bible, “in which the Papist does not believe,”[101] prayers, hymns,

and piety. Now, in what does the religion of the Congregationalists consist, if not in these very matters which they would insidiously intrude on the attention of our children? Does any one believe, if the writer in question, or those who believe in his sentiments, had the control of our schools, that the prayers and hymns would be such as a Catholic child could conscientiously listen to? Would the Apostles’ Creed and the Confiteor be among the forms, or would the Stabat Mater, Ave Maria Stella, in Latin or English, or any other of the beautiful appeals to the clemency and protection of the Blessed Mother which the church puts into the mouths and hearts of her little ones, find a place in schools presided over by the advocates of religion and piety, as prescribed by the law of 1826? And yet, we venture to say that more than one-half of the children who attend the public schools in the very city in which this Quarterly is published are Catholics, and born of Catholic parents. Yet we are told that not only the morals, but the religion of our children is to be at the mercy of politicians, calling themselves the state, too often elevated to power by most corrupt intrigues. Is there anything particularly virtuous in the character of our legislators or the members of our board of education that would induce us to suppose that they were specially selected by Providence to teach his laws and expound his doctrines? And still, for all practical purposes, they are the state. They enact the laws, select the schoolbooks, appoint the teachers, and prescribe the course of study to be pursued. If their appointees leave out the Bible, prayers, hymns, etc., the schools become, in the language of the Congregational, the instruments of “sweeping away the political Protestantism

of the land,” while, if they do enforce the observance of these religious exercises, we have a new set of apostles annually or biennially elected by political coteries to teach our children!

The three great sources of authority which all writers on the philosophy of government ascribe to the state are, then, wanting, to justify these assumptions of the advocates of the right of the state to teach religion to the children of its citizens, but the Congregational still argues that it has a right to teach “morality and piety.” How are morality and piety to be taught without religion? What is its idea of morals abstracted from practical religion? Does the writer who adorns its columns believe that the end and aim of all true education is to promote man’s true happiness, and, if so, does he believe in a hereafter of eternal rewards and punishments, and how we are to earn the one and avoid the other? He knows as well as we do that, of some dozen leading Protestant sects in this country, not two are agreed on the essential Christian duty and faith of man necessary for his salvation. Who, then, is to decide but the state, which, as we have endeavored to prove, has neither a divine mission nor even human consent to interfere in spiritual matters? It may be said that the state does not decide these questions, but it does. Every hour devoted to a child’s instruction, relatively at least, involves the question of man’s true destiny; for the religious question, which is the question of man’s true destiny, sums up all other questions. As far as Catholics are concerned, they object to each and all such teachers, whether appointed by the warring sects or by the temporal authority. For example, the writer in the Congregational, though evidently an intelligent

and accomplished gentleman, would not be a very safe teacher in a school composed in whole or in part of Catholic children. Any person who could endorse as he does Draper’s absurd assertion that the Imitation of Christ was the forerunner of the Reformation, call the illustrious Fénelon a Jansenist, style millions of his fellow-citizens by the cant epithets of “Romanists” and “Papists,” and coolly declare that Catholics do not believe in the Bible, is evidently unfitted to form a correct opinion on any religious subject, much less to be entrusted with the instruction of youth.

“But,” says the writer above quoted, “the safety of democracy requires compulsory education. The work cannot be entrusted to churches, or to corporations, or to individuals.” Now, this may mean very little or a very great deal. If it mean, as he hints in another part of his article, that the state has an absolute right to teach a particular religion or any religion at all in its public schools, and enforce attendance therein, for the preservation of our democratic form of government, we entirely dissent from his proposition. The very essence of a free government lies in its recognition of religious liberty and the natural rights of individuals, and our best guarantees of freedom rest on the fact that majorities, which for the time being represent the power of the state, all potent as they may be, cannot set aside the fundamental law, and dare not infringe on the civil or religious liberty of the citizen. No state could or ought to attempt an exercise of power so utterly despotic and foreign to the genius of our institutions.

We are aware that of late it has been customary to denominate our form of education as the American system, for the purpose, doubtless, of

exciting public prejudice in its favor. The system is not by any means American in the national sense. It is purely local, and of Puritanical origin and growth. When the New England colonies by persecution and violence secured for themselves uniformity of worship, such as it was, they established schools, in which prayers, hymns, and piety were taught ad libitum, with all the raw-head-and-bloody-bones anti-Catholic fiction which the descendants of the Pilgrims mistook for veritable history. Being all of one mind, such a system of training could have no perceptible evil effect on the pupils; for, if they did not hear intolerance and falsehood in the school, they were pretty certain to hear them in the meeting-house. But times have strangely altered since then, as the writer in the Congregational is forced to admit. “The reason our school system had to be modified,” he says, “was not that it was per se right from the day it was enacted, but because the foreign immigration and the changes of time had produced an immense revolution in the religious spirit of the people, and required the readjustment of the civil creed in the school system.” In no sense, then, can this system of public education which is sought to be thrust upon us be called American, except, perhaps, as contradistinguished from that of England, France, Germany, Austria, and other so-called despotic countries, in all of which the denominational plan, more or less generally, prevails. In the latter two countries particularly, one Catholic and the other Protestant, the scheme of secular education has been tried and abandoned, and the wisdom of the new system has been proved beyond peradventure. If it be American to tax citizens for the support of schools and compel them to

send their children to be called Romanists and idolaters, then is the public-school system entitled to that distinctive appellation? We do not think that it is.

The state having no authority by the natural or divine law to assume control of the education of our children, by what other right can it claim it? Some may say, from political necessity, that the state, in order to protect its own interests, must see to it that a certain amount of intelligence is diffused among its supporters. Here the whole question comes up again. What is that intelligence which is necessary to the preservation and well-being of our free institutions? Is it a certain knowledge of mathematics, geography, and the physical sciences, or is it not probity, morality, and lawful obedience to the constituted authorities? Yet these are virtues that can only be taught through religion, and the state, having no religion, cannot teach them. Is it not for the general interests that we should have stalwart, healthy, well-fed, and sober citizens? And yet the state does not profess to enforce a general plan whereby every one should be provided with proper exercise, employment, medicine, food, clothing, and shelter. To do so would simply be to attempt to realize the utopian dream of the socialists; and still it would be no greater a usurpation of power than the design of furnishing our children with a general system of instruction, and, indirectly, with a uniform religion. If the state, as it ought to do, requires a certain amount of intelligence in its citizens, let it make the presence or absence of that knowledge the test of citizenship and the passport to places of honor and public confidence. The right to vote and hold office, for example, is not an inherent right, but depends on many

qualifications, such as sex, age, nationality, freedom from crime, ability to support one’s self, and previous residence. Why not add ability to read and write intelligibly?

There are cases, however, in which we admit that the state has not only a right, but is in duty bound, to interfere with the disposition and education of children. When parents, either through poverty, misfortune, crime, or any other cause, are unable or unwilling to take proper charge of their children, the state, for its own protection and to save the community from the consequence of vice and idleness, is justified in taking care of them, for this does not violate the principle of civil polity that a state is constituted to do only for the citizen what he is unable to do for himself. Hence, the establishment of almshouses, asylums, nurseries, reformatories, and other benevolent institutions, which all wise governments provide as barriers against prospective crime and distress. But even in those exceptional cases, as much care as possible should be observed in following out the spirit of our free institutions, which are so strongly opposed to any interference in matters of conscience, even among the most humble and unfortunate.

But while we are combating the arguments of our Boston contemporary in favor of compulsory education, it may be said that no compulsion is used or intended to be used in this or many other states in the Union. This is a mistake; there is compulsion of the most practical kind. It is true that the officer of the law does not come into our homes and forcibly drag our children to school, but the tax-gatherer does so, almost as efficiently, if more silently. The masses of the people in this, as in most other countries, are poor. With the American Catholics this is peculiarly so. They are taxed to support

the public schools, and must either send their children there or pay for their education elsewhere. This double payment, in most instances, they cannot afford. How many tens of thousands of parents are there not among us whose scanty means will not permit them to indulge in the luxury of seeing their children instructed in the ways of true religion, and who are consequently compelled, if they desire even a primary education for their offspring, to send them to schools which they neither admire nor would select if they had a free choice!

We are accused of being hostile to the Bible. Such is not the fact, and those who make the assertion are well aware of its falsity. The Bible has always been an object of especial care and veneration in the Catholic Church. It is one of the sources of her authority and the muniments of her holy mission. What we object to is the profanation of its sacred character by unworthy and profane hands. It has repeatedly pained us to see even “King James’s Version,” imperfect as it is, scattered broadcast by the agents of the Bible societies in hotel and steamboat saloons, barbers’ shops, and bar-rooms, not to be read, but to be devoted to the meanest purposes of waste paper. The treatment of the holy book in some of our public schools is little better. If any person doubts that Catholics venerate and read the Bible, let him go to our large Catholic publishing-houses and see the numerous and splendid editions of the Old and New Testaments which are constantly being issued from their presses.

Though on principle we decidedly object to the reading of the Bible in our public schools, our greatest objection is to the schools themselves. We hold that the education that does not primarily include the religious element

is worse than no education at all, and, we hold, also, that the state has no right to prescribe what form of faith, doctrine, or religious practice should be taught to the children of its citizens. We claim that Catholic parents have a right to demand that their children shall be educated by Catholic teachers, be instructed from Catholic books, and at all times, particularly during hours of study, be surrounded as much as possible with all the influence that the church, into whose bosom they have been admitted by baptism, can surround them. This can never be done in our public schools. However high the personal character of the teachers in those institutions, and whatever may be the peculiar merits of their discipline and success in turning out smart accountants and superficial thinkers, we maintain that, in the formation of character and the cultivation of the spiritual and better part of our nature, they have been and must necessarily be failures. What parent can read without a shudder the following extract from a Boston paper regarding the recent investigation of a savant who, it is well known, is no friend to Catholicity or the teachings of the church:

“Professor Agassiz has of late given a portion of his valuable time to an investigation of the social evil, its causes and growth, and the result has filled him with dismay, and almost destroyed his faith in the boasted civilization of the nineteenth century. He has visited and noted down the houses of ill-fame throughout the city of Boston, and has drawn from the unfortunate inmates many sad life stories. To his utter surprise, a large number of the unfortunate women and girls traced their fall to influences which surrounded them in the public schools.”[102]

It has been already stated, on the authority of the Educational Monthly,

that in the State of Connecticut, the paradise of public schools and nursery of public-school teachers, there is one divorce annually to every nine marriages, and now we have the unbiassed testimony of Agassiz, after mature examination of the malign influence of state schools in the sister state. Is there any reason to doubt that this sad state of morals exists in other cities, and may be traced to the same source, and, if so, is it not time that our public system of instruction, at least for females, should be discontinued?

But even in a material point of view our common schools have been far from a success. In the efforts, conscientious we must believe, to eliminate sectarianism from the school-books, the Board of Education and Trustees of our cities have almost destroyed their usefulness for any purpose. The primary rules of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the elements of pure mathematics, can be taught with impunity, but, when the higher branches of study are reached, the religious question again comes up. Take geology, for example, that most interesting science, the abuse of which has led to more atheism than all the sophistries of Voltaire or Volney. As at present taught in our schools, without explanation or qualification, it cannot help being detrimental to the faith, and consequently to the morals, of the curious and undisciplined minds of the scholars. As to history, it is impossible, even with the most careful revision, to reproduce it without constant reference to disputed events and characters, regarding which Protestants and Catholics can never agree. Can we imagine a history of modern Europe, with the great facts of the civilization of the Old World by the church, the establishment of the temporal power of the Popes, the

“Truce of God” and the Crusades in the middle ages, the great rebellion against spiritual authority—miscalled the Reformation—the penal persecution of the Irish Catholics, and the French Revolution left out? At best, such a book would be a sorry compilation of dates and miscalled facts, and yet to describe those great epochs in European history with any degree of accuracy would necessarily offend the opinions or prejudices of either Protestants or Catholics. If history be “philosophy teaching by example,” we must look for it somewhere else than in our public schools.

But, because we are opposed to the existence of common schools, are we therefore against popular education? On the contrary, the efforts of the humbler class of Catholics throughout the country to secure education for their children independent of state interference are almost incredible.

In this city alone twenty thousand children are annually taught in the free schools attached to the various churches, at an expense of a little over one hundred thousand dollars, independent of the thousands who attend the pay-schools of the Christian Brothers of a high grade.[103]

Let us now sum up in brief our objections to the further continuance of the present public school system:

I. All education should be based and conducted on true religious principles.

II. The state has no right to teach religion in its schools.

III. State or public schools without religion are godless.

IV. As such, they are incapable of forming the character of our children, or teaching them morality according to the Christian principle.

V. In endeavoring to avoid what is called sectarianism, they defeat the ends of even mere secular education.

Now, it may be asked, What remedy do we propose for the evils which our public school system has already produced? What substitute are we prepared to offer that will both satisfy the demands of religion and the requirements of the state? We answer, by the establishment of denominational schools for Catholics, wherever practicable, under the supervision of the proper ecclesiastical authorities, and likewise for such of the sects as do not approve of mixed schools. How are these schools to be sustained? In either of two ways. If the state will insist on levying a general school tax, let it be divided pro rata according to the number of

pupils taught in each school: let the denominational schools have their proper proportion, and the mixed or non-religious schools theirs. The amount thus apportioned to the Catholic schools might be deposited with a board or other executive body, to be composed in whole or in part of clerics and laymen, and, if necessary, let the state appoint proper officials to see that accurate returns of attendance are made. The other way, which to our mind is much preferable, would be to abolish altogether the school tax, and throw upon the parents of all denominations or of no denomination the responsibility of educating their own children. Compulsory education may do very well in countries where the subject is but an automaton liable at any time to be moved by a despotic government, based on principles that the people are made for the government, not the government for the people, and where the acquired intelligence of the masses is merely used or misused for the benefit of a few hereditary rulers; but in a country like our republic, the strength of which lies in individual effort, and where wealth, fame, and honor are within the reach of every one, even the humblest who has energy and ability enough to win them, we can have no fear that parents, and, least of all, Catholic parents, will be derelict in their duty in respect to the proper secular education of their children. The struggles they have made and are making to support their free day-schools, despite the onerous tax with which they are burdened by the state, would be renewed with fourfold energy if that drain on their resources were removed.

The advantages to be derived from the adoption of either plan would be manifold and incalculable.

It would satisfy the conscientious

scruples of those parents who consider that they should not be required, directly or indirectly, to send their children to the public schools, as at present conducted. It would not only advance the material prospects of the pupil, by giving him a thorough education devoid of all the restrictions and mutilations which an attempt at fairness and the production of non-religious books have produced; while he would, gradually and without apparent effort, imbibe the true religious spirit that would be his guide and best defence in after life. It would also elevate the character of the teacher by placing him in his true position, midway between the divinely appointed minister of the Gospel, and the instructor of children in matters purely secular, and, by holding out to him a higher and nobler goal than that resulting from mere personal ambition or the hope of pecuniary reward, would doubly increase his zeal and efficiency. For the public generally, the change suggested would be equally salutary. The welfare of the state does not rest on piety alone, nor on mental intelligence alone, but on both acting together, the latter, of course, being subordinate to the former. No man, no matter what may have been his natural gifts, was ever less brave in action, less wise in council, less enterprising in commerce, or less loyal to his government, because he was taught from his infancy to regard the practice of religion as his first and principal duty. The desire of eternal happiness, as much an instinct of our nature as the mode of securing it, is the fruit of proper religious education, reacts on a man’s conduct even in matters exclusively pertaining to the things of the world, and compels him to a more steadfast and fearless course in the discharge of his civic duties.

But it would also have another and not less marked effect. It would rid the community of a host of officials, many of whom are incompetent, and some of whom, we are sorry to say, are corrupt, and it would also save the public treasury vast sums of money, much of which is now uselessly squandered. Who would believe that in this great city, where there is so much learning and public spirit, the Board of Education, consisting of twenty-one persons, is principally composed of liquor and billiard saloon keepers, horse dealers, retailers of articles used in the schools, and of that nondescript class called brokers? Yet this intellectual body exercises supreme control over the public schools of New York, and proposed this year to spend no less a sum than $3,150,000, or more than double the amount required for the same purpose eight years ago.[104] The way in which a portion of this money is spent may be inferred from a statement recently published in one of our daily newspapers, from which we extract the following paragraph:

“The next item is incidental expenses of the Board of Education, including shop account, $60,000. What are ‘incidental’ expenses? It means expenditures for which the items cannot be anticipated, or of which it is not agreeable to furnish a statement; it means simply a general fund to be expended by the clerks and officers of the Board of Education as they think proper ‘incidentally.’ Among these ‘incidental’ expenses is what is known as a tea-room; that is to say, the members have a supper or refreshments furnished to them at their meetings, and as they choose to order. This is never returned or charged under

the head of tea-room, supper, dinner, or board bill, but is covered up under the head of postage-stamps or other ‘incidental’ expenses. How much of the $60,000 goes in this way, it is, of course, impossible for us to know.”

Is it any wonder, then, that, in view of such extravagant use of the public money, of which the above is only a specimen, the education of about one hundred thousand children, the average attendance at our public schools, should cost over three millions of dollars, or at the rate of thirty dollars per capita, while in the Catholic free schools one-fifth of that number are taught at an expense of one hundred thousand dollars, or at the rate of only five dollars a head, per annum?

Are the Catholics competent and prepared to assume the duties and responsibilities of the education of the vast number of children of their communion who now attend the public schools? Most decidedly. As to our ability to teach, we point with something like pride, certainly with satisfaction, to the success of our numerous colleges, seminaries, and convent schools, to the latter in particular, where are always to be found among the pupils a respectable minority composed of daughters of many of our most intelligent Protestant families. We call attention, also, to our twenty-four city free schools, now in full operation, many of which, though of recent origin, will compare favorably with the oldest of our common schools. Besides the professors of our colleges, who are constantly preparing young men for the ministry and for the scarcely less responsible duties of teachers, and such orders as the Christian Brothers, we have many trained lay instructors ready and anxious to devote themselves to the good work of Christian education. Then, again, there are numbers

of Catholic teachers now in the public schools, male and female, many of whom we know personally, who would prefer to give their services exclusively to the training of children of their own faith if such an opportunity presented itself. Said one of this class, a teacher of over twenty years’ experience, on a late occasion to the writer, “If I dared, I would like to expose the dangers and absurdities of our school system; but I cannot, for I would surely be found out and dismissed, and then what would become of my wife and family? I wish we had separate schools for ourselves, and then I would feel like teaching even at a less salary than I now receive.”

We submit the consideration of this very grave and, in our mind, most important question to the serious consideration of our patriotic and reflective countrymen, no matter of what creed or opinion, having an abiding confidence in their sense of justice and equity. To the fanatical portion of the community who will not listen to reason, we have only this to say: Though you may pretend not to know it, and may even be unconscious of the fact, your instincts tell you that the present system of education saps the foundation of the Catholic religion, and it is for this reason you hold so tenaciously to it; but let us add, the system itself, being godless, undermines all religion and morality likewise. But such is your infatuation and hostility to our religion that to so undermine it you are willing to see your own faith, whatever that may be, ruined and wrecked as long as you can accomplish your object, and the next generation become atheists and sceptics, totally devoid of all faith. Holding the political power, and in spite of your boasted fair play and in defiance of the spirit of our free institutions, you are determined

to uphold your system and tax us for its support against our consciences, against religion, freedom, equal rights, and the spirit of American institutions. Your efforts to stretch the powers of our government, to the detriment of our natural, divine, and political rights, will ultimately end in your own confusion. They are more worthy of some half-crazed theorist or mad follower of Fourrier and the Communists than of a citizen of this great republic. The government that robs a parent of his rights and his children is neither free nor democratic, but is the aider and abettor of that system of free-lovism which is said to have originated in pagan Sparta, and has culminated in our own country at Oneida. But let it be understood that, as Catholics and free citizens, we proclaim our rights, shall resolutely defend them, asking for nothing which we are not willing to grant to others, and being content with no less for ourselves.

[100] Amendment proposed March, 1789.

[101] See page 587, October number of the Congregational Quarterly, under the title “The State—Religion in its Schools.”

[102] The Pilot, Nov. 4, 1871.

[103] For the benefit and edification of our readers, we subjoin an official tabular statement of the attendance on, and expenses of, the Catholic free day schools of the city of New York for the present year:

Location of Schools.Daily
attendance.		Annual Expenses
for the support
of schools.
Nos. 272 & 274 Mulberry St.,1,100$6,000
Barclay and Church Sts.,5733,118
New Bowery and James Sts.,1,4009,000
No. 29 Mott St.,1,2255,745
Nos. 54 & 56 Pitt St., and 264 Madison St.,1,6209,500
Nos. 8 & 10 Rutgers St.,1,0505,000
Leroy St.,1,0005,500
Nos. 300 & 302 East Eighth St.,1,6007,000
Nos. 121 & 123, and 135 & 137 Second St.,1,4205,970
Nos. 8 & 10 Thompson St.,2402,000
No. 208 East Fourth St.,1,7006,217
No. 48 Fourth Ave.,2002,000
Nos. 511 & 513 East 14th St.,1,25010,000
No. 32 West 18th St., and 111 West 19th St.,7205,000
No. 118 West 24th St., and 236 West 26th St.,1401,120
Nos. 333 & 335 West 25th St.,6503,000
No. 209 West 30th St., and 211 West 31st St.,4001,600
No. 143 West 31st St.,4001,000
East 36th St., near Second Ave.,1,2506,000
No. 309 East 47th St.,1302,660
East 50th St. and Madison Ave.,3501,000
East 84th St., near Fourth Ave.,5604,000
West 131st St., and West 133d St., near 10th Ave.,3201,000
West 125th St. and Ninth Ave.,1301,000
19,428$104,430

[104] The expenses of the Board of Education of this city for six years have been as follows:

1863, $1,450,000
1864, 1,787,000
1865, 2,298,508
1866, 2,454,327
1867, 2,939,348
1868, 2,900,000

ONE CHRISTMAS EVE IN LA VENDEE.

It was in ‘93—that horrible ‘93, whose very name makes our blood curdle and our hearts beat with a sense of terror and security, as when we gaze on the painted panorama of a battle-field or some scene of crime and danger and despair long since enacted, but brought vividly before us by the graphic power of eloquence or art. The words have a spell in them that fascinates us, and defies us to pass on without pausing to look upon the memories they evoke. Well, it is of this tragic ‘93 that I am going to speak. But not to describe its horrors. It only makes the frame of my story, a most veracious story, and full of the spirit of that wonderful epoch, where we see all that was noble and loveliest in humanity shine forth by the side of its most criminal and appalling aberrations.

It was Christmas eve fourscore years ago. The fertile soil of La Vendée, red-dyed by streams of patriot blood, was hidden under a deep quilt of snow. All the landscape slept as in a death-sleep under a pure white pall. Hills and plains were garmented in white. The snow had fallen heavily during the night, and its untrodden purity was as smooth and uniform as the blue of the winter sky, that looked down upon it and grew pale. The cottages that dotted the fair expanse hardly broke its uniformity, for they too were liveried in white, the roof thick thatched with snow, and the whitewashed walls only a degree less dazzling than the brightness of the ground. The hedges that divide the fields in La Vendée as in England were filled and covered with snow, and the hoar-frost like a fairy lace-work glittered and shone on the soft, unblemished surface, and the trees with rolls of snow resting on their bare gaunt arms held up clusters of icicles that sparkled like crystals in the tepid December sun.

The village of Chamtocé lay in this white landscape; and in the middle of the village stood the church, and close by the church the presbytery.

On the road that led from St. Florent to Chamtocé a young, lithe figure was crushing the crisp white carpet with a long, elastic step. His face was concealed, the upper part of it by a cap drawn low over his forehead, and the lower part by a woollen scarf wound round his throat, swallowing up the chin and nose in its capacious folds. The weather was not cold enough to need this ostentatious display of cache-nez; true, la nappe blanche de la Noël (white cloth of Christmas), as the peasants call it, was spread, but there was not a breath of wind, and it was not freezing. It had frozen during the night just enough to sprinkle the hoar-frost abroad and hang a thin fringe of glass from the roofs of the houses and deck the trees with icicles, but this was not what the Vendéans called freezing. The Loire pursued its journey majestically to the sea unchecked by the icy hand of the black frost, the cruel black frost, that had but to blow with its bleak breath for one night on the strong deep stream to paralyze its waters and chill their moaning into icy dumbness. So, the cold was not bitter. The traveller knew it, too, for on coming to a point of the road where it turned abruptly, and disclosed the church with its slim, gray belfry, and, on the rising ground beyond it, a windmill, still as spectre suspended midway between the white earth and the pale sky, he looked cautiously up and down the road, assured himself there was no one in sight, and then, raising his beaver cap, stood bare-headed in the attitude of a man saluting some object of love and veneration.

“Nearly four years since I knelt under the shadow of thy walls, and now I have come home, and thou dost greet me with the same unchanged, unchanging welcome!”

He replaced his cap, drew it low

over his face, and continued his way.

“Home, did I say?” he muttered presently. “Have I still a home to come to? Gaston most likely is gone, fallen like the best blood of La Vendée in God’s and the king’s cause. And Marie!”

A sudden flush suffused the bronzed cheek. The pilgrim walked on with a quicker step, and was soon at the gate of the presbytery.

“Ah! here it is, just as I left it—the little wicket that opened so often with a ready welcome. A good omen to begin with!”

He pushed it and walked on. The door of the dwelling-house stood ajar; winter and summer it was never shut; he pushed it open, and knocked gently at a door on the left.

“Come in!” said M. le Curé.

And François Léonval entered and stood face to face with the only father he had known on earth. Nearly four years had passed since they had parted, and the old priest who had baptized him, and taught him, and wept with him beside his mother’s grave, was just the same as when he had left him, benign, cheerful, a trifle more bowed perhaps and a good deal whiter, but the same in everything else—nothing was changed within. He looked up promptly, closed his book, and then, with a glance where “charity that thinketh no evil” deprecated a certain vague mistrust, he said:

“What can I do for you, my boy?”

“Monsieur le Curé! mon père! Is this the welcome you give me?”

“François! my son! my best-loved!” And the old man held out his arms, and the two clasped each other.

“Ah! my son!” exclaimed the curé, when his emotion left him power to speak, “this is an hour worth suffering for; it pays me for many

days of anguish. Little did I dream to have such a joy before we met in heaven. My son! my boy! Blessed be God and Our Lady of Mercy, who have watched over you and brought you back to me! I never thought to see your face before I died!”

“And why not, mon père!” said François, laughing, and embracing him again; “you know the prodigals are sure to return sooner or later; besides, you promised to pray me safe home, and not to go to heaven till I came back to get your blessing. Did you forget your promise?”

“Forget it! Does a father forget his son? But you have travelled a long way; you will tell me all presently; but first you must have need of food and warmth. Victoire!”

The grim old gouvernante appeared, and on recognizing François her features expanded into a smile of genuine delight, and she embraced the young man with motherly affection, and overpowered him with questions that she never waited to hear answered, while she bustled about the table, running backward and forward to her kitchen, and making ready with all speed the very best her store could supply. The frugal meal was soon spread, and the curé, to whom, after the first outburst of joy had subsided, her presence was an unguessed relief, said with a sudden change in his voice and look that struck cold on François’s heart:

“Ah! François, François, it was not well to leave me all these years without a sign or a word. Gaston held out for a long time that either you had escaped from the country, or that you were still fighting, and that it was in either case only the fear of getting us into trouble that prevented you writing, or the want of a trusty messenger, and I believed him while I could; but when two

whole years went by, and still we had no news, what could I think but that you had fallen? Victoire, put on your hood, and go—but stay—no, I had better go myself. We must run no risks: there is a price on your head, you say? I will go myself. These are times when we need the cunning of the serpent more than the innocence of the dove. Alas! what does innocence avail my little ones? But shame upon me for an ungrateful wretch! Does it not avail them the palm-branch and the crown, and are not the purest of the flock chosen for a sacrifice to plead for the guilty?”

Thus discoursing, he wrapped himself in his heavy serge cloak, and clutched his stick, and went in search of Gaston, but not without first speaking a word in Victoire’s ear.

And who was Gaston? Gaston was cousin-german and adopted brother of François. They had been brought up from infancy together by Gaston’s mother. When they were both sixteen, she died, leaving the lads to the care of the good God and Monsieur le Curé, and bidding them love each other like true brothers, and live together in the comfortable cottage, which, being her own, she bequeathed them as a joint legacy till either should marry, and then, if they chose to separate, the one who left was to have compensation in a sum of money to be kept by M. le Curé till the event entitled either of the youths to claim it. Besides the cottage, their mother, for both the lads looked on her as such, left two thousand francs, to be equally divided between them when they came to be twenty-one. This was the wedding portion she had brought to Gaston’s father, and as she had adopted François, and given him a true mother’s love, she wished to divide her all, share and share, between him and her own son.

Gaston had a goodly inheritance of land from his father, so she was not impoverishing him by sharing her own with his brother, and he could never feel in after-life that she had wronged him. So Jeanne Léonval thought, at least. And perhaps she was right at the time. But as years went on, Gaston saw things differently; his ideas about the value of money changed, and with them his notions regarding right and justice, and he began to feel an undefined vexation and sense of injury on the subject of his mother’s will. For Gaston had a worm at his heart—the worm that entered the heart of Judas, and sucked it dry of love, and truth, and mercy, and led him at last to deicide and despair. He loved money, and he was growing to love it more every day; it was filling up his heart, and making him hard and selfish, and brushing off the bloom of his boyish freshness. He was growing into a miser. Nobody noticed the growth. Gaston did not suspect it. He lived like other people, frugally but abundantly, in the homely manner of his mother and the people of his class. He wore good clothes, and the same as those around him. But though he did not take to the ways and crotchets of the miser of the story-book, his heart was none the less developing the miser’s spirit, and growing rapidly absorbed, to the exclusion of all other aims, in the love of money. He grudged more and more parting with it, and he longed and pined more greedily after its possession. François, who lived with him, saw nothing of this. He saw him indeed eager and active in turning his land and stock to account, vigilant to seize every opportunity for gain, sharp at striking a bargain, chary of spending his money on many innocent pleasures that tempted the self-denial

of older and wiser heads; but this was right and fair so far. There were plenty of idlers, and fellows to spend their money as fast as they made it, and it was well to see Gaston prudent and thrifty, and laying by for the rainy day and the little ones who would be coming by-and-by. So argued the honest, open-handed François, who approved the wisdom of his brother, but did not practise it, and never could keep a franc in his pocket while he saw any one in want of it. Quite as self-denying as Gaston, he pinched himself from a different motive. He saved to give. He gave to the widow who would be driven from her shelter if he did not come in time to pay the rent; he gave to the cold and the hungry; no hearth wanted wood, no mouth craved for bread, while François could supply both. Not a child in the village but loved him, not an elder but smiled a blessing on the young man as he passed. Gaston knew it, and forgave him. He loved him well enough to forgive him even that share in his mother’s dot that was coming to François one of these days. But when the day came, and he saw the money that ought to have been his handed over to his cousin—he disowned the brotherhood that moment for the first time in his life—Gaston felt the fiend wake up in him, he felt he was badly treated, wronged and robbed of his due, and he was wrathful against Jeanne and François. In the angry spirit of the moment, he spoke bitter words to François, and reproached him for having come between him and his mother. But François, who retained the guilelessness of a child, cared too little about the money to seize the base motive of his brother’s anger; he thought it was an outburst of latent jealousy against the orphan child who had come between him and the

fulness of his mother’s love, and, with the warmth of a generous nature, François forgave him his unjust reproaches; he offered to give up all at once unconditionally to his cousin, and to leave the cottage, and take no compensation, provided only Gaston would give him back his love and trust. Gaston was not utterly hardened, and the generosity and frankness of his cousin disarmed him, and shamed him out of his unworthy resentment; he embraced him, and asked him to forgive him, and they were true brothers from that out. The coils of avarice twined round Gaston’s heart, and choked his best instincts and his finest impulses, but they did not crush out his love for François. That grew and flourished like a lily amongst weeds. So they stayed together till they grew up to man’s estate, and then an event occurred in the distant town of Chapelle-aux-lys which was to make a new era in the lives of both.

A niece of the curé’s died, leaving one orphan child, whom she implored her uncle to receive and take care of; Marie was alone in the world; and there was no one to whom the mother could bequeath her except the curé of Chamtocé. Great was the perplexity of the worthy priest when he received the intelligence of his niece’s death, accompanied by the unexpected legacy of a grand-niece, and a request that he would enter into possession at once. Victoire was called into council, but, instead of helping him out of the difficulties of the position, she staggered him by asking if he meant to buy a cage and hang la petite in the window like a canary? That was the only way she saw of taking her in. Why, they were so tight for room that if she, Victoire, were not the woman she was, it would be simply an impossibility to fit herself and her

effects into the space allotted to her at the presbytery; and where, in the name of common sense, did M. le Curé think she could make room for another inmate? The curé admitted the inexorable logic of this fact, and immediately proposed adding another room to the house; this was the Vendéan’s ready way of simplifying difficulties when his family outgrew his dwelling. Victoire said of course that this remedy was open to them, but what were they to do with la petite till the room was built? Hang her up in the window? M. le Curé rejected the cage alternative, and suggested his niece be sent to one of the farmers’ wives’ for the time being. “Which of them?” Victoire begged leave to inquire. Mère Madeleine would take her and welcome, but she had four sons at home, so that would not do. Then there were La Mère Tustine and La Tante Ursule, and a great many other estimable matrons who would gladly give her a shelter, but between their hospitality and Marie’s acceptance of it there stood some impediment in the shape of sons or brothers that shut the door on the young stranger. The curé and his gouvernante were puzzling over the case, and seeing no way out of it, when François Léonval came in. The curé loved all his children, but, if there was one that he loved better than all, it was the child-like, open-hearted François. He told him at once of his trouble, and asked him what he was to do. François solved the difficulty instanter by offering him the spare room at home—his mother’s formerly, and never occupied since her death—assuring the curé that he and Gaston and Gervoise, their old bonne, would take every care of his grand-niece, and that, far from being in the way, she would be quite a godsend to them all in the dull cottage. The curé smiled

with a deeper thankfulness than the young man understood at the biblical simplicity betrayed in this proposal, and it took a good deal of argument to make François see that the scheme was not practicable; but when ultimately he did see it, he was ready with an amendment which the curé saw no fair reason for rejecting. This was that Mlle. Marie was to be installed in her uncle’s room, and he was to come and stay with the brothers while another was being added to the presbytery. This point settled, the first thing to be done was to get possession of Marie. The curé would have gladly gone to fetch the poor little orphan himself, but this was Saturday, a very busy day for the country priest, and to-morrow would be Sunday, a busier day still, and when it was quite impossible for him to be absent. But François here again came to the rescue. He would drive over to Chapelle-aux-lys, put up for a few hours—it was a good three hours’ drive—and be back by nightfall with the legacy. François Léonval was perhaps the only youth in the village to whom such a mission could have been entrusted without its provoking a stream of chattering comments on all sides, but the curé knew that not even that queen of gossips, Tante Ursule, would find a word to say against it in his case. So he gave his blessing to François, who ran home as fast as he could, put the strong bay mare to the cariole, and was soon trotting over the snow on the road to Chapelle-aux-lys. This was how Marie came to Chamtocé.

In due time the room was built, the curé took leave of the brothers, and returned to the presbytery, where Marie reigned henceforth with soft, despotic sway over himself, the stiff old Victoire, and all who came within her kingdom. She was soon the

acknowledged belle of Chamtocé, and the number of her admirers and the zeal with which they competed for her hand in the village dance, or the honor of carrying her red morocco Heures to and from church on Sundays and fête-days, became a serious complication in the existence of the venerable curé. For his flock loved him with the love that casteth out fear, and had no secrets from him; old and young went to him with their confidences as a matter of course, and the rival candidates for Marie’s favors carried their hopes and fears and complaints of her and of each other to his sympathizing ears with merciless garrulity. It was no small thing to bear the burden of this confidence, to hearken to these knotty cases, and to give advice and sympathy befitting each particular one. The curé, to be sure, had more experience than most men in this kind of diplomacy, having been the bosom confidant of all the swains who had sighed to the belles of Chamtocé these forty years past; but he declared that Marie’s lovers gave him more to do than the whole generation together. There were nine eligible partis going, and all nine were competing for her. The good man was driven to his wits’ end. Marie remained serenely indifferent to them all, and never gave a glance of encouragement to one above another, nor could her uncle detect the faintest sign of preference toward any of them. He took refuge, therefore, in perfect neutrality, and refused to interfere in behalf of any of the suitors. She was young enough to bide her time and try their fidelity before she adopted a choice so important to them and to herself. Marie was fifteen when she came to Chamtocé. The revolution had broken out in Paris and was spreading rapidly through the provinces.

La Vendée, which was destined soon to play such a noble part in the fiercest tragedy the world ever saw, was still comparatively quiet; but before Marie had spent two years in her new home, the Royalist movement was firing the hearts of the Vendéans, and the enthusiastic spirit of Charette and Cathelineau and Stoffel was fanning the flames of patriotism and goading the peasants to that grand and universal uprising whose story stands unparalleled in the annals of chivalrous loyalty. The Republican soldiers, les bleus, as they were called, were scouring the country, depopulating villages, murdering the priests, and hunting down the nobles, ordering off whole streets to the guillotine in a batch, spreading terror and devastation everywhere. The peasantry had risen en masse and joined the Royalist troops, and were selling their lives and their altars dear. Chamtocé was not behind hand in the patriotic movement. It furnished its goodly contingent of soldiers to the king, and many were the episodes of daring and self-devoted loyalty that marked the progress of the Vendéan cause in the pretty, peaceful village.

Marie was just seventeen when the first recruitment took place. It was a bright spring morning. She was sitting in the latticed window of the presbytery parlor, a dark-eyed, merry-looking maiden in a fan-shaped Vendéan cap, whose soft white cambric frilling set off her warm olive complexion admirably, and made her a very pretty picture as she sat singing to her spinning-wheel, bobbing her head with a quick, graceful movement that kept time to the play of her foot and hands. At a table at the other end of the room the curé was writing away diligently. He was too much absorbed in his work to be disturbed by the musical purring of

Marie’s wheel, or the broken snatches of song with which she varied the rond-rond and enlivened the pleasant, monotonous labor; he knew she was there, but her presence was no more hindrance to him than the sunshine that was streaming unbidden through the window, and filling the little room with warmth and brightness.

Suddenly the rond-rond ceased, Marie looked up, and fixed her eyes on some distant object along on the road. Then she stood up, and said hurriedly:

“Mon oncle! mon oncle!”

“Well, my child?” answered the curé abstractedly, without pausing from his work.

“I see horsemen galloping toward the village. Sont-ce les bleus?”

The word made the curé start like the touch of a spring. He dropped his pen and was beside her in an instant. They looked out steadily toward the dust-cloud that was advancing rapidly, and for one minute neither spoke. Then the curé exclaimed joyfully:

“No! They are Charette’s men!”

And so they were. But none the less was there cause for Marie’s cheek to grow pale, and the heart of the old pastor to beat with a great emotion. They knew what brought these Royalist soldiers to Chamtocé. Charette wanted men, and he had sent here to levy them. In less than an hour, every available man in the village was up on the place for inspection. The difficulty was whom to take and whom to refuse, for the brave fellows whose exploits and valor won for them later the sobriquet of peuple de géants (race of giants) were all clamoring to be enrolled under the king’s flag, and to go forth and die for the king’s cause.

For the first time to-day since that outbreak that had bound them in closer brotherhood, François and

Gaston quarrelled. Both wanted to go, both were equally good for the service; the recruiting officer, unable to choose between them, declared they must decide for themselves. The only way to do this was to defer it to the curé. They walked off to the church, where the old man was speaking plain, soul-stirring words of encouragement and exhortation to a throng of men and women, the men exulting, the women weeping, but all of one mind and heart in the cause, and ready to give their best and dearest to serve under the banner of the fleur-de-lis.

Marie was kneeling close by the altar, amidst a group of weeping mothers and sisters. Her eyes were dry, but dim and restless; she spoke to no one, but turned constantly toward the door, as if she were watching for some new arrival. When the brothers came in, there was a movement, the crowd made way for them as they walked up to the altar, and hushed their sobs to hear what they were going to say.

“Monsieur le Curé,” said Gaston, “only one of us may enlist, and you are to choose between us; which of us may go and fight for the king?”

“Ah! my children, what is it you ask of me! How can I choose!” exclaimed the old man, clasping his hands. “You are both dear to me; I would have you both fight for the king and win a crown of glory. If you fall fighting in defence of God and his altars, yours will be the crown of the martyrs. Which is most pure at heart, strongest in faith, most worthy to serve in the cause of God? He alone can tell!”

“François! François!” cried many voices in chorus, and the people gathered round the poor man’s friend, and blessed him, and bid him joy of being chosen for the good fight.

“So be it!” said the curé; and

François knelt down, and the curé laid both hands upon his head and blessed him.

Marie was a silent and unnoticed spectator of the scene. She was still on her knees, clasping the altar-rails with both hands so tightly that the strain left them white and bloodless. François waited till the crowd had followed M. le Curé out of the church, and it was empty except of the two, and then he went close up to Marie and knelt down beside her. He did not speak, and she did not look at him, but she knew that it was François.

“Marie!” he said, and laid his hand on her arm.

Then she turned and looked into his eyes, and these two knew that they loved each other.

“If I fall, you will remember me, Marie, and pray for me,” said François, taking her hand in both his.

“Yes.”

“And, Marie, if I return—”

“We will come to this same spot and bless God together, François.”

“You will wait for me a year and a day?”

“I will wait for you to the end of my life.”

They sent up one last prayer in silence, then kissed each other and parted.

As François left the church he met Gaston, who was seeking him in great concern everywhere. The brothers walked home arm-in-arm, discoursing with full hearts of this sudden and solemn parting. When they entered the cottage, François went straight to his room, and came out with a small deal box in his hand.

“Frère,” he said, “I have not much to trouble about in the way of property, but what I have you will keep for me. My savings are nothing to speak of, seven hundred francs in all; here is the box. I should not

have had even that sum but for the sale of the cattle at Easter. Do the best you can for me with it; lay it out in stock or grain—whatever brings most as times go. The sheep were the best investment the last two fairs; I wish I had done more in that line; but I was never overwise with my money, and this will thrive better in your hands than in mine, frère; only I would rather you didn’t let it lie out long at a time, as you do with your own; gather it in soon after a good stroke, and let it grow till it’s a good sum; it’s not safe in these days to leave one’s money floating in any business.”

Gaston’s astonishment had grown to stupefaction by the time his brother brought this speech to an end. What did it mean, this sudden desire to make money and let it accumulate? François had all his life been as careless of louis-d’or as of carrots or apples, and gave them away as readily for the asking; and now that he was about to face the cannon, and stood a strong chance of never needing them again, he was smitten with an insane desire to have them increase and multiply. Though Gaston said nothing, François read this wonder in his eyes.

“Don’t think I’ve put my heart in the money,” he said, laying a hand on Gaston’s shoulder, and looking wistfully into his face; “I’d hand it to you for your own, to do as you liked with it, if I were alone in the world; but I’m not, frère. I’ve another to think of now.”

He drew away his hand, and averted his face quickly, but Gaston saw his lip quiver, and the drops gather in his brave, truthful eyes. He saw it all at a glance, and followed the recruit’s figure, as it disappeared again into his room, with an expression on his face that it was better for both François did not see; if he had

looked at his brother then he would have read a secret that would have pierced his heart like a sword. Gaston stood staring after him as if he had been turned to stone, his features fierce and hard-set, the veins in his forehead swelling and throbbing, all his frame shaken by a vehement struggle. Gaston mastered it, his face relaxed, and he went in after François.

“Frère,” he said, “you may trust me,” and held out his hand to him.

François clasped it, but looking at his brother with a puzzled smile:

“Trust thee!” he repeated, “as if I needed thy pledge for that! Brother, I trust thee as I trust my soul.”

“And, frère, as Monsieur le Curé said just now, the best and purest are chosen for the sacrifice; if—”

“Vive Dieu et le Roi!” cried François, raising his cap. Then he was silent a moment before he said:

“If I fall, you will be a good brother to Marie, and do what you can to comfort her.”

“And the money, what shall I do with it?”

“Give it to her.”

The brothers embraced, and set out in search of M. le Curé. He blessed them all once more, and the brave young fellows fell into ranks with the soldiers, and marched off singing their battle-psalm, their hearts beating with high hope and faith and courage; while brave Vendéan mothers followed them out of the village, speeding them with blessings and cries of Vive Dieu et le Roi! It echoed through the gathering twilight with a strange, inspiring pathos. Quiet and darkness fell upon Chamtocé, the shadows died out of the silent church, the red flame of the sanctuary lamp rose and fell, flickering like a crimson pulse in the gloom,

and casting its halo on the bowed head of the Vendéan soldier’s fiancée.

PART SECOND.

François’s money multiplied with such unprecedented luck in Gaston’s keeping that the little deal box was soon too small to hold it. Gaston kept very little money of his own in hand, he let it float, as his brother said, but whatever he had was always in gold—he never took payment in anything else, and he followed the same plan for François. If it had been his own, he could not have put more zeal into the management of it; and it was with a sense of personal pride and success that at the end of a year he counted over François’s treasure, and found he had trebled the original sum. And Marie—how fared it with her? She was waiting in patience and hope and prayer till the time named by François as the furthest date of his return came and passed and brought no sign of him, and then her heart sank. She could not think that he would leave her in such cruel ignorance of his fate if he were still alive; but neither could she believe that he was dead. They would have heard of it somehow. Bad news travels quickly at all times, and even in those days of terror, when postal arrangements were broken up, and it was at the risk of his head that a messenger carried a letter, news came from the most distant points to out-of-the-way villages in a way that was almost miraculous. Les bleus were everywhere, ubiquitous, stealthy, vindictive, but they could not cut off communication between the Royalists. Fresh recruits started from Chamtocé, and wounds and deaths and noble exploits were chronicled from the distant camp or

battle-field, but not a word came over the hilly plains of La Vendée to tell of the fate of François Léonval. Two years went by, and still the silence was unbroken. Then one morning Gaston dressed himself with unwonted care, and went to the presbytery. He found M. le Curé alone. They sat some time together, and when the young man rose to take his leave, the curé said:

“You will meet her probably on the way home. Plead your own cause, my boy; I have done what I could for you; you have my best blessing if you can persuade Marie.”

Gaston met her and pleaded. But not successfully. “François said a year and a day, and after that, if you did not hear, you might be sure he had gone before us,” urged Gaston, choosing the word that would fall less harshly on his listener’s heart; “and now two years have passed and he has neither written nor sent. I do not ask you to forget him, or to cease to love him; we will both love him, and think of him always as dear brother, and he will be happier in heaven for seeing you happy here. Let me fulfil my promise to him that I would take care of you. Come home with me, Marie, and be my wife!”

“I promised that I would wait for him,” answered Marie, her dark eyes looking out toward the west with a gaze of patient longing as she walked on by Gaston’s side.

“A year and a day. You told me he said a year and a day.”

“He said it, but I put no limit to the time. I said I would wait to the end.”

“But he would not have it, Marie; he loved you too well to wish you to waste your life in solitude and vain hopes.”

But Marie shook her head and repeated:

“I promised I would wait for him.”

“And your uncle—does his wish count for nothing? You know that he has long since given up all hope, and that the thought of leaving you alone in the world is embittering his old age. ‘I am getting old,’ he said to me just now, ‘but the only thing that makes me dread death is this anxiety about my pauvre petite. Who will take care of her when I am gone?’ ‘I promised François I would, mon père,’ I said. ‘Then go and plead with her for yourself and for me,’ he replied, ‘that Marie may let you keep your promise.’”

They walked on in silence till they came to the gate of the presbytery, and Marie raised her face to Gaston’s and said:

“Wait one year more, Gaston, and then, if you still wish, come and tell me, and I will go home with you.”

“I have waited three years already, and I would wait as many more to win you,” answered the young man; and as he bent his face over hers—not a handsome face, but illuminated now by eyes that were liquid and beautiful with beseeching love—Marie thought that, since she must choose a home when her uncle was gone, she would rather share Gaston’s than any other, and that it might not be such a difficult thing to love him by-and-by.

That night, when Gervoise had gone to bed, and the place was quiet and all the bolts drawn, Gaston took out François’ money-bag and counted over the contents. It was a good round sum now. He built up the louis into little piles and reckoned them, and then poured them back into the bag; and the coins flashed like little suns in the dim light of his lantern; and Gaston feasted his eyes on them: he thrust his hand into the heap, and, gathering up a handful of

coins, let them drip down through his fingers one by one, listening to the pure ring of the metal as if it had been music, as indeed it was to him. Now that Marie had promised to be his wife, this gold which was hers would soon be his, and before the year was out it would be a still bigger heap. He had not told her or the curé that Francois had left any money in his charge, not from any idea of latent treachery to François—oh, no! Gaston was incapable of that; but it had been his dream ever since François had gone to win Marie and then settle this money on her, telling her, of course, whose gift it was. Partly from methodical habit, and partly from an unconfessed pleasure in the sight and touch of the gold, he had made a point of counting it all over after every fresh transaction, but from this night out he began to count it oftener. The fact that it was now to all intents and purposes his own added a new zest to the operation, and the prospect of it became by degrees the chief solace of his working hours, till at last he came to count it regularly every night and to long for the moment when he could lock his door and turn the flame of his lantern on the burning blaze of the gold.

The year came to an end. There was no news of François, and Gaston, being still of the same mind, claimed his promise, and Marie came home with him.

But seven months later François was tramping along through the snow on his way to Chamtocé, and now he is sitting before the pine-wood fire in Monsieur le Curé’s parlor. He had not asked for Marie, and the curé had not named her. The dumb entreaty of François’ eyes smote him to the heart, and he had not the courage to tell the pilgrim that the light which had lured him on through the

smoke of the battle, in the dreary watches of the bivouac, in the many miseries of his soldier life, was a mirage that had tempted him along the desert path, only to mock him when he neared it, and fade out of the sky like a false and fickle star. No; he had not the courage to tell him that Marie was his brother’s wife.

When the curé entered the cottage, he found Gaston sitting down to his dinner alone. Marie had gone to nurse a sick neighbor’s child. The curé was glad of her absence. It made his mission easier. “Mon garçon,” he said at once, “I bring news that will startle you, and I am thankful to be able to break it to you before Marie hears it. Your brother is come back.” The curé expected his announcement to startle Gaston, as he had said, but he was not prepared for the effect it produced. The young man stood bolt upright, looked at the curé with wild, scared eyes, and dropped again into his chair without uttering a word.

“Have you told him?” he gasped, after an interval of silence that the old priest felt himself incapable of breaking.

“No; her name was not mentioned by either of us.”

“Ha!” Gaston drew a breath of relief; “then perhaps—who knows? He may take it less to heart than we fear?”

“I don’t know. At his age, four years is a long absence; still we cannot tell. But at any rate, my son, you must come and give him a brother’s welcome, and do what a brother’s love can do to lighten the disappointment to him.”

He took Gaston’s arm, and they went out to the presbytery together.

The curé’s heart belied his words when he held out the hope that François’ love might not have borne unchanged the test of absence. He

knew the youth too well to believe it. And he was right.

The meeting between the brothers was quiet, but none the less terrible. The curé told François how it had all happened; how faithfully Marie had kept her troth, hoping long after he and Gaston had given up all hope; how at length he had urged her to listen to Gaston; and how, tardily and with a sad heart, she had yielded to both their entreaties. François heard him to the end, and then, in a voice of heart-rending gentleness, he said:

“It was my fault, frère; I do not blame thee. God’s will be done!”

He held out his hand, Gaston clasped it, and the brothers stood for a moment face to face in silence. Both were very, pale, but it was not François who was the paler of the two.

Gaston went home, and François watched his figure across the little garden and down the road till it disappeared like a blue speck on the white background, and then he fell upon the curé’s neck and sobbed like a woman.

Before many hours Chamtocé was on tiptoe with alarm and curiosity. A shepherd had arrived in haste with the news that one of the royalist captains had passed through Saumur in disguise, and been traced to Chapelle-aux-lys, whence les bleus were started in pursuit of him; there was a large price on his head; and les bleus were so enraged against him for his desperate exploits and for having baffled them so long, that they were resolved to show no quarter to the people that harbored him, and would set fire to the town rather than let him escape. An old cowherd who had been born and bred in the service of the Maulevriers had recognized François Léonvel on the road, and, guessing whither he was

bound, had sent a trusty messenger with a word of warning to Chamtocé.

Gaston was the only person, besides the curé and Victoire, who knew of his brother’s arrival so far, and when Gervoise came in with this news, which she caught from the village gossips on her way from evening prayers, his first impulse was to rush to the presbytery, and warn his brother to start at once, and seek some safer hiding-place. He went out quickly, but, as he had his hand on the wicket, he saw Marie coming towards the cottage. She was the last person he wished to meet just then, but he could not avoid her without exciting surprise in her mind, and perhaps suspicion. So he tarried till she came, wondering why she walked so slowly, as if she did not make sure he was waiting for her, or as if—as Gaston’s heart whispered to him—she would rather he went without speaking to her. Why? Was it possible the truth had come to her ears already? He could not believe it, still it was with a painful quickening of his pulse that he saw her at that leisurely pace.

“Were you waiting for me, Gaston?” she said simply.

“No. I am going in to Monsieur le Curé for a minute; I will be back presently. Are you not well, Marie?”

“Yes, mon ami, quite well, only tired and cold.”

She drew her shawl closer round her with a little shudder, and passed him and entered the cottage. Gaston’s heart leaped up as if an adder had stung it, and then sank as suddenly with a horrible faintness. He leaned against the snow-stuffed hedge and felt as if the very life were frozen within him. The blood rushed to his throat; he put his hand to his forehead as if a spasm of pain had stunned him; but soon rousing

himself from his absent attitude, he walked on to the presbytery. But he did not enter it. He did not see it, in fact. He walked on and on like a man in a dream, looking neither to the right nor the left, and when suddenly he remembered where he was, and whither he was bound, he had left the village more than a league behind him, and was standing on the sloping beach of St. Florent, under the shadow of its semicircular hills that look down upon the Loire, where the little islet of —— sits like a brooding swan midway in its waters. The night had fallen, but the moon was not yet up, and the darkness was only lightened by the snowy reflex of the landscape. A bank of cloud hung like a heavy curtain over the hill, and hid away the moon. Somehow Gaston was glad of the darkness. But it was in vain that he strove to make it dark within. No outer darkness could conceal from him the workings of his heart. He saw into its troubled depths as clearly as if a thousand moons had been shining in the purple vault above him. He saw the tempter busy with his fiercest instincts, and he saw what a base and miserable tool he was. Ay, but desperate as well as base. Much must be forgiven to a desperate man. Here was his whole life wrecked. His wife’s affection and trust—he felt it had not yet grown to love—was lost to him; his gold was lost to him—his precious, darling gold, that he had hugged to his heart till it grew to be a part of it, a second wife; and he must give it up just at a moment when he wanted it as he had never done before, and had laid out all his money, and had not a louis to ring on his hearthstone except this gold of François’. A curse upon the hour he took it! François would never ask it back—never accept it, most

likely, Gaston felt. But Marie would never consent to keep it. No, and she would grow to hate him in spite of herself for having come between her and François, and forced her to break her troth to him. His life, that was so bright and rich, how dark and wretched it had become within these last few hours! And was there no rescue from it all? Yes. He had only to speak a word, and he was saved. Let him start off now, before Marie knew of François’s return, and meet les bleus, and they would come quietly to the presbytery, and take him away in the night, and there would be an end of François for ever, and of the misery he was going to cause. Treachery? Bah! His was the treachery to come back after being as good as dead all this time. Was it a crime to have married Marie, when he left her three whole years without a word of love or a sign of existence? She was happy now, but if once she saw François she would never know happiness again. The sight of his misery would fill her heart with remorse, and break it. What right had François to go away at all when he knew that Marie loved him? It was no doing of Gaston’s that; he wanted to go in his stead. Would that he had! But now he was to be a ruined, blighted man to the end of his days. And to what purpose? To save François from being shot a little sooner than he might be; for so surely as he had a head on his shoulders, so surely would he have a bullet through it some day. No one would be the worse of his having it to-morrow instead of a month hence or a year, and two human beings would be considerably the better of it.

Gaston had flung himself on a snow-heap by the side of the river, his face buried in his arms, while he

worked out his wrongs and his despair to this conclusion. François must die. There was no other way out of it. Once he brought his mind to face this alternative and close with it, there was no time to be lost, and it would be dangerous to go over the ground again. He must act at once if he were to act at all. Gaston shook the snow from his arms, and sprang to his feet. But a change had come over the scene, and he could hardly realize that it was the same he had surveyed in the dim white darkness half an hour previously. The heavy bank of cloud had melted away; only one small patch remained, fringed with silvery rays that lighted up the sky like the glory of a tabernacle; all round it myriads of stars were twinkling in the liquid depths of blue, and gazing on their own brightness in the steel-blue mirror of the Loire, that trembled lightly as the golden shafts shot down through it and illuminated its cold, pure bosom like a second heaven. Presently, the moon came out, not “pale for weariness of climbing” the steep sky, but radiant and beautiful, and shone serenely in the clear December heaven, and all the world was bathed in silvery twilight. The solemnity of the scene thrilled through Gaston’s soul, and made his pulse beat with an unknown fear; but it was the ennobling fear with which nature inspires us in her sublimest aspects—the reverent awe that uplifts the soul, not the guilty terror that casts it down, paralyzing and debasing it.

His ghastly project cowered before him like a fiend dragged from outer darkness into the splendor of God’s sunshine. The divine beauty of the world without rebuked and annihilated the foulness of the world within. No base or treacherous thoughts could contemplate the purity

and glory of that starry splendor, and not perish. It drew the earth heavenward, and made all things grand and solemn. The meek, low hills grew mighty and majestic; they stretched their pure white peaks to kiss the stars, soaring high above the haunts of men, as if they scorned the earth, and would have naught in common with the pettiness, the guilt, and the folly that had their dwelling on the plain. The very silence had a voice in it more powerful than thunder. It rang with inarticulate harmonies through Gaston’s soul—mysterious, unuttered whisperings, as of angels hovering to and fro, brushing the crystal twilight with their wings.

And were there not angels near him in his hour of struggle? Did he not hear them pleading at his heart, touching his storm-tossed spirit with their loving, beseeching eyes, weeping, perhaps, over the impending ruin of his God-imaged soul? Surely, if angels ever weep, earth has no misery more worthy of their tears. And were they less powerful than the fallen spirits who were fighting against them for the noble prize, or did they love God’s human creature less than the fiends hate him?

Gaston called to mind the days long ago, when he was an innocent child, and prayed every night to his angel guardian before lying down to sleep, and believed that the beautiful benign spirit stood at the right side of his little cot, watching him while he slept. It was many a day since he had prayed, but now the words came back on him with a strange, impelling power, and played upon his heart like the notes of a long-forgotten melody. They rose to his lips, but he choked them down. He could not let them pass. Whom was he to speak to—an angel? There was a gulf between the Judas that

he was to-day and the unsullied little child who used to breathe that prayer in an angel’s ear.

Gaston felt the scene was subduing his soul to a dangerous softness, and unnerving him for his purpose. What a fool he was to stand there moon-gazing! He turned his back on the river and the hills, and strode homeward at a rapid pace. He tried to sing, but his voice jarred like a discord on the holy silence, and he checked himself. It was near ten when he re-entered the village. Every house was closed and quiet, but not asleep. This was Christmas eve. The children were put to bed with many a promise that they should be called for midnight Mass, but most of the elders were watching, saying their rosaries, or singing cantiques in family groups while awaiting the summons of the bell to gather round the crib of the new-born King. Gaston saw the lights gleaming from many windows, and wished them out. He had no mind to be seen prowling alone in the snow at this time of night, and on such a night, so he crept on stealthily under the shadow of the cottages, till he came to his own gate. He dreaded meeting Marie, and having to answer her questions as to why he had been out so long. But perhaps she would ask no questions. Was she really so pale when he met her that time, or was it his terrified fancy? Anyhow, she could not know yet for certain that François was here, whatever fears or hopes—yes, Gaston must use the word—the gossip that had reached her ears may have suggested. But on entering the bright, spacious kitchen where the table was spread for supper, all its pewter and delft glancing in the light of the pine-logs that blazed merrily in the broad chimney, he saw no one but old Gervoise, sitting bolt upright in her high-backed

chair in the chimney-corner, and nodding significantly at the knitting that lay on her knees. The noise he made drawing a stool to the fire awoke her. He asked where her mistress was, and Gervoise told him that Marie had come in for a few minutes and then gone out again, and that they were not to expect her home that night, as the child was worse. He was glad of her absence; yet it frightened him. Was it a pretext—was she shrinking from him, afraid or loath to meet him! At any rate, it changed his intention of starting at once; he decided that he would wait till all the village was up and astir for midnight Mass, and then he would slip off and ride hard, so as to reach Chapelle-aux-lys and be back again before daylight and Marie’s return. He said he did not care to eat anything, and went up to his room. He locked himself in, lighted his lantern, and pulled out the fatal money-bag; he felt he must strengthen himself by the sight of the gold, and count over his treasure once more, to make sure it was worth the price he was going to pay for it. This done, he flung himself undressed on the bed, and, worn out by the conflict of the last few hours, was soon sound asleep. But he had not been asleep long before he was aroused by a long knocking at his door, and a rough voice demanded admittance. Gaston sprang to his feet.

“Who’s there?” he said.

“Les bleus. Open in the name of the republic!” and the speaker dealt a blow on the door that nearly broke it in.

Gaston opened without further parley, and six men entered the room.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“We want one François Léonval who is concealed in this house. Tell us where to find him and we will go,

and do you no harm; but if you try to shirk it—” The man swore a brutal oath, and pointed his pistol at Gaston’s head.

But Gaston Léonval had a Vendéan’s spirit withal. It was not to dastardly personal cowardice that he would betray his brother; he felt the cold touch of the muzzle on his forehead, and, quietly pushing it aside, he told the man he might search the house, and he wished him joy if he found what he was looking for. “We had better begin by the outhouses and the garden,” said the one who seemed to take the lead; “two of you stay inside to prevent any tricks, while we are outside.” And he left the room, followed by all but one soldier, who remained to mount guard over Gaston.

But a safer and stronger sentinel was keeping watch by the wretched brother, urging him with terrible power and show of reason to say the word that would free him for ever. Only an hour ago, he was resolved to run great risks to say it, and now he had only to make a sign, and run no risk whatever, and he could not bring himself to do it. Confound that moonshine! It had made a woman of him. He went to the window and looked down into the garden to watch the proceedings of the soldiers. Then he heard them searching the rooms below, banging doors and overturning everything, and presently the officer came up-stairs again.

“Hearken, mon garçon, it’s no use trying to play hide-and-seek with les bleus,” he said, “you won’t find it answer. Now, once for all, where is this François Léonval?”

“I tell you he’s not here,” replied Gaston doggedly; “if he was, you would find him.”

“Most likely, if we had time to lose hammering at the walls and

hunting up the chimneys; but les bleus have a more expeditious way of going to work. When we can’t bag our game, we fire it. So walk out, and we will set a light to the house and make a little Christmas bonfire for you. If he’s a coward, he’ll soon cry merci! If he’s a brave man, why he’ll go out in a blaze, and that’s as good a death as another. So here goes, give me the light!”

He seized the lantern, took out the socket, and deliberately advanced towards the bed.

“Hold!” cried Gaston, clutching his outstretched arm; “the man you are in search of is not here; he is at the presbytery.”

The bleu laid down the light.

“Stay here,” he said to the soldier who had remained in the room; “we will whistle for you when it’s time to join us.”

He descended the stairs quickly, and Gaston heard the door close, and saw the five figures disappear down the road. After that he seemed to fall into a sort of stupor, and stood without moving hand or foot, staring stolidly out of the window, while the soldier waited in silence for the promised signal. It came at last, wounding the silence like the hiss of a snake, and Gaston knew that his brother was in the hands of the torturers.

No sooner was he alone than a legion of demons seemed to people the room, filling it with hideous forms and voices, mocking and scoffing, and asking him what he had done with his brother. He stamped in rage, and dashed his hands through his hair, and began to walk rapidly up and down. But the spectres kept pace with him, grinning and hooting and repeating with maddening iteration: “What have you done with your brother?”

“What had he done with him?”

cried Gaston aloud—“why, only what François would have done with himself sooner or later. And was he to let his house be burnt down and his gold melted to postpone the day perhaps for twenty-four hours? Pshaw! what an idiot he was to take on so about it. It was all that whistle that set his nerves on an edge. Why did it keep on hissing and hissing? The bleus and their capture were half a mile out of ear-shot by this. Fate had been good to Gaston, and served him much better than he could have served himself. It had taken the matter out of his hands, and he had been no more than a passive agent in its grasp, in the grasp of law and might—ay, and right too. When François came back like a simpleton and thrust his head into the lion’s mouth, what could he expect but that it would close on him and crunch him? It was over now. Marie would never hear of his return and need never curse the day she gave her hand to Gaston, and Gaston might sleep in peace, and without being haunted by terrors of his brother’s return.” Thus did he argue with the fiend and strive to beat him off, and stifle remorse that had entered his soul, and was gnawing at him with fierce, relentless tooth. But it would not do. Across the legion of fiends there flitted visions of the past, that he could not shut his eyes to, struggle as he would. First, there rose before him a curly-headed little brother whose small arms were round Gaston’s neck, clasping him as they lay in a little cot beside their mother, breathing softly in sweet child slumber; then he beheld a frank, bright boy kneeling with him beside that mother’s death-bed, while she blessed them and promised to meet them in heaven. Then the boy was a youth who stood with his hand on Gaston’s shoulder, and looked

into his eyes, and said: “Brother, I trust thee as I trust my soul!” This faded away, and he saw the same youth bronzed and war-worn, and betrayed in his manly trust, but still holding out his hand to Gaston, and saying with the well-remembered voice, now husky with the strong man’s agony: “I do not blame thee, brother; God’s will be done!” Slowly but vividly the visions rose before Gaston’s soul, and he could not but look on them, and, as he looked, sweet memories of his childhood rushed upon him like a torrent and bore him down; his boasted courage was gone, his pride, his love, his gold melted away like false phantoms, and he was alone with his sin and his despair. He remembered François’ noble unselfishness, his truth, his grateful love of their common mother, his reverence for her lightest wish; he remembered his many acts of kindness to the poor and the suffering, and how he had seen him followed by blessings from the old and young whom his generosity had helped and comforted; and oh! bitterest of all was the memory of their parting, when François gave him his little hoard in trust, and bid him take care of Marie. And this was the brother he had sold! O God! It was all too horrible to be true. Gaston seized the bag of gold, rushed from the house and into the stable, and, without waiting to saddle her, leaped on his mare’s back, and dashed off in pursuit of les bleus. They were only six, and he had gold enough to buy them if he only came in time. The mare flew as if she knew what hung on her speed, dashing up the snow that spattered her flanks and enveloped her rider in a moving cloud as they galloped along. The moon was still magnificent, and the stars shone down with the same calm splendor—the patient, far-away stars

that 1793 years ago rang out the glad tidings to the watchers on the hills of Judea: Glory to God! Peace to men! Gaston, as he flew past the scene of his recent struggle, felt a chill of supernatural terror freeze him to the marrow of his bones. The stars stooped down till they seemed to touch him, and pierce him with needles of fire; the hills, the stern, uncompromising hills, shook their pale brows at him, and turned and ran with him through the waste of snow; and above them, from the battlements of heaven, rang out a myriad voices in ecstatic song: Glory to God! Peace to men! But ever and anon, breaking the high harmony of that song, came a shriek as of a mocking fiend: “What hast thou done with thy brother?”

The mare took a longer stride and put out her strength with a sudden increase of vehemence as they came to a turn in the road where it crossed the river and rounded the base of the hills. Gaston’s heart leaped up to his throat, as he caught the hammering of hoofs ahead. Thank heaven! he was in time. The horsemen came in sight. They slackened their speed, nay, they were dismounting now. Out in the open road with no shelter of any sort in sight? What did it mean? The mare strode on. A few more pulls, and she would be up with them. Gaston could distinguish the trim figures of the soldiers and François’s loose peasant dress. But now he lost sight of them; they had moved behind a hedge. Only for a moment. The six slim figures emerged from the snowy foreground, and six muskets gleamed horizontal in the moonlight.

“Hold! in the name of heaven, hold!” shrieked Gaston.

He flung down the bag, that burst and sent the gold rippling on the ground—but it was too late; there

was a rattle, and flash followed flash, as he sprang from his horse and rushed between the murderers and his brother. François lay prostrate, writhing in the snow, that his blood was turning to crimson. Their eyes met for one moment, and then François’ closed for ever. Gaston fell on the body with a cry that was like the shriek of a condemned soul; and then he felt a hand on his arm.

“There are the midnight bells sounding,” said old Gervoise, in a querulous voice. “I have been calling to you through the door these ten minutes, and you wouldn’t awake. I thought you were dead, so I got my own key and opened it.”

Gaston, dazed and terror-stricken, and doubting still whether he was dreaming or waking, started up, and told Gervoise not to wait for him, that he would follow her in a minute. Then he fell upon his knees, and prayed as a soul might do who had passed the gate “where hope enters not,” and been snatched back from the dark abyss.

“It was a vision to save me from the crime of Cain. Blessed be the mercy that has rescued me!”

He lighted a candle, opened a drawer in which he kept some writing materials, and sat down with a pen in his hand. He hid his face in his hands, and his lips moved convulsively in prayer for a moment, and then he began to write. It was not long. He did not read the letter over, but sealed it with a broad red seal, and then, with that strange force of habit that asserts itself so unaccountably in moments of supreme emotion, he carefully replaced the pen and paper in the drawer. After this he laid the letter on the table in the middle of the room, and, taking his coat and cap, sallied out into the night.

The Christmas bells were ringing

out their welcome to the new-born King, tripping in silver-footed chime on the midnight silence, grave and merry, full of glad pathos and exulting hope, and forebodings solemn and tender. And the hymns and anthems of the villagers answered their call and swelled the chorus of the chimes; but the voice of a noble sacrifice that went up from Gaston’s heart mingled in diviner harmony with the pure joy-jargon of the bells. He entered the church, but, instead of going up to his accustomed seat, he stood near the door, half concealed by the angel holding the bénitier. He saw the stream of familiar faces flow in and take their places, and then turn with eager expectation toward the sacristy. The well-trained voices of the choir, unsustained by harp or organ, intoned the glorious hymn, Adeste Fidelis, and old and young answered in loud-voiced chorus: Venite adoremus, Venite in Bethlehem! The altar was wreathed with lights and flowers, every pillar and picture-frame sparkled with the red-berried holly; the little lowly crib with its suggestive imagery glowed with crimson lamps; and before it the loving prayer of simple hearts made a fitting welcome for the Child that was born in poverty, and first worshipped by shepherds. As midnight struck, the door of the sacristy opened, and Monsieur le Curé in his grandest vestments came forth; but before the door had closed again, Gaston caught sight of a figure kneeling furtively behind it. He gave one long look at the golden door of the tabernacle, signed himself with the sign of the cross, and slipped out of the church.

Early on Christmas morning, a horseman rode in from Chapelle-aux-lys with a letter for M. le Curé! It was signed Loison, soldat de la République; and its purport was to inform

him that one François Léonval, who had born arms for nearly four years against the republic, and taken refuge the day before at Chamtocé, whither the soldiers of the republic were bound in pursuit of him, had, in order to prevent the shedding of innocent blood, left his native village in the night, and of his own free will given himself up to justice. He had died like a soldier, worthy of a better cause, and had begged the writer to bear his last words to the curé of Chamtocé, which were that he was happy to give his life for God and the king; and he prayed a blessing on his brother, and Marie his sister-in-law, and begged them and the curé to be mindful of him in their prayers. He fell crying Vive Dieu et le Roi! which treasonable words had been enough to shoot him again if he were alive; but being dead, the writer, who respected a brave man, though he was a traitor, conveyed them in fulfilment of his promise to François Léonval.

Soon after this event the Reign of Terror came to an end. The fertile fields of La Vendée smoked once more under the furrowing ploughshare, and peace and plenty smiled upon the land. Absent ones returned to gladden many hearts, and to tell the story of their short and wonderful campaign, and brought back glory-laden banners, tattered and blood-stained, to hang in the village church, as trophies

of Vendéan valor, to show future sons of La Vendée how their fathers had fought the good fight. Once more there was marrying and giving in marriage, and toil and prosperity reigned in Chamtocé.

When the winter snows had twice melted off the hills, and the snowdrops peeped up under the grimy hedges, like white-robed little choristers singing their glad good-by to the winter, and the lusty young spring had laid his emerald finger on the earth, the bells rang out their full, exhilarating peal, and a gay procession wound its way to the church, where Monsieur le Curé in his surplice and stole awaited the bridal train. His voice shook, and big drops rolled down his aged cheeks, as he laid his hand on the two bowed heads and called down the blessing of the God of Abraham on Marie and François Léonval. This was his last ministration. He tarried long enough to bless the marriage of his two best-loved children, and then he went home. They laid him to rest beside a humble grave that was always freshly decked with flowers. It bore a white stone cross and a marble slab, on which it was recorded that François Léonval in life was a brother with a noble heart, and in death a martyr who had died for a noble cause, and that, like his Master, “having loved his own, he loved them to the end.”