The Catholic World, Vol. 15, Nos. 85-90, April 1872-September 1872 / A Monthly Magazine

by Various

NOTE.

The Mission Establishments of California.—The plan of the early missionaries in Florida and New Mexico had been to form the converts into villages near the Spanish settlements, in which they were trained to the usages of civilized life. In the numerous Christian villages thus spread over the country, all civil functions were exercised by the chiefs, the missionaries confining themselves to those of a spiritual nature only. The progress of the Indians under this system was slower than was desirable, and experience led to an improvement in the manner of conducting the missions that were subsequently established in New Mexico and California. In the latter, the missionary went in the first place attended by a small guard, with a colony of Indian converts, herds of cattle, and a plentiful supply of agricultural and other implements. Chiefly through the converted Indians, the surrounding natives were drawn to the mission. The next step was to proceed to the erection of the mission building, a rectangular structure eighty or ninety yards square, with a court-yard in the centre, which was adorned with trees and fountains. The church and the pastor’s residence occupied one side, and galleries surrounded the court, opening upon the rooms of the missionaries, stewards, and travellers, the shops, schools, store-rooms, infirmaries, and the granary.

A part of the buildings entirely separated from the rest, and called the monastery, was reserved for the Indian girls, where they were taught by native women to spin and weave, and received such other instruction as was suited to their sex. The boys learned trades, and those who excelled were promoted to the rank of chiefs, thus giving a dignity to labor which impelled all to embrace it. Once in the mission, the native was instructed in Christianity, and constrained to labor. Many of the missionaries being skilled in mechanical art, the Indians were formed to every trade, and the surplus products of their industry were exported yearly in exchange for necessary European goods. The Indians were apportioned into sections, each under a chief who led his party to church or to labor, and who was not backward in enforcing promptness. Against this the Indian at first rebelled: but, as all his wants were satisfied, he soon became attached to his manner of life, and would draw others of his countrymen in, whom he easily persuaded to submit to the routine.

Many learned Spanish thoroughly, and all acquired a knowledge of the Christian religion, which they faithfully practised. Thus they gained two great benefits—peace and comfort in this life, and means of attaining happiness in the next. Those who visited the missions were amazed to see that with such petty resources—most frequently without the aid of white mechanics—the missionaries accomplished so much, not only in agriculture, but in architecture and mechanics; in mills, machines, bridges, roads, and canals for irrigation; and accomplished it all by transforming hostile and indolent savages into laborious carpenters, masons, coopers, saddlers, shoemakers, weavers, stone-cutters, brickmakers, and lime-burners. Around the mission building arose the houses of the Indians and of a few white settlers; at various distances were ranches or hamlets, each with its chapel. In a little building near the mission-house was a picket of five horsemen, who were at once soldiers and couriers.

The regulations of the mission were uniform. At daybreak, the Angelus summoned all to the church for prayers and Mass, after which they went to breakfast. Then all joined their respective bands, and proceeded to their regular labors. At eleven, they returned to dine, and rested till two, when labor recommenced, and continued until the ringing of the Angelus bell, an hour before sunset. After prayers and beads, they supped, and spent the evening in innocent amusements. Their food was the fresh beef and mutton plentifully supplied by their herds and flocks, cakes of wheat and Indian corn, peas, beans, and such vegetables as they chose to raise. The missionaries themselves, bound by vows of poverty, received only food and clothing. The Indians of a mission were not all of the same tribe, but perfect harmony prevailed, and when the season of work was over, many paid visits to their countrymen, and seldom returned alone. Sometimes a zealous Christian would visit his own tribe as an apostle, to announce the happiness which was attainable under the mild rule of the Gospel. In this way the missions constantly received new accessions, for the good missionaries had the art of making labor attractive. All the men and women in the mission were, moreover, well and completely dressed.

It will be seen that this discipline was strict, and the Spanish government, at the time of the forcible withdrawal of the Jesuits, wished to bring odium upon them in connection with this system of administration of their origination. The Franciscans, however, who succeeded the Jesuits, continued the method of their predecessors, convinced of its expediency. An attempt on the part of the government to alter it, in the establishment of a mission near the mouth of the Colorado, on its own principles, a few years after the expulsion of the Jesuits, only resulted in cruel outrages upon the Indians by those who were placed in the temporal administration in lieu of the Franciscans. These outrages provoked rebellion, and led to the massacre of the civil functionaries, and of the religious as well. The government did not repeat the experiment.

Forbes, the author of a work on California, after commending the labors of the California Jesuits, says of their successors, “The best and most unequivocal proof of the good conduct of the Franciscan fathers is to be found in the unbounded affection and devotion invariably shown towards them by their Indian subjects. They venerate them not merely as friends and fathers, but with a degree of devotedness approaching to adoration.” He adds, “Experience has shown how infinitely more successful the Catholic missionaries have been than the Protestant.” These and many other testimonies from unprejudiced sources might be given to show the state of happiness in which the Indians formerly lived. An American traveller, Bartlett, who in 1854 visited the mission of San Gabriel, to which at one time five thousand Indians were attached, says, “Humanity cannot refrain from wishing that the dilapidated mission of San Gabriel should be renovated and its broken walls be rebuilt, its roofless houses be covered, and its deserted halls be again filled with its ancient industrious, happy, and contented population.”

Two classes of persons, therefore—as Marshal remarks in his History of Catholic Missions—“have been instrumental in the irreparable injury inflicted on the Indian tribes: Mexicans who had forfeited their birthright as Catholics, and Protestants who had never possessed it. Affecting to follow the precedents of modern European policy, of which the chief maxim seems to be the exclusion of all ecclesiastical influence in the government of human society, the Mexican civil authorities resolved to secularize all the missions. The result has been as in every land where the same experiment has been tried, a swift relapse into barbarism, from which the church alone has saved the world, the immediate decay of material prosperity, and a vast augmentation of human suffering.

“History might have taught the Mexicans to anticipate these inevitable fruits. When England laid her hand on the possessions of the church, which had been for centuries the patrimony of the poor, she took her first step towards her present social condition. Prisons and workhouses became the dismal substitutes for monasteries, and jailers supplanted monks. England has not profited much by the change. The new institutions are at least ten times more costly than the old, and the benefits derived from them have been in inverse proportion. They now receive only prisoners, and disgorge only criminals; while a whole nation of heathen poor, a burden on the present resources of the country and a menace for her future destiny, have sunk down, as even English writers will tell us, to the level of the most degraded tribes of Africa or America, and are as utterly void of religion or of the knowledge of God as the Sioux, the Carib, or the Dahoman.”

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THE PROGRESSIONISTS.
FROM THE GERMAN OF CONRAD VON BOLANDEN.

CHAPTER IV.
HANS SHUND.

Hans Shund returned home from business in high feather. Something unusual must have happened him, for his behavior was exceptional. Standing before his desk, he mechanically drew various papers from his pockets, and laid them in different drawers and pigeon-holes. The mechanical manner of his behavior was what was exceptional, for usually Hans Shund bestowed particular attention upon certain papers; his soul’s life was in those papers. Moreover, on the present occasion, he kept shaking his head as if astonishment would not suffer him to remain quiet. Yet habitually Hans Shund never shook his head, for that proceeding betrays interior emotion, and Shund’s neck was as hardened and stiff as his usurer’s soul. The other exceptional feature of his behavior was a continuous growling, which at length waxed into a genuine soliloquy. But Hans Shund was never known to talk to himself, for talking to one’s self indicates a kindly disposition, whilst Shund had no disposition whatever, as they maintain who knew him; or, if he had ever had one, it had smouldered into a hard, impenetrable crust of slag.

“Strange—remarkably strange!” said he. “Hem! what can it mean? How am I to account for it? Has the usurer undergone a transformation during the night?” And a hideous grin distorted his face. “Am I metamorphosed, am I enchanted, or am I myself an enchanter? Unaccountable, marvellous, unheard of!”

The papers had been locked up in the desk. A secret power urged him up and down the room, and finally into the adjoining sitting-room, where Mrs. Shund, a pale, careworn lady, sat near a sewing-stand, intent on her lonely occupation.

“Wife, queer things have befallen me. Only think, all the city notables have raised their hats to your humble servant, and have saluted me in a friendly, almost an obsequious manner. And this has happened to me to-day—to me, the hated and despised usurer! Isn’t that quite amazing? Even the city regent, Schwefel’s son, took off his hat, and bowed as if I were some live grandee. How do you explain that prodigy?”

The careworn woman kept on sewing without raising her head.

“Why don’t you answer me, wife? Don’t you find that most astonishing?”

“I am incapable of being astonished, since grief and care have so filled my heart that no room is left in it for feelings of any other kind.”

“Well, well! what is up again?” asked he, with curiosity.

She drew a letter written in a female hand from one of the drawers of the sewing-stand.

“Read this, villain!”

Hastily snatching the letter, he began to read.

“Hem,” growled he indifferently. “The drab complains of being neglected, of not getting any money from me. That should not be a cause of rage for you, I should think. The drab is brazen enough to write to you to reveal my weaknesses, all with the amicable intention of getting up a thundergust in our matrimonial heaven. Do learn sense, wife, and stop noticing my secret enjoyments.”

“Fie, villain. Fie upon you, shameless wretch!” cried she, trembling in every limb.

“Listen to me, wife! Above all things, let us not have a scene, an unnecessary row,” interrupted he. “You know how fruitless are your censures. Don’t pester me with your stale lectures on morals.”

“Nearly every month I get a letter of that sort written in the most disreputable purlieus of the town, and addressed to my husband. It is revolting! Am I to keep silent, shameless man—I, your wedded wife? Am I to be silent in presence of such infamous deeds?”

“Rather too pathetic, wife! Save your breath. Don’t grieve at the liberties which I take. Try and accustom yourself to pay as little attention to my conduct as I bestow upon yours. When years ago I entered the contract with you vulgarly denominated marriage, I did it with the understanding that I was uniting myself to a subject that was willing to share with me a life free from restraints; I mean, a life free from the odor of so-called hereditary moral considerations and of religious restrictions. Accustom yourself to this view of the matter, rise to my level, enjoy an emancipated existence.”

He spoke and left the room. In his office he read the letter over.

“This creature is insatiable!” murmured he to himself. “I shall have to turn her off and enter into less expensive connections. I am talking with myself to-day—queer, very queer!”

A heavy knock was heard at the door.

“Come in!”

A man and woman scantily clad entered the room. The sight of the wretched couple brought a fierce passion into the usurer’s countenance. He seemed suddenly transformed into a tiger, bloodthirstily crouching to seize his prey.

“What is the matter, Holt?”

“Mr. Shund,” began the man in a dejected tone, “the officer of the law has served the writ upon us: it is to take effect in ten days.”

“That is, unless you make payment,” interrupted Shund.

“We are not able to pay just now, Mr. Shund, it is impossible. I wished therefore to entreat you very earnestly to have patience with us poor people.”

The woman seconded her husband’s petition by weeping bitterly, wringing her hands piteously. The usurer shook his head relentlessly.

“Patience, patience, you say. For eight years I have been using patience with you; my patience is exhausted now. There must be limits to everything. There is a limit to patience also. I insist upon your paying.”

“Consider, Mr. Shund, I am the father Of eight children. If you insist on payment now and permit the law to take its course, you will ruin a family of ten persons. Surely your conscience will not permit you to do this?”

“Conscience! What do you mean? Do not trouble me with your nonsense. For me, conscience means to have; for you, it means you must. Therefore, pay.”

“Mr. Shund, you know it is yourself that have reduced us to this wretched condition!”

“You don’t say I did! How so?”

“May I remind you, Mr. Shund, may I remind you of all the circumstances by which this was brought about? How it happened that from a man of means I have been brought to poverty?”

“Go on, dearest Holt—go on; it will be interesting to me!” The usurer settled himself comfortably to hear the summary of his successful villanies from the mouth of the unfortunate man with the same satisfaction with which a tiger regales itself on the tortures of its victim.

“Nine years ago, Mr. Shund, I was not in debt, as you know. I labored and supported my family honestly, without any extraordinary exertion. A field was for sale next to my field at the Rothenbush. You came at the time—it is now upwards of eight years, and said in a friendly way, ‘Holt, my good man, buy that field. It lies next to yours, and you ought not to let the chance slip.’ I wanted the field, but had no money. This I told you. You encouraged me, saying, ‘Holt, my good man, I will let you have the money—on interest, of course; for I am a man doing business, and I make my living off my money. I will never push you for the amount. You may pay it whenever and in what way you wish. Suit yourself.’ You gave me this encouragement at the time. You loaned me nine hundred and fifty florins—in the note, however, you wrote one thousand and fifty, and, besides, at five per cent. For three years I paid interest on one thousand and fifty, although you had loaned me only nine hundred and fifty. All of a sudden—I was just in trouble at the time, for one of my draught-cattle had been crippled, and the harvest had turned out poorly, you came and demanded your money. I had none. ‘I am sorry,’ said you, ‘I need my money, and could put it out at much higher interest.’ I begged and begged. You threatened to sue me. Finally, after much begging, you proposed that I should sell you the field, for which three years previous I had paid nine hundred and fifty florins, for seven hundred florins, alleging that land was no longer as valuable as it had been. You were willing to rent me the field at a high rate. And to enable me to get along, you offered to lend me another thousand, but drew up a note for eleven hundred florins at ten per cent., because, as you pretended, money was now bringing ten per cent. since the law regulating interest had been abrogated. For a long while I objected to the proposal, but found myself forced at last to yield because you threatened to attach my effects. From this time I began to go downhill, I could no longer meet expenses, my family was large, and I had to work for you to pay up the interest and rent. But for some time back I had been unable to do as I wished. I could not even sell any of my own property; for you were holding me fast, and I was obliged to mortgage everything to you for a merely nominal price. My cottage, my barn, my garden, and the field in front of my house—worth at least two thousand florins—I had to give you a mortgage upon for one thousand. The rest of my immovable property, fields and meadows, you took. Nothing was left to me but the little hut and what adjoined it. With respects, Mr. Shund, you had long since sucked the very marrow from my bones, next you put the rope about my neck, and now you are about to hang me.”

“Hang you? Ha-ha! That’s good, Holt! You are in fine humor,” cried the usurer, after hearing with a relish the simple account of his atrocious deeds. “I have no hankering for your neck. Pay up, Holt, pay up, that is all I want. Pay me over the trifle of a thousand florins and the interest, and the house with everything pertaining to it shall be yours. But if you cannot pay up, it will have to be sold at auction, so that I may get my money.”

“For heaven’s sake, Mr. Shund, be merciful,” entreated the wife. “We have saved up the interest with much trouble; every farthing of it you are to receive. For God’s sake, do not drive us from our home, Mr. Shund, we will gladly toil for you day and night. Take pity, Mr. Shund, do take pity on my poor children!”

“Stop your whining. Pay up, money alone has any value in my estimation—pay, all the rest is fudge. Pay up!”

“God knows, Mr. Shund,” sobbed the woman, wringing her hands, “I would give my heart’s blood to keep my poor children out of misery—with my life I would be willing to pay you. Oh! do have some commiseration, do be merciful! Almighty God will requite you for it.”

“Almighty God, nonsense! Don’t mention such stuff to me. Stupid palaver like that might go down with some bigoted fool, but it will not affect a man of enlightenment. Pay up, and there’s an end of it!”

“Is it your determination then, Mr. Shund, to cast us out mercilessly under the open sky?” inquired the countryman with deep earnestness.

“I only want what belongs to me. Pay over the thousand florins with the interest, and we shall be quits. That’s my position, you may go.”

In feeling words the woman once more appealed to Hans Shund. He remained indifferent to her pleading, and smiled scornfully whenever she adduced religious considerations to support her petition. Suddenly Holt took her by the arm and drew her towards the door.

“Say no more, wife, say no more, but come away. You could more easily soften stones than a man who has no conscience and does not believe in God.”

“There you have spoken the truth,” sneered Shund.

“You sneer, Mr. Shund,” and the man’s eyes glared. “Do you know to whom you owe it that your head is not broken?”

“What sort of language is that?”

“It is the language of a father driven to despair. I tell you”—and the countryman raised his clenched fists—“it is to the good God that you are indebted for you life; for, if I believed as little in an almighty and just God as you, with this pair of strong hands I would wring your neck. Yes, stare at me! With these hands I would strangle Shund, who has brought want upon my children and misery upon me. Come away, wife, come away. He is resolved to reduce us to beggary as he has done to so many others. Do your worst, Mr. Shund, but there above we shall have a reckoning with each other.”

He dragged his wife out of the room, and went away without saluting, but casting a terrible scowl back upon Hans Shund.

For a long while the usurer sat thoughtfully, impressed by the ominous scowl and threat, which were not empty ones, for rage and despair swept like a rack over the man’s countenance. Mr. Shund felt distinctly that but for the God of Christians he would have been murdered by the infuriated man. He discovered, moreover, that religious belief is to be recommended as a safeguard against the fury of the mob. On the other hand, he found this belief repugnant to a usurer’s conscience and a hindrance to the free enjoyment of life. Hans Shund thus sat making reflections on religion, and endeavoring to drown the echo which Holt’s summons before the supreme tribunal had awakened in a secret recess of his soul, when hasty steps resounded from the front yard and the door was suddenly burst open. Hans’ agent rushed in breathless, sank upon the nearest chair, and, opening his mouth widely, gasped for breath.

“What is the matter, Braun?” inquired Shund in surprise. “What has happened?”

Braun flung his arms about, rolled his eyes wildly, and labored to get breath, like a person that is being smothered.

“Get your breath, you fool!” growled the usurer. “What business had you running like a maniac? Something very extraordinary must be the matter, is it not?”

Braun assented with violent nodding.

“Anything terrible?” asked he further.

More nodding from Braun. The usurer began to feel uneasy. Many a nefarious deed stuck to his hands, but not one that had not been committed with all possible caution and secured against any afterclaps of the law. Yet might he not for once have been off his guard? “What has been detected? Speak!” urged the conscience-stricken villain anxiously.

“Mr. Shund, you are to be—in this place—”

“Arrested?” suggested the other, appalled, as the agent’s breath failed him again.

“No—mayor!”

Shund straightened himself, and raised his hands to feel his ears.

“I am surely in possession of my hearing! Are you gone mad, fellow?”

“Mr. Shund, you are to be mayor and member of the legislature. It is a settled fact!”

“Indeed, ’tis quite a settled fact that you have lost your wits. It is a pity, poor devil! You once were useful, now you are insane; quite a loss for me! Where am I to get another bloodhound as good as you? Your scent was keen, you drove many a nice bit of game into my nets. Hem—so many instances of insanity in these enlightened times of ours are really something peculiar. Braun, dearest Braun, have you really lost your mind entirely? Completely deranged?”

“I am not insane, Mr. Shund. I have been assured from various sources that you are to be elected mayor and delegate to the legislative assembly.”

“Well, then, various persons have been running a rig upon you.”

“Running a rig upon me, Mr. Shund? Bamboozle me—me who understand and have practised bamboozling others for so long?”

“Still, I maintain that people have been playing off a hoax on you—and what an outrageous hoax it is, too!”

“I believe a hoax? Just listen to me. I have never been more clear-headed than I am to-day. Acquaintances and strangers in different quarters of the town have assured me that it is a fixed fact that you are to be mayor of this city and member of the legislative assembly. Now, were it a hoax, would you not have to presuppose that both acquaintances and strangers conspired to make a fool of me? Yet such a supposition is most improbable.”

“Your reasoning is correct, Braun. Still, such a conspiracy must really have been gotten up. I mayor of this city? I? Reflect for an instant, Braun. You know what an enviable reputation I bear throughout the city. Many persons would go a hundred paces out of their direction to avoid me, specially they who owe or have owed me anything. Moreover, who appoints the mayor? The men who give the keynote, the leaders of the town. Now, these men would consider themselves defiled by the slightest contact with the outlawed usurer—which, of course, is very unjust and inconsistent on the part of those gentlemen—for my views are the same as theirs.”

“Spite of all that, I put faith in the report, Mr. Shund. Schwefel’s bookkeeper also, when I met him, smiled significantly, and even raised his hat.”

“Hold on, Braun, hold! The deuce—it just now occurs to me—you might not be so much mistaken after all. Strange things have happened to me also. Gentlemen who are intimate with our city magnates have saluted me and nodded to me quite confidentially. I was unable to solve this riddle, now it’s clear. Braun, you are right, your information is perfectly true.” And Mr. Shund rubbed his hands.

“Don’t forget, Mr. Shund, that I first brought you the astounding intelligence, the joyful tidings, the information on which the very best sort of speculations may be based.”

“You shall be recompensed, Braun! Go over to the sign of the Bear, and drink a bottle of the best, and I will pay for it.”

“At a thaler a bottle?”

“That quality isn’t good for the health, my dear fellow! You may drink a bottle at forty-eight kreutzers on my credit. But no—I don’t wish to occasion you an injury, nor do I wish to see you disgraced. You shall not acquire the name of a toper in my employ. You may therefore call for a pint glass at twelve kreutzers a glass. Go, now, and leave me to myself.”

When the agent was gone, Hans Shund rushed about the room as if out of his mind.

“Don’t tell me that miracles no longer occur!” cried he. “I, the discharged treasurer—I, the thief, usurer, and profligate, at the mere sight of whom every young miss and respectable lady turn up their noses a thousand paces off—I am chosen to be mayor and assemblyman! How has this come to pass? Where lie the secret springs of this astonishing event?” And he laid his finger against his nose in a brown study. “Here it is—yes, here! The thinkers of progress have at length discovered that a man who from small beginnings has risen to an independent fortune, whose shrewdness and energy have amassed enormous sums, ought to be placed at the head of the city administration in order to convert the tide of public debt into a tide of prosperity. Yes, herein lies the secret. Nor are the gentlemen entirely mistaken. There are ways and means of making plus out of minus, of converting stones into money. But the gentlemen have taken the liberty of disposing of me without my previous knowledge and consent. I have not even been asked. Quite natural, of course. Who asks a dog for permission to stroke him? This is, I own, an unpleasant aftertaste. Hem, suppose I were too proud to accept, suppose I wanted to bestow my abilities and energies on my own personal interests. Come, now, old Hans, don’t be sensitive! Pride, self-respect, character, sense of honor, and such things are valuable only when they bring emolument. Now, the mayor of a great city has it in his power to direct many a measure eminently to his own interest.”

Another knock was heard at the door, and the usurer, taken by surprise, saw before him the leader Erdblatt.

“Have you been informed of a fact that is very flattering to you?” began the tobacco manufacturer.

“Not the slightest intimation of a fact of that nature has reached me,” answered Shund with reserve.

“Then I am very happy to be the first to give you the news,” assured Erdblatt. “It has been decided to promote you at the next election to the office of mayor and of delegate to the legislative assembly.”

A malignant smile flitted athwart Shund’s face. He shook his sandy head in feigned astonishment, and fixed upon the other a look that was the next thing to a sneer.

“There are almost as many marvels in your announcement as words. You speak of a decision and of a fact which, however, without my humble co-operation, are hardly practicable. I thought all along that the disposition of my person belonged to myself. How could anything be resolved upon or become a fact in which I myself happen to have the casting vote?”

“Your cordial correspondence with the flattering intention of your fellow-citizens was presumed upon; moreover, you were to be agreeably surprised,” explained the progressionist leader.

“That, sir, was a very violent presumption! I am a free citizen, and am at liberty to dispose of my time and faculties as I please. In the capacity of mayor, I should find myself trammelled and no longer independent on account of the office. Moreover, a weighty responsibility would then rest upon my shoulders, especially in the present deplorable circumstances of the administration. Could I prevail on myself to accept the proffered situation, it would become my duty to attempt a thorough reform in the thoughtless and extravagant management of city affairs. You certainly cannot fail to perceive that a reformer in this department would be the aim of dangerous machinations. And lastly, sir, why is it that I individually have been selected for appointments which are universally regarded as honorable distinctions in public life? I repeat, why are they to be conferred upon me in particular who cannot flatter myself with enjoying very high favor among the people of this city?” And there glistened something like revengeful triumph in Shund’s feline eyes. “When you will have given a satisfactory solution to these reflections and questions, it may become possible for me to think of assenting to your proposal.”

Erdblatt had not anticipated a reception of this nature, and for a moment he sat nonplussed.

“I ask your pardon, Mr. Shund, you have taken the words fact and decision in too positive a sense. What is a decided fact is that the leaders of progress assign the honorable positions mentioned to you. Of course it rests with you to accept or decline them. The motive of our decision was, if you will pardon my candor, your distinguished talent for economizing. It is plain to us that a man of your abilities and thorough knowledge of local circumstances could by prudent management and, by eliminating unnecessary expenditure, do much towards relieving the deplorable condition of the city budget. We thought, moreover, that your well-known philanthropy would not refuse the sacrifices of personal exertion and unremitting activity for the public good. Finally, as regards the disrespect to which you have alluded, I assure you I knew nothing of it. The stupid and mad rabble may perhaps have cast stones at you, but can or will you hold respectable men responsible for their deeds? Progress has ever proudly counted you in its ranks. We have always found you living according to the principles of progress, despising the impotent yelping of a religiously besotted mob. Be pleased to consider the tendered honors as amends for the insults of intolerant fanatics in this city.”

“Your explanation, sir, is satisfactory. I shall accept. I am particularly pleased to know that my conduct and principles are in perfect accord with the spirit of progress. I am touched by the flattering recognition of my greatly misconstrued position.”

The leader bowed graciously.

“There now remains for me the pleasant duty,” said he, “of requesting you to honor with your presence a meeting of influential men who are to assemble this evening in Mr. Schwefel’s drawing-room. Particulars are to be discussed there. The ultramontanes and democrats are turbulent beyond all anticipation. We shall have to proceed with the greatest caution about the delegate elections.”

“I shall be there without fail, sir! Now that I have made up my mind to devote my experience to the interests of city and state, I cheerfully enter into every measure which it lies in my power to further.”

“As you are out for the first time as candidate for the assembly,” said Erdblatt, “a declaration of your political creed addressed to a meeting of the constituents would not fail of a good effect.”

“Agreed, sir! I shall take pleasure in making known my views in a public speech.”

Erdblatt rose, and Mr. Hans Shund was condescending enough to reach the mighty chieftain his hand as the latter took his leave.

CHAPTER V.
ELECTIONEERING.

The four millions of the balcony are at present standing before two suits of male apparel of the kind worn by the working class, contemplating them with an interest one would scarcely expect from millionaires in materials of so ordinary a quality. Spread out on the elegant and costly table cover are two blouses of striped gray at fifteen kreutzers a yard. There are, besides, two pairs of trowsers of a texture well adapted to the temperature of the month of July. There are also two neckties, sold at fairs for six kreutzers apiece. And, lastly, two cheap caps with long broad peaks. These suits were intended to serve as disguises for Seraphin and Carl on this evening, for the banker did not consider it becoming gentlemen to visit electioneering meetings, dressed in a costume in which they might be recognized. As Greifmann’s face was familiar to every street-boy, he had provided himself with a false beard of sandy hue to complete his incognito. For Seraphin this last adjunct was unnecessary, for he was a stranger, and he was thus left free to exhibit his innocent countenance unmasked for the gratification of curious starers.

“This will be a pleasant change from the monotony of a banking house existence,” said the banker gleefully. “I enjoy this masquerade: it enables me to mingle without constraint among the unconstrained. You are going to see marvellous things to-night, friend Seraphin. If your organs of hearing are not very sound, I advise you to provide yourself with some cotton, so that the drums of your ears may not be endangered from the noise of the election skirmish.”

“Your caution is far from inspiring confidence,” said Louise with some humor. “I charge it upon your soul that you bring back Mr. Gerlach safe and sound, for I too am responsible for our guest.”

“And I, it seems, am less near to you than the guest, for you feel no anxiety about me,” said the brother archly.

“Eight o’clock—it is our time.”

He pulled the bell. A servant carried off the suits to the gentlemen’s rooms.

“May I beseech the men in blouses for the honor of a visit before they go?”

“You shall have an opportunity to admire us,” said Carl. The transformation of the young men was more rapidly effected than the self-satisfied mustering of Louise before the large mirror which reflected her elegant form entire. She laughingly welcomed her brother in his sandy beard, and fixed a look of surprise upon Seraphin, whose innocent person appeared to great advantage in the simple costume.

“Impossible to recognize you,” decided the young lady. “You, brother Redbeard, look for all the world like a cattle dealer.”

“The gracious lady has hit it exactly,” said the banker with an assumed voice. “I am a horse jockey, bent on euchreing this young gentleman out of a splendid pair of horses.”

“Friend Seraphin is most lovely,” said she in an undertone. “How well the country costume becomes him!” And her sparkling eyes darted expressive glances at the subject of her compliments.

For the first time she had called him friend, and the word friend made him more happy than titles and honors that a prince might have bestowed. He felt his soul kindle at the sight of the lovely being whose delicate and bewitching coquetry the inexperienced youth failed to detect, but the influence of which he was surely undergoing. His cheeks glowed still more highly, and he became uneasy and embarrassed.

“Your indulgent criticism is encouraging, Miss Louise,” replied he.

“I have merely told the truth,” replied she.

“But our hands—what are we to do with our hands?” interposed Carl. “Soft white hands like these do not belong to drovers. First of all, away with diamonds and rubies. Gold rings and precious stones are not in keeping with blouses. Nor will it do, in hot weather like this, to bring gloves to our aid—that’s too bad! What are we to do?”

“Nobody will notice our hands,” thought Seraphin.

“My good fellow, you do not understand the situation. We are on the eve of the election. Everybody is out electioneering. Whoever to-day visits a public place must expect to be hailed by a thousand eyes, stared at, criticised, estimated, appraised, and weighed. The deuce take these hands! Good advice would really be worth something in this instance.”

“To a powerful imagination like your own,” added Louise playfully. She disappeared for a moment and then returned with a washbowl. Pouring the contents of her inkstand into the water, she laughingly pointed them to the dark mass.

“Dip your precious hands in here, and you will make them correspond with your blouses in color and appearance.”

“How ingenious she is!” cried Carl, following her direction.

“Most assuredly nothing comes up to the ingenuity of women. We are beautifully tattooed, our hands are horrible! We must give the stuff time to dry. Had I only thought of it sooner, Louise, you should have accompanied us disguised as a drover’s daughter, and have drunk a bumper of wine with us. The adventure might have proved useful to you, and served as an addition to the sum of your experiences in life.”

“I will content myself with looking on from a distance,” answered she gaily. “The extraordinary progressionist movement that is going on to-day might make it a difficult task even for a drover’s daughter to keep her footing.”

The two millionaires sallied forth, Carl making tremendous strides. Seraphin followed mechanically, the potent charm of her parting glances hovering around him.

“We shall first steer for the sign of the ‘Green Hat,’” said Greifmann. “There you will hear a full orchestra of progressionist music, especially trumpets and drums, playing flourishes on Hans Shund. ‘The Green Hat’ is the largest beer cellar in the town, and the proprietor ranks among the leaders next after housebuilder Sand. All the representatives of the city régime gather to-day at the establishment of Mr. Belladonna—that’s the name of the gentleman of the ‘Green Hat.’ Besides the leaders, there will be upward of a thousand citizens, big and small, to hold a preliminary celebration of election day. There will also be ‘wild men’ on hand,” proceeded Carl, explaining. “These are citizens who in a manner float about like atoms in the bright atmosphere of the times without being incorporated in any brilliant body of progress. The main object of the leaders this evening is to secure these so-called ‘wild men’ in favor of their ticket for the city council. Glib-tongued agents will be employed to spread their nets to catch the floating atoms—to tame these savages by means of smart witticisms. When, at length, a prize is captured and the tide of favorable votes runs high, it is towed into the safe haven of agreement with the majority. Resistance would turn out a serious matter for a mechanic, trader, shopkeeper, or any man whose position condemns him to obtain his livelihood from others. Opposition to progress dooms every man that is in a dependent condition to certain ruin. For these reasons I have no misgivings about being able to convince you that elections are a folly wherever the banner of progress waves triumphant.”

“The conviction with which you threaten me would be anything but gratifying, for I abhor every form of terrorism,” rejoined Seraphin.

“Very well, my good fellow! But we must accustom ourselves to take things as they are and not as they ought to be. Therefore, my youthful Telemachus, you are under everlasting obligations to me, your experienced Mentor, for procuring you an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the world, and constraining you to think less well of men than your generous heart would incline you to do.”

They had reached the outskirts of the city. A distant roaring, resembling the sound of shallow waters falling, struck upon the ears of the maskers. The noise grew more distinct as they advanced, and finally swelled into the brawling and hum of many voices. Passing through a wide gate-way, the millionaires entered a square ornamented with maple-trees. Under the trees, stretching away into the distance, were long rows of tables lit up by gaslights, and densely crowded with men drinking beer and talking noisily. The middle of the square was occupied by a rotunda elevated on columns, with a zinc roof, and bestuck in the barbarous taste of the age with a profusion of tin figures and plaster-of-paris ornaments. Beneath the rotunda, around a circular table, sat the leaders and chieftains of progress, conspicuous to all, and with a flood of light from numerous large gas-burners streaming upon them. Between Sand and Schwefel was throned Hans Shund, extravagantly dressed, and proving by his manner that he was quite at his ease. Nothing in his deportment indicated that he had so suddenly risen from general contempt to universal homage. Mr. Shund frequently monopolized the conversation, and, when this was the case, the company listened to his sententious words with breathless attention and many marks of approbation.

Mentor Greifmann conducted his ward to a retired corner, into which the rays of light, intercepted by low branches, penetrated but faintly, and from which a good view of the whole scene could be enjoyed.

“Do you observe Hans there under the baldachin surrounded by his vassals?” rouned Carl into his companion’s ear. “Even you will be made to feel that progress can lay claim to a touching spirit of magnanimity and forgiveness. It is disposed to raise the degraded from the dust. The man who only yesterday was engaged in shoving a car, sweeping streets, or even worse, to-day may preside over the great council, provided only he has the luck to secure the good graces of the princes of progress. Hans Shund, thief, usurer, and nightwalker, is a most striking illustration of my assertion.”

“What particularly disgusts and incenses me,” replied the double millionaire gravely, “is that, under the régime of progress, they who are degraded, immoral, and criminal, may rise to power without any reformation of conduct and principles.”

“What you say is so much philosophy, my dear fellow, and philosophy is an antique, obsolete kind of thing that has no weight in times when continents are being cut asunder and threads of iron laid around the globe. Moreover, such has ever been the state of things. In the dark ages, also, criminals attained to power. Just think of those bloody monarchs who trifled with human heads, and whose ministers, for the sake of a patch of territory, stirred up horrible wars. Compared with such monsters, Hans Shund is spotless innocence.”

“Quite right, sir,” rejoined the landholder, with a smile. “Those bloody kings and their satanic ministers were monsters—but only—and I beg you to mark this well—only when judged by principles which modern progress sneers at as stupid morality and senseless dogma. I even find that those princely monsters and their conscienceless ministers shared the species of enlightenment that prides itself on repudiating all positive religion and moral obligations.”

“Thunder and lightning, Seraphin! were not you sitting bodily before me, I should believe I was actually listening to a Jesuit. But be quiet! It will not do to attract notice. Ah! splendid. There you see some of the ‘wild men,’” continued he, pointing to a table opposite. “The fellow with the bald head and fox’s face is an agent, a salaried bellwether, a polished electioneer. He has the ‘wild men’ already half-tamed. Watch how cleverly he will decoy them into the progressionist camp. Let us listen to what he has to say; it will amuse you, and add to your knowledge of the developments of progress.”

“We want men for the city council,” spoke he of the bald head, “that are accurately and thoroughly informed upon the condition and circumstances of the city. Of what use would blockheads be but to fuss and grope about blindly? What need have we of fellows whose stupidity would compromise the public welfare? The men we want in our city council must understand what measures the social, commercial, and industrial interests of a city of thirty thousand inhabitants require in order that the greatest good of the largest portion of the community may be secured. Nor is this enough,” proceeded he with increasing enthusiasm. “Besides knowledge, experience, and judgment, they must also be gifted with the necessary amount of energy to carry out whatever orders the council has thought fit to pass. They must be resolute enough to break down every obstacle that stands in the way of the public good. Now, who are the men to render these services? None but independent men who by their position need have no regard to others placed above them—free-spirited and sensible men, who have a heart for the people. Now, gentlemen, have you any objections to urge against my views?”

“None, Mr. Spitzkopf! Your views are perfectly sound,” lauded a semi-barbarian. “We have read exactly what you have been telling us in the evening paper.”

“Of course, of course!” cried Mr. Spitzkopf. “My views are so evidently correct that a thinking man cannot help stumbling upon them. None but the slaves of priests, the wily brood of Jesuits, refuse to accept these views,” thundered the orator with the bald head. “And why do they refuse to accept them? Because they are hostile to enlightenment, opposed to the common good, opposed to the prosperity of mankind, in a word, because they are the bitter enemies of progress. But take my word for it, gentlemen, our city contains but a small number of these creatures of darkness, and those few are spotted,” emphasized he threateningly. “Therefore, gentlemen,” proceeded he insinuatingly, “I am convinced, and every man of intelligence shares my conviction, that Mr. Shund is eminently fitted for the city council—eminently! He would be a splendid acquisition in behalf of the public interests! He understands our local concerns thoroughly, possesses the experience of many years, is conversant with business, knows what industrial pursuits and social life require, and, what is better still, he maintains an independent standing to which he unites a rare degree of activity. Were it possible to prevail on Mr. Shund to take upon himself the cares of the mayoralty, the deficit of the city treasury would soon be wiped out. We would all have reason to consider ourselves fortunate in seeing the interests of our city confided to such a man.”

The “wild men” looked perplexed.

“Right enough, Mr. Spitzkopf,” explained a timid coppersmith. “Shund is a clever, well-informed man. Nobody denies this. But do you know that it is a question whether, besides his clever head, he also possesses a conscience in behalf of the commonwealth?”

“The most enlarged sort of a conscience, gentlemen—the warmest kind of a heart!” exclaimed the bald man in a convincing tone. “Don’t listen to stories that circulate concerning Shund. There is not a word of truth in them. They are sheer misconstructions—inventions of the priests and of their helots.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Spitzkopf, they are not all inventions,” opposed the coppersmith. “In the street where I live, Shund keeps up a certain connection that would not be proper for any decent person, not to say for a married man.”

“And does that scandalize you?” exclaimed the bald-headed agent merrily. “Mr. Shund is a jovial fellow, he enjoys life, and is rich. Mr. Shund will not permit religious rigorism to put restraints upon his enjoyments. His liberal and independent spirit scorns to lead a miserable existence under the rod of priestly bigotry. And, mark ye, gentlemen, this is just what recommends him to all who are not priest-ridden or leagued with the hirelings of Rome,” concluded the electioneer, casting a sharp look upon the coppersmith.

“But I am a Lutheran, Mr. Spitzkopf,” protested the coppersmith.

“There are hypocrites among the Lutherans who are even worse than the Romish Jesuits,” retorted the man with the bald head. “Consider, gentlemen, that the leading men of our city have, in consideration of his abilities, concluded to place Mr. Shund in the position which he ought to occupy. Are you going, on to-morrow, to vote against the decision of the leading men? Are you actually going to make yourselves guilty of such an absurdity? You may, of course, if you wish, for every citizen is free to do as he pleases. But the men of influence are also at liberty to do as they please. I will explain my meaning more fully. You, gentlemen, are, all of you, mechanics—shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, carpenters, etc. From whom do you get your living? Do you get it from the handful of hypocrites and men of darkness? No; you get your living from the liberals, for they are the moneyed men, the men of power and authority. It is they who scatter money among the people. You obtain employment, you get bread and meat, from the liberals. And now to whom, do you think, will the liberals give employment? They will give it to such as hold their views, and not—mark my word—to such as are opposed to them. The man, therefore, that is prepared recklessly to ruin his business has only to vote against Mr. Shund.”

“That will do the business, that will fetch them,” said Greifmann. “Just look how dumfounded the poor savages appear!”

“It is brutal terrorism!” protested Seraphin indignantly.

“But don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Spitzkopf! I am neither a hypocritical devotee nor a Jesuit!” exclaimed the coppersmith deprecatingly. “If Shund is good enough for them,” pointing to the leaders under the rotunda, “he is good enough for me.”

“For me, too!” exclaimed a tailor.

“There isn’t a worthier man than Shund,” declared a shopkeeper.

“And not a cleverer,” said a carpenter.

“And none more demoralized,” lauded a joiner, unconscious of the import of his encomium.

“That’s so, and therefore I am satisfied with him,” assured a shoemaker.

“So am I—so am I,” chorussed the others eagerly.

“That is sensible, gentlemen,” approved the bald man. “Just keep in harmony with liberalism and progress, and you will never be the worse for it, gentlemen. Above all, beware of reaction—do not fall back into the immoral morasses of the middle ages. Let us guard the light and liberty of our beautiful age. Vote for these men,” and he produced a package of printed tickets, “and you will enjoy the delightful consciousness of having disposed of your vote in the interests of the common good.”

Spitzkopf distributed the tickets on which were the names of the councilmen elect. At the head of the list appeared in large characters the name of Mr. Hans Shund.

“The curtain falls, the farce is ended,” said Greifmann. “What you have here heard and seen has been repeated at every table where ‘wild men’ chanced to make their appearance. Everywhere the same arguments, the same grounds of conviction.”

Seraphin had become quite grave, and cast his eyes to the ground in silence.

“By Jove, the rogue is going to try his hand on us!” said Carl, nudging the thoughtful young man. “The bald-headed fellow has spied us, and is getting ready to bag a couple of what he takes to be ‘wild men.’ Come, let us be off.”

They left the beer cellar and took the direction of the city.

“Now let us descend a little lower, to what I might call the amphibia of society,” said Greifmann. “We are going to visit a place where masons, sawyers, cobblers, laborers, and other small fry are in the habit of slaking their thirst. You will there find going on the same sort of electioneering, or, as you call it, the same sort of terrorism, only in a rougher style. There beer-jugs occasionally go flying about, and bloody heads and rough-and-tumble, fights may be witnessed.”

“I have no stomach for fisticuffs and whizzing beer-mugs,” said Gerlach.

“Never mind, come along. I have undertaken to initiate you into the mysteries of elections, and you are to get a correct idea of the life action of a cultivated state.”

They entered an obscure alley where a fetid, sultry atmosphere assailed them. Greifmann stopped before a lofty house, and pointed to a transparency on which a brimming beer-tankard was represented. A wild tumult was audible through the windows, through which the cry of “Shund!” rose at times like the swell of a great wave from the midst of corrupted waters. As they were passing the doorway a dense fog of tobacco smoke mingled with divers filthy odors assailed their nostrils. Seraphin, who was accustomed to inhaling the pure atmosphere of the country, showed an inclination to retreat, and had already half-way faced about when his companion seized and held him. “Courage, my friend! wade into the slough boldly,” cried he into the struggling youth’s ear. “Hereafter, when you will be riding through woodland and meadows, the recollection of this subterranean den will enable you to appreciate the pure atmosphere of the country twice as well. Look at those sodden faces and swollen heads. Those fellows are literally wallowing and seething in beer, and they feel as comfortable as ten thousand cannibals. It is really a joy to be among men who are natural.”

The millionaires, having with no little difficulty succeeded in finding seats, were accosted by a female waiter.

“Do the gentlemen wish to have election beer?”

“No,” replied Gerlach.

His abrupt tone in declining excited the surprise of the fellows who sat next to them. Several of them stared at the landholder.

“So you don’t want any election beer?” cried a fellow who was pretty well fired.

“Why not? May be it isn’t good enough for you?”

“Oh, yes! oh, yes!” replied the banker hastily. “You see, Mr. Shund”—

“That’s good! You call me Shund,” interrupted the fellow with a coarse laugh. “My name isn’t Shund—my name is Koenig—yes, Koenig—with all due respect to you.”

“Well, Mr. Koenig—you see, Mr. Koenig, we decline drinking election beer because we are not entitled to it—we do not belong to this place.”

“Ah, yes—well, that’s honest!” lauded Koenig. “Being that you are a couple of honest fellows, you must partake of some of the good things of our feast. I say, Kate,” cried he to the female waiter, “bring these gentlemen some of the election sausages.”

Greifmann, perceiving that Seraphin was about putting in a protest, nudged him.

“What feast are you celebrating to-day?” inquired the banker.

“That I will explain to you. We are to have an election here to-morrow; these men on the ticket, you see, are to be elected.” And he drew forth one of Spitzkopf’s tickets. “Every one of us has received a ticket like this, and we are all going to vote according to the ticket—of course, you know, we don’t do it for nothing. To-day and to-morrow, what we eat and drink is free of charge. And if Satan’s own grandmother were on the ticket, I would vote for her.”

“The first one on the list is Mr. Hans Shund. What sort of a man is he?” asked Seraphin. “No doubt he is the most honorable and most respectable man in the place!”

“Ha! ha! that’s funny! The most honorable man in the place! Really you make me laugh. Never mind, however, I don’t mean to be impolite. You are a stranger hereabout, and cannot, of course, be expected to know anything of it. Shund, you see, was formerly—that, is a couple of days ago—Shund was a man of whom nobody knew any good. For my part, I wouldn’t just like to be sticking in Shund’s hide. Well, that’s the way things are: you know it won’t do to babble it all just as it is. But you understand me. To make a long story short, since day before yesterday Shund is the honestest man in the world. Our men of money have made him that, you know,” giving a sly wink. “What the men of money do, is well done, of course, for the proverb says, ‘Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.’”

“Shut your mouth, Koenig! What stuff is that you are talking there?” said another fellow roughly. “Hans Shund is a free-spirited, clever, first-class, distinguished man. Taken altogether, he is a liberal man. For this reason he will be elected councilman to-morrow, then mayor of the city, and finally member of the assembly.”

“That’s so, that’s so, my partner is right,” confirmed Koenig. “But listen, Flachsen, you will agree that formerly—you know, formerly—he was an arrant scoundrel.”

“Why was he? Why?” inquired Flachsen.

“Why? Ha, ha! I say, Flachsen, go to Shund’s wife, she can tell you best. Go to those whom he has reduced to beggary, for instance, to Holt over there. They all can tell you what Shund is, or rather what he has been. But don’t get mad, brother Flachsen! Spite of all that, I shall vote for Shund. That’s settled.” And he poured the contents of his beer-pot down his throat.

“As you gentlemen are strangers, I will undertake to explain this business for you,” said Flachsen, who evidently was an agent for the lower classes, and who did his best to put on an appearance of learning by affecting high-sounding words of foreign origin.

“Shund is quite a rational man, learned and full of intelligence. But the priests have calumniated him horribly because he will not howl with them. For this reason we intend to elect him, not for the sake of the free beer. When Shund will have been elected, a system of economy will be inaugurated, taxes will be removed, and the encyclical letter with which the Pope has tried to stultify the people, together with the syllabus, will be sent to the dogs. And in the legislative assembly the liberal-minded Shund will manage to have the priests excluded from the schools, and we will have none but secular schools. In short, the dismal rule of the priesthood that would like to keep the people in leading-strings will be put an end to, and liberal views will control our affairs. As for Shund’s doings outside of legitimate wedlock, that is one of the boons of liberty—it is a right of humanity; and when Koenig lets loose against Shund’s money speculations, he is only talking so much bigoted nonsense.”

Flachsen’s apologetic discourse was interrupted by a row that took place at the next table. There sat a victim of Shund’s usury, the land-cultivator Holt. He drank no beer, but wine, to dispel gloomy thoughts and the temptations of desperation. It had cost him no ordinary struggle to listen quietly to eulogies passed on Shund. He had maintained silence, and had at times smiled a very peculiar smile. His bruised heart must have suffered a fearful contraction as he heard men sounding the praises of a wretch whom he knew to be wicked and devoid of conscience. For a long time he succeeded in restraining himself. But the wine he had drunk at last fanned his smouldering passion into a hot flame of rage, and, clenching his fist, he struck the table violently.

“The fellow whom you extol is a scoundrel!” cried he.

“Who is a scoundrel?” roared several voices.

“Your man, your councilman, your mayor, is a scoundrel! Shund is a scoundrel!” cried the ruined countryman passionately.

“And you, Holt, are a fool!”

“You are drunk, Holt!”

“Holt is an ass,” maintained Flachsen. “He cannot read, otherwise he would have seen in the Evening Gazette that Shund is a man of honor, a friend of the people, a progressive man, a liberal man, a brilliant genius, a despiser of religion, a death-dealer to superstition, a—a—I don’t remember what all besides. Had you read all that in the evening paper, you fool, you wouldn’t presume to open your foul mouth against a man of honor like Hans Shund. Yes, stare; if you had read the evening paper, you would have seen the enumeration of the great qualities and deeds of Hans Shund in black and white.”

“The evening paper, indeed!” cried Holt contemptuously. “Does the evening paper also mention how Shund brought about the ruin of the father of a family of eight children?”

“What’s that you say, you dog?” yelled a furious fellow. “That’s a lie against Shund!”

“Easy, Graeulich, easy,” replied Holt to the last speaker, who was about to set upon him. “It is not a lie, for I am the man whom Shund has strangled with his usurer’s clutches. He has reduced me to beggary—me and my wife and my children.”

Graeulich lowered his fists, for Holt spoke so convincingly, and the anguish in his face appealed so touchingly, that the man’s fury was in an instant changed to sympathy. Holt had stood up. He related at length the wily and unscrupulous proceedings through which he had been brought to ruin. The company listened to his story, many nodded in token of sympathy, for everybody was acquainted with the ways of the hero of the day.

“That’s the way Shund has made a beggar of me,” concluded Holt. “And I am not the only one, you know it well. If, then, I call Shund a usurer, a scoundrel, a villain, you cannot help agreeing with me.”

Flachsen noticed with alarm that the feeling of the company was becoming hostile to his cause. He approached the table, where he was met by perplexed looks from his aids.

“Don’t you perceive,” cried he, “that Holt is a hireling of the priests? Will you permit yourselves to be imposed upon by this salaried slave? Hear me, you scapegrace, you rascal, you ass, listen to what I have to tell you! Hans Shund is the lion of the day—the greatest man of this century! Hans Shund is greater than Bismarck, sharper than Napoleon. Out of nothing God made the universe: from nothing Hans Shund has got to be a rich man. Shund has a mouthpiece that moves like a mill-wheel on which entire streams fall. In the assembly Shund will talk down all opposition. He will talk even better than that fellow Voelk, over in Bavaria, who is merely a lawyer, but talks upon everything, even things he knows nothing about. And do you, lousy beggar, presume to malign a man of this kind? If you open that filthy mouth of yours once more, I will stop it for you with paving-stones.”

“Hold, Flachsen, hold! I am not the man that is paid; you are the one that is paid,” retorted the countryman indignantly. “My mouth has not been honey-fed like yours. Nor do I drink your election beer or eat your election sausages. But with my last breath I will maintain that Shund is a scoundrel, a usurer, a villain.”

“Out with the fellow!” cried Flachsen. “He has insulted us all, for we have all been drinking election beer. Out with the helot of the priests!”

The progressionist mob fell upon the unhappy man, throttled him, beat him, and drove him into the street.

“Let us leave this den of cutthroats,” said Gerlach, rising.

Outside they found Holt leaning against a wall, wiping the blood from his face. Seraphin approached him. “Are you badly hurt, my good man?” asked he kindly. The wounded man, looking up, saw a noble countenance before him, and, whilst he continued to gaze hard at Seraphin’s fine features, tears began to roll from his eyes.

“O God! O God!” sighed he, and then relapsed into silence. But in the tone of his words could be noticed the terrible agony he was suffering.

“Is the wound deep—is it dangerous?” asked the young man.

“No, sir, no! The wound on my forehead is nothing—signifies nothing; but in here,” pointing to his breast—“in here are care, anxiety, despair. I am thankful, sir, for your sympathy; it is soothing. But you may go your way; the blows signify nothing.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

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THE SPANIARDS AT HOME.

There is something very pleasant in waking some morning in a strange country, with strange faces around us, a strange language ringing in our ears, strange costumes, strange institutions, strange everything—something, we fancy, half akin to what Byron felt when he woke one morning to find himself famous. It is pleasant to step from New York to Cadiz, from the heart of the New World into an historic city, that was as historic before our nation was born as it is to-day; that has not cared to march overmuch with the age, yet has never drifted backward, and still stands there, as it did long ago, the “white-walled Cadiz,” rising sheer out of the waters, with its long, straight streets and tall houses sleeping by the golden bay.

It is pleasant, we say, to find ourselves here breathing awhile from the heat of the strife that beats over there for ever and knows no rest; to open our eyes upon “something new and strange”; to miss for once the eternal stages and the rumble and the jingle of the cars, and the multiplicity of signs, and names, and glaring advertisements, crowding in upon us at all times and in all places.

It is not unpleasant even to miss our dames for awhile with their exaggeration of wealth and extravagance, resting our eyes instead on the modest black robes, nunlike in simplicity, crowned by the bewitching mantilla of the beauties whom Byron sang.

As you look into the street, the feeling grows upon you that you are gazing on a moving panorama pencilled by the old Spanish painters. There pass the blooming señorita, fresh as a rosebud, side by side with the duenna, yellow and puckered: how they resemble la Joven and la Vieja of Goya. That little beggar-boy, with those beautiful black eyes and a carnation in the olive cheek, sprawling in his picturesque rags on the pavement, is surely a brother to that of Murillo, so studiously engaged in performing an operation on his person more necessary than elegant. Here saunters a lazy soldier smoking his cigarette; there an old padre totters with bended head hidden under the large hat, snuff-box in hand, and an old calf-skin volume under his arm; he has just stepped out of his gilded frame. The trappings of the mules, the brown faces and merry eye of the muleteer, were known to us long ago on canvas. Nor are there wanting those pale ascetic countenances where religion, and intellect, and inspiration are so marvellously blended: you see them in the pulpit and on the altar, in the cloister and the convent walls. In our last article,[201] we ventured to assert that the Spaniards were the purest race in Europe; and not the meanest proof of the truth of this assertion might be furnished by their paintings. Those who pride themselves on the blue blood that runs in their veins have their galleries filled with portraits of the family, where you may trace the same lineaments handed down from sire to son for generations, which no change of time or costume can efface. The Spanish painters have furnished us with the portraits of their nation, and a beggar to-day might point with pride to his progenitor on the canvas of Murillo.

How different is the life here from ours!

There are only two meals, unless you choose to take what the Spaniards call “lonch.” On rising, the boy brings you your bath, and, if you care for it, as you are sure to do, a cup of coffee. If you have business to transact, you go to your office: if not, you take a book or a newspaper, and saunter into the garden, while the morning is fresh and a thousand delicious odors are around you. At half-past ten or eleven the household meet at breakfast, when you pay your respects to the “señorita,” the dear little lady, as the servants entitle your hostess, and inquire if she has passed the night well. The breakfast is similar to the French dejeuner: a variety of courses, with perhaps some delicious fruits, and a cup of cafe con leche at the end. While we are breakfasting, a friend or relative of the family may enter, and, as he sits and jokes, he produces his cigarette, ignites and smokes away as only a Spaniard can, with an ease and a grace and a thorough enjoyment that are enviable. This may startle our lady readers, but remember we are in Spain; the dining-room is spacious and lofty, the windows open, and the pure clear air flower-scented, or, if in season, loaded with the breath of the orange blossom, gains rather than loses by the transient odor so faintly discerned of the delicious Havana leaf. The breakfast ended, your host hands a cigar around to each of the gentlemen: the ladies remain to chat them out, and then everybody goes about his business. And here let us answer once for all a ridiculous question that has often been put to us. Ladies when speaking of their Spanish sisters are apt to say: “Oh! yes, I know they are very charming and graceful, and the mantilla is a love of a costume, and so becoming to a dark complexion; but tell me, now, is it not true that—they smoke?” The astonishment of a Spanish gentleman on being asked by every foreigner he meets if his wife and daughters—for to such the question really reduces itself—indulge in “the weed,” is just as great as our own would be on a similar query being put to us regarding our ladies.

We meet again at dinner at six or seven o’clock. Your host may possess a French cook—we beg his pardon—artiste; if not, you will have a Spanish dinner unflavored, since we must confess it, by the too fragrant garlic, which is confined to the mountaineers up in the Basque Provinces. You have some dishes cooked in oil, and it is so pure and good that you very soon get to like it. There is genuine “Vino de Jerez” on the table, undoctored for the market, clear as amber, ambrosial as nectar, delicious in bouquet and flavor. You will be astonished at the Spaniards taking so little of it; many never touch it at all. They prefer claret or pure water, the climate not admitting of stronger drinks. “Borracho,” drunkard, in Spain, as in most southern countries of Europe, is the vilest title you can give a man. There are splendid olives and rare fruits, preserved, or as they dropped from the hand of nature. More friends may call during dinner, ladies, perhaps, this time, and your hostess never disturbs herself with the thought that they have come to see what is on the table. “Señor don Rafael, beso a Usted la mano,” says the lady to her visitor—“I kiss my hand to you.” “Beso a Usted los pies, señorita,” responds the cavalier with a bow—“I kiss your feet, my dear lady.” Dinner over, cigars are again produced, and we all adjourn to the patio, it being too warm for music or cards. The elders assemble and discuss the funds, or times, or the state of the country. Politics are very rife at present, and the fire and animation of the speakers, the variation of their tones, the free and striking gesture—for with a Spaniard the whole body speaks—are a pleasing novelty to us, accustomed to a tamer mode of conversation. The ladies nestle together, and are deep in the mysteries best known to themselves. The younger gentlemen gradually detach themselves from their elders, and leave the country to go to ruin, while they indulge in less momentous but far more interesting topics with the ladies, and give vent to their Andalusian wit.

The patio is a feature in a Spanish house. It is a species of court, large or small, according to the dimensions of the mansion, paved with flags or marble, with perhaps a fountain playing in the middle and cooling the atmosphere; in the marble basin silver and gold fish leap, and a few rare plants freshen around it. High overhead is a roof of glass, where a canvas screen keeps out the sun when his rays are too powerful. The house, generally of two stories in the south, but very lofty, is built around this quadrangle, the upper floor reaching partly over it, supported by pillars, sometimes richly wrought and adorned. Paintings or engravings relieve the bare white walls. On the one side a doorway, with a little convent grating to peer from, completely shuts out the view of the street; on the other, an iron gate opens to the garden, where you see the yellowing oranges clustering bright in their dark-leaved recesses, and brilliant flowers and odor-bearing shrubs gladden the eye and soothe the senses. From the patio we proceed to the Alameda or paseo—park or promenade as we should call them. Here all the world assembles, seated in groups, sauntering up and down in little bands, small knots standing a little aloof to discuss some grave topic—nobody alone. Laughter resounds on all sides—laughter and the Castilian tongue everywhere: ringing out in music from the mouths of the dames, swelling and falling and adapting itself to every changing emotion in the very emotional breasts of those men, rippling over and enchanting our ears in the tiny mouths of these children. To a stranger the scene is bewitching; the softness of the air and the perfume that lingers on it; the animation in the countenances and gestures of all; the grace of the ladies’ costume, the ever-fluttering fan which only a Spanish woman knows how to use; the sallies of wit in tones that mock the best comedian; a free-heartedness and union among all, springing undoubtedly from the religion which makes all men brethren. At the very entrance of the Alameda there is probably a tiny chapel of the Virgen Santissima, with ever-burning light, where men and women pause to drop a prayer as they go to and from their diversion. Imagine such a thing in Central Park!

We are in Andalusia, and of all the lovely spots in this lovely land we think it bears off the palm. Columbus, when the glories of the Antilles burst upon him after that dreary and momentous voyage, compared the climate more than once to an April day in Andalusia. Everything it produces is of the best—corn, wine, fruits, cattle. The bread is the most delicious and whitest we have ever tasted or seen. The nights are most lovely. The sky deep and clear; all the stars of heaven seem to cluster above us, and the moon shines with a startling brilliancy on the white houses of the sleeping town, on the brown cathedral that towers above all, on the dark thick clustering leaves of the orange-trees, on the silent streets, narrow and straggling, showing every stone and pebble on the one side with minute distinctness, while the other is buried in mysterious shadow. Not a sound is heard save the cry of the sereno calling out the hour as he passes his lonely rounds.

The Andaluz is the embodiment of his climate. A child of the sun, of the clear free air, with wealth in his fields and the great ocean smiling all around his coast, where the ships of all nations come to lade and unlade, he yearns for the freedom which strangers hold so carelessly, and is ready to fight and to die for it. So Andalusia is the hotbed of revolution. As the Biscayan is famed for his unyielding nature, the Gallego for his stupidity, so is the Andaluz for his wit. He speaks rapidly and with many gestures, clipping his words—a grave sin against the sonorous Castilian. He is handsome, quick, fiery, with a keen eye for ridicule, but a good nature that can never resist a joke even if it be at his own expense. People say that he derives his comely form and graceful extremities from the Moors, but he would not thank you to tell him so. The Andaluza is worthy of such a partner, if she does not surpass him. If he is a Republican, she is a Carlina, for Don Carlos with her means religion, and religion means everything. Byron has painted her, and very faithfully. His remarks on the state of the country might be written to-day. He moralizes over the barbarity of the bull-fights, too. They are dying out now in exact proportion as man-fights are gaining ground with us. Of the two, we must say we infinitely prefer the bull-fight. It is amusing to hear Englishmen and Americans virtuously indignant on the immorality and barbarism of such an exhibition, as they bury themselves next moment in a three-column description of the latest feat of the fancy, or the glorious contest for hours between two miserable dogs or wretched cocks. We are lovers of fair play, manliness, and good-fellowship. We do things in an honest, straightforward fashion, and the hand that shakes another’s preparatory to the combat quite takes the sting from the blow that maims his fellow-man for life or beats that life out of him. So we look on and applaud and make our bets on the contest, and curse the wretch who has lost his own miserable life and our money.

But we are straying into civilization; let us go back to barbarism and Andalusia. The vineyards are decidedly unpicturesque; the vines low, the soil yellow. But the life at vintage season is

“Full of the warm South,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth.”

The agricultural laborers are very well paid in Spain, getting as much as one dollar a day or even more. The work is terrible; out the whole day under a burning sun, delving and cutting and trenching a dusty soil, with a pick instead of a spade to penetrate below the upper stratum of dust. They are tall wiry fellows, most of them from the mountains, brown as the soil, and sinewy, with dark eyes and crisp, close-cut black hair. A quarter of an hour spent in merely looking on overpowers us; but they seem made for the sun. The food that supports them under such toil is composed chiefly of a single dish called gazpacho, and gazpacho merits special mention. Fill a large bowl with water and vinegar, we do not know the exact proportions, but there is a great deal of vinegar, and, so far as we recollect, oil is added. A quantity of bread is thrown in to soak, and some herbs, with, perhaps, a slight flavor of garlic; and there you have gazpacho, the staple food of these men in the hot months. You eat a small piece of some light meat and a salad before it; a piece of toast fried in oil is not bad; drink a glass of water or two after; light the never-failing cigarette, and you are cool and refreshed. It may not seem a very delicate diet to us; but when the Levante, the hot desert wind laden with the finest of the burning sands, comes choking the atmosphere, and penetrating every crevice with a furnace heat all the day and all the night, burning the blood in the veins till it reaches fever-heat, and leaving you weak and utterly prostrate, “with just strength enough to thank God that breathing is an involuntary action”—as a gentleman aptly described to me the effects of the sirocco, the Italian equivalent—then place before a man in such a state of lassitude a steaming joint of roast beef with the heavy incidentals, and he will turn from it with disgust. At such moments the gazpacho seems the most delicious dish under the sun. The houses and furniture of these laborers are the neatest and cleanest in the world. The same feeling runs through high and low in Spain; their houses are models of freshness and purity. And Jacobo or Perico turns out on the Sunday in linen fine as his master’s, in jacket of velvet with buttons or bells of gold, a crimson scarf round his waist, and patent-leather shoes shining on his feet. He can joke and chat with his master with an easy freedom that never passes beyond the bounds of respect and never sinks into servility. As you pass him on the road alone or with any number of his companions, they all lift their sombreros with an inborn grace, and a genial buenos dias or buenas tardes, señor. But the new order is trying, and with some success, to change all that; though a stranger still meets in Spain with that rare yet most Christian thing, unbought courtesy.

The Gallego is the very opposite of the Andaluz—a rude, simple mountaineer, he is the hewer of wood and drawer of water to his countrymen. He is honest and open as the day, with a childlike affection for his master, and is particularly happy at a blunder. Rare are the stories told in Andalusia of the Gallegos. We give two, rather as indicating the estimation in which they are held than as happy specimens of the Andalusian broma.

When the post was first introduced into Spain, the postmaster of a small town in the north was astonished, one day, by a Gallego bursting in on him with the query, delivered in stentorian tones:

“Is there a letter here for me from my father?”

“I do not know, sir; who is your father?”

This was too much for the Gallego; the idea of anybody in this world being unacquainted with his parent was so overpowering that, not being able to restrain his feelings, he rushed from the spot, and was not heard of for some time afterwards. Meanwhile, a letter arrived directed in a style of calligraphy that might have done credit to Mr. Weller, Senior, addressed

To my Son
At San Juan.

Having sufficiently recovered from the violent shock given to his feelings, the Gallego once more presented himself at the post-office with the same question, “Is there a letter here from my father?”

“Oh! yes,” said the official, immediately producing the mysteriously addressed missive; “here, this is from your father. Take this one,” and delivered it without the slightest doubt as to the accuracy of its destination.

Another, on finding himself for the first time in a city, as he stood gaping and wondering at the sights around him, suddenly heard a shrill voice cry out, “I don’t want to go to school; the master beats me.”

He looked around for the child, but the only object that met his gaze was a parrot, mowing and chattering in a cage, and bobbing, wriggling, and looking at the Gallego with its cunning old eye forty different ways at once.

“I don’t want to go to school; the master beats me.”

The bewildered Gallego stared, and pondered, and, after a deep consultation with himself, came to the conclusion that the voice must proceed from the cage; from the strange specimen of humanity before him, so marvellously resembling a bird; but a bird talking the purest Castilian, though with something of a sharp accent, was a clear impossibility. His simple, good-nature was hurt at the idea of having wronged a fellow-creature even in his thoughts. So turning he excused himself: “Pardon me, child; I thought it was a bird.”

Of all traits in the national character, their universal civility astonishes an American or Englishman, accustomed as we are to the every-man-for-himself principle; yet how few we meet who do not consider the Spaniards as a treacherous, revengeful, and bloodthirsty race! Our own statistics, we fear, would furnish but a sorry set-off against theirs for crime in every phase; and particularly for the most cowardly, brutal, and premeditated assaults and assassinations, ending too often with the escape of the culprit. The quarrels in Spain between man and man arise generally from some love affair or political difference, very rarely from money. Two peasants are drinking in a tavern, the wine excites their fiery blood; one has lost his novia, the other has won her; a blow or an insult is given; they draw their knives, and adjourn to fight—“just like gentlemen.” It is, in fact, a duel, which common-sense has not yet been able to laugh out of Spain. No pecuniary damages, won by the cold arguments that sway a court of law, can heal the wound of honor in the chivalrous breast of the Spaniard; and not a few examples have we lately had of lives lost in this way. One was most tragic in its end as in all its bearings; I allude to the duel between Don Enrique de Bourbon and Montpensier. And surely never was presented on the stage a scene more dramatic or striking. Don Enrique was by profession a naval officer, high in the service of his royal relative, Queen Isabella, a young, gallant, and efficient sailor, with a promising future opening before him. He was happy in the love of a lady destined as all understood to be his; when suddenly Montpensier stepped in and won her, scarcely by force of personal attractions, for he was already well advanced in years; but the marriage was a closer link to the throne. Don Enrique vowed the death of the man who had crossed his life at the threshold. But his schemes of vengeance were baffled; an order came to quit the country, ostensibly for having joined in conspiracy against the throne. Deprived at once of his love, his command, and his country, life was closed to him. From his retirement he sent challenge after challenge to Montpensier, and vilified him even in the public press, as he could not force a response from him; but to no purpose. Montpensier, high in favor at court, secure in possession and in power, could safely affect to despise the ravings of a madman. By-and-by came the revolution which drove Isabella out. Now was Don Enrique’s chance, and he hastened to seize it. As expulsion under the queen’s reign was a virtue in the eyes of the new government, he applied for restoration to his country and his rank in the navy. The first request was granted, the second denied; as the government had proclaimed an end to the Bourbon race, no member of that race could take rank under them, unless he renounced his title. Here again he traced the hand of Montpensier. If he could have nothing else, at least he would have revenge, being now in the same city with the man who had crossed him at every step of his career. He sent his last challenge, publishing it at the same time in the press, enumerating the occasions on which he had sent similar messages, which had ever been met by the silence of fear. He heaped insults upon him, apostrophizing him as a “pastillero frances,” a fellow ready to soil his hands with the pettiest and meanest intrigue. Montpensier was at the time a candidate for the Spanish throne; for the kingship of a people in whose eyes honor was ever dearer than life; further silence would ruin his prospects; so at last he was forced out of his reserve, and, in a letter that sounded well, accepted the challenge as one which a man of honor could not pass over in silence, disclaiming at the same time any antagonism to its author personally; if there was any justice in what he said, it was the result of accident; in fact, leaving people to understand that he never troubled his head about the man. They met on a cold gray morning, and the chances of success leaned decidedly on the side of Don Enrique. A young, bold man, to whom deadly weapons had been playthings from his infancy, he was urged on by a life of hate to slay the man who had blighted that life and darkened its promising opening; his opponent was a middle-aged man, near-sighted, who bore the reputation of a littérateur rather than a fighter. Both felt that perhaps a crown as well as a life hung on the trigger. Scarce was the word given to fire when the bullet of Don Enrique brushed his foe, and Montpensier’s lost itself in the air. A second shot, and they still stood face to face uninjured. “Està afinando”—“He is getting closer,” whispered the prince to his second, as he took the last pistol from his hand. The words are remarkable as expressing the coolness of the man, whose eye took in everything at such a moment, and perhaps something more. At the next discharge, the bullet of the man who, whether designedly or not, had met him and beaten him at all points, pierced his breast; he sprang into the air, fell forward, and rolled contorted on the ground, a corpse—a theme for novelist as well as moralist: it looked like fatality.

But from such sad scenes we are happy to turn to others more worthy of our attention and more characteristic of the nation at large. The thing that of all others cannot fail to strike the visitor is the intense religion displayed everywhere. “Ay, Maria!” “Por Dios!”—“For God’s sake”—“Ay, Dios mio,” are the expressions that buzz around our ears all day. The holy name is a household word with them, pronounced at all times and on all occasions, but with a reverence that never shocks. When they wish something done, they say “Dios quiere”—“God grant it”; when they bid you good-by, “Adios—Vaya Usted con Dios—Queda Usted con Dios—Que Dios te guarda”—“Go with God—Rest with God—May God guard thee.” They speak of the blessed sacrament as “Su Majestad”—“his majesty,” of the Blessed Virgin always as “la Santissima Virgen”—“the most Holy Virgin.” The graveyard is “el campo santo”—“the holy field”: so like the old Catholic “God’s acre” that Longfellow loves. When they wish to express intense horror of a thing, they make the sign of the cross on their foreheads, lips, and breast, and then in the air, as though to place that invincible sign between them and the object of their abhorrence. The vast majority of the towns and villages are named after the saints, and each one has its special patron as well as the patron of the district. And that intense faith in intercessory prayer to some special saint which holy writers urge us to cultivate is born in them. On the festival of Good Friday throughout Spain, the municipality and gentlemen of the towns walk dressed in evening costume side by side with the poor. Not a vehicle is to be seen in the street: all the world is there to watch and pray. The new government, Prim’s, gave the order for coaches to run as usual on Good Friday, in outrage of a custom immemorial in the nation, and an honor to them as to all Christendom of whatever creed. But the coachmen as well as their masters proved better Christians than their rulers; and on the day in question not a conveyance was to be seen, save a solitary coach, which the populace immediately seized, compelling its occupant to descend, who proved to be a scared member of the diplomatic body. The celebration of Holy Week in Seville attracts the world thither.

The modern churches in Spain, particularly in Madrid, though for the most part spacious and lofty, do not impress one with their beauty. To those accustomed to associate their ideas of religion with the Gothic style of architecture, the altars will not be pleasing. Spiral pillars wriggle to the roof, inwrought and gorgeously painted. The vases are filled with silver and gold filigree work wrought to imitate flowers. There are many figures, small or large, of el niño Jesu, or la Santissima Virgen, or the saints, not always displaying the most finished art, decked out with a costume of sober black or gorgeous color and texture, glittering with gold and precious stones and ornaments of choice and antique workmanship. Little thanksgiving offerings surround them. Such things as these look like superstition to the cold eye of a man to whom faith is folly and reverence ignorance. But there is something powerful in the simple, earnest belief of the people who pray before them, and are content to be thus reminded of the great and good God and Virgin Mother, who are willing to receive the offerings of the meanest; a reverend familiarity with God is thus created which those people bear about with them. These men and women go into the church to pray: their very costume is befitting the sanctuary; and there is very little of that newspaper religion which some of our weekly journals piously advocate by so carefully announcing “where the best dresses and prettiest faces are to be seen.” On the walls hang magnificent paintings. The treasures of Murillo are in the cathedral of Seville. They were placed there by his own hand, having been painted for their several positions that the light might fall on them in such or such a manner. And it is not unpleasant to think of the sun rising and falling day after day as though in obedience to the great master who has passed away, bringing out their beauties faithfully in accordance with his wish. The construction of the cathedral itself is a triumph of architecture. Not a stone has shifted from its place since it was first laid there: there is no sinking or rising in the floor: and to-day you may pass your cane over the surface and not a joint offers the slightest obstruction.

The very names of the people are taken from religion and the mysteries of religion in the same spirit with which they named their discoveries after Santa Cruz, San Domingo, San José, Trinidad. Among men’s Christian and surnames we continually find Jesu, Jesu Maria, Juan de Dios, Santa Cruz, Salvador; among the women, Concepcion, Dolores—a sweet name after the Mother of Sorrows, Maria de los Angeles, and the like.

The very streets and the public places are christened in the same way; and the ships baptized and launched with religious ceremonies, a custom that prevails also in France.

They preserve the old gospel use of the word woman. That is the title by which the husband addresses his wife as often as any other. She calls him hijo, son, or hombre, man. “Hija de mi alma,” daughter of my soul, is also very common. Ceremony is only employed with strangers; tu, thou, is the form in which intimate friends are always addressed. After becoming acquainted, you call the lady of the house and her daughters, whether grown up or young, by their maiden names simply. It is amusing to hear little ones who can scarcely lisp address each as señor and señora.

They have a fair supply of newspapers, and very able ones, in Spain; though, as usual, those that enjoy the widest circulation at present are devoted to the dissemination of false principles. They are cried out in the streets not by newsboys as with us, but principally by old blind men, who stand in the most public places with a tablet of the latest news on their breasts, and having got their lesson by rote spout away untiringly.

The club is becoming a very favorite institution, and is, in fact, the stronghold and rendezvous of political parties. There is a very famous one in Madrid, which numbers among its members such men as Castelar, Moret, and others. They meet sometimes for public discussion; and those great orators rise there to propound their theories as earnestly as in the Cortes.

They have a code of intercourse worthy of imitation. When a Spanish family takes up its quarters at a hotel or in a new place, the neighbors, though perfect strangers, call, leave their cards, and go away. If their acquaintance is desired, they are waited upon and conversation ensues; if not, the stranger simply returns his card in the same manner as the other was received; and no slight or grievance is felt or intended.

The amusements are various. Apart from the opera, theatre, and those common to all nations, they are very fond of an indoor game called volante, which is simply battledoor and shuttlecock; ladies and gentlemen play at it together. There is also a very favorite game of cards, tresillo, to which we have no equivalent. The climate compels the Spanish women to lead a more indoor life than with us. The men are fond of riding, hunting, and shooting. They sit as erect on horseback as statues; and the army officers are very fond of displaying the motions rather than the speed of their steeds. Mules are in great demand; for the roads in Spain, except in the neighborhood of the great towns, are very bad; mere bridle-paths most of them. Seated in a vehicle that would be a treasure in an art museum for antiquity, construction, and shape, with a team of six or eight of these animals to jolt you anywhere, is a position more than pleasant. The jingle of the little bells with which the harness is adorned, the cracking of the driver’s whip, the tones in which he endeavors to animate the vicious brutes, now cajoling them in accents that might win the heart of a maiden, again pouring forth a volley of imprecations on their heads and tails and pedigree, as though they were human, is a study. You can never trust these animals, and it is always the safer plan to give their hoofs what a sailor would call sea-room. An archbishop, passing along the streets one day, suddenly came upon a string of them, and as suddenly crossed to the other side of the street. “O Señor Arzobispo,” said the muleteer, “you need not be frightened. These are harmless animalitos.”

“Yes, I know they are harmless,” replied his grace, “and that is the reason I cross here; if they were not, I should go to the next street.”

This fact of the roads being so bad and the intercommunication so deficient, coupled with tales of brigandage, gives strangers the idea that travelling in Spain is very insecure. We might pass from end to end of the land, unknown and unarmed, with far greater safety than during a five minutes’ walk through many a street in New York or London after nightfall. We had an instance of brigandage and its treatment in Spain during Prim’s régime, a time when the country was as convulsed as at present. Encouraged, no doubt, by the lamentable success of a similar exploit in Greece, some miscreants carried off a merchant from Gibraltar, and demanded a round ransom as the forfeit of his life. Prim, without a moment’s hesitation as to the nice question of treating with brigands, or a thought of where the ransom was to come from, paid it, and sent four of the civil guard to follow up the robbers, which they did so successfully that they shot them all and retook their booty. We have not heard of brigandage since in Spain, notwithstanding the highly touched pictures presented, the other day, of an attack on a railway train, accompanied by smoke and powder, and brigands in the stage costume of centuries back.

This civil guard is an excellent institution. The body is recruited from the best ranks of the soldiery. It is a distinction to be admitted among them, which engenders an esprit de corps that makes them the terror of the wrong-doer and the right arm of order. We ourselves might take a lesson from the incident mentioned above, if we are to credit the reports of the Lowery gang.

They have but one great line of railroad in Spain, which runs through the country from north to south. The train creeps along at a steady thirty miles an hour, without a moment’s variation. To a stranger, wishing to catch a glimpse of the country, this is highly advantageous; as he is not whirled away at a rate that presents to his anxious eye trees, houses, mountains, streams, in a phrenzied panorama. For our present notions of commerce it may be too slow, and a man in a hurry feels half inclined to get out and walk; but as a set-off against this, the Spaniards pride themselves on not having had a single accident accompanied by loss of life since the railroad was first started. You are rolled through the fertile plains and swelling uplands of Andalusia, rich in corn and wine and oil; through fields, and orange and olive groves, dotted with white towns and modest villages, where the church-tower ever soars above all as a landmark. You pass Seville; and as its associations crowd upon you, fain would you linger amid the gay society of the lovely city smiling amid its groves and gardens; dreaming day by day in las delicias; lost amid the treasures of art that make every boy in the street an efficient critic, so accustomed is his eye to the beautiful and the true. Famous spots and historic cities greet you as you go. The Escurial looms up, a white, silent palace with deserted windows, standing out in startling relief from a semi-circle of bare mountains. Not a soul was to be seen around it; the monks had been just expelled; not a sound to break the painful silence that seemed to emanate from the gloomy pile. It stood there as the great king left it, a type of himself, out of the world in a grandeur of isolation; a something that ought to have passed away, unknown in these days. Had a troop of cavaliers with pennon and plume and glistening mail shone out a moment on the mountain-side, it would have seemed in keeping with the place rather than strange. There is almost a contrast between the ages as our little engine puffs and snorts and fumes, fretting to “go ahead” and leave it, staring out of its silent windows, unmoved, untouched by the age, which busies itself with things and not with ideas.

Before arriving at Madrid, where the train stops for a few hours, we pass through Aranjuez, the beautiful summer-palace of the late queen; with its woods and magnificent vistas and lengthening avenues, full of lovely recesses and places of cool shade. At last we are in the heart of the kingdom.

Madrid, though not very large, is a brilliant city. Its prado where fashion saunters is beautifully laid out. It has a splendid museum, many churches, though none of them remarkable for beauty, and the vast palace of royalty, rich in furniture and objects of art. The houses and public buildings are lofty, the hotels many and excellent. Fountains spout in the open squares; crowds are buzzing through the streets or discussing at the cafés, for politics absorb the life in Madrid. The weather is treacherous, and many are carried off in a few hours by a pulmonia, for, as their proverb says, “The air of Madrid will not cause a leaf to flutter from the tree, but will kill a man.” Though the sky is clear and blue, and the sun shines out royally, a breeze comes down from the neighboring sierras, frost-laden, that pierces you through and through, and searches all your bones, and the very marrow in them; there is death in its breath. For all that, the Madrileños live a very gay life; retiring to rest generally at the small hours, and rising when they please. In the summer the city is empty, even the shopkeepers flit; for the heat is then intolerable, and they wander to San Sebastian or the south of France, or to their own watering-places, which are numerous and inferior to none.

As the train bears us further north, the scene ever varying grows more and more deserted. You close the curtains of the carriage to keep out the heat during the day, while at night you may wake amid frost and snow. The villagers and mountaineers crowd to the carriage windows at every station; old men, and dark-eyed boys, and graceful girls, with fruits and wines, and water, and milk. “Quien quiere agua? Agua fresca? Quien quiere leche? Agua como la nieve!”—“Who wants water—cool water? Who wants milk? Water cool as snow,” is the shrill cry from many throats on all sides. “Señorito, un quartito por el amor de Dios”—“A farthing, my dear little sir, for the love of God.” “Teno lastima de, un pobrescito, señorito mio, y Dios te lo pagara”—“Have pity on a poor little one, and God will repay thee,” snivels an old beggar in pitiful rags. If you listened to him for five minutes, he would treat you to a sermon on the evil of poverty and the eternal rewards of generosity, that would rival the most eloquent of preachers and charm the money out of your pockets.

Through the Pyrenees, the scenery grows wilder still and more picturesque; the construction of the railway here is a marvel of skill and enterprise. You are shot through tunnels bored through the solid rock, numbers of them of considerable length. You skirt dizzy precipices with scarce a straw between you and the dim hollows or ominous pools that sleep hundreds of feet below. Quaint little hamlets with quaint people are perched on mountain-tops or buried in pastoral nooks far away down. Tiny streamlets start out of the mountain and accompany you as you go. You can trace them as they tumble and fall, and lose themselves, and reappear with gathering volume and widening channel, till you cross them on a bridge lower down, and find them broad and powerful rivers, turning mills and humming onward to the sea. This is a great district for paper mills; you see them on every side. San Sebastian is up here, with its beautiful villas and pleasant strand at the foot of the mountain, skirted by a town increasing in wealth and importance every year. The favorite promenade is called the Paseo de las Conchas, “The Walk of the Shells,” a very beautiful one. It is becoming a very favorite and fashionable resort during the summer months; so much so that gamblers tried to obtain permission from the government to establish here the gambling-tables which have been banished from their own Baden Baden. Fine hotels are springing up, and there is no summer residence in Europe that would better repay a visit than this, uniting as it does the air of the sea and the mountains, where you may turn from the strand to the most pastoral of scenery, from the conventionalities of life to the rude simplicity of the Basque mountaineer.

This brings us to the frontier, and here we stop, with the consciousness of having thrown but a very fleeting glance over so vast a field, with its mines of historic wealth and troublous problems of to-day. Our object has been to display in their truer colors a people as little understood as it is studiously misrepresented by a host of writers, who forget that the pen is the handmaiden of truth.

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AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.

Every summer the fashionable world must go to the baths, must drink the waters, must be refreshed after the arduous winter campaign of dining and wining, of dancing and talking, of matinées and soirées. In America, we recover our strength at Saratoga and Newport, hunt in the Adirondacks, freeze on top of the White Mountains, listen to the roar of Niagara, drink sulphur at Sharon and the Virginia Springs, and shortly, when the magnificent National Park, at the headwaters of the Yellowstone, is fenced in, we will go to sleep in a palace-car in New York, and wake up at the foot or on the top of the Rocky Mountains. I believe the park, so generously voted to a grateful country by our patriotic Congress, is in that charming vicinity.

Human nature is the same everywhere; old Europe and young America live, think, talk, have their being, in one and the same way. London and Paris, Berlin and Vienna, get tired and worn out just like Washington and New York, Boston and New Orleans. People must travel, people must have somewhere to go. Some go to Brighton, some go to Boulogne-sur-Mer, some to Ostend; lately, it is very fashionable to go to Norway, the lakes are so blue, the trees are so green, nature is so grand and beautiful; and if the trip is only continued to Lapland, the midnight sun can be seen to the greatest advantage.

But for its being a little too near Spain and its weekly—that is to say, daily—revolutions, Biarritz is charming; so is Vichy, so is Wiesbaden, so is Spa, so is Hombourg, so is Aix-la-Chapelle, where there are the hottest of hot sulphur springs, as hot as when Charlemagne loved to bathe and drink; and loved the place so well that he made it the capital of his dominions north of the Alps, raised it to the rank of second city of his empire, and built the noble cathedral which Leo III. was kind enough to come all the way from Rome to consecrate.

And in 804, when Leo III. dedicated it, according to the wish of Charlemagne, to the Blessed Virgin, in the presence of many cardinals, of 363 bishops, and numerous princes, travelling was not made easy as nowadays. There was no tunnel through Mont Cenis, but people climbed up and slid down mountains as best they could, forded rivers, and jogged along on horses or mules, or any other beast of burden that could be made to answer the purpose. Of course, society was the same then as now; there were good and bad men and women, just as now; but, judging by what we see and read of the past, there was a strong living faith, that was fonder of building up than of pulling down.

Charlemagne could invite the Pope to visit him, and consecrate his cathedral; he could look the Pope honestly in the eyes, and ask his blessing. Strong, mighty, powerful, he was an humble, obedient son of the church; his strength and might and power were used in support, in defence of that glorious Mother Church to whom he owed all that was good and great in his life.

He gave to the Pope, that he might be independent of all human control; he did not steal and insult, as a present reigning sovereign delights in doing; he did not, like a modern emperor of the French, use religion as an instrument for gaining popularity—send soldiers to Rome one day, and order them back the next, make a convention in September with a robber-king, and in October hurry off Frenchmen to retrieve the day at Mentana; but he believed and acted up to his belief. He had his faults, as all men have, but he was true to his principles, and, like all true men, died in the peace of God.

For him there was no Sedan, no Waterloo, but a glorious tomb in his own grand cathedral, and grand it is—an octagon in the Byzantine style, surrounded by numerous chapels. The rotunda is supported by pillars of polished Ravenna marble, presented by Leo III., dividing the galleries into arcades. The church was commenced in 796, and finished in 804; the works were superintended by Eginhard, the biographer of Charlemagne.

All that Rome and Ravenna could furnish of most beautiful in marble was employed in the decoration. The dome was surmounted by a globe of massive gold, the doors and balustrades were of bronze, the vases and ornaments of unparalleled magnificence. The railings of the eight arcades of the triforium, cast in bronze of four different patterns, and the doors, adorned with lions’ heads of the same material, which no longer occupy their original position, but are attached to a porch of the seventeenth century, convey a perfect idea of the state of art in the eighth century. On the right of the porch is the figure of a she-wolf, which has served as a foundation for many popular legends, but the real origin is unknown.

The arches of the gallery are adorned with thirty-two pillars of marble, granite, and porphyry, brought by Charlemagne from the Exarch’s palace at Ravenna and from Rome. The finest of these, removed by the French in 1794, were brought back in 1815, and have been repolished and replaced at the expense of the Emperor of Germany. The interior of the dome was originally adorned with mosaics, remains of which may still be seen. The cathedral was pillaged by the Normans in 881, restored by Otho III. in 983, but in all essential respects is still the church of Charlemagne.

Eastward of the old apse, Otho III. built a chapel, in which he was buried; both of these were pulled down in the fourteenth century, when the present choir, which has preserved the plan of Otho’s chapel, was erected; and his tomb is exactly beneath the present high altar. The choir is Gothic, one hundred and fourteen feet high; nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the octagon nave and the Gothic choir—so totally unlike, and still harmonizing. It is the Christian religion subduing and dominating the proud Roman Empire.

Thirty-seven emperors and eleven empresses have been crowned in this cathedral, from 831 to 1531. Ferdinand I., brother of Charles V., was the last. Since then, they were crowned at Frankfort, where the election was held. From the centre of the dome hangs a massive Gothic lustre, presented by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in souvenir of his coronation. The bases of the circles are engraved with groups, representing the Annunciation, Nativity, Adoration of the Magi, Crucifixion, Three Marys at the Tomb, Ascension, Descent of the Holy Ghost, and the Last Judgment. The lustre is suspended by four chains, richly chased, and united in a brass plate, on the lower side of which is engraved a figure of St. Michael.

Immediately beneath the lustre a large slab of marble bears the simple inscription, Carolo Magno, which covered the vault where once reposed the remains of Charlemagne. The vault below was opened by Otho III. in 997, and again by Frederick in 1165. Charlemagne, who died at Aix-la-Chapelle in 814, did not designate his burial-place, but it was thought there could be no more appropriate spot than the magnificent church which he had built in his chosen city.

His body was found seated on a throne as if alive, clothed in the imperial robes; his crown on his head, his manuscript of the Gospels on his knees, his sword, Joyeuse, was placed by his side, and his pilgrim’s pouch, which he always wore on his journeys to Rome, was suspended to his girdle. His sceptre and shield, which were of gold, and had been blessed by Leo III., were at his feet. Over all was thrown the imperial mantle, and above was erected a superb triumphal arch, on which was this epitaph:

“Ici repose le corps de Charles, grand et orthodoxe empereur, qui étendit glorieusement le royaume des Francs, et le gouverna heureusement pendant 47 ans.”

The body of Charlemagne was enshrined by order of Frederick, and the throne of white marble on which he was seated is now kept in the upper gallery of the nave, directly facing the choir; the other relics were carefully preserved, and used in the coronation of succeeding emperors of Germany. Towards the end of the last century, at the approach of the French army, they were removed to Paderborn, and returned in 1804, but not complete, as the Emperor of Germany had kept three articles which were regarded as indispensable at a coronation.

These articles were a shrine, enclosing some of the earth watered by the blood of the proto-martyr St. Stephen; the book of Gospels, found on the knees of Charlemagne, which is written on bluish bark, in characters of gold. It was with the hand on this book, and upon the shrine of St. Stephen, that the emperor made his coronation oath. The third article was the sword of Charlemagne, Joyeuse, a present from Haroun-al-Raschid, which was the sword of coronation. It was presented to the emperor by the Elector of Trèves, who invested him with it with these word: “Accipe gladium per manus Episcoporum.” At the words, “Accingere gladio tuo,” the Elector of Saxe placed it in the scabbard, and, assisted by the Elector of Cologne, girded it around the new emperor.

The emperor was by right a canon of the chapter of the cathedral, whose members obtained from Gregory V., when he visited Aix-la-Chapelle in 997, the title of cardinal-priests. In the ages of faith, the imperial dignity was semi-priestly; the emperor was considered as having charge of souls. Before the emblems of sovereign dignity were placed in his hands, he swore, with his hand upon the Gospels, fidelity to the church which had just consecrated him.

The archbishop gave him the sword “to combat the enemies of Christ”—the imperial purple symbolized “the zeal with which he should endeavor to consolidate in the empire the reign of faith and of peace”—and with the sceptre he was exhorted to become “the father of his people, the protector of the ministers of God, the defender of the widow and the orphan.” And, last of all, to seal the alliance contracted with the Holy Church, he received a portion of the sacred Host, consecrated in the pontifical Mass, the other half of which was consumed by the priest of God.

After the election of the emperor at Frankfort, the electors and the emperor elect proceeded to Aix-la-Chapelle, where the coronation took place. The emperor heard Mass in the choir of the cathedral, surrounded by his court; the people were in the nave—the octagon, built by Charlemagne; after the Mass, he was conducted up the staircase, temporarily erected from directly beneath the lustre in the centre, to the throne of Charlemagne. The electors and their suites occupied the arcades in the gallery; and there, surrounded by priests, princes, and people, the Christian emperor swore to maintain the laws of God and man.

Before signing the act of his election, the emperor confirmed all the privileges given by his predecessors to the Cathedral of Notre Dame; and then the cortége proceeded to the Hôtel de Ville, where the coronation banquet was held in the splendid hall, so beautifully restored by the King of Prussia—we beg pardon, Emperor of Germany. The Cathedral of Notre Dame was formerly exempt from ordinary episcopal jurisdiction, and from its foundation was directly under the Holy See, which privilege was confirmed in 1157 by Pope Adrian IV.

Aix-la-Chapelle is very old; it was known to the Romans under the name of Aquis Granum, and is said to have been founded in the second century. Remains of Roman baths have been discovered near the cathedral and the Elisenbrunnen. Burnt by the Huns in 451, it was rebuilt, and became a favorite residence of the Frankish kings. Here was Charlemagne born, April 2, 742, and here he died, January 28, 814. In 881, the town was sacked by the Normans, and at the end of the tenth century restored and enlarged by Otho III., who died here in 1002. Charlemagne surrounded the city with a wall, pierced by ten gates, which Frederick Barbarossa rebuilt and strengthened in 1187.

The good old city has seen stormy days, as in 1198 it was besieged by Otho of Brunswick, and in 1247 by William of Holland, to whom it surrendered after a siege of six months. During the middle ages, it attained great wealth by its manufacture of cloth; agencies for the sale of which were established at Venice and Antwerp in the fourteenth century. Many diets of the empire were held here; and three times, in 1668, 1748, and 1818, the diplomats of Europe met in the Hôtel de Ville to settle terms of peace and heal the wounds of war. The conferences of the congress were held in the Krönungsaal, a spacious saloon occupying the whole of the third floor; the former banqueting-hall after the coronations.

The Hôtel de Ville was erected on the site of the palace of the Frankish kings, in which Charlemagne was born, and the famous banqueting-hall has been adorned with splendid frescoes, done by the best artists of the Düsseldorf school, depicting scenes in the life of Charlemagne. They were painted at the command of the Emperor of Germany, and the nine frescoes represent: The Destruction of the Saxon Idols; The Battle of Cordova; The Baptism of Witikind; A Diet of the Empire; The Coronation of Charlemagne; The Coronation of his son Louis; The Taking of Pavia; The Opening of the Tomb of Charlemagne; The Foundation of the Cathedral.

Since the time of the Romans, Aix-la-Chapelle has been celebrated as a watering-place; and modern Europe fully appreciates the delicious baths and bubbling springs. Every seven years the Exposition of the Great Relics takes place; and then the pilgrims, drawn by faith, are added to the thousands of votaries at the shrine of fashion who annually flock to the dear old city.

The four Great Relics, which are exposed every seven years, from the 10th to the 24th of July, are: The dress of the Blessed Virgin; The swaddling-clothes of the Infant Jesus at Bethlehem; The cloth that encircled the loins of our dear Lord on the cross; The cloth in which the head of St. John the Baptist was enveloped after his decapitation. Charlemagne obtained these relics from Rome, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. His intimate relations with the Popes Adrian, who died in 795, and Leo III., are well known: his influence was unbounded with the Byzantine emperors, who sent ambassadors with the relics as presents; and in the East he had control over the holy places in Palestine. These sovereigns, who contributed to enrich his church of Notre Dame with treasures from their own sanctuaries, would not have dared incur the wrath of the great warrior by sending him false relics.

In 408, the Empress Pulcheria, the sister of Theodosius and wife of Marcian, built churches to contain the swaddling-clothes of the Infant Jesus and the cincture of the Blessed Virgin. The septennial exposition dates from the ninth century; and since then, historical testimony abounds, public facts attest, without interruption to our day, the authenticity of the relics venerated at Aix-la-Chapelle. Among the lesser relics are the cingulum or leathern belt of our Lord, the extremities of which are united and stamped with the seal of Constantine; a piece of the cord with which the hands of our Lord were bound during his Passion; a piece of the sponge which was dipped in vinegar and gall and presented to our Lord on the cross; and a rib of St. Stephen, the first martyr.

The last exposition was in 1867, and the crowds that assisted bore witness to the living faith that makes the people of the Rhenish Provinces such admirable Catholics. Aix-la-Chapelle looked beautifully; from the high towers and dome of the cathedral, from every church and house, from the spires of the Hôtel de Ville, the banners and flags were flying. The black and white flag of Prussia, the red-and-white and blue-and-white banners of the churches, mingled with the Papal colors.

Sixty thousand pilgrims came every day afoot to Aix; every avenue leading to the cathedral was crowded, people standing in close file waiting their turn to enter. But in those serried ranks there was no noise, no confusion; profound, earnest devotion attested their faith and piety. The Rosary was recited in bands; a man’s voice would say alone the “Hail Mary,” and the “Holy Mary, Mother of God” was taken up by all. From 1 to 8 p.m. the cathedral was opened for the procession of pilgrims, but it was impossible to think of entering during that time, as it was an affair of hours.

After 8 P.M., the canons allowed a few, some hundreds, to enter by a private door; and then we first saw the interior of the superb old cathedral. We passed along through the arches and vaults of the basement story, ascended and descended staircases, and finally reached a vestibule, leading directly to the octagon, the centre of the cathedral. The grated doors were closed, as the pilgrims were still in the body of the church; in the dim light, we could see the glimmer of tapers in the choir; and the voices of the kneeling crowd reciting the litanies rose to heaven, the very incense of prayer.

Soon the doors were opened, and the favored ones passed slowly through. How grand and majestic the cathedral looked! The octagon in darkness, the choir illuminated. In single file, we made the tour around the relics; then all knelt down—the priests who were strangers in the stalls of the clergy, the laity outside. The canons walked in procession, each holding one of the precious relics, which we were allowed to kiss. After all was over, we looked around; we were kneeling in the superb choir, said to be the highest in Europe—higher than the choir in the cathedral of Cologne, which is lower than the nave. As we gazed upwards, and beheld the grand arches which rose so high above our heads, our thoughts were raised to heaven, and made us glorify God, who gives power to man to conceive and execute such works. The stained-glass windows are exquisite, and in the dim, religious light all looked bewilderingly beautiful.

The next morning, at 10 a.m., we took our position in front of the cathedral, where benches were erected temporarily to accommodate those who preferred sitting to standing. The crowds were reverentially silent and recollected, reciting the Rosary and the Litany of the Blessed Virgin. The relics were exposed from five points. When the priests appeared in the tower opposite us, the brass band in the gallery which connects the towers broke forth in grand harmony; the people singing as one voice the superb German choral music. It was overpowering! High up in the old gallery the canons holding the precious relics, the cross glittering, the light blazing around them, the splendid music resounding in triumph in the open air! The ages of faith are not past, as we all felt that day at Aix.

At 12 m. we joined the procession waiting for the doors of the cathedral to open, that we might enter the golden chamber. This was a select crowd, as we had to pay two francs for a card. The Prussian cavalry rode up and down to keep the ranks straight; and after we had been jammed outside, we received a final mash inside, and, by the time we were jelly, we shoved ourselves into the golden treasury, where a canon explained everything in German and French; then the procession passed again through the choir, around the octagon, and out another door.

The last day of the exposition was distinguished by a procession in the streets: the first that had taken place since the French Revolution. It was very solemn and grand; the Great Relics were borne in their superb shrines by the canons of the cathedral, the Archbishop of Cologne carried the reliquary containing the cingulum of our Lord, the Bishop of Luxembourg the cincture of the Blessed Virgin.

Of course these great crowds, with the usual amount of dust and dirt, rather fatigued us, even though we were immensely impressed; so we sought the refreshing waters, and continued our meditations in the Kaiserbad; or, rather, we would commence our morning devotions by making ourselves comfortable. The Kaiserbad is the finest in Europe; long corridors, arched roofs lighted from above, encaustic-tiled floors, beautiful dressing-rooms, each one opening into a delicious bath of white marble, into which you descend by six white marble steps into the pure white sulphur water. Twenty minutes is the time advised for well people; invalids stay in an hour sometimes; after the twenty minutes, the attendants brought in hot sheets, in which we were enveloped. It was Elysium—the perfection of material enjoyment.

From the Kaiserbad we adjourned to the cathedral, heard Mass, and then strolled through the Elisengarten, the grounds around the spring; the Prussian military band played delightfully every morning, and we listened, drank occasional glasses of hot sulphur water, and then, refreshed and invigorated, were ready for any performance. In the afternoon, people drive to the heights of Louisberg, formerly a great fortress that commanded Aix, famous in the wars of the middle ages, and demolished after some treaty, to keep the peace of Europe.

The view from the height is superb. Aix-la-Chapelle was the favorite resort of Pauline Bonaparte, and Louisberg her pet promenade; so, after her death, the city of Aix erected a monument to her memory. There is also a Belvidere, where they have musical reunions and balls, and people drink coffee and Seltzer water, in which we indulged. After Louisberg, we drove around the old ramparts, visited the beautiful cemetery and the Burtscheid, the hottest of the springs, where the water is boiling—cooks an egg in a few seconds.

Besides the cathedral, there are several beautiful churches. The Jesuit church of the Immaculate Conception is very fine, built in the severest Gothic style, of solid stone. In the convent of the Sisters of the Infant Jesus, they make the most magnificent embroideries, one Gothic chasuble, just finished for an English bishop, was worth 15,000 francs; and the benediction veils, stoles, and capes were exquisite.

In the cathedral are preserved some fine chalices and vestments; amongst the latter a chasuble said to have been used by St. Bernard—it is of purple, adorned with pearls; a cape, with small bells attached to the lower edge, worn by Leo III. at the consecration of the church; a set of vestments of cloth-of-gold, ornamented with pearls, presented by Charles V.; and a chasuble, given in 1599 by Isabella, Infanta of Spain. Among the treasures of the cathedral is a manuscript of the Gospels, beautifully written in letters of gold on purple vellum; its binding is covered with plates of silver-gilt, richly enamelled.

In addition to the pious crowd, there was more than the usual influx of fashionable people. We had the pleasure of contemplating the Prince and Princess Frederick Charles of Prussia while they stood on the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville. Prince Frederick Charles, the Red Prince, is one of the great Prussian captains, and of course there was immense excitement. The place before the Hôtel de Ville is the vegetable and flower market, and the peasants, in their quaint caps and bonnets, were enchanted either with their royal highnesses or with the soldiers, who strolled among them, and bought up their wares.

Dremel’s, the hotel of Aix, was entirely devoted to the Sultan and his suite, who were on their way from Paris to Constantinople, after the Exposition. They were a splendid set of men. In the morning, on our way to the Kaiserbad, we passed Dremel’s, and, as they were always lounging around, we had a fine view of them. The Sultan kept himself secluded from the vulgar gaze, and was only seen the morning of his departure. Every one was on hand to see the commander of the faithful; at last, a great lumbering Prussian state carriage appeared, and there was the Sultan leaning back, eyes half-closed, arms folded on his breast, as if he were the sovereign of the world. His impassible face never changed expression; he looked the miserable fatalist he is.

In our German hotel, the Belle Vue, there was no reading-room, no drawing-room; everybody sat in the dining-room, chattering and talking away. Frank, the jolly landlord, made merry with a chosen band of friends, among whom was the Burgomaster, at the end of one table; all smoking, each man’s bottle of wine standing before him. A German friend assured us all Germany passed the evening in the same way; the professors at the universities think it absolutely necessary to drink as many bottles of wine in the evening as they have studied hours during the day. We mildly suggested it was not strange that German philosophy was rather cloudy sometimes, as the smoke of the evening might befog the learned professors; but our friend maintained it was healthy for mind and body.

Charming, delightful Aix! It was with regret we left it; we looked with longing eyes at the dome of the grand cathedral as it receded in the distance, and sighed for the delicious Kaiserbad as we were whirled through the dust and smoke. However, we had the happiness of making one person enjoy what we had so fully appreciated; on our return home we had the pleasure of seeing once again one whose name is dear to the heart of every American Catholic, the late illustrious Archbishop of Baltimore. He was suffering from rheumatism, and we told him such wonderful things of the baths at Aix, he changed his mind, and, instead of going to Paris, went to Aix; with what result, the following charming note will tell:

Aix-la-Chapelle, August 4, 1867,
Hôtel de Belle Vue.

Dear Madame: I drop you a few lines, to return my sincere thanks for having so effectually called my attention to the baths and waters of this celebrated city. I find that all you said and promised has been fully realized; and when, hereafter, any one will dare tell me that your amiable sex is accustomed to draw upon its imagination for its facts, or at least to color extravagantly what has proved pleasing, I shall point to your recommendation of these waters as a sufficient refutation, or at any rate a most noted and brilliant exception to the remark.

The baths are all you said, and more; they are really superb, and just what I needed. In fact, I consider it a special providence that I met you in Brussels, or otherwise I should have gone to Paris instead of Aix. Already I am quite relieved, and in another week I expect to be as young and supple as ever. I am at the Belle Vue, but, after taking one bath at the Kaiserbad, I have taken the rest at the Rosebad; the latter are fully equal to the former in sumptuousness, and the attendance is probably better. I expect to return to Paris before or about the 15th inst., and if I can be of any service to you in Europe or America, you may freely command me.

Though I have not yet taken any excursion to the country, I have visited the relics and curiosities of the grand old cathedral, and also the Hôtel de Ville. This is one of the oldest cities in Europe, and its inhabitants say with pride, “After Rome, Aix-la-Chapelle!” The city with its monuments carries us back a thousand years to the brilliant days of Charlemagne, who was a giant not only morally and intellectually, but physically, for he was over seven feet two inches tall. Best regards and blessing to your family, and compliments to the dean. Yours truly,

M. J. Spalding,

Archbishop of Baltimore.

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[AMBROSIA]
A LEGEND OF AUGSBURG.

We were talking of our travels, my friend Archer and I, and of the lessons travelling brings to those who go a little out of Murray’s beaten track. And especially, so we were pleased to think, these lessons might be learnt in little out-of-the-way nooks, hidden centres of ignored life, none the less busy for that, and none the less full of exciting life-dramas. I was telling him of Pavia—for my wanderings had led me chiefly through Italy—of the desolate, enchanted look of the wall-enclosed court-yards round the gloomy and picturesque palaces; of the lonely walk on the former ramparts, now planted with fine horse-chestnuts; of the many tapestries of romance I had woven in my mind about the silent-looking houses and the dark-eyed maidens I occasionally met in the streets. It was while Pavia was in Austrian hands that I passed through it, and perhaps the military occupation tended to make the sleepy city still more sombre and dull. Yet what additional elements of romance that circumstance contributed! For it was not impossible that some fair, mild German, with his dreamy sentimentality, yet fresh from college, might have been drawn to feel a holy, wondering love for the bright southern beauty whose childhood had been fostered in indignant hatred of his land and race; and between these two how many complications of pathetic interest might we not imagine, how many shades of feeling and degrees of circumstances might we not conjure up! “But,” said Archer, interrupting my fine flow of language about the joys and sorrows of the town of the Certosa, “you know Italy, strictly speaking, is rather the land of passion than of romance. Could you think of an Italian ‘Gretchen’? The one character most like her, the Cenci, is so different despite the likeness! Religion seems more spiritual in Germany; in Italy they do as the Greeks of old, put their own human feelings into heavenly representatives and then pay homage to them, thinking unconsciously that they are honoring supernatural attributes. There is too much earthliness about their ideal—in fact, I do not believe they have an ideal at all.”

“Come, come,” I answered, “you are too hard on the southern temperament. You do not know Italy well enough to speak with authority on the subject. After all, as long as their way of feeling religion does them good, the Italians are quite as well off, spiritually, as your Teutonic ideals. I am not sure but what I prefer warmth and impulse to passive tenderness, however reliable the latter may be throughout a lifetime. But this question of the relative merits of various races will always be an open one, and no one wishes to leave it so more than the church herself, for she wisely sees how much the glory of God gains through this blending of various natures in his service.”

“No doubt,” answered my enthusiastic Teutomane, “as far as that side of the question is concerned. You have been saying something equivalent to telling me that the orchestra is preferable to a single violin or cornet, while I was speaking of the intrinsic merit of each of those individual instruments.”

“Well,” I said, “now tell me something about the tone of these instruments. You know I have been very little in Germany, and I should be glad to hear something worth hearing, something that one would not find in the guide-book, nor in the volume of self-important nonsense occasionally thrust upon the public by a gushing sister or a city alderman.”

“You are very caustic,” said my friend with a laugh. “If I must travel so far out of the beaten track to please you, why not plunge at once into a volume of mediæval legends?”

“Is it in print? Because in that case I could see for myself, and therefore would not care to hear it,” I answered teasingly.

“It is not in print, Sir Doubter, and, what is more, it is not even in manuscript.”

I began to feel interested. “A popular tradition, then?” I asked.

“Exactly. It is not worth much, only I happened to see the places mentioned, the quaint house that is standing yet, though very much disguised of course, and the dark street leading to the cathedral. It happened in Augsburg, and the cathedral, as you know, is Protestantized, though still very well kept. I was only in the town for two days, so you may imagine I know little of it beyond what my narrator told me.”

“And pray who was your narrator?”

The father of a girl in an old book-stall, where I had stopped attracted by some rare copy of a Catholic work, of which she did not seem to know the value. Equally surprised at seeing the book there and at finding her ignorant of its worth, I asked her how she got it. She lifted up her head, which had been bent on some mysterious turning-point of her knitting, and said smilingly:

“Mein Herr is a Catholic, then?”

I answered that I was, and repeated my former question.

“It must have been one of my great-uncle’s books,” she said, “he was going to be a priest, but he died before being ordained. We were always Catholics.”

“And how came you to keep this stall, child?” I asked, becoming interested.

“It is my father’s,” she answered quickly; “and he has been ill for two months, so I keep it for him. His uncle left him all his books.”

“And is your father so poor, then?”

“Very poor, mein Herr,” said the girl, with a longing glance at the book I still held in my hand, as if she were thinking of the price a connoisseur might be tempted to give for it. “His father and grandfather were booksellers,” she continued, “but not like him; they had large libraries and plenty of men working under them. That was long before I was born, mein Herr.”

“And I suppose your father got into difficulties. But anything would have paid better than this, my poor child.”

“My father would not go to work for any other bookseller, not if he were the king,” laughed the girl, more merrily than I thought the case warranted; “and he is a regular student. My mother used to earn money in many ways, teaching, writing, sewing; and I did the housework. She died two years ago, and we have nothing but the book-stall now to keep my sick father and my little crippled brother.”

I thought to myself, Why, here is a regular romance; perhaps the inevitable lover of German stories is going to peep out next, from the frank revelations of my new friend. At any rate, let us follow it up. So I said aloud: “If your father is willing to part with this book, I should like to buy it. But I should be very glad to see him and chat with him about it. Do you think he could see me?”

“Oh! yes, of course,” answered the girl with a hearty smile; and for the first time I noticed her features and expression. She was not beautiful—I hope you did not expect the romance to be perfect?—but there was a pure, calm steadiness in her look, and an air of unconscious dignity about her that made her striking to the eye. She seemed made for fidelity and helpfulness, and as to external charms, if you admire hair, she simply had superabundant masses of it. German-like, it was put up in broad plaits, tightly coiled round the head, without a shadow of coquettishness, and just as if she thought it no ornament at all. Now I have noticed your Italian girls know how to make a good deal more of their advantages. I have seen poor girls in Venice with as elaborate a coiffure—ringlets, puffs, plaits, and wavings—as any Parisian hair-dresser could exhibit on his waxen models.

“Libels again!” I answered. “I have seen the very contrary at Naples, and there are women there like Grecian statues. Venice is half Eastern, you know. But to go on with your impromptu romance.”

Well, when evening came, I went to the address the young girl had given me, and as you may imagine, it was not a palace that I entered. The neighborhood was as commonplace as any in an old German city can be, that is, picturesqueness itself compared with our modern “back slums.” Still, through the picturesqueness, there stared the most unmistakable poverty. I went up a good many flights of steep, narrow stairs, with curious balusters that would have driven a dealer in old carving wild with delight, and knocked at a door that I recognized by the rude cross and bit of palm over the archway. There was just such another cross and sprig of green inside the door, and a little holy-water vessel in stamped brass hung at the side nearest the door-handle. There was nothing very peculiar about the room, except that it had an air of freshness and cleanliness, which, considering its sick inmates and its cramped locality, was the more pleasant because it was a surprise. A great German bed, with a feather-bed of traditional height, filled one side of the room, and there was a stove in the middle. The remains of the supper were on a side-table, and a lamp drawn close to the father’s arm-chair stood on a centre-table laden with domestic “mending.” The little crippled brother sat in a low easy-chair by the stove, which chair was the only luxury in the room: My friend, the young girl, came quickly forward and said:

“My father is so glad you have come, mein Herr.”

I sat down beside him, and soon got into conversation with the old scholar. He was still very weak, but seemed to feel better when excited. I found him a thorough bookworm, full of knowledge that, in another man’s hands, would have made his fortune. I discovered, or rather forced him to tell me, that in that press (pointing to a common painted chest of drawers) were manuscripts ready to be published, if a publisher could be found to undertake the risk, but the author had no ambition, though he was full to the brim of literary enthusiasm. His researches had lain chiefly among works of mediæval ecclesiastical lore, legends and poems, etc. The emblems borne by the various saints were a favorite subject of his. His uncle’s theological collection and the libraries in which he had spent his youth, had furnished him with means to prosecute his studies even after his father’s reverses in fortune—the public libraries had done the rest. His wife’s help had been very important, and piles of her notes and references lay among his own manuscripts. He spoke with pride of his little crippled son, whom he said he had made as good a scholar as if the poor boy had been to the universities; and as to his daughter, his looks said more than his words, as he gazed at her across the table, she sitting so calmly there amid her heap of “mending,” her dark-blue dress reminding me of the coloring of a mediæval virgin martyr in the stained-glass window of some old cathedral. She was more queenly than slender in figure, and neither her face nor her hands were small, though they were perfectly shaped; there was more majesty than grace in her whole air, yet she was thoroughly girl-like. I unconsciously invested her in my mind with royal robes, heavily jewelled, like the Byzantine saints, or with the ample cloak of the brave and learned Portia. Presently she went into a smaller room, opening into the one where we were sitting, and during her absence I ventured to hint to the father that for her sake he should try to make those literary treasures of his more remunerative. He smiled; I asked him if she were already provided for, or if he did not feel it his duty to put by some kind of fortune for her.

“My child is watched over from heaven,” he said; “she will never come to harm.”

“What is her name?” I asked. I had already ascertained his family name to be Reinhold.

“Ambrosia,” he answered.

“Rather an uncommon name,” I remarked, well pleased, somehow, that it should be so.

“Yes,” said the father, “and I dare say it will interest you to hear the reason why she has that name. She was born on the anniversary of the day that a young girl called Ambrosia came to life here in the sixteenth century. This was how it happened. The troubles of the Reformation were just beginning, and this young girl, who was the burgomaster’s daughter, was famous through the town for her holiness and modesty. She was betrothed to a young merchant who had been her playmate in childhood. Did you notice that great building on the corner of the street to the right of the cathedral? That was her father’s house; it is a hotel now. Her bridegroom lived two or three streets further off, on a corner too; and under the corner window, which was beautifully carved and painted, stood a wooden image of the Mother of God, with a lamp before it which was never allowed to go out. It began to be whispered about that Engelbrecht, the young lady’s betrothed, and a very handsome, dashing young fellow, was rather inclined to the new doctrines which Luther was then preaching all over Germany. Every one wondered how Ambrosia would take this, but no one knew anything positive until it became the talk of the city that one night Engelbrecht and a few companions, heated with wine and singing profane songs, had broken and extinguished the votive lamp before the image under his window, and thrown the image itself into the gutter. The next day it was known that Ambrosia was very ill, and had sent for her lover. He came, and, as he really was very fond of her, the sudden alteration in her looks frightened and subdued him for the moment. She took off the betrothal ring he had put upon her finger, and very gravely and sweetly told him that she could never be his bride on earth, but that she fervently hoped that she had indeed won his soul’s final salvation, through the joyful and willing sacrifice of her own life. She said she should die on the day that was fixed for their wedding, but that from the dead she would speak to him yet, and in public. Then a year would go by, and she told him that it was not given to her to know if he would repent or not during that time, but that on the anniversary of her death she would come to life again and walk from her tomb to the cathedral and back; and she summoned him to meet her there. It was her hope that, after that second call, he would surely be won back to God. So when her wedding day came, although she seemed happy and looked only very grave and pale, she called her father and mother and her lover to her, and there, sitting by the window that looked on the cathedral, she passed away without agony, and just as the hour struck which should have seen her a new-made wife. She was not buried for several days, for the scoffers said she was deceiving the people and simulating death. Doctors and priests watched the body for a week, and Mass was said in the room where she lay, surrounded with flowers and tall tapers. Exorcisms were even read over her, but the placid expression of her alabaster face seemed to grow only more heavenly day by day. At last signs of decomposition appeared, as if to make the marvel more certain, and those who had watched the body drew up a legal declaration of her undoubted death. She was brought to the churchyard, the family vault was opened, and the coffin, which was still uncovered, was just going to be finally closed, when she raised herself suddenly to a sitting posture, and, seemingly transfigured into greater beauty than had ever been hers in life, she gazed slowly round the crowd and beckoned to her lover. He stood transfixed, and the people fell back from him and left him face to face with his bride. She only said in a clear, pitying voice that was heard by all, ‘Remember, Engelbrecht, thy tryst with me one year from this day. God be with thee until then.’

“She fell slowly backwards into her narrow couch, and when the people had taken courage again, they came hurriedly and closed the coffin in great awe. A year went by, and Engelbrecht, uneasy and remorseful, plunged into worse excesses than ever, went heart and soul, at least outwardly, into the Lutheran movement, and became the head of a band of young men whose dissoluteness was spoken of with disgust by the licentious reformers themselves. The day came, and with it crowds flocked to the grave of Ambrosia. Those who had gone at sunrise found a white-robed figure kneeling there, its face hidden in its hands, and two long plaits of golden hair streaking its drapery. Those who had watched all night and gone there the evening previous after dusk, could tell nothing save that the grave had been the same as ever, but they thought they must have slept for a few minutes before midnight, since they had heard the quarter strike from the cathedral, and had looked at their timepieces directly after, and found it was half an hour after midnight. The radiant, silent figure was there then, and an odor as of incense filled the night air. As soon as the cathedral doors were open (it was in June), Ambrosia rose and turned towards the church. Some sceptics who saw the strange procession, rushed at once to the grave, and, hastily disinterring the coffin, found it empty. Crowds joined the procession to the cathedral, which the young girl reached during the first Mass, for the priests still had possession of it then. Every one wondered if her lover would meet her, but no sign of him appeared. Ambrosia looked incomparably more beautiful than in life; her eyes were cast down, and she wore a golden betrothal ring on her finger. She moved like a spirit, yet there was no doubting the reality and substance of her presence. There were many in the crowd who were scoffers and libertines, men whom no virtuous maiden’s eye would as much as glance upon, yet even they were silenced, and the marvellous beauty of Ambrosia seemed to have no other effect upon them than one of awe and unconscious restraint. The people followed her in and lined the aisles through which they knew she would walk on leaving the cathedral. She knelt for a moment before the high carved tabernacle, with a lovely miniature spire, quite in a separate corner from the altar—you have seen those tabernacles of ours in old Catholic churches in other parts of Germany, mein Herr?—and then she turned slowly back. There was no hurry, no anxiety nor expectancy, in her manner; still Engelbrecht had not been seen. She had come to the middle of the left aisle, still with her eyes persistently cast down, and though the people had all asked her many questions as to their future spiritual fate and that of others dear to them, yet she had never answered a word. Now, she stopped deliberately, yet never raising her eyes. A sob was heard in the crowd, and the serried masses heaved to and fro as a young man forced his way violently through. It was Engelbrecht, but he was unrecognizable. A cloak covered him from head to foot—evidently a studied disguise—yet what was more unlike him was his agitated, humble manner, the look of passionate self-accusation in his drawn features, and his impetuous disregard for appearances. As Ambrosia stopped, he rushed forward with his arms extended, but some unseen power stayed his progress, and though she was not a foot distant from him, he could not touch her. For the first time she lifted her head, and a look of love, pure as an angel’s over a repentant sinner, lighted up her ethereal face and mingled with an expression of deepest gratitude. She pointed to the betrothal ring on her finger, and then glanced upward without uttering one word. This second warning from the world of souls was of too solemn a nature to admit of even the holy yet too human expression that her words had given to the first, but it was unmistakably borne in upon the mind of her lover that as long as he kept true to the faith, he might hope to claim her as his spiritual bride in the kingdom of God. And, as she continued her journey toward her grave, he did not even follow her, but went straight to the Dominican convent and asked for the habit of the order. Those who accompanied Ambrosia to the churchyard could tell nothing as to the manner of her disappearance; all they knew was that they saw her one moment, and the next they saw nothing. Engelbrecht gave all his riches to the church to found a seminary somewhere beyond the bounds of the heretical countries of Germany, for the instruction of missionaries; the foundation eventually became a house of his order. He wished his own dwelling to be used for monastic or hospital purposes, should religion again revive in Augsburg; but his wish was not fulfilled. The house was forfeited to the state, and became successively a warehouse, a barrack, a prison, and a factory. Now, it is a great printing-office, and plenty of lies are coined into money within its walls, through the partisan newspapers that issue from it. You can see the corner window still, with its beautiful carving hardly injured by time, and the empty niche beneath it where the image of the Mother of God once stood. Have you noticed it, mein Herr?”

“No,” I said, hardly liking to answer, for fear of losing some further detail. “But what of Engelbrecht?”

The old German looked surprised.

“Why, I have told you he became a monk.”

“But did he distinguish himself against the reformers?”

“Ah!” said Reinhold, reverentially, “God knows, and his bride, but he left no record for the world to read. No doubt he worked out the will of God.”

I was silent, for I was ashamed of myself in the presence of this man, to whom the hidden life of the soul seemed so all-sufficient a history.

Ambrosia, his daughter, had come back long before this story was finished, and was sitting sewing diligently, and listening to it with all her father’s pride and personal enthusiasm in the matter.

“So,” continued Reinhold, “the day of this wonder was remembered, and among those who remained Catholics, it became a custom to christen girls born on that day by the name of the holy maiden Ambrosia. My child, thank God, was one of them.”

After listening to this peculiar and interesting legend, I led the conversation to the book I wished to purchase, and which Ambrosia had brought home with her on purpose. Reinhold knew the value of it perfectly well, and firmly resisted my well-meant attempts to fix a price upon it beyond what even its merits warranted. I was hardly able to indulge in such extravagance, yet bibliomania had always been my besetting sin, and I had curtailed our little household in many ways to feed my library. Besides, here was a charity as well-deserved as it seemed well-placed; how else, with my limited means, could I help my poor friends? But my fellow-bookworm was proof against all such artifices, and I was reduced to ask him, point-blank, was there anything which he would allow me to do for him? Without the least show of fussy pride, but with a quiet, manly gratitude that was immeasurably more dignified, he answered at once, his voice shaking as he looked at his little son:

“A very little would make my child’s life happy and useful, and, lieber Herr, that little I have it not.”

“How stupid of me!” I exclaimed. “I might have thought of that myself. Is he to be a scholar, or an artist, or what?” I said, stroking his hair, while his great eyes were fixed hungrily on mine.

“Books are his passion,” said his father, “and he knows all our poets by heart. He should have a literary education, I think.”

“But,” said I, “he could not go alone to the university, and if you do not mind leaving Augsburg, would it not be best for you all to go together? I have some English friends at Bonn, Catholics and rich people; they will do much for your child that I cannot do, though my heart would rejoice to do it, so suppose we start to-morrow?”

Reinhold looked up incredulously. Ambrosia laughed, and the poor little cripple clapped his hands in ecstasy. I watched the girl to see whether a shade of regret denoted ties of a tenderer or more passionate nature than her strong, calm family affections; but there was no sign of anything save quiet joy and a gratitude that in its fulness made me feel quite ashamed. I kept thinking of what could be done for her; whether my English friends at Bonn could or would be kind to her in any practical way, and whether in that case she and her father would ever submit to being provided for by the kindness of strangers. She seemed too self-reliant for that; and although she evidently longed for the same education her brother was to have, and had, indeed, already amassed in the intervals of her active work such miscellaneous knowledge as mere reading could give her, yet I felt sure that she would insist on earning her bread and helping to support her father. I decided on introducing the old man to the notice of some great publisher, with whom an arrangement about his manuscripts might perhaps be made; but of this we did not speak just now. I left the room full of our new projects, and spent the early part of the next day in carefully visiting the scenes of Ambrosia’s life, death, and marvellous resurrection. In the afternoon I went back to Reinhold’s old-fashioned abode, and found everything nearly ready. The books were packed in a curious old chest, which was certainly a quaint contrast to the trunks and valises of modern tourists; this and some of the old furniture, endeared to Reinhold and his daughter by the associations of a lifetime, were to be forwarded to their new destination through the care of the good “Pfarrer” (parish-priest), and a few little necessaries (a very slender amount in the eyes of our “girls of the period,” I fancy!) together with the precious manuscripts, were to go with us in a large leather hand-bag, which I volunteered to carry. I asked to be allowed to take charge of the little brother too, as we were too near the railway to need a carriage, but Ambrosia laughingly caught him up, and, with gentle deftness, insisted on carrying him, telling me to give my disengaged arm to her invalid father. As soon as we were seated in the train, Ambrosia began to tell me that she had never been in one before. I asked if she were sorry to leave the old town.

“Oh! no,” she said, “I know I shall go back there one day, when I know more than I do now.”

I wondered if there were any hidden meaning in the words. Reinhold and I talked “shop” all the way, till our fellow-passengers must have been bored with our enthusiastic bibliomania. Ambrosia sat chatting gayly to her little brother, whose glee and wonder were sometimes gravely expressed in questions that made our neighbors laugh. When we got to Bonn, and were comfortably settled at a quiet, old-fashioned hotel, absolutely perfect in its appointments, but as unobtrusive of its merits as its gaudy, noisy rivals were shrilly eager about theirs, I set out to find my friends. They were out of town. Without their influence I was powerless, so I had to wait a few days for their return. They took up the matter as warmly as I could have wished, and were particularly anxious to do something for Ambrosia; the difficulty was to find something she would accept. In the meantime, the crippled child was recommended to the college authorities with plenty of guarantees, seen to by the priest, who was my friend’s adviser and fellow-worker in all his good schemes, and Reinhold was quietly put in the way of good opportunities for the publication of some of his accumulated writings. The little boy promised well, and I was more anxious about Ambrosia, who wanted to support herself by needlework.

“You see,” she said to me, a week after our arrival, “some of the work will be knitting, and I can read as I knit; then I will go to school at night and on Sundays, and pick up what I can, and twice a week I will make time for the singing-class. There is a very good one, and so cheap, attached to our church here, and the master is a really great artist, though he is old and very poor now. He and my father will be friends, I know, so you see I shall be as well off as it is possible.”

Nothing could move her from her resolve, and as I had to leave Bonn shortly after, I was obliged to take things as they were. I received monthly bulletins of my little protégé’s conduct and progress, and sometimes heard from Ambrosia and Reinhold, through their rare but warm letters, though oftener from my friends established at Bonn. After awhile, I heard that the girl had consented to take music lessons twice a week, in the evening, with Miss L., my friend’s niece, and sometimes to share her French and Latin lessons. English she already knew. The needlework was not abandoned, however, and Ambrosia, I was told, seemed to gain new energy with each new pursuit she undertook. Reinhold’s works were in a fair way of being successfully published, and his circumstances were actually beginning to mend. I never heard of such a lucky venture as that hurriedly made at the Augsburg book-stall! Everything and everybody favored it, and my quiet old sister at home used to make me tell the story over and over again, as we turned over the pages of the book that had been the first deus ex machinâ of the romance. She was certainly disappointed in the want of a lover for Ambrosia, and, to console herself, would sometimes so arrange the little we knew as to make it the frame of a possible love-story that we did not, and never might, know.

A year passed by in this way, when business called me up from my cottage in the Isle of Wight to London. It was May, and the exhibitions were just open. I went to Burlington House, and saw very little that was worth seeing; then to Pall Mall, to some of the minor galleries. The French collection of paintings was pretty upon the whole, but suddenly I came upon a picture that was really striking. An old German town and a cathedral painted to the very life formed a most varied background, upon which a conventional “crowd,” that is, a few picturesque groups of burghers and peasants in the costume (accurate to the slightest detail) of the early part of the sixteenth century, was represented, gazing at the central figure, a maiden dressed in white, with two thick cords of golden hair streaking the snowy robe. I looked at once for Mephistopheles and his victim Faust, taking this for a novel and very artistic representation of Goethe’s masterpiece; and turning to the catalogue I looked for the name of the painter—“Franz Eichenthal.” But the painting itself was marked “Ambrosia, a Legend of Augsburg,” and in a few brief words beneath the story was told as Reinhold had told it to me. Strangely interested, I looked at the white figure; I saw the likeness which had before escaped me; it was Ambrosia’s face, her abundant hair, her grand form; the repose, the dignity that I so well remembered were there, but over the whole was thrown an air of etherealized peace and beauty which was a fitting tribute to the entirely spiritual essence of the story. I looked to see if Engelbrecht were anywhere represented, and thought I could discover him in a corner, half hidden by the shadow from a buttress of the cathedral. There was a wonderfully energetic expression about this face, which made me single it out from the rest as being probably meant for the unhappy lover. There was strength and nobility in the features, and an almost feminine grace in the figure, while the look of horror and remorse struggling with unbelief was in painful contrast with this courtly exterior. Underneath, on the buttress, was carved, in antique characters, the name of the painter, “Franciscus Eichenthal, pinxit.” It certainly happened to be the most obvious place for this traditional signature of the artist, yet I could not help fancying, almost hoping, that there was more in it than a mere chance, and that “Engelbrecht” was, in fact, the portrait of the painter himself. Ambrosia’s face drew me to it again; the likeness was life itself, yet such as an American authoress describes as “not the man that we are, but the angel that we may be.” She says that “as to every leaf and flower there is an ideal to which the growth of the plant is constantly urging, so there is an ideal to every human being, a perfect form in which it might appear, were every defect removed and every characteristic excellence stimulated to the highest point.” She likens this to the image of St. Augustine, as his mother, with her spiritual prophetic sight, saw him all through his reckless youth, and then says: “Could a mysterious foresight unveil to us this resurrection form of the friends with whom we daily walk, compassed about with mortal infirmity, we should follow them with faith and reverence, through all the disguises of human faults and weaknesses, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.”[202]

The German artist seemed to have had some such revelation vouchsafed to him concerning Ambrosia. The picture was unspeakably beautiful, and I felt instinctively that in the future it would become literally true. And yet the girl had never before struck me as having so exalted a nature; perhaps it was that she was so utterly unlike the usual ideal of a perfect woman.

I made inquiries as to whether the picture was an “order,” or simply a speculation, and learned that it had been the latter, but was now destined for the hall of the “Young Men’s Catholic Society” at Augsburg. An English nobleman had been so struck with it abroad that he had induced the artist to have it exhibited in London, and had himself ordered engravings and photographs from it. I felt very much inclined to go in for another extravagance, and have it copied on a reduced scale for my library, but I thought it most prudent to consult my sister first. I went home full of my discovery, and at once wrote to Reinhold for an explanation.

I received a very happy letter from Ambrosia herself in return, telling me of her engagement to the painter Eichenthal, who was an Augsburg man, and had lived for many years quite close to their old home, without either family having the remotest knowledge of each other. At the singing-class these two had met, their fellow-citizenship had first drawn them together, and the old master, whose favorite pupil the artist was, had brought him to see Reinhold. The result was natural, and my sister was innocently enthusiastic over the ending in so pleasant a reality of the romance she had begun in imagination many months before.

There was a quiet wedding at Bonn, and my friend’s niece, Ambrosia’s companion in her studies, was bridesmaid. My sister and I went over to be present, and the dear old father, now quite strong again, gave his daughter a copy of his first published work for a wedding gift. Next to the dedication leaf, which was addressed to your humble servant, and overflowing with affectionate expressions, there was a cheque for half the proceeds of the work (and the sum was not to be sneered at, I can assure you).

Ambrosia and her husband then went to Rome, where Eichenthal identified himself with the school of Overbeck, and became very popular among the foreign visitors and patrons of art. The Englishman who had taken such a fancy to his picture of the Augsburg legend chanced to come across him again in Rome, and, having succeeded to his father’s property, lavishly encouraged his artist friend. A replica, full size, of the original “Ambrosia” was painted for his chapel in England, and a large picture, representing a group of the patron saints of his family clustering round the throne of the Virgin and Child, was also ordered. The painter’s wife was the model for a St. Catharine of Sienna, and the Englishman himself, a thorough Saxon in build and features, made a magnificent St. Edward the Confessor.

Several years later, the young couple settled in Augsburg, where Eichenthal established a flourishing school of Christian art, and used to give lectures on the subject in the very hall where his first successful work was hung. Ambrosia’s brother got on so wonderfully that at twenty he was made professor of belles-lettres at Bonn, and was famous for writing the most beautiful religious poetry that had been known for many years. Ambrosia’s children gather round their young crippled uncle in the spacious, old-fashioned house where Reinhold lives with his daughter, and make him repeat wonderful mediæval legends clothed in verse of his own. This is how he spends his vacation. Reinhold is always at his manuscripts, and the same books that used to be his pitiful stock in trade are now the cherished ornaments of his large library. The Christmas-tree gathering in that house is a poem in itself. The children of Ambrosia’s friend, the English girl of Bonn, are often there playing with the artist’s beautiful boys, for there is no Ambrosia the younger among Eichenthal’s children. The best society of Augsburg, Protestant and Catholic alike, delight to honor the successful artist; the musical soirées given in his house are as perfect in their way as each of his own paintings, and never is anything purely worldly allowed to appear under his roof.

“When I first saw my wife,” he says, “I was a Lutheran or rather a so-called philosopher, but since I won her, I vowed to make her my arbiter and my conscience; you see the result. ‘Seek first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.’”

“And this is the end?” I said regretfully, as Archer paused.

“Not quite,” he answered with a peculiar smile; “the end will not really come till Ambrosia has grown to be the counterpart of her spiritual portrait. But she is growing towards that standard every day. Would that you and I were, old friend!”

“There is time yet,” I said; “let us try.”

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THE CHURCH.

It is of her womb that we are born; our nourishing is from her milk; our quickening from her breath.... She it is who keeps us for God, and appoints unto the kingdom the sons she has borne.... He who leaves the church of Christ attains not to Christ’s rewards. He is an alien, an outcast, an enemy. He can no longer have God for a father who has not the church for a mother. If any man was able to escape who remained without the ark of Noah, then will that man escape who is out of doors beyond the church. The Lord warns us, and says: “He who is not with me is against me; and he who gathereth not with me scattereth.” ... He who gathereth elsewhere but in the church, scatters the church of Christ.—St. Cyprian.

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[THE NECESSITY OF PHILOSOPHY AS A BASIS OF HIGHER EDUCATION.]
BY F. RAMIERE, S.J.
FROM THE ETUDES RELIGIEUSES.
CONCLUDED.