The Catholic World, Vol. 16, October 1872-March 1873

by Various

John.

In beauty, not above criticism; in courage, undaunted; in love, most generous and most forgiving; in patience, rivalling Job; in constancy, unswerving; in humility, without an equal.

After the above enumeration of qualities, it should be superfluous to add that John is a dog. It would be ridiculous to expect so much of a man. He is, moreover, a Skye-terrier, well-born and well-bred.

To announce to John's acquaintances that one was about to eulogize the dog would be to incur and deserve some such reply as that made by the Spartan to a rhetorician who announced his intention to pronounce an eulogium on Hercules: “An eulogium on Hercules?” repeated the Spartan. “Who ever thought of blaming Hercules?”

Our reply would be that we write, not for those who deny, but for those who never heard.

There is no shifting of scenes in our little drama. The unities are preserved with almost Grecian strictness; the writer, however, as chorus, claiming the privilege of being occasionally discursive.

Scene.—A suburban summer residence in that most magnificent of seasons, autumn, “in that month of all months in the year,” October; furthermore, the most perfect of Octobers. The stone-colored house is the only neutral bit in the landscape; all else is a glow of color. The fresh greensward recedes under flower-bosses of solid brilliancy. A flower carpet, gayer than any loom of Turkey, Brussels, or France ever wove, lies under the clump of evergreens in a far corner of the estate. Tapestries of woodbine hang over balconies, and porches, and bay-windows; and the noble trees that stand, two and two, in stately pairs, all about the place, and up the avenue, are a torchlight procession, which sunshine, instead of quenching, fires to a still more dazzling blaze. It is that picturesque time when ladies throw gay scarfs over the summer dresses they still wear; when the sky shakes out her violet mists to veil the too divine beauty of earth; that season of exquisite comfort when one has open windows and open fires; that delicious season when fruit is brought to the table still warm with the sunshine in which it finished ripening five minutes before. Above all, it is that season when people who are at all sympathetic are inclined to silence.

Mrs. Marcia Clay was not at all sympathetic. She was simply herself, a frivolous woman, with a strong will, and a Chinese wall of selfishness and self-complacence built up on all sides of her. The soft “Hush!” on the lips of the Indian summer, when the soul of Nature plumes her wings for flight, she heard not. The suspense, the regret, the melancholy, the fleeting rapture of the season she perceived not. To her it was surely the fall of the year, when people get ready for the winter, lay in coal, buy new clothes, and go back to town.

Flounced to the waist in rattling silk, her fair hair furbelowed all over her head, and, apparently, pounds of gold hanging from her ears, thrust through her cuffs, dangling at her belt, strung about her neck, and fastened [pg 623] to the pin that held her collar, this lady sat in one of the pleasant parlors of her house, and talked as fast as her tongue could run.

The woman who listened was of another kind, one who might have come to something if she had been possessed of will and courage, but who, having a small opinion of herself, was only somebody by little spurts, which did no good, since they were always followed by unusual self-abasement. She was not without a despairing sense of this incongruity, and had more than once bewailed in her own mind the fact that she was neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, but inclined to each in turn; had little wings which, as she spread them, changed to little fins, which, as she moved them, became little feet, that, when she would have walked, collapsed utterly, and left her floundering—a woman without moral vertebræ, who had been all her life the prey of people in whom the moral vertebræ were in excess. She was nothing in particular, physically, either, being gayish, oldish, tallish, weakish, and dressed in that time-honored, thin plain black silk gown which is the infallible sign of genteel poverty, and which, at this instant, adorns the form that owns the arm that moves the hand that holds the pen that writes this history.

Mrs. Marcia Clay.—“It is very provoking, my dear, but it can't be helped. If I should intimate to him that our trunks are all packed to go in town, he would leave instantly. He is the most touchy of mortals. To be sure, I have invited him here again and again, but I expected him in summer-time, not when we were on the point of moving, and had our very beds half made in the city. There's nothing for it but to unpack, and pretend to be delighted. Fortunately, he amuses himself.”

The uncertain person in the black silk gown ventured to suggest that Mr. Bently might accompany them to town, and was met by a little shriek which made her jump.

“Fancy him in my blue satin or pink satin chamber! Why, my dear, he smokes, and—chews! chews, dear! Between you and me, he is a bear in his habits, a positive bear. If you will believe me, I have seen him wear slipshod shoes and crumpled linen. You should see him at home, in his den. An inky dressing-gown that he wipes his pens on, old slippers with holes in them, books piled all about, and dust that you could write your name in! In that state he sits and writes hour after hour.”

Ah! Mrs. Clay & Co., who look at littleness through magnifying glasses, and are blind to all true greatness, the sole of this man's slipshod shoe is cleaner than your tongue. There is no dust on his thoughts; there are no holes in the fabrics his brain weaves; and when he writes, far-away lands that know you not, and kindred greatness nearer by, feel the electric spark that slips from his pen's point.

“What a shocking person he must be!” says Miss Uncertainty, meaning to please. “I don't wonder you won't have him in town.”

“Goodness gracious, Miss Bird!” cried the lady, coloring up. “What can you be thinking of! Why, Mr. Bently is famous. He can afford to be eccentric. It is an honor to have him in one's house. People have turned and looked at me when they heard that I am his cousin; and his name opens to me places that—well, everybody can't enter. Then it is a very fine thing to have a gentleman in one's parlors who can talk to those lions whom one doesn't know what to say to, and who can tell what one's pictures, and bronzes, and [pg 624] marbles mean, and translate from every language under the sun. I well remember a time when he won for me a perfect triumph over Mrs. Everett Adams. It was delicious. Mrs. Everett Adams is always picking up lions, especially learned and scientific ones, and, when Professor Porson came here, she monopolized him at once. You cannot conceive how odiously she behaved, nor what airs she assumed. One heard nothing but Porson, Porson, till I was sick of the name; and it was impossible to go anywhere, to theatre, opera, or concert, without seeing her sail down to the most conspicuous place, after everybody was seated, with Prof. Porson in her train. Well, one evening she brought him to our house, just to plague me, and we had half a dozen or so persons to meet him. It was an evening of torment, my dear. The professor was in the clouds, with Mrs. Everett Adams fluttering behind him, like a tail after a kite, and all the rest were in raptures, except me—I was extinguished. The professor knew what every bronze and marble was, and who made it, and if it was an original or a copy; and, in short, everything I had seemed as common as possible. As a last desperate resort, I brought out some old books in foreign languages that poor dear Clay had picked up. He was always collecting things of that sort. The professor turned them over with the tips of his fingers, and read a word here and there. Oh! he knew all about them. Yes; he had read them when he was a boy. But I had begun to suspect him. My poor husband used to say that, when a man will not own that there is anything he doesn't understand, root and branch, he was always sure that that man was an impostor. So I took up two of the books that I saw he had passed over, and asked him to translate a passage for me. They looked about as much like a printed language as the figures on my carpet do. To my joy, he had to own that he couldn't. They were Chaldaic, he said, and he had made but little study in that language. Mrs. Adams glanced angrily at me, and I smiled. Just at that moment, as good luck would have it, the door opened, and in came Cousin Bently. I flew at him with the books. Triumph, my dear! Never did I have such a rapturous moment. Cousin took the books up in his slow way, put up his eye-glasses, and looked them over in such a superior manner that really my hopes rose. They were Arabic, I've forgotten what about, and he read out some passages, and translated them, all the company looking on. My dear, the Porson and Adams stock sank to less than one per cent. in an instant. The professor was red, and Mrs. Adams was pale. I could have hugged Cousin Bently on the spot, though his boots were not blacked, and his collar was in a positively shocking state.”

“How charming it must be to have him visit you!” says Miss Bird, wheeling about as the wind veered.

Poor thing! She did not mean to be insincere. She merely wanted to say the right thing, and didn't care a fig about the matter, one way or the other.

“Charming!” repeated Mrs. Clay, with emphasis. “It gives a tone. Besides, it draws some people one likes to know. You should see Madame de Soi, the most exclusive of women, flutter round him like a butterfly round a—round a—well, really, I am at a loss for the word. It is impossible to call Cousin Bently a flower, unless one should make a pun about the seedy contents of his valise. I studied botany once, and I [pg 625] know a pun can be made of it. Madame knows no more and cares no more about his learning than a cat does, but she has tact, and does contrive to smile at the right time. I never could do that. When I smile, Cousin Bently is sure to push out his under lip, and stop talking. But she will look and listen with such rapture that you would positively think he were describing the dress the empress wore at the last ball; and sometimes she even says something that he will seem pleased with. That very evening of the Porson collapse she talked with him half an hour of molecules, whatever they are. I actually thought they were speaking of people. Fancy being called a molecule! Yes, Cousin Bently is a great credit, and a great convenience to me. Why, but for him, I couldn't have gone to those stupid exclusive lectures of Mr. Vertebrare's, where I yawned myself to death among the very cream of society.”

The lady paused for breath, and her companion, feeling obliged to say something, faltered out that she always feared those very clever persons.

“I should think you would after the experience you had with that dragon,” replied Mrs. Clay significantly.

Miss Bird colored, and was silent. “That dragon” was a rather difficult old lady, a Miss Clinton, with whom she had lived and suffered many years, and who had lately died.

“And so,” Mrs. Clay summed up, “I have Cousin Bently on my hands for a week or ten days, and must make the best of it. And”—suddenly lowering her voice—“speak of angels—ahem! Cousin Bently, allow me to make you acquainted with Miss Bird, an old schoolmate of mine.”

Miss Bird rose with a frightened air, dropped her eyes, blushed deeply, half extended her hand, and half withdrew it again, and stammered out, “Good-morning, sir!” which was not a very felicitous greeting, the time of day being near sunset.

Mr. Bently acknowledged the introduction with rather a stately bow, gave the person before him a calm and exhaustive glance, protruded his under lip very slightly, without meaning to, and walked to the further end of the room.

“Why need people be such fools?” he muttered, half philosophical, half impatient. He had been, as all learned and even merely clever people must be, too much looked on as an ogre by the simple. It was rather provoking to see people shaking at his approach, as if he were going to compel them to talk Greek and calculus, or have their lives.

As the gentleman seated himself in an arm-chair before a delightful bay-window, and facing the window, there was another addition to the company, and—enter our hero!

Reader, John!

A longish, curly-haired quadruped with bright dark eyes full of merriment and kindliness, and teeth so beautifully white and even that it would be a privilege to be bitten by them. Of course he has undergone those improvements which man finds it necessary to make in the old-fashioned plan of the Creator, and his clipped ears stand up pointed and pert, and his clipped tail is indeed less a tail than an epigram. But the bounding grace of his motions no scissors can curtail.

Do not imagine that John has entered the room properly, and stood still to be presented and described. Far from it. He bounced in through the window, as though shot from a mortar, and, while we have been writing this brief sketch of his person, has flown into the learned gentleman's [pg 626] arms, kissed him enthusiastically a dozen times, pawed his hair into fearful disorder, made believe bite his nose and hands, with the utmost care not to hurt him in the least, pulled one end of his cravat out of knot, and threatened to overturn him, chair and all, by drawing back and rushing at him again like a little blue and yellow battering-ram. His manner was, indeed, so overpowering that Mr. Bently had half a mind to be vexed, and could not help being disconcerted. His affection for dogs was entirely Platonic, and he had a theory that bipeds and quadrupeds should have separate houses built for them; but this creature had struck him as being the most honest and sensible being in the house, and had, moreover, taken to him.

Miss Bird looked askance at the scene in the bay-window, and Mrs. Clay looked askance at Miss Bird, and wondered at her impudence and folly. Bird had blushed and dropped her eyes when she was introduced to the gentleman, and she was now watching him out of the corners of her eyes. Bird was an old maid, with a moderate annuity; Mr. Bently was an old bachelor, with next to nothing beside brains and a name. Bird must be set to rights. So much the lady's actions told of her thoughts.

“I wish I dared send for Marian Willis here,” she whispered confidentially, watching the effect of her words. “Nothing would please me better than to bring those two together again. But Cousin Bently would suspect my drift, and, as likely as not, start off at once. Nothing annoys him so much as to see that any one is trying to get him married. Marian is in every way suitable, and between you and me, dear, I think they would both be glad to have a mediator, only they are too proud to own it. Everybody thought about ten years ago that they were engaged, and they certainly were in a fair way to be, when some lovers' quarrel occurred, and they parted. You have never seen Miss Willis, have you?”

Yes; Bird had seen her at Miss Melicent Yorke's wedding, and she was the grandest looking lady there. She wore a black velvet dress, buttoned up high with diamonds, and not another jewel about her. She had a pink half-open camellia in her bosom, and a wide-open one in her hair. Clara Yorke said that the beautiful plainness of Miss Willis' toilet made everybody else look all tags and ends. She gave the bride a rare engraving of some picture of The Visitation, which Miss Melicent didn't half like, because the S. Elizabeth was on her knees, and because there was a crown carved in the frame just over the Virgin's head. But the bridegroom had reconciled her to it, saying that motherhood is a crown to any woman. Mrs. Edith Yorke, Carl's wife, who is now abroad, was very fond of Miss Willis, and used to call her “Your Highness.”

“Oh! their intimacy was because Mr. Carl Yorke was a Catholic,” interposed Mrs. Clay rather abruptly.

When Bird got talking of the Yorkes, she never knew when to stop; and the subject was not pleasant to her listener. Mrs. Clay had tried to be intimate with the family, and had signally failed. Always kind and courteous, there still seemed to be an invisible crystalline wall between them and her.

“Marian's religion is her one fault. It may be possible that she and Cousin Bently disagreed about that, though it would be hard to find out what he believes, or if he believes anything. He defends every religion you attack, and attacks every religion you defend.”

“But do you think she would marry [pg 627] him?” asked Bird incredulously; and her glance toward the window became depreciatory and critical, instead of awful.

Mr. Bently, as a learned man, was to be regarded with fear and admiration; but as a bridegroom—that was another thing.

“Why, she is handsome and rich.”

“What if she is?” asked the other tartly. “It only makes her more suitable. But she is not rich, though she lives with a rich old uncle, who may leave her something. She is in every way suited to Cousin Bently. He would never marry an inferior woman.”

This last assertion Mrs. Clay made very positively, for the reason that she was mortally afraid it was not true. Her private opinion was that Mr. Bently must have been very lonely in his bachelor lodgings before he came to visit her, and that he might easily be induced to marry even Bird, rather than live alone any longer.

Meantime, the object of their conversation, having put the vociferous John away, and induced him to lie at his feet, instead of pervading his neck and face, sat gazing out through the window. He certainly was not an eminently beautiful man, neither was he a pink of nicety in his dress, though he abhorred untidiness in others, particularly in women. His form was rather fine, but his features were too strong for grace, his hair was growing gray, and his teeth were discolored by his odious beloved tobacco. There was something a little neglected in his appearance. Evidently he needed some one with authority to remind him, when occasion demanded, that his cravat was horribly awry, that he had forgotten to smooth his hair down since the last time he combed it up with his ten fingers, and that, really, that collar must come off. In fine, he needed an indulgent wife, who would look out for him constantly, but with discretion, never intruding the cravat and collar question into his sublime moments.

Was he conscious of something lacking in his life, that his expression was less the gravity of the man of thought than the sadness of the lonely man? Something ailed him—physical sickness, no doubt, for his face was flushed, and his eyes heavy—but some trouble of the mind also. He looked across the lawn, that was bounded by a dense line of autumn-colored trees, with a sky of brilliant clearness arching over. Betwixt sapphire and jasper the low purple dome of a mountain pushed up, making a background for a shining cross that might be suspended in air for any support visible to him who gazed on it. But he had seen that cross before, and his mind, leaping over the few intervening miles, followed down from its sunlighted tip and touched a slim gray tower and a vine-covered church, and, looking through the gay rose-window over the chancel, saw a tiny lambent flame floating in and fed by sacred oil of olives. Mentally he stood before the church door, saw the grove of beeches that hid it from the road, saw through those heavy boughs the green slope of a lawn near by and the mansion that crowned its summit. But in one respect the eyes of the seer were less true to the present than to the past, for they beheld roses, instead of autumn colors, wreathing pillar, porch, and balcony.

In this house Marian Willis lived. He sat and recollected all his intercourse with her, from the first pleasant dawn of friendly regard and sympathy, growing up to something brighter and closer, yet scarcely defined, to its sudden extinguishment. [pg 628] His acquaintance with her had been like a day that breaks in silent and cloudless light, and is shut in by a cold and smothering fog before its noon. What had been expressed to her of all that sweetness he found in her society? What to him of the pleasure she seemed to feel in his? Nothing that had other utterance than silent looks and actions. What had separated them? A mist, a fog, an impalpable yet irresistible power. Some tiny wedge had been inserted that gave a chance for pride to rush in and thrust their lives apart. There had been a slight reserve that grew to coldness and thence to alienation. Who does not know how those many littles make a mickle? Possibly a certain gallant officer, just home from the wars, with his arm in a sling, and a sabre-scar across his temple, had had something to do with the trouble. Certainly the last mental picture Mr. Bently had carried away from his last visit at Mr. Willis' was of this same officer walking in the garden with Marian Willis leaning on his sound arm, and listening to the tale of his adventures as women always do and always will listen to soldiers who bring their wounds to illustrate their stories.

On that occasion, Mr. Bently had returned to his cousin's house and behaved in what he considered a very reasonable manner. He locked himself into his chamber, let in all the light possible, placed himself before the mirror, and critically examined the reflection he saw there. There was no glorious sabre-wound across his temple, showing where he had once wrestled with death, and come off conqueror; but, instead, there were long, faint, horizontal lines beginning to show on his forehead—mementoes of the silent combat with time, and of anxious quest in search of hidden truth. There were no crisp, fair curls shining over his head; the brown hair was straight and short, and here and there a white hair rewarded the search for it. The soldier's large violet eyes flashed like jewels; but these eyes in the mirror were no brighter than wintry skies, a calm, steady blue that a planet might look through, perhaps, but that were not used to lightning. The soldier was clad in a trim uniform that set off well a form of manly grace, the stripe that glimmered down the leg, the band, like a lady's bracelet, that bound the sleeve, the golden eagle outspread on either shoulder, all helping to make a gallant picture; the raiment reflected with pitiless fidelity by the mirror before him was decidedly neutral. No one could call it picturesque nor even elegant of its kind. It was simply calculated to escape censure.

Having made a full survey and, as he thought, a fair comparison, this self-elected judge then pronounced sentence on the person whose reflection he gazed at.

“You are a fool!” he said, with a conviction too deep for bitterness. “What is there in you that a fair and charming woman could prefer? Bah! She prizes you as she does those vellum Platos and Homers that she admires because others do, but cannot read a word of. When she sinks into her arm-chair for that hour of rest before dressing for dinner, does she take with her a book of Greek or of logic? No; she reads the poet or the novelist. You have nothing to do with her more intimate life.”

Thus had the scholar decided, gazing at his own reflection in the mirror, seeing there only the shell of the man, and that not at its best, at its worst rather. The kindling of intelligence, the scintillating of sharp intellectual pursuit, the soft radiance which dawning love gave him when [pg 629] he was shone upon by the beloved object—those he saw not. He saw only a fool.

So far, so good. But he had not finished the work. A fool may be miserable, may be ruined by his folly, even while owning it. He must not only prove the vanity of hoping, but the vanity of loving. He must remove the halo from his idol's brow, not rudely, but with all the coolness and gentleness of reason. What, after all, were beauty and grace, a sweet voice and smile, and gracious speaking? He set himself to analyze them, physiologically, chemically, and morally.

So the botanist analyzes a flower, and when he has destroyed its ravishing perfume, and that exquisite combination which constituted its individuality—a combination man can separate, but which only God can form—he points to the fragments, and says, “That is a rose!”

But suppose that, even while he speaks, those withering atoms should stir and brighten, the anthers should gather again their golden pollen, and hang themselves once more on each slender filament, the petals blush anew, and rustle into fragrant crowding circles, and a most rosy rose should rise triumphantly before him!

Some such experience had Mr. Bently when he had finished his work of demolition. Turning coldly away from the ruins of what had been so fair, he walked to the window to take breath, and saw there before him the living woman complete, her soul welding with immortal fire every characteristic and mood into a being irresistibly lovely, baffling, and—disdainful. She stood in the garden where Mrs. Clay had purposely detained her beneath his window, and she stood there unwillingly. Only a social necessity had brought her to the house, and she had determined that she would not, if it could be helped, meet that gentleman who, from being a daily visitor of her own, had suffered three days to pass during which he had once or twice talked with her uncle over the gate, but had never approached her.

Since that hour when, looking from his window, he had seen her sail past without raising her eyes, Mr. Bently had been haunted at times by two antagonistic visions—the rose dissected, which he viewed with indifference, succeeded by the rose full-blown, triumphant in unassailable sweetness.

He thought it all over now as he sat looking out of Mrs. Clay's eastern bay-window. And having thought it over once, it began to go through his mind again, and still again. The various scenes passed, one by one, slowly, like persons in a procession, and he gazed at them from first to last; and there was the first again! He had had enough of it, but it would not stop. His head was aching, and feeling somewhat light besides. He pressed his forehead with his hands, and tried to think of something else, even if it were no more pleasant subject than the cold he must have taken to make him so sore from head to foot. But still that procession moved with accelerating speed. He spoke to John, tired and annoyed himself a little with the creature's antics, then leaned back in his chair, and let his brain whirl.

Certainly he was ill; but nothing else was certain. Whether to go or stay, to speak or remain silent, he could scarcely decide. When dinner was announced, instinct kept him conventional. He ate nothing, but he went through all the proper forms, with no more abstraction than might be attributed to his intellectual oddities. But dinner, with its inanities, over, he made haste to escape to his own room.

“Going out for a walk, cousin?” asked Mrs. Clay, as he passed her.

How the trivial question irritated him! He bowed, afraid to utter a word, lest it should be an offensive one. His nerves felt bare, his teeth on edge.

Miss Bird looked more deeply than her friend had, and in the one timid glance she gave the gentleman saw a painful trouble underneath his cool exterior.

“I hope he didn't hear what we were saying of him before dinner,” she remarked apprehensively.

“No, indeed!” was the confident response. “He scarcely hears what you say to him, still less what is said of him.”

“But he looked displeased,” persisted the anxious Bird.

Mrs. Clay cast a sarcastic glance on her subordinate. “My dear,” she said with decision, “the less you occupy yourself with my cousin's feelings, the better for you. Your solicitude will be quite thrown away.”

Bird sighed faintly, and resigned herself to being snubbed.

Mr. Bently walked up-stairs slowly, dreading to be alone, and shut himself into his room; and, when there, desolation settled upon him. It is not pleasant to be sick in one's own home, with loving and solicitous friends surrounding one with their cares, and taking every task from the weak hands; it is still less pleasant when, though friends are near, they are powerless to lift the burden which only those helpless hands can carry; but how far more miserable, how far more cruel than any other desolation on earth, is it when sickness falls upon one who must work, and the sick one is not only oppressed by the burden of duties unperformed, but is himself a burden, coldly and grudgingly tended, or tended not at all? Mr. Bently knew well the extent of his cousin's friendship, and the worth of her Chinese compliments, and he would far rather have fallen in the street, and been left to the tender mercies of strangers, than fall ill in her house.

Morning came, and it was breakfast-time, by no means an early hour. Mrs. Clay had put off the meal half an hour on her cousin's account. “He has at least one polite habit—he does not rise early,” she said. “But then he is as regular as a clock in his late hour.”

He was not prompt this morning, however, for they waited ten minutes after breakfast was on the table, and rang a second bell, and still their visitor did not appear.

Miss Bird suggested that he had looked unwell the evening before, and might be unable to come down.

“Really, how thoughtful you are!” Mrs. Clay said with cutting emphasis. “I had quite forgotten. Perhaps, my son, you will go up and see if Miss Bird is right.”

“My son” objected to being made a messenger of. “If the old fellar wanted to sleep, let him sleep. Don't you say so, Clem?”

Clementina always agreed with her brother; the two prevailed, and the “old fellar” was left to sleep, or toss and moan, or be consumed with fever and thirst, or otherwise entertain himself as he or fate should choose, while the family breakfasted at their leisure.

It is scarcely worth while to put Clementina and Arthur Clay in print. They are insignificant and, in a small way, disagreeable objects, and their like is often met with to the annoyance of many. The mental ignorance and lack of capacity which we lose sight of when they are overmantled by the loveliness of good-will, in such as these become contemptible by being placed on [pg 631] pedestals of presumption and ill-nature, and hateful when they are set as obstacles and stumbling-blocks in the way of souls who would fain walk and look upward.

Breakfast over, and no Mr. Bently appearing, Mrs. Clay felt called on to make inquiries, and, accordingly, dispatched a servant to her cousin's door, while she herself listened at the foot of the stairs. She heard a knock, but no reply, then a second knock, followed by the servant's voice, as if in answer to some one within.

“Paper under the door, sir? Yes, sir!”

She was half way up the stairs by this time, and snatched the slip of paper which the man had found pushed out under Mr. Bently's door. “What in the world can be the matter? Where are my eye-glasses? Cousin Bently is such a frightful writer that, really—”

While the lady is adjusting her glasses, and her children and companion are gathering about her, we will read this document, for there will be no time afterward. It is short, and is strongly scented with camphor.

“I am ill, and, it is possible, may have small-pox. It has been where I was a fortnight ago. Keep away from me, and send for a doctor.”

Confusion ensued. Screams resounded from the parlor; orders and counter-orders were given, only one fixed idea penetrating that chaos—to get away from the house as quickly as possible. Carriages were got out, silver and valuables piled into them by Bird, who alone would go upstairs, and who was made to do everything, and in less than half an hour the whole family started for the city. The servants, all but the gardener, had already fled.

“But who is to take care of Mr. Bently?” Bird asked, pausing at the carriage door.

“I shall give the gardener orders to get a doctor and nurse,” Mrs. Clay said impatiently, fuming with selfish terror.

“But I'm not afraid,” Bird hesitated. “I've been vaccinated. And it's hard to leave him alone.”

“Nonsense!” cried the lady. “I shall allow nothing of the sort. It is not necessary, and, besides, it is not proper. Do get in, if you are going to town. It really seems to me, Miss Bird, that you are altogether too much interested in Mr. Bently.”

Then, at last, Bird perceived what was in the speaker's mind, and, as most women would in such circumstances, laid down her better impulses at the feet of meanness. Crushed and ashamed, and, at the same time, weakly and despairingly angry, she took her place in the carriage, and listened in silence to the lamentations and complaints of her companions.

“How could Cousin Bently do such a thing? How could he come to me when he knew he had been so exposed?”

That Mr. Bently had only learned from the paper of the evening before to what he had been exposed, and had only thought during the night what might be the meaning of his illness, the lady did not inquire into.

At the garden gate stood James, the gardener. Mrs. Clay stopped long enough to give him hurried directions to get a doctor and nurse, and do all that was necessary for the invalid, then ordered the coachman to drive on.

“I hope John isn't with us,” one of the young ones said presently. “He was round Cousin Bently all day yesterday.”

No; Bird, recollecting that fact also, had shut John into one of the [pg 632] chambers, and left him there. She ventured to hope that he would not be left to starve, but no one responded to her merciful wish.

The cause of all this terror and confusion had seen the departure of the family without being surprised at it. He had not undressed, but had lain on a sofa all night, and, when morning came, had written the warning which proved so effectual, and then sank into an arm-chair near the window, longing for air. He expected the family to keep away from him, and was neither sorry nor indignant that they had removed themselves still further. Of course a doctor would be sent, and of course there was some one to take care of him. He sat and waited for that some one to enter. Perhaps it was James. He saw the gardener shut and fasten the gate after the carriage went out, and he heard the locking of the stable door. He waited, but no one came. Well, the house must be attended to first, and he would be patient, though thirst, and alternate fever and chills, and racking pains were tormenting him. He was annoyed, too, by John's efforts to escape from the next room, and would have gone to release the creature but for the fear of spreading contagion.

A distant door opened and shut; he heard a distant heavy step, and thanked God that relief and companionship were at hand. But the sounds ceased, and no one came near him. He saw James, the gardener, laden with packages, hurry down the avenue, and disappear into the public road, and a thrill of fear shot through him. The scene outside swam before his eyes, and grew dark for a moment. Could it be that they had all gone away, and left him to die alone? No; he could not believe it! James had perhaps gone to bring the doctor. He would wait patiently, since wait he must.

An hour passed, and no one came. There was no sound in the house but that occasional whining and barking from the next room; no sound outside except when a carriage rolled swiftly by in the road. He saw no person coming. It was impossible to endure that thirst any longer. He went into the bathroom, and wet his hands and face, and drank of the tepid water there. His head reeled at sight of the stairs, and he did not dare to attempt to descend. Returning to his chamber, he fell on to the sofa, and, for the first time in his life, fainted; coming back to life again as though emerging from outer darkness, but not into light—into a sickening half-light, rather. So hours passed, and he knew without a doubt that he was utterly deserted, and that a lonely and terrible death threatened him. Could he do nothing to avert it? He recollected that Mrs. Clay had a medicine closet in the bathroom. Possibly, if he could reach it, something might be found there to relieve, if not to cure, him. What mountains molehills can change into sometimes! This man, so strong and full of life but a day before, now lay and gave his whole mind to planning how he should save himself a few steps in going to the bathroom again, how he could avoid the stairs, lest he should fall, and whether he could this time cross the corridor to release that troublesome, whining dog. Whenever, weary and confused, he lost himself a moment in a half sleep, that whining and scratching assumed terrible proportions in his imagination, and became the fierce efforts of wild beasts to reach him. He started up now and then, with wide-open eyes, to assure himself that he was not in a menagerie; to fix in his mind the picture of that airy chamber, with [pg 633] its clear tints of green and amber, its open windows showing the long veranda outside, and the bright perspective of foliage and sky.

But when his eyelids drooped again, and he sank back into half sleep and half fainting, back came the painful phantoms to torment him till they were once more chased away for a time.

Toward evening he roused himself to make that difficult pilgrimage of fifty paces in search of healing and refreshment, bathed eagerly his face and head, and found his cousin's medicine closet. But when he had reached that, his strength was nearly exhausted. He had only enough left to take down the laudanum bottle, and get back to his room with it. Laudanum might dull this pain, and quiet the excited nerves. Once more John must wait. He could not stop to release him.

The room in which the dog was confined had a window on the balcony that ran past Mr. Bently's room. That window was open, but the blind was shut, and John, despairing of escape through the door, had turned all his efforts toward unfastening this blind, and had several times been near success, when the spring, flying back, had defeated him.

The invalid's bath of cold water had refreshed him somewhat. He hated to take the laudanum. He had never been an intemperate man, and had always shrunk from swallowing anything which could in the least degree isolate his mind from the control of his will. He would bear the pain a little longer.

He lay there and thought, and visions of happy homes rose up before him. At this hour of early twilight, the lamps were being lighted, or people sat by firelight, and children, grown languid and sleepy with the long day's play, leaned silent on their mothers' laps. At this hour, men of thought, intellectual workers, laid aside the weightier labors of their profession to indulge in an exhilarating contention of wits, so much happier than other workers, in that their recreations do not retard, but rather accelerate their work. It is but dancing at evening with Terpsichore, or pacing with Calliope along the margin of the same road which he had travelled by day in a dusty chariot, or walked encumbered by his armor. In their lighter intellectual contests, what sparks were sometimes struck out to live beyond the moment that gave them birth! What random beams of light shot now and then into seeming nothingness, and revealed an unsuspected treasure!

All these scenes of social comfort and delight rose before the sufferer's mind with tantalizing distinctness, fairer and fuller in the vision than he had ever known the reality to be. He felt like a houseless wanderer who, freezing and starving in the street, sees through lighted windows the warmth and joy of the home circle.

Mr. Bently was not a pious man. He had a deep sentiment of reverence, and a firm belief that somewhere there is an inflexible truth that deserves an obedience absolute and unquestioning. But controversy had spoiled him for religious feeling, which is, perhaps, too delicate for rough handling, and in the clash of warring creeds some freshness and spontaneity had been lost to his convictions. Reaching truth, winning battles for truth, he had been like a traveller at the end of a long journey, when he scarcely cares in his weariness for the goal attained, but must needs eat and sleep. He had spent too much time and strength in wiping away the mire flung on the garments of religion to be any longer [pg 634] quick in enthusiastic homage. “Pity 'tis, 'tis true.” The butterfly you would save from the net loses the down from its wings with your most careful handling; the friend you defend from calumny you dethrone even while defending. The feeling that dictated that brutal egotism, “Cæsar's wife must not be suspected,” dwells in a less arrogant form in most human hearts, and rare indeed is that soul which sets its love as high, after even the most triumphantly refuted accusation, as it was before.

Desertion and imminent death chilled this man's heart, and he had no mind to turn to God, save in a cold recognition of his power and wisdom. Love entered not into his thoughts, but despair did.

The pain increased, the dizziness came back. He stretched his hand for the glass and vial of laudanum, and tried with a shaking hand to pour out what he could guess to be an ordinary potion. There was no reason why he should suspect that that bottle might have been standing in the house so long as to have made even the smallest dose of its contents deadly. As he measured, and tried to recollect how much he should take, pouring out unknowingly what would have been for him Lethe indeed, a louder rattle and bang at the blind of the next room proclaimed the success of the four-footed prisoner. There was a scampering on the veranda, a dog's head, eager and bright-eyed, was thrust in at the window of the sick-room, then, with an almost human cry of joy, John flew at its occupant.

Away went bottle and glass, breaking and spilling—no laudanum for Mr. Bently that day. Down went Mr. Bently among the sofa pillows, prostrated by the unexpected onset; and love, and delight, and absolute devotion, in the form of an uproarious Skye terrier unconscious and uncaring for risks, nestled in the breast of the deserted man, were all over his face and neck, and through his hair, and speaking as plainly as though human speech had been their interpreters.

When the man comprehended, recovering from his first confusion, reason and endurance stood aside and veiled their faces, and a greater than they took their place.

Through a gush of tears which were but the spray of a subsiding wave of bitterness, this soul raised its eyes, and beheld a new light. It lost sight of the Almighty in a vision of the Heavenly Father.

The flight that followed was painful, but not unsoothed. The dog, perceiving at once that his friend was ill, became quiet. He lay with head pressed close to the restless arm, and, if the sick man moaned, he answered with a pitying whine. Once he left the room, and wandered through the whole house in search of help, whined and scratched at every closed door, and, finding no one, came back with an air of distress and perplexity. Later, when Mr. Bently seemed very ill, John ran out onto the balcony, and barked loudly, as if calling for relief.

Morning came again, and the sick man's pain gave place to a deathlike faintness, resulting from lack of nourishment. For thirty-six hours nothing had passed his lips but water, and that no longer ran from the faucet when he tried it. He crept down-stairs, stair by stair, holding by the balusters, like a little child. There was no water to be seen in the dining-room, and he did not know where to find any. He reached the parlor, lay down on the floor, and prayed for death or for life—anything to put an end to that nightmare of misery. It seemed that [pg 635] death was coming. His hands and feet grew cold with an unnatural chill, and, though the morning sunshine poured through the windows, all looked dim to his eyes. His senses seemed to be slowly receding, without pain, without any power or wish on his part to recall them. He lay and waited for death.

And while he waited, as one hears sounds in a dream he heard a door open and shut, then a quick, light step that ran up-stairs. John, standing over his friend, left him, and rushed to the parlor door, barking wildly, but was unable to get out, the door having swung to. In vain he tried it with his paws, and thrust his small nose into the crack. It was too heavy for him to move.

Suddenly, while Mr. Bently gazed with languid, half unconscious eyes at the creature, the door was pushed wide open, and a woman stood on the threshold. She was neither young nor old, but simply at the age of perfection, which is a variable age, according to the person. Her face was a full oval, but white now as hoar-frost. All its life seemed to centre in the large hazel eyes that were piercing with a terrified search. She wore her fair hair like a crown, piled high above the forehead in glossy coils like sculptured amber. Over one temple a black and gold moth was poised, as though it had just alighted there, its wings widespread. The long black folds of a velvet robe fell about her superb form, sweeping far back from her swift but suddenly arrested step. Scintillating fringes of gold quivered against the large white arms, edged the short Greek jacket, and ran in a single flash down either side of the train. A diamond cross lay like a sunbeam on her bosom, a single diamond twinkled in each small ear.

There was but an instant's pause, then she crossed the room quickly, and knelt by him.

“My God! my God!” she murmured, and lifted his head on her arm. “What fiendish cruelty!”

Her touch and voice recalled him to himself. He tried to put her away. “Leave me, Marian, I beg of you! Do not endanger yourself for me!”

But even while bidding her go, every nerve in him grew alive with the joyous conviction that he would not be obeyed, and that, danger or no danger, she would not desert him. Here were strength, help, and the power to command. She brought the world with her, this queenly woman, who had not even snatched the gloves from her hands since last night's ball, but had hurried to seek news of him, after the first confused rumor, to call doctor and nurse, to rush to him herself with all the speed her panting horses could make.

“Leave you? Never!”

He asked no questions, but resigned himself. How delightful the sickness, how sweet the pain, that led to this! How thrice blessed the desertion that gave her to him!

In half an hour, the doctor had come and given his decision. Mr. Bently's illness was merely a violent cold with fever, and a few days of careful nursing would make all right. In another half hour, he was established in a pleasant chamber in Mr. Willis' house, with a nurse in close attendance, the whole family anxiously ministrant, John an immovable fixture in the sick-room; and, later, Mrs. Marcia Clay besieging the house for news of poor dear Cousin Bently, and protesting and explaining to the very coldest of listeners, declaring that nothing but her duty to her family, etc.; and what was the meaning of that broken bottle and glass, and ineradicable laudanum [pg 636] stain on the carpet in her house? Was it possible that Cousin Bently had thought of taking any of that terrible stuff that she meant to have thrown away ages before? And would they bring down John? Arthur had asked for him.

Some one went to Mr. Bently's room for John, but came back without him. The invalid was reported to have flown into something like a passion on learning the messenger's errand, and to have held the dog firmly in his arms.

John was his! No one else should have him. Whatever crime it might be called to refuse to give him up—stealing, embezzling, false imprisonment—he was ready to be accused and convicted of it, and would go to jail for it with the dog in his arms.

Mrs. Clay was enchanted to be able to oblige her cousin in such a trifle, and would he speak freely when he wanted anything? and then went home and told all her family in confidence that Mr. Bently was a raving maniac.

Reader, according to our promises at the beginning of this history, we should stop here. The scene has changed, the time already exceeds twenty-four hours, and only the characters remain the same. But we have not done. There is something more which we are pining to tell. Shall we stop, then, and perish in silence, rather than transgress rules made by a people “dead and done with this many a year,” whose whole country, with themselves on it, could have been thrown into one of our inland seas without making it spill over? No! Perish the unities!

Scene II.—Large parlor, rosy-tinted all through with reflections from sunset, from firelight, and from red draperies. After-dinner silence pervading, open folding-doors giving a view through a suite of rooms, in the furthest of which an old gentleman sleeps in his arm-chair. Or, perhaps, it is a picture of a library, with an old gentleman asleep in it. The stillness is perfect enough for that. Mr. Bently, convalescent, first dinner down-stairs since his illness, stands near a window looking out, but watchful of the inside of the parlor, and of a lady who sits at an embroidery-frame near the same window. The lady is superficially dignified and tranquil, but there is an unusual color in the cheeks, and a slight unsteadiness in the fingers, which tell her secret conviction that something is going to happen. This is the first time the two have met since Miss Willis found the deserted man lying half senseless on Mrs. Clay's parlor floor.

He is thinking of that time now, and that an acknowledgment is due, and wondering how it is to be made, half a mind to be angry, rather than grateful, for the service. Such is man. All the bitterness of his lonely life rises up before him. Gray hairs are on his head, lines of age mark his face, but his heart protests against being set aside as too old for anything but dry speculation and love of abstract truth.

“I have been seeking for some proper terms in which to express to you my grateful sense of your humanity in coming to me when I was left sick and alone, but I cannot find them,” he said at length, facing her.

“There is no need to say anything about it,” she replied quietly, setting a careful silken stitch. “I could not have done otherwise.”

Having begun, the gentleman could not stop, or would not.

“I am sure you meant well, but did you do well?” he went on. “Could you not have been content to send the doctor, without coming yourself? Did you reflect that you [pg 637] were apparently incurring peril, and that for a man who had a heart as well as a head, and, worse yet, for a man whose heart had for years striven vainly to forget you? You have deprived me of the shield and support of even attempted indifference. I can no longer try to forget you, or think of you coldly, without the basest ingratitude.”

Will the reader pardon Mr. Bently for expressing himself so grammatically? It was through the force of a long habit, which even passion could not break. It is true that, according to Gerald Griffin, Juno herself, when angry, spoke bad Latin; but then, Juno was a woman.

Allons, donc. We are ourselves interested in this conversation, and are pleased to observe that, though the speaker's moods and tenses are not flagrant, his eyes and cheeks are.

The lady glanced up swiftly with that smile, half shy, half mirthful, with which a woman who knows her power, and means to use it kindly, receives the acknowledgment of it.

“Why should you think coldly of me, or forget me?” she asked.

Mr. Bently met her glance with stern eyes. “Does a man willingly submit to slavery?” he demanded. He had not suspected Marian Willis of coquetry.

She looked down at her work again, the smile fading, but the mouth still sweet, slowly threaded her needle with a rose-pink floss, and said as slowly, “I do not wish you to forget me.”

One who has seen the sun strike through a heavy fog, stop a moment, then fling it asunder, all in silence, without breath of breeze, but making a bright day of a dark one, knows how Mr. Bently's clouded face cleared at those words, and the look of her who spoke them.

No more was said then. Enough is as good as a feast, and both tasted in that moment the full sweetness of a happiness the more perfect because apparently incomplete.

On one point our mind is made up—this story shall not end with a marriage. A marriage there was, at seven o'clock one spring morning, in the little suburban church, with only three visible witnesses; and the marriage feast was—be it said with all reverence and adoration—manna from heaven, the Bread of Angels!

Mrs. Clay was, of course, shocked at this affair. Where was the trousseau, where the fuss, the presents that might have been, the rehearsal at a fashionable church, the organ music, the crowd of dear criticising friends, the reception, cake and wine, journey, what not—all the parade, weariness, and extravagance which have so often changed a sacrament into a ceremony? Where, indeed? They had no existence outside of the lady's disappointed wishes.

She did not even see what she called this “positively shabby affair,” and we will not dwell on it. Turn we to the final scene.

Does the reader object that John bears too small a part in the story named for him? On the contrary, the whole story is because of John. You have, perhaps, seen a painting of the procession at the coronation of George IV., pages and pages of magnificent persons, names, and costumes, the brilliant pageant of the long-extended queue, all because of one person in it. The figure is rather large, apparently, for use in this place, but only apparently; for John's record is better than any king's, in that it is unstained.

A year has passed. In the midst of a fair area of gardens and trees stands a pleasant house. Only a window or two are open, for the spring is not yet far advanced. Underneath [pg 638] a large old pine, tree not far from the porch, a hole has been dug, and at one side of it stands Mr. Bently, spade in hand, and at the other his wife. This little pit is lined with green boughs, and the lady stoops and carefully and soberly adds one more. On the heap of earth thrown up rests a box.

This much is visible to a young man who comes strolling up the path from the gate. He pauses, and looks on in astonishment. He recollects of having heard somewhere that Cousin Bently's dog John was accidentally shot, and that Mrs. Bently cried about it. Can it be possible that they are making a funeral over John? That would be too funny.

Mr. Bently stooped, took the box in his arms, and placed it carefully down among the green boughs. Standing upright then, he wiped his eyes, and muttered a trembling, “Poor fellow!”

“Good-morning!” said a brisk voice at his elbow. “I'm sorry Johnnie met with a mishap. Are you burying him here?”

The vapid, mean, supercilious face gave them both such a shock that they reddened and frowned. No one could have been less welcome at that moment than Arthur Clay.

Mrs. Bently answered his question with a brief, “Yes.”

“Oh! well, there are dogs enough in the world,” said the young man, meaning to be consoling.

“There are puppies enough!” muttered Mr. Bently, and began shovelling the earth savagely into the grave.

“Please go into the house, and wait for us, Arthur,” the lady said, with polite decision. She had no mind to have this last touching rite spoiled by such an intrusion.

But young Mr. Clay was in an obliging mood. “Thank you; I'd just as lief stay, and rather. I never attended a canine funeral before.”

There was a momentary silence, then Mrs. Bently spoke again, with still more decision and far less suavity: “On the whole, you must excuse us from seeing you any longer this morning. If you had gone to the door, the servant would have told you that we do not receive any one to-day.”

The young man gave an angry laugh. “Oh! certainly! I wouldn't for the world intrude on your sorrow. Good-morning! It's a pity, though, that dogs are not immortal, isn't it? You might have John canonized.”

Mr. Bently flashed his eyes round at the speaker. “What!” he thundered, “you immortal, and my dog NOT!”

If they had been two Parrott guns, instead of two eyes and a mouth, Mr. Arthur Clay could not have retreated more precipitantly.

The grave was filled in and covered over with boughs, two sighs were breathed over it, then the couple walked, arm in arm, slowly toward the house.

“He was a perfect creature!” Mr. Bently said, after a silence.

“Yes!” assented the wife. “Only he would bounce at one so.”

“Marian,” said her husband solemnly, “if it hadn't been for John's habit of bouncing at his friends, you would have had no husband.”

It was well meant, but unfortunately worded. The lady pouted, being by no means an ideal, perfect, pattern woman, but only a natural and charming one, with varying moods and whims playing, spraylike, over the deeps of principle and religion. “Don't be too sure of that!” she made answer to him.

Mr. Bently never bristled with virtues when his wife made such remarks. [pg 639] He smiled now, full of kindness. “I meant to say that I should have had no wife,” he corrected himself.

At that, the pout, which was only a rebellious muscle, not a rebellious heart, disappeared. “It means the same thing, you most patient of men!” exclaimed his wife fervently.

They reached the porch, and stood there a moment, looking back to the mound under the pine-tree.

“It is a comfort to think,” said the wife, “that for one year of his life we made him such a happy dog.”

Then they went in, and the door closed behind them.

The International Congress Of Prehistoric Anthropology And Archaeology.

From La Revue Generale De Bruxelles.

The International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archæology held its sixth meeting at Brussels, in 1872. The idea of this congress originated in Italy. Some eminent Swiss, Italian, and French naturalists, assembled at Spezzia in 1865, resolved to hold the first session the following year at Neufchâtel. This meeting, entirely confined to explorations, created no sensation out of the scientific world, but it was agreed there should be another at the time of the International Exposition at Paris in 1867. The congress, thenceforth established, appointed a committee to organize the next meeting. More than four hundred savants responded to the invitation. At Paris it was decided to meet again the next year at Norwich, at the same time as the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The programme of questions proposed for discussion at Norwich presents a striking similarity to that at Paris. The congress held at Copenhagen in 1869 was distinguished by a more local and practical character than the preceding. Finally, the Congress of Bologna, in 1871, enlarged still more the extent of its programme; according, however, the first place to objects that particularly interested Italy.

The programme of the Congress of Brussels was, so to speak, determined by M. E. Dupont's important discoveries in the caverns of the province of Namur, and the questions were drawn up from the Belgian point of view, in order to give our savants an opportunity of acquainting foreign scientific men with the researches and facts relating particularly to our country. Similar proceedings had taken place at Copenhagen and Bologna. But the programme of Brussels by no means excluded points of general interest. Here is the list of those proposed:

I. What discoveries have been made in Belgium to attest the antiquity of prehistoric man?

II. What were the manners and pursuits of the people who lived in the caverns of Belgium? Did their manners and pursuits vary during the quaternary epoch? What analogy is there between their manners and pursuits, and those of the troglodyte [pg 640] population in other parts of Western Europe and of the savages of the present day?

III. What were the pursuits of the people who inhabited the plains of Hainault during the quaternary epoch? Can it be proved they held any communication with their contemporaries of the caverns of the provinces of Liége and Namur, or with the quaternary peoples of the valleys of the Somme and the Thames?

IV. What characterized the age of polished stone in Belgium? What was its connection with previous ages, and with the age of polished stone in Western Europe?

V. What were the anatomical and ethnical characteristics of man in Belgium during the age of stone?

VI. What characterized the age of bronze in Belgium?

VII. What characterized the appearance of iron in Belgium?

Excursions to the caverns of the valleys of the Lesse, the flint-works of Spiennes and Mesvin, and the entrenched camp of Hastedon near Namur, formed a practical demonstration of the problems discussed at the meeting.

Many illustrious co-workers responded to the invitation of the Committee of Arrangements. England was represented by Messrs. Prestwich, Owen, the great palæontologist, Dawkins, Lubbock, Franks, the Director of the Department of Antiquities and Ethnography at the British Museum, etc.; France, by her most eminent anthropologists, archæologists, and geologists, Messrs, Quatrefages, Broca, Belgrand, Hébert, De Mortillet and Bertrand of the Musée de S. Germain, General Faid'herbe, the Marquis de Vibraye, Cartaillac, De Linas, Doctors Lagneau et Hamy, one President and the other Secretary of the Society of Anthropology, Deshayes, Gaudry, Gervais, the Abbés Bourgeois and Delauny, one Superior and the other Professor at the College of Pont-Levoy, Oppert, the celebrated explorer of Khorsabat, and many others, among whom we must not omit the inevitable Mlle. Clemence Royer, at least as a curiosity. The northern countries sent the founders of prehistoric archæology in the North—Messrs. Worsaœ, Engelhardt, De Wichfeld, Steenstrup, Waldemar-Schmidt, from Denmark; Messrs. Hildebrand, Landberg, Lagerberg, Nillson, D'Oliviecrona, from Sweden; Italy was brilliantly represented by Messrs. Capellini, Fabretti, Biondelli, Count Conestabile, Gozzadini, etc.; Spain and Portugal by only a few; Holland by several, among whom was M. Leemans, Director of the Museum of Leyden; Austria by Count Wurmbrand; Germany by the Baron de Ducker, Professors Fraas, of Stuttgart, Schafthausen, of Bonn, the celebrated Virchow, of Berlin, Lindenschmidt, of Mayence; Switzerland by Desor, one of the founders of prehistoric archæology. Belgian science was represented in the committee by Messrs. d'Omalius d'Halloy, the venerable President of the congress, Van Beneden, De Witte, Dupont, with the élite of our savants, attended by a constellation of archæologists de circonstance belonging to the various orders of the literary, artistic, and political world, and even the commercial; for philosophy does not daunt M. Jourdain in these days. As for the rest, it was a spectacle of no slight interest to behold the extraordinary concourse of hearers that thronged the sessions at the ducal palace, attentively listening to discussions sometimes very abstract, and again participating in the excursions of the learned assembly with a genuine interest apart from the mere pleasure of the excursions themselves. In [pg 641] proportion as man adds to his knowledge of the globe he inhabits, instead of being satisfied, the greater ardor and interest he manifests to know more. “The surface of both land and water explored in every sense of the word; mountains measured; oceans sounded, and their secrets brought to light; inorganic substances and organized bodies analyzed and described; plants, animals, and the human races studied under every aspect; historical traditions investigated and revised; the dead languages brought into use, and the words derived from them traced back to their original roots—all this is not enough. Knowing what he is, and with a thousand theories as to his destination, man wishes to pierce the mystery of his origin; he asks whence he came, and how he began the career so laboriously pursued, and into which he was thrust by a destiny of which he had no consciousness.”[219] The truths that we grasp in our day were perhaps only guessed at by the ancients. Lucretius has drawn a very correct picture, for those days, of the wretched condition of the earlier races, their struggles with the elements, and even the primitive weapons of stone which they wrought before the age of bronze and iron. But this is only a poetical conception to which must be attached no more importance than it merits. The science of prehistoric ages then had no existence. This science, scarcely known twenty years ago, has now quite a literature of its own, several reviews, and an annual International Congress (in future it will be biennial), splendid museums in all our capitals, and a society whose labors have contributed not a little to so prodigious a result—the Society of Anthropology.

Some persons are troubled at the discussion of grave and delicate questions that seem to set revelation and science at variance. As for us, who can never admit the possibility of a conflict between the Bible and nature—those two divine revelations—or that they ought ever to be completely separated, we deeply regret the complete absence of our clergy at these great sessions, while those of France and Italy were represented in a brilliant manner.

“I am well aware,” says M. Chabas, in an able preface, “that the materialistic tendency of savants of very considerable attainments in anthropology and other branches of prehistoric research, withholds many men whose concurrence would be of value to science from entering the arena where such points are discussed.” But timid minds are becoming more reassured. Therefore, as the Abbé Bourgeois happily remarked at the Congress of Paris, “We shall perhaps have to add to the antiquity of man, but we ought also to detract from that of fossils.” Besides, hitherto, in spite of so much research, man alone has been found intelligent and with a moral sense of his acts; and in the animal kingdom there is not a single proof to confirm even remotely Lamarck's theory of transmutation revived by Darwin. When so many are appealing to science to the exclusion of God from the universe, it would be well for others to endeavor to make him manifest by the aid of science.

“What!” exclaims Mgr. Meignan, in his brilliant work on The World and Primitive Man according to the Bible, “ought the exegete to make no account of the progress of human knowledge? Can the savant find neither profit nor light in the wisdom of Holy Writ? We think otherwise. The theologian who first studies nature [pg 642] will be better enabled to explain certain passages of the Bible; and the naturalist and archæologist, in their turn, will find it advantageous to study the real meaning of Genesis.” The human mind enters upon a course of examination more or less legitimate in subjecting religion itself to the trial of controversy; it is almost a duty imposed on the conscience of all who are not vainly endowed with reason to enable themselves to give a reason for the belief that is within them. “The task of the apologist,” says the eminent prelate just quoted, “is never at an end in our restless age.” The disagreement that some seem to apprehend only exists in superficial or sceptical minds.

If the Bible is not a scientific revelation, neither does it contradict science, and especially in the bold outlines drawn by Moses. Science, as it progresses, sets up its landmarks, so to speak, beside the immutable bounds of faith; it is so with the laws of light, as well as the fundamental principles of geology. Revelation assigns no limits to the antiquity of the world, and allows the beginning in which God created it to recede to as remote a period as is wished, and geology corroborates the Scripture account of successive creations. Is not the unity of origin of the human species, distinctly declared in both Testaments, connected with all the hypotheses that have excited so much opposition in our day? I do not mean the unity of the human species, a doctrinal question very different from the other, and not necessarily connected with it. But the unity of origin of the human race is now taught and demonstrated by the greater part of those versed in natural history; it is a scientific truth. As to the existence of man in the tertiary epoch, it is far from certain, though sustained by many highly respectable men.[220] M. Evans, the Secretary of the Geological Society of London, whose name is an authority on things pertaining to anthropology and palæontology, expressed himself in these terms at a meeting of the British Association at Liverpool last year [1871]: “We cannot,” said he, “possibly make any prediction as to the discoveries that still await us in the soil beneath our feet; but we certainly have no reason to conclude that the most ancient traces of man on the earth, or even on the soil of Western Europe, have been brought to light. At the same time, I must confess that the existing evidence of man in the miocene period, and even in the pliocene, in France (it will be seen further on that this has since been asserted in Portugal), appears to me, after the most careful examination on the spot, very far from convincing.”

Besides, the word prehistoric has only a relative exactness of meaning. In Belgium, prehistoric man comes down to the century before the Roman Conquest. A vast number of the monuments and remains so discussed in our day might be included in the historic period. In most cases, too absolute a signification is given to the word prehistoric, conveying an idea of remote antiquity far beyond the bounds of chronology. It is under the influence of this preconceived opinion that the most distinguished [pg 643] and independent investigators have allowed themselves to be carried away with the apparent revelation of an entirely new world. In hearing of the millions of ages attributed to quaternary man, one feels greatly behind the times, and asks himself anxiously if there really is a science that has a good right to make man so old, and that affords means of ascertaining, as has been stated, what our ancestors were observing in the heavens on the 29th of January, 11,542 years before Christ. This feeling of astonishment must be still livelier in those for whom the insoluble problems of antiquity extend back to less than two thousand years. We do not know the site of Alesia, and we pretend to know the habitat and manners of villages of more than three hundred thousand years before the downfall of the Gallic nationality! It should be confessed that the science which has so recently sprung up, and which has for its object the study of human labor anterior to the use of metals, is neither so firmly established nor so positive in its deductions that we should blindly accept such bold theories. This is one of the reasons that should encourage more men of serious pursuits to take a part in these debates, as to which it is allowable to hope that the truth will some day be discovered at an equal distance from any exaggeration.

We shall have occasion to return to these questions which occupied the Congress of Brussels. This preamble appeared necessary as a justification for confining ourselves to a plain, simple analysis of the proceedings of the congress—others can review them better than we.

We will only add one word more. The field for discussion had been prepared in a wonderful manner by the recent publication of the excellent work in which the learned and active director of our Royal Museum of Natural History has condensed his researches.[221]

The opening session took place the 22d of August. The day was spent in receptions, speeches of welcome, replies, the installation of the board, and other official courtesies which we spare the reader. The following days there were two sessions a day. The morning of the 23d of August was devoted to the first question in the programme. There was no one better fitted to develop it than M. Dupont, the Chief Secretary of the congress, and the most active of its organizers. He had already given a clear outline of its history in his discourse at the first session of the day before. It was started in Belgium in 1829, and kept up by the researches of Schmerling, who may be regarded as the Champollion of prehistoric anthropology; but our illustrious fellow-citizen was not encouraged in his discoveries, and it may be said that he was, to a certain degree, a martyr to the scientific prejudices of his time. His labors, occurring at a time when Cuvier's authority was at its height, could not counterbalance the influence of that great genius, who declared that man could not be found among fossils' bones, and that the vestiges of the human race in the caverns came under the general rule. No one then could have dreamed of referring these remains to the epoch of the mammoth, and it was scarcely admitted, till within a dozen years, that man was contemporary with the animals of the geological periods which preceded ours. Schmerling, but little befriended by circumstances, was deceived as to what caused the introduction of this débris into the [pg 644] caverns. He attributed it to sudden inundations. Some years later, Mr. Spring opened the way to the true theory, which allows the reconstruction of the ethnography of geological epochs; but he could not continue his researches, and it was not till 1861 that Lartet's report concerning the caverns of Aurillac at length established a collection of decisive facts. In 1863, M. Dupont was appointed to explore the caverns of the province of Namur, which gave promise of discoveries of unusual interest; it was important that our country, after having taken so large a part in establishing the first principles of this new science, should not remain inactive in the movement to which it had led. The immense result of researches continued without relaxation for seven years, summer and winter, and the valuable remains thus found, which are the ornament of our principal museum, prove that the direction of the task could not have been confided to better hands.

M. Dupont, laying aside the arbitrary classifications that had hitherto been adopted for determining the antiquity of remains found in caverns, introduced the geologic method in his researches, which is founded upon principles almost incontestable and evidences of indubitable truth. The chronological data furnished by this method are generally of mathematical exactitude. “With this point to start from,” says M. Dupont, “I was sure of clearly determining the fauna and ethnographical remains of each epoch to which the objects discovered in the various subterranean explorations belonged.”[222] In pursuing the application of this method, our young and already illustrious savant was enabled to show the evolution of physical and biological phenomena, and to reconstruct the ethnography of the age of stone. Whatever may be thought of the reality of the facts brought forward, it must be confessed that no ordinary mind could have formed such bold conceptions.

After a communication from Dr. Hamy on the flint-works of France and England at the time of the mammoth, the Abbé Bourgeois discussed the question of tertiary man. The learned professor's clear, fluent language, the distinction of his manners, and his open, animated countenance [pg 645] so completely won the goodwill of the audience that thenceforth, whenever he spoke, his appearance in the tribune was hailed with unanimous applause.

The Abbé Bourgeois and M. de Launay, his colleague, are the true heralds of tertiary man. The chronological discussion they so boldly excite seems to embarrass them but little; on the other hand, they almost banish the hope some still seem to cling to of finding the man-monkey. In 1866, M. Bourgeois described and presented to the Academy of Sciences some wrought flints found in the tertiary deposits in the commune of Thenay near Pont-Levoy (Loir-et-Cher). M. Desnoyers had already, in 1863, pointed out bones found in strata incontestably pliocene, on which were striæ, or very distinct and regularly marked incisions. Worked flints are beginning to be found, we are assured, in the bottom of the calcareous deposits of Beauce; that is to say, in chalk. They are identical in form with those found on the surface; as in other places, there are utensils for cutting, piercing, scraping, and hammering. Many of these instruments have been injured by the action of fire. Finally, says the Abbé Bourgeois, “I find in them almost every proof of man's agency, to wit: after-touches, symmetrical grooves, grooves artificially made to correspond with natural ones, and especially the multiplied reproduction of certain forms. This is a peculiar, unheard-of fact of the highest importance, but, to me, an indubitable one.” M. Bourgeois exhibited to the competent judges assembled at Brussels what he considered the proofs of the authenticity of his discovery. To him they are convincing, but what he seeks, above all, is truth, and he asked that a special committee be appointed to elucidate the question. This committee pronounced a verdict two days after, without deciding the point. Of thirty-two specimens presented for examination, some appeared to them evidently wrought, but most of them were unanimously rejected. There was no difference of opinion as to M. Bourgeois' sincerity of belief, but they were divided as to the authenticity of the deposit. Those who have seen the place had no doubts; the remainder were incredulous. M. Capellini proposed that a new committee be appointed to make researches on the spot. The general conclusion was that no solution is at present possible.

The existence of prehistoric man in Greece next became the subject of lively discussion, giving rise to the most contradictory opinions. The conclusion was that there are no decided proofs. The same doubt was manifested with respect to a skull from California, said to have been found in tertiary formation. It is not even certain it is a human skull.

The second session of the day opened with an account from M. Rivière of the discovery of a complete skeleton in a grotto at Menton, found among the remains of various animals of the quaternary epoch, such as the lion, bear, rhinoceros, etc. Then M. de Mortillet gave a detailed description of the fauna, and the utensils, arms, pursuits, manners, and even the first manifestation of art, of man in the quaternary period, and he proposed a still further subdivision of the classes than is now admitted. The speaker mentioned a very singular circumstance calculated to excite reflection—an inexplicable hiatus between the last period of the age of cut stone and the age of polished stone, in which new races appeared of greater industry and more intelligence, agriculture was developed, [pg 646] the industrial pursuits were extended, and art disappeared. It is the era of lacustrine villages and of dolmens. M. de Mortillet's sketch of prehistoric civilization was picturesque but far from convincing.

The Abbé Bourgeois did not think M. de Mortillet's classification correct, because the progress of civilization in France and Belgium was unequal. “The Belgians,” he said, “were more advanced.” And the orator added with charming bonhomie: “I cannot say it is otherwise now.”

M. Fraas, professor at Stuttgart, stated that he had made some explorations in the grotto of Hollenfelz near Ulm, in Würtemberg. The Homo unius cavernæ was refuted in his conclusions by M. Hébert, the celebrated professor at the Sorbonne, and by other savants. M. d'Omalius was of the opinion that two geologists of different countries, desirous of identifying beds contiguous to their fields of exploration, were never able to agree. Between two strata there are always deposits that partake of the distinctive characteristics of both.

We pass from the grave to the entertaining. The following day, at seven o'clock in the morning, all the learned assembly, glad, it may be imagined, to get away from the pretentious paintings of the ducal palace, took flight by steam for the valley of the Lesse. We would be the first to confess that, if the country excited the sincere admiration of the excursionists, the latter were equally a delightful source of curiosity to the native inhabitants. They will not readily forget the picturesque sight of our long caravan traversing the good town of Dinant all decked out with flags, parading in elegant equipages lost among the coucous, fiacres, and calèches of wondrous construction, or perched on the imperials of the most extraordinary vehicles, omnibuses, and pataches truly prehistoric, filing along the banks of the Meuse towards the valleys amid laughter, jests, joltings, and the vociferations of our Automedon. Charming landscapes, but detestable roads. This region has been so often described that I need not attempt to depict it; it is with the pencil and brush it should be undertaken. Sometimes the road winds around with disagreeable undulations through the deep ravines bordered by apple-trees whose fruit-laden branches sweep the imperials of the carriages, endangering the silken hat; sometimes rolling over broad grassy roads walled in by immense cliffs crowned with ruins and verdure, or affording vistas through the neighboring valleys, lit up by the sun streaming through the woods with a mild radiance that recalls the Elysian Fields of mythological memory. At length we come to the Lesse, which bars the way with its clear, rapid current. The carriages have to ford the capricious and petulant waters of the little winding torrent. The horses sheer in the very middle of the stream, causing a deafening noise of laughter, shouts of alarm, and blows of the whip. All ends by crossing without any great difficulty, but the same scene is reproduced five or six times with varied incidents; for there are that number of fords to cross. It was in one of these places, where we were obliged to cross the river in boats in order to reach the grottoes, that we saw the overloaded skiff capsized that bore among others M. d'Omalius and Mlle. Royer. The apostle of woman's emancipation clung with shrill screams to the neck of a small gentleman, her chevalier servant for the time, and, when she found a footing with the water up to her chin, she contributed somewhat to save her assistant [pg 647] by keeping his head out of water—a fine opportunity for quoting La Fontaine, with a kind variation: “That is nothing; it is not a woman that is drowning.” The nonagenarian president of the congress was taken out safe and sound, and it was with extreme difficulty he was induced to change his chaussures, but nothing could prevail upon him to accept dry garments. Happily, the weather was superb, and the shipwrecked travellers could get dry in the sun.

We returned by way of the plateaux that overlook the valley. Nothing could be imagined more fantastically beautiful than that immense panorama bathed in the purple light of the setting sun. The visitors, under the guidance of M. Dupont, had been through all the principal caverns described in his book. His learned explanations were greatly relished, and added a keen interest to an excursion of which the unexpected and the amusing had heightened the charm. We will not speak of the banquet that crowned so delightful a day, or of the ovations that were lavished on the savants and others. For such details, we refer you to the newspapers that published the reports.

To Be Concluded In Our Next Number.