The Russian Clergy.
We have heard nothing new of late about the project of certain zealous Anglicans and members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States to establish communion between their churches and the schismatic Oriental Christians in the empire of Russia. It seemed fitting enough at first glance that the special variety of Christianity introduced by Henry VIII. should agree with the methods of ecclesiastical discipline prescribed by an equally autocratic sovereign at the opposite extremity of Europe; and there were, of course, abundant reasons why the Anglicans and their American descendants should covet a recognition from a branch of the church which, whatever its corruptions and irregularities, can at least make good its connection with the parent stem. Our readers have not forgotten, however, how coldly the overtures of these ambitious Protestants were received. The Russian clergy ridiculed the hierarchical pretensions of their English and American friends. They denied their apostolical succession. They questioned their right to call themselves churchmen at all; and, in short, looked upon them as no better than heretics, and not very consistent heretics either. The movement for union was a foolish one, begun in utter misconception of the radical differences between the two parties, and sure from the first to end in discomfiture and irritation.
Indeed, it was even more foolish than most of us still suppose. Not only was it impossible for the Russian Church to make the concessions required of it, but there is no reason to believe that the Episcopalians would have been very well satisfied [pg 404] with their new brethren had the alliance been effected. The Russian Church is an organization which stands far apart from every other in the world, presenting some monstrous features which even Protestantism cannot parallel. The Jesuit Father Gagarin has published a very curious work on the condition and prospects of the Russian clergy,[185] which would perhaps have modified the zeal of the English and American petitioners for union and recognition if they could have read it before making their recent overtures. We see here the rottenness and uselessness into which a national church falls when it is cut off from the centre of Christian unity and the source of Christian life.
The Russian priests are divided into two classes, the white and the black clergy, or seculars and monks. The great difference between them is, the white clergy are married, and the black are celibates. Whatever learning there is in the ecclesiastical order is found among the monks. The bishops are always chosen from the monastic class; and the two classes hate each other with remarkable heartiness. The marriage of priests is an old custom in the East, which antedates the organization of the Russian schism. It prevails in some of the united Oriental churches to this day. But in Russia it exists in a peculiarly aggravated form. Peter I. and his successors, by a multitude of despotic ukases, succeeded in erecting the white clergy into a strict caste, making the clerical profession practically hereditary, and marriage a necessary condition of the secular clerical state. The candidate for orders has his choice between matrimony and the monastery; one of the two he must embrace before he can be ordained.
The rule seems to have originated in an attempt to improve the education of the white clergy. The deplorable ignorance of the order led the government to establish ecclesiastical schools. But the schools remained deserted. The clergy were then ordered to send their children to them, and sometimes the pupils were arrested by the police and taken to school in chains. The Czar Alexander I. ordered, in 1808 and 1814, that all clerks' children between six and eight years of age should be at the disposal of the ecclesiastical schools; and, that there might be no lack of children, the candidate for the priesthood was compelled to take a wife before he could take orders. Once in the seminary, the scholar has no prospect before him except an ecclesiastical life. He cannot embrace any other career without special permission, which is almost invariably refused. At the same time, the seminaries are closed against all except the sons of the clergy. The son of a nobleman, a merchant, a citizen, a peasant, who wanted to enter, would meet with insurmountable obstacles, unless he chose to become a monk.
Thus the paternal government of the czar secures first an unfailing supply of pastors for the Russian Church, which otherwise might be insufficiently served; and, secondly, a career for the children of the clergy, free from the competition of outside candidates. And, indeed, the priests might very well say: Since you compel us to marry, you are bound, at least, to furnish a support for our offspring. But the system does not stop here. What shall be done with the priests' daughters? In the degraded condition of the Russian Church, where the white clergy or popes are popularly ranked lower in [pg 405] the social scale than petty shopkeepers or noblemen's servants, these young women could not expect to find husbands except among the peasantry, and they might not readily find them there. The obvious course is to make them marry in their own order. The seminarian, therefore, by a further regulation of the paternal government, is not only obliged to marry, whether he will or no, but he must marry a priest's daughter, and some bishops are so careful of the welfare of their subjects that they will not suffer a clerk to marry out of his own diocese. Special schools are established for these daughters of the church; and we could imagine a curious course of instruction at such institutions, if the Russian ecclesiastical schools really attempted to fit their pupils for the life before them; but, as we shall see further on, they do nothing of the kind.
Sometimes it happens that a priest has built a house on land belonging to the church. He dies, leaving a son or a daughter. His successor in the parish has a right to the use of the land, but what shall be done with the house? The law solves this difficulty by providing that the living shall either be saved for the son (who may be a babe in arms), or given to any young Levite who will marry the daughter. Thus the clerical caste is made in every way as compact and comfortable as possible, and, for a man of mean extraction, moderate ambition, and small learning, becomes a tolerable, if not a brilliant career.
The clergy of a fully supplied parish consists of a priest, a deacon, and two clerics, who perform the duties of lector, sacristan, beadle, bell-ringer, etc. The deacon has little to do, except to share on Sunday in the recitation of the liturgy, which, being inordinately long, is sometimes divided into sections and read or chanted by several persons concurrently, each going at the top of his speed. The clerks of the lower ranks, however, may pursue a trade, but they are all enrolled in the same caste, out of which they must not marry. The number of parish priests in Russia is about 36,000; of deacons, 12,444; of inferior clerics, 63,421. One-half the revenue of the parish belongs to the priest, one-quarter to the deacon, and one-eighth to each of the two clerics. The prizes of the profession are the chaplaincies to schools, colleges, prisons, hospitals, in the army, in the navy, about the court, etc., most of which are liberally paid. The parochial clergy are supported by: 1. Property belonging to the parish, chiefly in the towns, yielding about $500,000 per annum; 2. A government allowance of $3,000,000 per annum; 3. About $20,000,000 per annum contributed by parishioners; 4. Perpetual foundations, with obligation to pray for the departed, invested in government funds at four per cent., say $1,075,000. The average income of a priest is thus about $341. In addition to this, however, each parish has a glebe, of which the usufruct belongs to the clergy. The minimum extent of this church domain is about eighty acres, and it is divided after the same rule as the revenues, namely, one-half to the priest, one-quarter to the deacon, and the remainder to the inferior clerks. When there is no deacon, the priest's share is, of course, proportionately larger. In many parishes, the glebe is much more extensive than eighty acres. In Central Russia, it amounts sometimes to 250, 500, even 2,500 acres; and, in those fertile provinces known as the Black Lands, the share of the priest alone is sometimes as much as 150 acres. At St. Petersburg, the church provides the parish priest a comfortable and elegant [pg 406] home. “The furniture is from the first shops in Petersburg. Rich carpets cover the floors of the drawing-room, study, and chamber; the windows display fine hangings; the walls, valuable pictures. Footmen in livery are not rarely seen in the anteroom. The dinners given by these curés are highly appreciated by the most delicate epicures. Occasionally their salons are open for a soirée or a ball; ordinarily it is on the occasion of a wedding, or the birthday of the curé, or on the patron saint's day. The apartments are then magnificently lighted up; the toilettes of the ladies dazzling; the dancing is to the music of an orchestra of from seven to ten musicians. At supper the table is spread with delicacies, and champagne flows in streams. A Petersburg curé, recently deceased, loved to relate that at his daughter's nuptials champagne was drunk to the value of 300 roubles (£48).”
Considering the education and social standing of a Russian priest, this is not bad. In the rural districts there is much less clerical luxury; there is even a great deal of poverty and hardship. But we must not forget that the rustic clergy is but a little higher in culture than the rudest of the peasantry, and a life which would seem intolerable to an American laborer is elysium to a Russian hind. Most, even of country priests, have comfortable houses, well furnished with mahogany and walnut; and, though they do not eat meat every day that the church allows it, they have their balls and dancing parties, at which their daughters dance with the young men from the neighboring theological seminaries. The wives and daughters of the reverend gentlemen, to be sure, have to labor sometimes in the fields; but “they are dressed by the milliner of the place; you will always see them attired with elegance; they do not discard crinoline, and never go out without a parasol”—except, of course, when they are going to hoe corn and dig potatoes.
The voluntary contributions of the parishioners are collected, or enforced, in a variety of ways, and paid in a variety of forms. Towards the feast of S. Peter each house gives from three to five eggs and a little milk. After the harvest, each house gives a certain quantity of wheat. When a child is born, the priest is called in to say a few prayers over the mother, and give a name to the baby; the fee for this is a loaf and from 4 to 8 cents. Baptism brings from 8 to 24 cents more. For a second visitation and prayers at the end of six weeks there is a fee of a dozen eggs. At betrothals the priest gets a loaf, some brandy, and sometimes a goose or a sucking-pig. For a marriage he is paid from $1 60 to $3 20; for a burial, from 80 cents to $1 60; for a Mass for the dead, from 28 to 64 cents; for prayers for the dead, which are often repeated, 4 or 8 cents each time; for prayers read at the cemetery on certain days every year, some rice, a cake, or some pastry. The peasants often have a Te Deum chanted either on birthday or name-day, or to obtain some special favor; the fee for that is from 8 to 16 cents. The penitent always pays something when he receives absolution; but as confession is not frequent in the Russian Church, the income from this source must be small. In the towns the fee is often as high as $1, $2, $4, and even more. Among the peasantry it sometimes does not exceed a kopec (one cent); but if the penitent wishes to receive communion, he must renew his offering several times. At Easter, Christmas, the Epiphany, the beginning and end of Lent, and on the patron saint's [pg 407] day, which sometimes occurs two or three times a year, it is customary to have prayers chanted in every house in the parish, for which the charge varies in the rural districts from 4 cents to 60 cents each visit, according to the importance of the occasion. In the large cities the fees are much more considerable. Father Gagarin cites the case of a parishioner in St. Petersburg to whom the clergy presented themselves in this manner twenty-seven times in a single year, and at each call he had to give them something. This, however, was an exception. Generally the visits are only fifteen a year. “Sometimes it happens,” continues our author, “that the peasant cannot or will not give what the priest asks. Hence arise angry disputes. One priest—so runs the story—unable to overcome the obstinacy of a peasant refusing to pay for the prayers read in his house, declared that he would reverse them. He had just before chanted, ‘Benedictus Deus noster’; he now intoned, ‘Non Benedictus, non Deus, non noster’ thus intercalating a non before each word. The affrighted peasant, the chronicle says, instantly complied. Often enough, too, in spite of all the prohibitions of the synod, the wives and children of the priests, deacons, and clerks accompany their husbands and fathers, and stretch out their hands also. The worst of all this is that the Russian peasant, while long disputing merely about a few centimes, will think himself insulted unless the priest accept a glass of brandy. And when the circuit of all the houses in the village has to be made, though he stay only a few minutes in each, this last gift is not without its inconveniences.” It must be an edifying round certainly. But then the reverend gentleman has a wife to help him home.
The black clergy is not in a much better condition than the white. All the monasteries are supposed to be under the rule of S. Basil; but they are not united in congregations, each establishment being independent of all the rest. Most of them do not observe the great religious rule of poverty and community of goods, but each monk has own purse, and the superiors are often wealthy. One hundred years ago, the number of convents, not reckoning those in Little and White Russia, was 954. The ukase of Catharine II., which confiscated the property of the clergy, suppressed all but 400. Since then the number has increased.
The great increase in the number of monks between 1836 and 1838 is accounted for by the forcible incorporation of the United Greeks. This was not formally effected until 1839, but the United Greeks were reckoned as part of the Russian Church in 1838, and many of their monks were transferred from their own to the non-united monasteries earlier than that. It will be seen, however, that the increase thus obtained was not permanent.
The curious discrepancy between the number of monks and the number of nuns has an equally curious explanation. Women are forbidden, by a decree of Peter the Great, to [pg 408] take the vows under forty years of age. Hence the convents are crowded with postulants who must wait sometimes twenty years before they can take the veil. Some persevere, some return to the world, and many continue to live in the convent without becoming professed. If we reckon the whole population of the convents—monks, nuns, novices, and aspirants—we shall find the number of the two sexes more nearly agree.
It is interesting to see from which classes of society these monks and nuns are drawn. F. Gagarin distinguishes five classes: I. The clergy, including priests, deacons, and clerks, with their wives and children; II. The nobility, embracing not only the titled nobility, but government functionaries and members of the learned professions; III. The urban population, comprising merchants, artisans, citizens, etc.; IV. The rural population, consisting of peasants of all conditions; V. The military. The monks are recruited from these five classes in the following ratio:
Clergy: 54.3 per cent.
Urban population: 22.3 "
Rural population: 16.3 "
Military: 3.4 "
Nobility: 3 "
The immense preponderance of the clerical element is owing primarily, of course, to the regulation of caste, which virtually compels the children of the clergy to follow the profession of their fathers. For the ambitious, the monastery alone offers an alluring prospect, since it is from the black clergy that the bishops are taken. The religious calling, therefore, in Russia is not so much a vocation as a career. If there were really an unselfish devout tendency towards the monastic life among the children of the clergy, we should expect to find it stronger with the daughters than with the sons. But the case is far otherwise. There are no bishoprics for the women; their career is to marry priests, go with them from house to house collecting alms, and help them home when they have taken too much brandy. Hence we find the following ratio among the population of the nunneries:
Urban population: 38.8 per cent.
Rural population: 31 "
Clergy: 13 "
Nobility: 12 "
Military: 4 "
The number of recruits supplied to monasteries by the clerical profession averages 140 a year. These comprise a curious variety of persons. First, there are priests or deacons who have committed grave crimes; they are sentenced to the convent, as lay convicts are sentenced to the galleys. Next there are seminarists who have failed in their studies; if they quit the ranks of the clergy altogether, they are forced into the army; if they remain among the white clergy, they have no prospect of becoming anything better than sacristans or beadles; by entering a convent they will at least live more comfortably and may aspire to become deacons or priests. Then there are deacons and priests who have lost their wives; they cannot marry again; the Russian government hesitates to entrust a parish to a wifeless priest; the wife indeed, as we have just seen, has some very important functions to perform in the administration of parochial rites; so the unfortunate widower is not only advised but sometimes compelled to go to a convent. Again, there are seminarists who after completing their studies act as professors for some time before they are ordained. Suppose [pg 409] such a man has been married and his wife dies. He cannot be ordained if he marry again. He cannot be ordained a secular priest without a wife. He must either go to the convent or seek some career outside the clerical profession, and that, as we have seen, it is almost impossible to find. Ambition draws many to the monastery. A student of any one of the four great academies of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kasan, and Kieff, who embraces the monastic life during his academical course, is morally certain on quitting the academy of being named inspector or prefect of studies in a seminary; at the end of a few years he becomes rector; and if he do not impede his own advancement he can hardly fail to be a bishop after a while. Still there is difficulty in obtaining from the academies a sufficient number of educated monks, and according to F. Gagarin some extraordinary devices are resorted to in order to supply the demand. When persuasion has failed, the student whom the convent wishes to capture is invited to pass the evening with one of the monks. Brandy is produced and it is not difficult to make the young man drunk. While he is insensible the ceremony of taking the habit and receiving the tonsure is performed on him, and he is then put to bed. When he awakes, he finds by his side, instead of the lay garments he wore the night before, a monastic gown. All resistance is useless. He is told that what is done cannot be undone, and after a while he submits angrily to his fate. This at any rate was the method of impressment into the religious state adopted fifty years ago. Now, says our author, it is unnecessary, inasmuch as a shorter way has been found of reaching the same result. The students of the academies (these are students of theology, be it remembered—equivalent to our seminarians) are in the habit of frequenting public-houses and getting drunk. They are carried home on hand-barrows, and this proceeding is known as the “Translation of the Relics.” When a young man has been fixed upon as a desirable recruit for the monastery, the superior has only to watch until he is brought home on a barrow; the next morning, while his head and his stomach are rebuking him, he is informed that he has been expelled for his disgraceful conduct; but, if he will give a proof of his sincere repentance by making a written request to be received as a monk, he may be forgiven.
There is no novitiate in the Russian convents. The neophyte makes his vows at once—provided he has reached the age prescribed by the law—and instances are not wanting of monks who have even attained the episcopate without ever having lived in a convent. According to the Russian law, academy pupils may make the religious profession at 25; other men at 30. It often happens that a youth has finished his studies before reaching 25; in that case, instead of applying for a dispensation, he makes a false statement of his age. Others who fail at their books wait for their thirtieth year, and are placed meanwhile each one under the care of some monk, who is supposed to form him for the monastic state. But he receives no religious training. He does not learn to pray, to meditate, to examine his conscience. He waits upon his master; he joins in the long service in the church; and the rest of the time he spends in amusement within or without the convent. His pleasures are not always of the most edifying character, and his excursions are not confined to the day.
What sort of monks can be formed [pg 410] by such training? The asceticism prescribed by S. Basil is rarely observed. Meat is forbidden, but it is a common dish on the convent tables. Drunkenness is so prevalent that it hardly causes surprise. “After that,” says our author, “one can imagine what becomes of the vow of chastity.” There is, as we have already said, no pretence of observing holy poverty. Every monk has a certain share of the convent revenues, proportioned to his rank, and this share is sometimes large. The average income of the black clergy is not easily ascertained. There are two sorts of convents—those which receive aid from the state, as compensation for confiscated estates, and those which depend entirely upon private resources. Those of the first kind are divided into monasteries of the first, second, and third classes, receiving from the government respectively 2,000, 1,600, and 670 roubles a year ($1,680, $1,344, $563). There are 278 of these convents, receiving 259,200 roubles, or about $217,728 from this source. In former years, each convent was entitled to the compulsory services of a certain number of peasants. Since the emancipation of the serfs the government has commuted this privilege by paying an annual sum of 307,850 silver roubles, or $258,594. Endowments with an obligation to pray for the departed yield in addition $2,150,400 to white and black clergy together. Let us suppose that the monks get one-half; that would be $1,075,200 per annum. Then the convents possess large properties in arable lands, woodlands, meadows, fisheries, mills, etc. One convent is mentioned which has derived an income of $10,000 merely from the resin collected in its forests. The greater part of the revenues, however, are derived from the voluntary contributions of the people. These seem to be enormous. Russians prefer to be buried within the precincts of the monasteries, and the monks not only ask an exorbitant price for the grave, but make the deceased a permanent source of profit by charging for prayers over his remains. Images famous for miracles, churches enriched with the relics of saints, have multitudes of visitors who never come empty-handed. How much can be made from this concourse of the faithful may be imagined when it is remembered that a single laura, that of S. Sergius at Moscow, is visited every year by a million pilgrims. Begging brothers traverse all Russia, gathering alms. A very pretty trade is driven in wax tapers. The various arts resorted to by the white clergy to collect money are well known to the monks also. The Laura of S. Sergius is said to have a revenue all told of at least 2,000,000 roubles ($1,680,000), and a single chapel in Moscow yields to the convent to which it is attached an annual income of about $80,000. These princely revenues are not devoted to learning, education, charity, religion. A large part is misappropriated by the persons appointed to gather them. A third is the property of the superiors. The rest is divided among the monks. The annual income of the superior of one of the great lauras is from $33,600 to $50,400; of the superior of a monastery of the first class, from $8,400 to $25,200; second class, $4,200 to $8,400; third class, $840 to $4,200. All this is for their personal use; the monastery gives them lodging, food, and fuel, and they have to buy nothing but their clothing.
The seminaries, governed by the state, teach successfully neither piety nor learning. The tendency of the courses of instruction is to become secular rather than ecclesiastical. A proposal has recently been made that each bishop shall choose for his diocesan seminary a learned and pious priest to hear the confessions of the pupils, and excite them to devout practices; but it is objected that no secular priest can be found who is fit to discharge such important functions, while those monks who are fit are already employed in more important duties; besides, if one could discover among the white clergy the right sort of man, so much virtue would come very expensive, and the bishops could not or would not pay the salary he would be in a condition to demand. The seminarians are required to confess twice a year, namely, during the first week of Lent and during Holy Week. In reality, most of them omit the second confession; they go home to their families at Holy Week, and rarely approach the sacraments, though they always bring back a certificate from the parish priest that they have done so. A new regulation prescribes two additional confessions and communions, namely, at Christmas and the Assumption, and attempts another reform by ordaining that seminarians shall say their prayers morning and evening, and grace before and after meat.
The bishops are appointed by the czar, and transferred, promoted, degraded, imprisoned, knouted, or put to death at the imperial pleasure. Until very recently, no bishop could leave his diocese without the permission of the synod, so that consultations among the episcopacy were, of course, impossible. Now, however, a bishop may absent himself for eight days, on giving notice to the synod. It is the synod at St. Petersburg that exercises, under the czar, the whole ecclesiastical authority of the empire. The bishop has no power, and nothing to do but to sign reports. All the business of his diocese is really transacted by a lay secretary, appointed not by the bishop, but by the synod. Under the secretary is a chancery of six or seven chief clerks, with assistant clerks and writers. This office superintends all the affairs of the clergy, and transacts no business without drink-money. It is the most venal and rapacious of all Russian bureaus, and such a mine of wealth to the officials that recently, when the chancery of a certain town was abolished on account of the destruction of its buildings by fire, the employees petitioned to be allowed to restore them at their own expense. The secretary is the one all-powerful person of the diocese. From 12,000 to 15,000 files of documents are referred to the chancery every year for decision, and it is he who passes upon them, asking nothing of the bishop except his signature. He is almost invariably corrupt, and as he [pg 412] possesses, through his relations with the synod, the power to ruin the bishop if he chooses, there is no one to interfere with him.
The synod consists of the metropolitan of St. Petersburg and a number of other bishops chosen by the czar and changed every now and then, and of two or three secular priests, one of whom is the czar's chaplain, and another the chief chaplain of the army and navy. But in reality, the whole power of the synod is held by an imperial procurator, who sits in the assembly, watches all its proceedings, stops deliberations whenever he sees fit, is the intermediary between the church and the state, and formulates decisions for the signature of the synod. Most of these decisions are signed without reading, and sometimes they are made to express the direct contrary of the sense of the assembly. The procurator, in a word, is to the synod what the secretary is to the bishop—the representative of the civil power ruling the enslaved and submissive church. The czar speaks through the procurator, the procurator speaks through the lay secretaries of the bishop, and so the church is governed practically without troubling the clergy at all.
The “Old Catholics” of Germany, and the new and improved Catholics who are (perhaps) going to be made under the patent of Father Hyacinthe and wife, are understood to be looking eagerly for connections in various parts of the world. Let them by all means go to Russia. They will see there how much liberty a church gains when it cuts itself off from its obedience to the See of Peter, and what kind of a clergy is constructed when men try to improve upon the models of Almighty God.
The Cross Through Love, And Love Through The Cross.
Maheleth Cristalar was the daughter of a Spanish Jew. Her father had once been very wealthy, and indeed until the age of sixteen she had lived in princely splendor. The beauties of her Spanish home were very dear to her; she had many friends, and as much time as she chose to spend in study.
But one day, her mother, a stately, handsome matron, came into her little sitting-room, looking pale and worn.
“Maheleth, my child,” she began, in faltering tones, “we have had some bad news this morning. I am afraid we are in danger of being totally ruined.”
The young girl looked up; she was very beautiful, and the spiritual expression on her face intensified and heightened her beauty in a singular degree.
“Ruined, dear mother? Is my father very unhappy about it?”
“He is more angry than unhappy; it has happened through the dishonesty of persons he trusted.”
“Shall we have to leave home?” asked Maheleth.
“I fear we shall; it is a heavy trial.”
“It will be for our good in the end, mother darling. I am so sorry for you and my father, because you have always been used to riches.”
“So have you, my poor child.”
“But not for so long a time; and it is easier to root up a sapling than a full-grown tree.”
“Ah! you hardly know what may be before you, Maheleth; your sisters are mere children; we have but few relations; with fortune, so also friends will forsake us; the shock will be very sudden, and we shall have to bear it alone.”
“You forget our God,” said the girl gently.
A shade of impatience passed over the elder woman's face.
“We do not hope for miracles now, child,” she answered; “your father has worked hard for his wealth, but God will not treat him as he treated Job.”
“Depend upon it, if he does not, mother mine, it is because he knows what is best for us. You would not have us lose our hopes of the hereafter for the sake of more or less comfort in the earthly present?”
“My child, you should have been a boy; such sayings would tell well in a sermon, but in practical business matters they are but cold comfort.”
“Oh! they are comfort sufficient, believe me; besides, they do not debar us from prudent measures and precautions in a temporal point of view.”
“Well, child, you are a visionary, I always knew that; it remains to be seen if you can be a stoic.”
“What need of that, dear mother? Stoicism is not obedience nor resignation.”
Here a light step was heard, and the half-open door was pushed quickly back. A little girl, about nine years old, ran in with flushed face, and, holding in her hands a velvet casket, cried out in gleeful voice:
“O mother! sister! see! I got leave to bring this in myself. It has just come from the jeweller's, just as my father ordered it!”
And she opened the casket, displaying a wonderful parure of opals and diamonds, exquisitely and artistically wrought. Señora Cristalar turned away impatiently, saying to the child:
“Thamar, I am engaged; don't come fooling here about these jewels; put them down, and go into the next room.”
The child, hurt and astonished, looked blankly at her sister. Maheleth reached out her hand for the casket, and half rose from her seat.
“I will come to you presently, little sister, if you wait in there; never mind the pretty gems just now.”
And so saying, she kissed the little eyes that were ready to overflow with childish tears, and, setting the jewels on a table out of sight of her mother, resumed her seat.
“There are the first-fruits of our circumstances,” said the mother bitterly. “The man expects to be paid for those to-day, and I shall have to tell him to take them back!”
“Come! if there were nothing worse than that! Now, mother, we will both go to my father, and pray together, and then consult among ourselves.”
Maheleth's father was very fond and very proud of his eldest daughter, and this indeed was his best trait. Shrewd and clever in worldly affairs, yet strictly honest in his dealings, he was not devoid of that hardness that too often accompanies mercantile success, and as often turns to weakness when that success disappears.
One thing seemed to sustain him, but it was only a hollow prop after all—his pride of race. For generations his family had been well known and honored: he could trace his [pg 414] ancestry back in an unbroken line of descent from one of the exiles from devastated Jerusalem. Rabbis and learned men had borne his name, and though in later times no opening save that of trade and banking had been available to those of his race, yet his blood yielded it in nothing to that of the proverbially haughty nobles of Spain. It mattered little that by some he was shunned as of an inferior extraction or lower social status; his own wealth, his wife's beauty, his lavish hospitality, his daughter's charms, were strong enough, he knew, to break the barriers of prejudice, at least as far as appearances went. As to marriages, he did not covet for his children the alliance of a poor foreigner, and poor most of the proud families were whom he daily entertained at his splendid house—poor in brains, poor in beauty, poor in energy and strong will.
And yet, though he almost despised his neighbors, this shock was very galling to him. They now would turn from him, would forget his open-handedness, and remember only his race and creed; would pity him perhaps, but with the pity that is almost contempt. And this seemed to paralyze him, for all his fiercely expressed consciousness of superiority to his friends.
Maheleth tried to persuade him to take the trial calmly; for even in a temporal aspect calmness would sooner show him how to retrieve his fortunes.
“For,” she said, “you know that, with your abilities, you can, if you will, gain enough for my little sisters' dowry by the time they will be grown up; and that is the first thing to be considered, and after that we shall even have enough to live in comfort.”
“And what is to become of you, Maheleth?” asked her father fondly.
“Oh! you and I will be co-workers. I will look after those two until you can marry them well, and so we will both have a definite object in life. We can keep my mother in some degree of comfort from the very beginning, if we only look things in the face.”
The opals and diamonds had to be returned to the jeweller's; the pleasant home was broken up, and what with the sale of his property, and various other legal arrangements, Ephraim Cristaler was able to pay all his creditors, with a few trifling exceptions, for which he bound himself by solemn promise to provide shortly.
Then the banker and merchant disappeared, and the nine days' wonder was forgotten by his former circle of acquaintances.
One day, a young Englishman, travelling or rather sauntering about Europe in a way unlike the usual useless rush of tourists from one point to another of Murray's Guide-Book, arrived at Frankfort and settled there—for how long, he, least of all, could have told.
At the hotel, nothing was known of him but his name, Henry Holcombe, and that he had come with a black portmanteau containing a number of books. He went slowly to see the sights, one by one, as if he had plenty of leisure and wanted to enjoy it; and, when he did go, he never measured the length and breadth of saloons, the height of towers, the number of statues in the cathedral-niches; nor did he ever disgrace his name by carving it side by side with the ambitious Joneses or the heaven-soaring Smiths on the pinnacle of a temple, or the bark supports of a summer-house; when he went out with a book in his hand, it was neither the obtrusive Murray nor the ostentatious Byron; and, in fact, he [pg 415] departed altogether from the standard of the regulation British tourist.
He was walking one day down the Juden-Strasse, the picturesqueness of whose mediæval-looking houses had a special attraction for him, when it came on to rain very suddenly, and the sky seemed to threaten a storm in good earnest; the street was soon deserted, and the narrow roadway became a miniature stream. Presently he heard a step behind him, and a slight figure, half-hidden by a large umbrella, pressed quickly past him. It was a woman, and, he thought, a very young one, but more than that he could not tell, because she was veiled and muffled, and held the dripping umbrella very close down upon her head. She had not gone a dozen paces beyond him before she dropped something white like a roll of music, and stooped slowly to pick it up. The cloak and long skirt she was holding fast to keep them from the mud embarrassed her, and the young Englishman had time to spring forward and restore the white roll of paper to her hand before she had grasped it.
“Oh! thank you, mein Herr!” said a low, rich voice, in very soft German. And, as Henry took off his hat in silence, the girl made a pretty sweeping inclination, and left him, walking as quickly as before.
But he had seen more this time, and he knew she was beautiful, and had a dainty, graceful hand. Curious and interested, he watched the dark-clad figure down the street, quickened his own steps as it hastened on, slackened them as it paused to clear a crossing without splashing the long and rather inconvenient garments. He saw it stop at last, and ring a bell at an old forlorn-looking door, where he might have expected to see the face of a gnome appear, as guardian of unsuspected treasures within.
He was dreadfully romantic, this young Englishman, but in a subdued, quiet way that seldom showed itself in words, and was specially repelled by the gushing style too much followed just then by some of his fair countrywomen.
The door was opened and shut, and, except through his notice of the number over it, 25, his relation with the beautiful stranger was cut off.
He thought of it day after day, got a directory, and found out that in the house No. 25 there lived three families of the names of Zimmermann, Krummacher, and Löwenberg. The occupations of the heads of the families were given thus: “money-lender,” “banking-clerk,” and “lace-merchant,” respectively; no clue whatsoever, of course; and, unless in a regular and received manner, Mr. Holcombe could not think of entering the house. Still, the face he had seen veiled under the prosaic tent of a wet umbrella kept between him and his thoughts, and would not be driven away. Then, too, what business was it of his to go and throw himself in the way of a girl who most likely was a Jewess? Yet, reason as he might, the mysterious face would visit him, and it seemed to him as the face of an angel. Very often he passed the house, and once or twice even made a pretence of sketching it; but he never saw the figure again. Once a young face looked out over the flowers in the window of the ground-floor room, a merry face full of health and mischief—not his dream. The blinds were always drawn on the first floor, even when the windows were open, and he began to fancy she must be hidden behind those discreet shrouders of privacy. A friend of his met him at his hotel one day when he came home from the Juden-Strasse, and surprised him by telling [pg 416] him he was going home in a fortnight to get married.
“I've been half over the world, my dear fellow,” he said, “and enjoyed myself immensely. And I've got such a pile of things going home to my fiancée, for our house. She will be delighted, she is so fond of queer, foreign things, not like what other people have, you know. I'll show you some, but most are gone in packing cases through agents from the different parts of the world I've been in.”
And the two young men went upstairs to examine the bridal gifts.
“Look here,” said Ellice to his quieter friend, “it was a pasha's wife sent me these,” dragging out a handful of Eastern jewelry, golden fillets, and embroidered jackets and slippers. “A cousin of mine is the wife of the consul at Smyrna, and she got them for me, for of course I was not allowed to go near the Eastern lady! And look here, these are carved shells, and mother-of-pearl crucifixes from Jerusalem, and boxes made from Olivet trees and cedars of Lebanon; you should value those.”
“I hope your future wife will,” gravely said young Holcombe; “the wood of the olives of Gethsemani is almost a relic in itself.”
“Oh! Miss Kenneth will appreciate them just as much as you do, Holcombe, she is very reverential. See, here is some alabaster, Naples coral, and Byzantine manuscripts, and marble ornaments from the Parthenon. Ah! here is the filigree silver of Genoa; that is one of my last purchases, except these pictures on china from Geneva; see the frames, too, they are Swiss.”
Then he turned out a huge tiger-skin, and said: “All my Indian things except this were sent from Bombay, and a year ago I sent home all kinds of jolly things from North America—furs and skins, antlers, and other curiosities. By the bye, I have some old point from Venice, but some people had been there before me and cleaned the shop out pretty nearly, so I shall have to get some more. Belgium is a good place, isn't it?”
Holcombe looked thoughtful; his truant mind was at No. 25 again, and he did not answer. His friend went on:
“I'll just ask the landlady, she'll be likely to know if there is any place here, just for a souvenir of Frankfort.”
“Yes,” said Holcombe, “I suppose she knows.” And, as he spoke, the phantom face was directly in his mind's eye, and he could not drive the vision away.
“And now, old fellow, suppose you show me the lions here,” said Ellice; “you have been here longer than I have.”
So they walked out, and of course in due time came to the high, irregular houses bordering the curious Juden-Strasse. It was Friday evening, and the street was full of people hurrying to one spot; the air was balmy, and told of summer; the scene was very striking. The stream of people disappeared under the archway of a splendid Moorish-looking building, with Hebrew characters carved above the portal. It was the new synagogue. The two friends followed the men; the women were lost to view in the stair-cases leading to the galleries. A gorgeous lattice-work defended these galleries, and the assemblage in the main part of the temple were men with their hats on and light veils or shawls across their shoulders.
The service began; low, plaintive chants resounded through the building; sometimes the congregation joined. It was very solemn, and Henry [pg 417] Holcombe seemed fascinated. Some one passed him a book and found the place for him. And now came the prayer for the mourners, the mourner's Kaddisch, as he saw it printed before his eyes. There was a stir among the people, and he could hear the women's clothes rustling in the gallery. Those who had recently lost friends and relations stood up during the intercession, and then another prayer was offered up in German. Holcombe thought the sound of the old Hebrew was like the passing of water through a narrow rocky channel; it was soothing and flowing, sad and majestic, and he wondered if the girl he had seen once thought and felt about it as he did.
When the crowd dispersed, he tried to linger at the entrance, watching the women as they passed out. His friend was hardly so patient, and reminded him of the table d'hôte they had most likely already missed.
“I am afraid,” he said, “your people would scarcely approve your admiration of the pretty Jewesses.”
Holcombe blushed and moved away, and, just as he came out on the sidewalk, a girl in black passed him slowly, with an anxious, absent look.
“By jove! that is a pretty face!” exclaimed Ellice; but the other said nothing. For the second time, he had seen the face he was always dreaming of, “She looks like an angel,” he thought, “and yet she is not even a Christian.”
“I never saw a German Jewess like that,” his friend went on to say. “She looks like a Spaniard.”
The next day, Ellice had got an address written down, and said to Holcombe:
“If you care to go with me, we will go and look after this lace-merchant this morning.”
Holcombe's heart gave a great throb as he asked carelessly to see the address: “Jacob Zimmermann, 25 Juden-Strasse.”
“I don't know much about laces,” he answered, “but I will go with pleasure.”
“It feels like going on an adventure, like something you read of in a book,” said Ellice, “this penetrating into the privacy of those tumble-down dens of the Juden-Strasse.”
“Well,” returned Holcombe quietly, “it does give one the idea.”
They rang at the door No. 25, and the merry, mischievous face he had seen once at the window greeted Henry as he entered. They inquired for Herr Zimmermann.
“Oh!” said the girl, laughing and looking astonished, “he is up on the third floor. Shall I show you the way? But he is ill, and, as he lives all alone, he has got into very queer ways.”
They went up, guided by the laughing girl, who rattled on as she preceded them.
“Gentlemen like you most often inquire for us, for my father, I mean, and no one ever comes to see old Zimmermann except some wrinkled old ladies, and heaven knows how they find him out; and as to Herr Löwenberg, he is a stranger and has no friends.”
The two young men then knew that she was the money-lender's daughter, and Holcombe thought his dream companion must bear the name of Löwenberg.
“But is not Zimmermann a rich old merchant, and is he not well-known in the town?” asked Ellice. “My landlady named him at once when I asked for laces.”
“Oh! yes; rich he is; so rich he won't sell generally; but then an Englishman is another thing! He lives like a rat in a hole, and starves himself.”
By this time, they had reached the [pg 418] door of the miser's room; a low, subdued voice was heard within reading.
Their knock was answered by a noise of light footsteps, and the door was drawn ajar by some one inside.
“Rachel, what is it? You know Herr Zimmermann is ill.”
Holcombe knew that voice must belong to the girl he had never forgotten. Just then the light from the door fell upon the men in the darkened, narrow passage, and the slight figure drew back a little.
“They are English gentlemen,” said Rachel. “They want to buy.”
“To-day, Rachel? It is the Sabbath.”
Rachel shrugged her shoulders, and Ellice stepped forward.
“I beg your pardon. I forgot that. But since we are here, perhaps you will let us see the laces, and we can come back and choose on Monday.”
The girl looked uneasily back into the room, and then said, in a very low voice:
“No; please do not ask to come in to-day; he is hardly conscious, and he might forget it was the Sabbath in his excitement.”
“Very well,” said Ellice politely, and Holcombe whispered to him: “Come away; don't you understand?”
The door was closed gently, and Henry said:
“She was afraid he could not resist the temptation of a good offer, if it were made to him, and she wanted to prevent his doing anything wrong.”
“How stupid I am!” said Ellice. “Of course that's it. But, I say, is she not pretty?”
“Beautiful!” answered Holcombe very quietly.
“Is that Fraulein Zimmermann?” asked Ellice of Rachel.
“No; Fraulein Löwenberg,” said the girl. “She is very kind to the old man. Her own father is ill and can't work, and she is very good to him. She reads to old Zimmermann, and looks after him, too, when he is ill. She has two little sisters also.”
“And how do they live?” asked Ellice.
“She keeps them, I think. The father used to be clerk in Hauptmann's bank; but he has been laid up six months now, and the mother died two months after they came here.”
“Are they Germans?” said Ellice, really interested.
“Their name is, but I fancy they are foreigners. Maheleth speaks like a foreigner.”
“Maheleth! A curious name.”
“Yes, an unusual one; so is her sister's—Thamar.”
They were at the street-door now, and Ellice bade the girl good-morning, saying they would come again on Monday.
“What a curious chance!” he went on. “It is the same girl we saw coming out of the synagogue last night. Did you notice?”
“Yes,” said Holcombe.
“You don't seem very much interested, anyhow.”
“My dear fellow, I never could get up an ecstasy!”
“Still waters run deep, Holcombe. I suspect that is the case with you, you sly fellow.”
Monday came, and the two friends were again at No. 25. Rachel admitted them as before, and showed them into the old lace-merchant's den. He was alone, and looked very eager; but his wasted, wrinkled hands and dried-up face spoke his miserly character, and froze the sympathy he so little cared to receive. He laid out his precious wares with trembling fingers, and it [pg 419] was curious to see these cobweb treasures drawn from common drawers and boxes, and heaped on a rickety deal table near the stove that was just lighted, because he was still so ill. Everything about the room looked cold and hungry; the floor was bare; the paint on the walls dirty and discolored; and an untidy assortment of tin pans and cheap crockery littered the neighborhood of the stove. The window looked into a back-yard, and what panes were not broken were obscured by dirt. In strange contrast to all this was a bouquet of fresh flowers on a chair.
While Ellice and the old man were bargaining, Holcombe fastened his eye on the flowers, conjecturing well whose present they were.
The old Jew asked enormous prices for his laces, and gave marvellous accounts of the difficulties he had sustained in procuring them as an excuse for his exorbitant demands. So the time seemed long to Henry, who knew little or nothing about such things, when suddenly Rachel appeared at the door with a basin of soup. “Fraulein Löwenberg sent you this,” she said to the old man, and then to the strangers: “You must excuse us; he is too weak to do without this at the accustomed time, and the fraulein is gone out.”
“Gone out!” querulously said the miser. “Gone out without coming to see me!”
“She knew you were engaged,” retorted Rachel. “You will see her again to-night.” She spoke as to a spoiled child.
“Well, well, business must be first, and she has business as well as I have.” And he went on with his flourishing declamations over his lovely laces.
Holcombe understood why she had omitted her morning's visit to her old protégé, and, indeed, it would have been unlike his ideal of her had she acted otherwise.
“Have you nearly done, Ellice?” he said, coming up to the table.
“Yes; all right. See, I have chosen the nicest things I could find, as far as I know; but the fellow asks such confounded prices.”
“Well, you had only that to expect,” was the smiling answer, and then the young man turned to the lace-merchant.
“Have you been ill long?”
“Only a month, and I should be dead if it were not for Maheleth. I cannot do without her.”
“But she is poor herself; she cannot bring you what you want, can she?”
“No, she cannot; she is poor, and her father is poor, and so am I. I sell nothing now; I have no customers.”
Holcombe smiled slightly, but he went on:
“Are you fond of flowers?”
“Yes, but I cannot afford them.”
“Then it would be cruel of me to ask a violet hearts-ease of you; but, if you would give me that, I will send you more flowers, and bring you something you will like to-morrow.”
“Yes, you may take one; but, if you want flowers, Maheleth can give you some; she has some growing in her room.”
“No, this one is enough. Good-by, and I will try and see you again.”
As they left the house, Ellice said to his friend:
“Well, Holcombe, you are green! You don't mean to say you believe he is poor?”
“No, I don't believe it; but he will be none the worse off for a few flowers and some good food, if he won't get them for himself.”
“I suppose you remember that [pg 420] there is another invalid in the house, and the same person nurses both?”
“I know what you mean, Ellice, and I wish you wouldn't joke; it is not fair.”
“Very well, old fellow; but, if you were anybody but yourself, I should say ‘take care.’ You always were the steadiest old chap going.”
A day or two afterwards, Holcombe was left alone again; he had sent things to Zimmermann as he had promised; but as yet he had not revisited the Juden-Strasse. On Friday, there was a special service at the Catholic cathedral, at eight o'clock, and the young man, hardly knowing why, determined to go.
The church was only partially lighted, except the chancel, which was dazzling. The music was good, the congregation devout, and the German sermon as interesting as could be expected. The whole effect was very beautiful, and seemed to Henry a peace-giving and heart-soothing one. A rush of voices came breaking in upon his reverie at the Tantum Ergo, and the surging sound was like a mighty utterance of his own feelings. As the priest raised the Host, he bowed his head low, and prayed for peace and guidance; and when he lifted it again the first object his eye fixed on was a slight, dark-robed figure, standing aside in the aisle, drooping her head against one of the columns. He knew the figure well; but, with a strange thrill, he asked himself why was she here? For the music? For the beauty of the sight? For love of a creed she was half ashamed to embrace? Or from the curiosity of a chance passer-by?
He watched her as she moved behind the shadow of the pillar, and waited till she was enticed from her hiding-place by the quick desertion of the once crowded church. Now the light from a lamp streamed down on her; the face was anxious and troubled, as if weary with thought.
“Friday, too!” he said to himself. “And she has come here on the very Sabbath. Perhaps she has been to her own service first. But what can it mean, if she only were what this would point to?”
To Be Continued.
Odd Stories. IV. The White Shah.
If thou wouldst hear a choice history of princes, go into the garden of the shah's pleasure-house, and hearken to what the humming-birds tell thee in sleep. How else could thy servant have learned the memory of Shah Mizfiz, the forgotten? Was it not he who built the palace of a hundred towers in the valley of groves? Beautiful beyond compare was that valley's lake which presented itself like a mirror before the pavilion of the shah; and magnificent as a house in the sky were the hundred delicate towers that rose one above the other, amid gardens and fountains, and half lost in groves of venerable height and shade. High hills whose sides were covered with woods and flowers, and watered with [pg 421] streams and fountains, shut out the valley from the world save where it was entered through a great gate crowned with towers; and a long colonnade of loftiest trees pranked with beds of tulips, hyacinths, and roses, and intertwined with flowering vines that here and there made curious arbors. From the windows, or from the balconies, or from the pavilions of his palace, the shah could see the lords and ladies who, dressed in gold-broidered silks of all colors, shook their plumes as they rode up to his gate, or, listening to the song of minstrels, sailed upon the bosom of the lake.
Naught now could the shah do but dream. Surrounded by hills that fenced him from mankind, by waters that mirrored the skies or leaped into the sunlight, by flowers whose odors inspired the sense, by trees which everywhere made repose for him, and by towers, the intricacies and ingenuities of which rendered his palace ever new to him, he forgot all common things. The cares of state he left to his ministers at the gate of the valley; while in one or other of the innumerable courts of his palace, or among its unknown and invisible gardens, he retired from the intrusion of mortals. “I went to seek the rose-king,” said or sang a poet of the court; “so I stripped a great rose of all its leaves, one by one, and in its heart of hearts I found the Shah Mizfiz.” Now, having captured the tenth of a number of white elephants, the like of which was never seen, except in the woods and by the lake of the imperial valley, where they roamed in romantic innocence and tameness, the Shah Mizfiz betook himself to his dreams as others do to their books.
At times, seated high on his favorite white elephant, the old shah rode in state through his grounds. Thence it came to pass that, seeing his beard like almond-blossoms, and the milky color of his throne-bearer, they who visited the gardens of the lake remembered him as the White Shah. Leaning on the cushions of his vine-encircled pavilion, his silken beard and silvery locks floating in the breath of the zephyr, how often have the minstrels passed by beneath him over the mirror of the lake, singing under their gorgeous sails or to the time-beat of their oars those songs which, with a tinkling and rippling melody, lingered in his ear. Less was it known how looked and fared the shah when he retired to the inmost bowers of the interior gardens of the hundred towers. But what wonder if in one of those fine day-dreams so celebrated by the poet Bulghasel the flower-fairies themselves did him veritable honor, and, circling gardens of roses, tulips, and lilies, danced at his feet and round about him, an illusion of humor and beauty?
Ah! the deep-eyed, far-gazing White Shah! What dreams he dreamed of green ages in the youth of the world, of far-off golden centuries to come, of ships navigating the air of sunset, of adventures in the stars, and of nights with the great moon-shah! They were not to be told or counted; the number and wonder of them would have tasked a hundred scribes, and put as many dreamers to sleep. Howbeit, the shah's visions persuaded him to become an oracle for all his empire. Statesmen consulted his dreams, and poets made themes of them, and doubtless the humane spirit of his visions found its way into the laws. Thanks to them, the people had abundant feast-days, and, if a mine of precious stones were discovered, or the caravans were richer than usual, or the lords were moved to more [pg 422] than wonted bounty, or new fountains were built on the dry roads, or new temples set up here and there, the shah's dreams were praised. When he had completed the thousandth of a line of dreams, the smallest of which would have made a paradise on earth again, he dreamed that his people were prosperous like none other under the sun; for his prime minister had artfully omitted to report that his eastern provinces were suffering the horrors of a famine, and those of the west were threatened by war. But on neither of these facts did the White Shah lay the blame for that final eclipse which ruined his dreams. In a fatal hour, having too long slept among the poppies, and drunk too much wine and coffee, he dreamt that the demon Sakreh had caught him up in a storm on the desert of Lop, out of which he let him drop into the Lake of Limbo, whence, fishing him up by the hair of his head, he banged him against the Caucasus and set him down to cool on the Himalaya, ere, taking him to the topmost height of the palace of the hundred towers, he allowed him to fall through the many-colored glasses of the dome of delights. His displeasure with the effects of this dream was heightened and consummated when the poet Bulghasel, in a moment of malediction, trod on his particular corn. From that moment, peace forsook the couch of the White Shah, and dreams of glory visited not his slumbers.
Henceforward what had been dreamland to the too happy shah became the saddest reality. In a white age he had lost his visions as old men lose their teeth. He wandered about the valley—no longer seated high on the pride of his white elephant, but crownless and on foot—murmuring from hour to hour: “I have lost my dream—I have lost my dream.” One day, leaving palace and throne, he passed out of his gate liked one crazed, to seek, as he said, his dream. Far away among the Parsees the poet Bulghasel found him after many pilgrimages: “And O my white-haired sire,” cried the affectionate poet, “hast thou found the object of thy search?” “Yea, son,” rejoiced the White Shah, “I have found that which I never lost, but would that I had possessed; for then my dream was a fiction, and now truth is a sufficient dream for me. If the new shah would sleep well, let him have this dream.”