VIII.—THE SERPENT.
Several months had elapsed since the events had taken place which we have just narrated. It was night. In the centre of the garden, a simple black cross had been erected on the spot where the unfortunate young man had been massacred. No inscription revealed to the passer-by either the name of the victim or the fatal circumstances of his death. Alas! it was written for ever in characters of blood on the hearts of the family. Every evening, the superintendent, with his wife, children, and servants, assembled at the foot of this cross, to pray for the repose of the soul of his unfortunate friend. On this especial evening, all the family had as usual visited the grave, and returned to the house, except the young girl, who, dressed in deep mourning, still remained kneeling at the foot of the sombre monument. She was very pale, and there was an expression of the most ineffable sadness on her face. The evening dew had almost entirely uncurled her long ringlets, which now hung in disorder around her cheeks. You might have mistaken her for a statue of grief. From the clear, high heaven above, the moon poured floods of melancholy light. Its dreamy rays fell on the sod at the foot of the cross and on the face of the young girl like a thought from beyond the tomb—like a silent and grateful sigh from the innocent victim whose memory had left so tender and anguishing an impression in her soul. Her lips moved in ardent prayer—prayer, that celestial solace of the grief-stricken heart, the smile of the angels through the tears of earth. For a long time she thus silently held communion with her God, breathing out her prayers with sighs and tears, as she knelt at the foot of this cross, on the sod still damp with the victim’s blood. At last she rose, and was about to leave, when, raising her eyes for a moment, she thought she saw a shadow moving across an opening in the wall of a shed near by. A cloud, at that moment passing over the moon, prevented her from distinguishing what the object was. She waited a moment until the cloud had passed over, when what was her astonishment to see a human face in the aperture! It must be a robber, she thought, and yet she knew positively that the gate was well secured. “He will find himself nicely caught when the servants come to lock up,” said she to herself. By degrees, however, the head was pushed more and more through the air-hole, and gradually emerged from the obscurity. At the same moment, the moonlight fell clear and full on the face. The young girl actually shivered. She recognized it but too well; it was impossible to be mistaken. It was he; she recognized perfectly his copper skin, his hard, ferocious features, and his yellowish eyes, rolling in their sockets. It was indeed the Potawatamie, the murderer of the young officer.[188]
Her first thought was flight, but an invincible curiosity fastened her to the spot. The Indian continued to work through the aperture; one arm was already out, and he held something in his hand which she could not discern. He tried for a long time to get through the air-hole, which was too small for his body. Finally, while making a last effort, he suddenly turned his head, and fixed his eyes with a very uneasy expression on a little bush near him. He seemed undecided what to do; then, letting go the object, he rested his hand on the ground, and, pushing it against the earth with all his strength, tried to force himself back again through the hole. But his broad shoulders, compressed on both sides by the wall, held him like a vice, and he could neither move one way nor another. Then his uneasiness increased, and he looked again anxiously toward the bushes. A slight rustling of the leaves was then perceptible, and a small head emerged slowly from the shadow of the branches, and extended itself toward the savage. It was a rattlesnake.[189] Immovable and with fixed eyes, the Indian watched the least movement of the reptile, which advanced softly and cautiously, as if aware of the strength and power of his redoubtable adversary. When within a few feet of the savage, it stopped, raised itself up, and, throwing out its forked tongue, sprang toward his face; but, before he could touch him, the Indian, as quick as thought, gave him a violent blow with the hand that was free, and the reptile fell a short distance from him. Then he began again to make every effort to disengage himself; but in vain. The snake, now furious, advanced a second time to recommence the attack, but with more caution than before. Approaching still nearer to his enemy, he threw himself forward with much greater violence, but without success; for the hand of the savage sent him rebounding further off than before. The Potawatamie then gathered all his strength for a final effort of liberation, but of no avail: he remained fast in the opening of the air-hole. Quick as lightning, the reptile, now foaming at the mouth, with blazing eyes, and jaws swollen with rage, his forked tongue extended, sprang with renewed strength toward his prey. His scaly skin glistened and sparkled in the silvery light of the moon, and the slight noise made by his rattles resembled the rustling of parchment, and alone broke the silence of the night. This mortal combat in the stillness of night, between a serpent and a savage more subtle than the serpent, had an indescribable fascination; it was more like a contest between two evil spirits, in the shadow of night, over some unfortunate victim. The serpent now approached so near the Indian that he could almost have seized him with his hand; he raised himself a last time, and, throwing back his head, sprang forward. The savage, guarding himself carefully with his one hand, had followed with his eyes the least movement of the writhing body. It was plain to see that the final fight had begun, and could only terminate in the total vanquishment of one or the other of the combatants. At the instant that the snake sprang like an arrow upon his enemy, the Indian raised his hand; but this time the attack of the reptile had been so rapid and instantaneous that, before he could strike him a blow, his fangs had entered his cheek. A hoarse cry died away in the throat of the savage, who, seizing the serpent with his hand before he could escape, raised him to his mouth, and in his rage tore him to pieces with his teeth. A vain reprisal—the blow had been struck. A short time after, the most horrible cries and fearful convulsions announced that the mortal venom had entered his veins. The victim writhed with despair in the midst of his excruciating agony. It was thought at first that he had finally succeeded in getting out; but subsequently they found the body, enormously swollen, still held in the aperture of the air-hole. His bloodshot eyes were starting from their sockets, his face as black as ink, while his gaping mouth revealed two rows of white teeth, to which still clung the fragments of the reptile’s skin, and flakes of bloody foam. Providence had indeed terribly avenged the assassination of the young officer.
[THE JESUITS IN PARIS.]
A walk in the direction of the gloomy though now as ever fashionable Faubourg St. Germain is not exactly one that a non-fashionable person would ordinarily choose; nor does the Rue de Sèvres in that quarter hold out any particular inducement for a foot-passenger to traverse it.
However, it was to the Rue de Sèvres that, on the 18th of January, 1873, I bent my steps; for at one o’clock precisely I had an appointment to keep there with a Father of the Compagnie de Jésus; and No. 35 in that street is the society’s headquarters.
I crossed the Seine at the Pont Royale, and soon found myself in the main artery of the faubourg—the well-known Rue du Bac. I splashed along with omnibuses that seemed determined to do their best to destroy the roughly macadamized carriage-road; by huge gaps in the façade, where the pétroleuse had been at work, and where the dull-red walls looked as if the destroying element were still lurking about them; by blue-coated and blue-hooded policemen, who scrutinized one to an extent that made you debate within your mind whether you had or had not picked the pocket of a passer-by, or lately become affiliated to the Internationale. On, by the “Maison Petit St. Thomas”—a large dry-goods establishment, the name of which may bring back perhaps to some of our lady readers the pleasant season passed a few years since in Paris, with its gay fêtes and agreeable shopping excursions. On, till the plate-glass of the store windows becomes less costly, and the fish and the charcuterie, or ham and sausage shops, become more plentiful. On, till at last, to right and left, “Rue de Sèvres,” in bold white letters on a blue ground, tells me that I have reached my destination. To save time, I thought it necessary to ask some one where the particular house that I wanted was situated. I looked at a sergent de ville, but his glances repelled me. I turned towards a cabman, but I fancied he expected something more than I was prepared to give him; and then, not in despair, but in the natural order of things, I had recourse to the inevitable Parisian chestnut-man, who (I having taken the precaution of buying two sous’ worth of damply-warm chestnuts) willingly gave me all the information that I required.
The exterior of No. 35 Rue de Sèvres is as much like that of any other house in Paris as you can well imagine. There is a certain number of feet of stucco, relieved by oblong windows; and there are two large portes cochères, or folding-doors, far apart from one another, and looking incapable either of being opened or closed; although, in point of fact, the one leads to the church, and the other to the convent.
I entered, of course, by the last-named portal, and, passing through the usual French courtyard, knocked at a glass door, from whence it was evident that a brother porter within held communication with the world without.
I presented my letter of introduction to him, and, while he was making arrangements for the transmission of it to the rightful owner, because it was raining heavily, and because I saw only one door open, I entered by that door, and found myself uninvited and unwittingly in the conciergerie, or porter’s lodge, itself.
The concierge and his occupation afforded me a good deal of amusement, or, to speak less lightly, a good deal of room for thought during part of the three-quarters of an hour that I was destined to wait for the arrival of the priest with whom I had the engagement. He has under his control the management of ten brown wooden handles, attached to ten wires, which wires are connected with ten different doors in different parts of the establishment.
If a person want a confessor, he pulls the wire connected with the church. If a lady desires advice, another pull opens the parlors to her. If a priest wishes to come from the convent, another pull in another direction is necessary. And as these pulls (except in the last case) are invariably followed by a message sent through a speaking-tube by the same brother porter, to inform the priest of the fact that he is wanted; and as through the before-mentioned glass door and otherwise he receives all letters, and answers all queries, both from within and without, he has, I take it, a pretty hard time of it.
I had been too much absorbed at first to observe what was taking place around me; but, after a little, I began to remark that the priests, in passing to and fro through the conciergerie, bestowed upon me more glances of earnest inquiry than I thought my personal appearance actually warranted. At last the mystery was solved by one father being so good as to tell me that seculars generally waited in the parlors. I bowed, thanked him gratefully, and went; but not before I had discovered that, if the pigeon-holes for letters be a true test, there were fourteen or more priests resident in the Rue de Sèvres at that particular time.
I was not sorry for the exchange of place. It was strangely interesting to be sitting in those rooms where, so short a time since, the Communists, under the command of an energetic young gentleman named Citoyen Lagrange, took prisoner the good Superior Father Olivaint and his Père Procureur, M. Caubert.
Strange to sit in those parlors, and gaze upon the large and well-photographed portraits of those two men and martyrs, and to notice the remarkable likeness existing between them. How both had the same square forehead and firmly set, powerful mouth; and how both looked—as they were—soldiers ready to die under the banner for which they fought.
Ne pleurez pas sur moi,[190] cried Father Olivaint to the solitary group of sympathizers whom he met on his way to the Préfecture de Police.
No! mon père, we weep not, but rather thank God that the grand old spirit of martyrdom has not yet died out among us!
Besides the thoughts which the past suggested to me, it was interesting to note the living occupants of the rooms. One silver-haired old gentleman, whom I afterwards found out to be the self-same Père Alexis Lefebvre whom Lagrange left in charge of the house, telling him to keep it au nom de la Commune, was holding a very serious conversation with two or three gentlemen, the red ribbons in whose button-holes declared them to be chevaliers de la Legion d’Honneur. Another father was having quite a small reception of middle-aged married ladies, who probably had, or desired to have, sons either at the College of Vaugirard or at that of S. Geneviève. Another—but stay! here is my particular father, to whose kindness I owe it that I have been enabled to write this paper.
The Society of Jesus is so well known to the citizens of New York that it would be superfluous for me to give any lengthened description of the general principles of government upon which the order is based. Suffice it to say, for the benefit of the uninitiated, that, in common with other religious, they have a head resident at the Roman court; provincials under him, among whom the supervision of the different stations is divided; and superiors of individual houses.
It is peculiar, however, to the Society of Jesus that each provincial has attendant upon him an officer called socius, whose care it is to look after the pecuniary business of the province, and in many kindred ways to assist his chief; but this office, I am informed, does not confer any additional rank upon the holder.
The case is different, however, with some other officials of the society, called “consulters,” who, as their name implies, are chosen from among the number of the elder and more experienced brethren.
The house in the Rue de Sèvres was reopened in the year 1853, after having been considerably enlarged.
The main building consists of a plainly-built quadrangle, on the north side of which, and in immediate connection with it, stands the church, dedicated to the sacred name of Jesus. Running along all the inner sides of the quadrangle, both on the ground and the other two floors, is a lofty, well-ventilated corridor or cloister, adorned here and there, after the usual manner of convents, with religious paintings.
The piece of ground forming the natural centre of the quadrangle is laid out with shrubbery, though without pretension to anything more than neatness.
On the ground floor are situated the refectory, the kitchens, and other offices; while the first and second floors are devoted exclusively to the use of the fathers. The cells, like the corridors, are lofty and well ventilated, but so simple in their arrangement as to require no description.
The priests, in the true monastic spirit, sweep and keep clean their own rooms and even the cloisters; and, from the general air of cleanliness and order that pervades the place, it is evident that the work is well done. This walk through the cloisters of the Jesuit house in Paris would be uninteresting were it not for the remembrance of one ne’er-to-be-forgotten room; and for the sake of the names printed upon the cell doors, bringing back as they do to one’s mind the recollection of past times and weary troubles; and the near presence of men so many of whom have distinguished themselves in working for the cause of holy church.
Tread softly, and be silent now, as ye approach yonder door that bears no printed name; for the key that turns the jealous lock will disclose that to thy gaze which should excite thy intensest feelings of humility!
It is the “Martyrs’ Room,” where are kept the relics of the five heroic men, each one of whom “pro lege Dei sui certavit usque ad mortem et a verbis impiorum non timuit; fundatus enim erat supra firmam petram.”[191]
Anatole de Beugy was arrested with the Père Ducoudray.
“Voilà un nom à vous faire couper le cou,” cried the officer in charge of the party of arrest.
“Oh! j’espère,” replied the father calmly; “que vous ne me ferez pas couper le cou à cause de mon nom.”
I imagine that the officer did not think more highly of F. de Beugy after this. In fact, all through the time of his imprisonment, his captors seem not to have liked him or his indomitable sang froid. His coat is there, in this “Martyrs’ Room” (a secular one, by the bye), and it is pierced with seventy-two Communist bullets—truly, a very palpable proof of his enemies’ animosity.
When the Père Olivaint was on his way to execution, as he descended the stairs of the prison of La Roquette, he found—how naturally!—that he had his breviary tightly grasped in his hand. “They have me,” perhaps he thought, “but they need not have this”; and he presented the book to the concierge of the prison, who had shown him some kindness. God knows what motives the man had, but an officer of the National Guard snatched it from his hand, and threw it into the flames of a fire near by.
The concierge recovered the breviary, or what remained of it, and it is now in the “Martyrs’ Room.”
He who can look upon this relic without emotion must have a very hard heart indeed!
Do any of us ever think that the spirit of penance—corporal penance—is dying out amongst us? There are instruments of self-mortification in this “Martyrs’ Room” that will convince us to the contrary.
It is not a miracle—unless the world and life be all a miracle—if, when men die wondrous deaths, wonderful things should follow upon those deaths; and when we see a marble tablet in this “Martyrs’ Room” telling how, not eighteen months ago, at Mass-time, when the priest invoked the saints whose relics lay beneath the altars in the church, a child was healed of a grievous disease, we must not be surprised.
“Ecce ego vobiscum sum omnibus diebus usque ad consummationem sœculi.”[192]
The beds from La Roquette are here—pieces of sacking, stretched out by a contrivance something similar to that made use of in the formation of camp-stools.
Here are the little silver cases in which the fathers concealed the Blessed Sacrament, to be at last, as each anticipated, his viaticum.
But enough....
The church, as I before stated, is situated on the north side of the quadrangle. It is Gothic, and of fair proportions, consisting of a choir and two aisles. The only side chapel worthy of note is that where repose the bodies of the PP. Olivaint, Ducoudray, Clerc, Caubert, and De Beugy, murdered on the 24th and 26th of May, 1871, by the Communists of Paris. The walls, the floor, the whole chapel, in fact, is literally covered with wreaths of blood-red immortelles; while in front of what, in the event of their canonization, will be the “Martyrs’ Altar,” are five white marble slabs, bearing upon them the names of the five victims, together with the incidents and date of their deaths.
My kind guide—the priest whom I have elsewhere described as being “my particular father”—having now shown me all that was necessary of the house and chapel, returned with me to his cell, and, in some very interesting conversations then and on my succeeding visits, soon gave me an idea of the important works undertaken by his society in Paris.
“We are,” said he, “quite a military order. Fighting is as much our business as it is the soldier’s; and I will even go so far as to say that he is no true Jesuit who does not fight. Of enemies, as you may imagine, there is no lack whatever; but, undoubtedly, here our bête noire is socialism; for you know in Paris, as indeed elsewhere, it has ever been our aim to undertake, if possible, the education of the male portion of society. And this, unfortunately, happens to be the favorite work of the socialists also; for, however faulty their code of moral philosophy may be in other respects, they have at least grasped the fact that to educate the affluent youth of a country is to form the intellect of a rising generation. However,” concluded my instructor laughingly, “we have never been very popular in European society.”
“No,” I answered abstractedly; for I was thinking just then of the sacred name which the order bears—of him who was “Virum dolorum et scientem infirmitatem”;[193] and my thoughts reverted to the martyr shrine that I had so lately seen in the chapel. “But perhaps you, who have in such a special manner enrolled yourselves under the banner of the sacred name of Jesus, have received of him a greater share than others of the shame of the cross.”
The father’s reply was a very practical one. “My dear sir,” said he, “nothing of the kind. The world dislikes us because we persist in teaching, and because it knows perfectly well that all our teaching is impregnated to the core with that particular kind of Catholicity which it hates—the Catholicity, I mean, whose first principle is devotion and implicit obedience to the Holy See.”
It will be seen, therefore, from the foregoing fragment of conversation, that the Jesuits’ work in Paris is for the most part the Catholic education of the upper classes.
The fathers in the Rue de Sèvres do, in one way and another, a good deal of work, although but little, perhaps, of a character that directly identifies itself with the peculiar animus of the order to which I have alluded. They are popular as confessors, and this involves a good deal of labor.
They direct two confraternities of men, each numbering respectively upwards of two hundred members. One is for the fathers of families, and the other for young men. Each society meets in the chapel upon alternate Thursdays for Mass and instruction. Again, the Jesuits render every assistance that lies in their power to the parochial clergy; and thus the fathers become, now conductors of missions, and now Lenten or Advent preachers.
At the Rue de Sèvres are given retreats, not only to their own brethren and the secular clergy, but also, and on a large scale, to private individuals—men whom care has driven to seek refuge in the contemplation of the treasures laid up for them in heaven.
Jesuits, whose duty calls them to places en route to which Paris becomes a natural resting-place, find a haven in the Rue de Sèvres. The provincial resides here when he is in Paris; and, finally, a few men who, at a moment’s notice, are available to be sent anywhere to meet a sudden emergency, make for the time this most interesting house their home.
In a dark, narrow street in close proximity to the Pantheon—in a street that, in its unlikeness to some other parts of the city, reminds one of the Paris of history—is situated the College of S. Geneviève. This is the chief educational establishment of the order; the other being that of the school of the Immaculate Conception at Vaugirard—a village on the southwest side of Paris.
In concluding this chapter in the life of what, next to holy church itself, must ever be considered the most wonderful organization that the world has ever seen, I cannot do better than append a brief account of the character of the work done in these two houses.
The Ecole S. Geneviève, founded in the year 1854, proposes for its object the preparation of youths for admission into the various professional colleges in France. That the work is a success may be seen in the fact that, in 1872-1873, sixty-four students were actually admitted from thence to the military academy at St. Cyr, while twenty-three more were declared “admissibles”; that the same school sent sixteen boys to the Ecole Centrale, to be educated as engineers, seven to the Ecole Navale, and twenty-three to the Polytechnique; and, lastly, that, exclusive of these, many more have been admitted into other similar establishments in Paris or elsewhere. The aggregate number of students appears, from the statistics put into my hands, to exceed four hundred and fifty.
The present rector of S. Geneviève is the immediate successor of the Père Ducoudray; and it is a noteworthy fact that three out of the five men killed under the Commune were connected with the school; the other two being PP. Caubert and Clerc. The services of the last-named father must have been extremely valuable; for, previous to his admission to the Society of Jesus, he had been for many years a naval officer.
The school of the Immaculate Conception, at Vaugirard, is perhaps as perfect a specimen of its kind as can be found in Europe.
At the present moment, there are upwards of six hundred and forty boys, representing the flower of the French beau monde, receiving at this institution a sound high-class education.
On his entrance, the scholar is at first put through an elementary course, out of which he is drafted into the sixth form, from which he rises to the third, and then completes his education by successive courses of classics, rhetoric, and philosophy.
Thus, to an outsider and to a passer-by in Paris, appears the work of that grand order whose aim we believe to be no less than the motto they have adopted:
Ad majorem Dei gloriam!
[SAN MARCO: A REMINISCENCE.]
In all the great cities of the Old World, the cathedral is the nucleus round which gathers the social life of the community. It is a national monument, a historical representative; it keeps in its tombs records more precious to the nation than those treasured in archives and libraries; it is identified with the city’s success or failure, and often bears visible marks of this sympathetic life in its trophies or in its ruins. Of old, the principal church of a city became the mirror of the people’s individuality; it took on the form that best expressed the people’s genius; it was an index to the national character. If this is so with other churches, it is perhaps even more strikingly true of S. Mark’s in Venice.
This unique church, the S. Sophia of the West, and the inheritrix par excellence of Byzantine treasures, is one that, to our fancy, makes a deeper impression on the stranger than S. Peter’s at Rome. To describe it technically; to speak of its uneven floor and crowded, heavy pilasters; to enumerate its columns, and analyze the color of its mosaics, is simply a desecration, besides inevitably implying an untruth. Criticism cannot be anything but an afterthought, even though genuine admiration should not be the first impression of the visitor. A spell is laid upon you at the very outset, and an indescribable feeling of reverence steals over your every sense as you tread the dusky aisles. We have always found it most satisfactory, in visiting either churches or cities, to slowly drink in the spirit of the place, rather than rush into a dissection of its detailed sights; and we are persuaded that this slow, receptive method is the only way in which to enjoy travel of any sort.
Thus, for instance, S. Mark’s became so woven in with our daily life that, without being able to give a single date or statistical fact concerning it, we were yet entirely penetrated with its peculiar beauty, but, above all, by its silent influence.
We went there every morning to early Mass—which, by the bye, is the only way to see a beautiful church on the Continent. You grow to love it, to know its every corner, to feel its peace, to be quite at home in it, to look out for the sunbeam throwing its line of gold over some particular spot on the marble floor, or for the red glow of the sunset to illumine some favorite mosaic. Then, too, you begin to know your fellow-worshippers, and to expect the clamorous hum of devotion with which this old man tells his beads, or to be disappointed if you fail to see the old beggar-woman crouching behind the ponderous door, and stretching out her hand with a ready blessing for the daily alms. S. Mark’s is one of the most peaceful churches in Europe; silence seems natural to it, and not even a great ceremony appears to create any stir there. The midnight Mass, which, by a singular exemption from the ordinary rule, takes place on Christmas eve, at five o’clock in the afternoon (this and the Christmas Mass at Vienna are the only such exceptions), is celebrated with great pomp, and the music is not too full of repose; yet the spirit of the church seems serenely unaltered, and the great brooding silence hangs over the echoes of the pageants, hushing them till the mind wanders away so far from their earthly presence that it is hardly more conscious of them than a man standing on a high mountain would be of the suppressed hum of the city lying at his feet. But another solemnity have we witnessed in this church much more congenial to its spirit, and indeed the most impressive of all Christian ceremonies—the office of Tenebræ. S. Mark’s is never lighted by anything save the golden lamps of its distant shrines, and the tall columns of wax on the high altar. The service on the three evenings of Holy Wednesday and Thursday, and Good Friday, is generally after dark, and every one brings his own light—a cerino, or coil of waxen taper—by which to read his book. This will barely suffice for two persons to read by, so that, from the gallery where we were stationed, we could see the church sown with stars, like the heavens at midnight; while, in the various fantastic recesses above and below our own, called galleries, glimmered a score of similar fitful lights. The attendance was small, and the beauty of the sight thereby increased. The chant, coming from below as the invisible choir breathed out the solemn lamentations, had a weird, stilling effect, like that of the sighing of the wind among the pines, suggesting everything that was strange, far-away, and desolate. We had heard the Miserere of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and likened it to what one might dream the angels to have sung while Christ hung on the cross of Calvary; but this—the same service, the same words, almost the same chant—seemed rather what the watchers round the sepulchre might have whispered amid their sobs, as they left the sacred body of their dead Lord on the evening of the first Good Friday.
Among the few people whose faces were near enough to be recognized were some of our acquaintances of the Venetian salons. They wore the customary dress, black gowns and lace veils falling gracefully around them. One was a great beauty by night, though what looked a soft, cream-colored complexion then would look sallow by day. She was the daughter of a Jew, married to a nominal Catholic, but an actual atheist, and herself practised no religion whatsoever. Here she was, with her beautiful, hopeless eyes fixed on the religious ceremonial with a sort of weary, hungry, perplexed look, while a friend tried earnestly to interest her in the spirit of the ritual.
Don Carlos and his family were there too, he and his brother being mere boys at the time, and more occupied by the care required to keep the cerino from burning down too low than by the solemn ceremonies at which they were assisting. The daily life, if one may so call it, of the Venetian Basilica has, however, more power to charm the memory than its hours of splendid show. We like best to think of it almost empty and quite silent, its high altar seldom used, and its Lady Chapel, Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, and altar of the Crucifix quaintly propped up against the corner of the pilaster, surrounded by the few worshippers whose faithful instincts bid them haunt the same spots day after day. In the early morning, you enter the seemingly deserted church. No hum of prayer is heard; hardly a human form is in sight. Suddenly, to the right of the high chancel, the sound of a little bell is heard, and, from the winding path that leads through chapels and pillars from the sacristy, a priest appears, vested for Mass, and accompanied by his server. From hidden corners rise up silent forms that join his train, and follow him to the altar which he has chosen; a devout congregation is quietly collected, and crowds round the rails, outside and inside, or, where there are no rails, presses up to the priest’s very feet, and often impedes the server’s movements. The latter is not always very reverential, however, and his motions sometimes savor of abruptness; but the people are too simple-minded to be shocked. When the bell should be rung, the boy ensconces himself at the side of the altar, and pulls a string attached to a bell high up above his head; and here, as in most Italian churches, the Domine non sum dignus is not distinguished by a bell at all. Another feature of S. Mark’s is the collector. At every Mass, he comes round, rattling a box in the face of each person, and crying, in a monotonous tone, “For the poor, my brethren,” or, “For the souls in purgatory”; and, as there are many collectors, and the succession of Masses at each of the three or four altars is uninterrupted, it may be judged whether this simple and erratic style of collecting is not rather an infliction than otherwise; yet somehow it fits in with the spirit of the place. S. Mark’s contains no pictures; that is, no masterpieces of those whom the world recognizes as the kings of their art. SS. Giovanni e Paolo, the Jesuit church, that of the Frari, and many others, are rich in these treasures; but San Marco has its matchless mosaics, combining Scriptural, historical, and allegorical subjects of colossal dimensions, with the most fanciful arabesques and purely decorative tracery. The colors, both in the interior, where the low arches seem lined with the golden glow of an everlasting sunset, and on the outer porch, where figures of vast size and groups of bold conception strike the eye, are almost as brilliant to-day as they must have been a thousand years ago.
If there is no chef-d’œuvre of modern art, there is nevertheless something more suggestive to the Catholic mind. The “picture” we grew to love most in all Venice was no Titian or Paul Veronese, nor even a Bellini (though the latter have the fragrance of Beato Angelico about them); but a brown Byzantine Madonna, hidden behind crowns and necklets of heavy gold, and enthroned in a deep, receding shrine—a temple of blazing gems under the massive, overhanging arches of S. Mark’s. The face, as revealed in the unadorned prints of it sold all over Venice, is very beautiful, the features severely regular, and the expression one of infinite majesty and calm. We know more than one of these sombre masterpieces of unknown artists, which no one admires, because no one, as a rule, sees them, but which, though overloaded with precious metals to the detriment of their beauty, and branded contemptuously by sightseers as mere “miraculous images,” are yet very pure models of ancient art, and most interesting relics of early Christianity. For instance, there is one at Warsaw in universal veneration all over Poland, and whose grave, dignified, and grandly serene cast of features raises it as a work of religious art far above the portraits of simpering maidens, buxom peasants, or gorgeous sultanas, whom the world has recognized for nearly four hundred years as the type of the Mother of God. Russia is rich in these Byzantine pictures, and the Greek Church holds them in as great honor as the Catholic.
We seem to have wandered out of Venice, somehow, in this gossip about unrecognized pictures; but the mention of Byzantium in reality brings us back to the lagoons, for it is as familiar to the Venetian as his own republic. Indeed, one would think that Venice had no civilization before she invaded Constantinople in 1204; for everything of any value, artistic or historical, is always traced up to this date. As it is impossible to create a new Venice, so it would be to build a new Basilica of San Marco; the city of the Evangelist stands alone in history, and its cathedral alone in art. It has the rare merit of suggesting nothing if not Christianity; it is more individual than S. Peter’s, and less associated with pageants and festivals; it is no mere imitation or adaptation of the forms of pagan art; it suits the purple sky and brilliant atmosphere of the South, yet without jarring on the sense of the Christianity to whose use it is dedicated; and, if its style is less symbolical than the Gothic, it is at least less servile than the Palladian. The chief impression it has left on us, as well as the only analysis we wish to make of its beauties, is this—that it is the easiest church in Europe in which to pray without distraction.
[“MOTHER OF GOD.”]
I knew, O God! that thou wert great and good,
Holy and just, and yet most loving, too;
But never did I know thy tenderness
Till these sweet words had pierced me through and through.
It seemed so far to lift my heart to thee,
I could but fear and tremble as I prayed;
Until thy grace made these sweet words disclose
The infinite act of love which thou hadst made.
Mother of God! Then Thou art one with us—
Our Brother, Lover, Saviour, all in one;
And the great distance ‘twixt our souls and thee
Was bridged by Mary’s words, “Thus be it done.”
Henceforth, when I would make my act of love,
When my full heart would lift itself to thee,
Should holy awe and fear weigh down my soul,
“Mother of God” upon my lips shall be.
[MEMOIRS OF A GOOD FRENCH PRIEST.]
It must not be always that men’s evil manners are writ in brass, their good deeds in water. The one grand, true, and pure wife of Henry VIII., with her strong sense of justice, commended the chronicler of the virtues of her once-potent but then fallen enemy. The history of conquerors, which most attracts the world’s admiring gaze, is but too often a record of crime; but, fiat justitia, with their crimes let their redeeming qualities, if any there be, stand forth, so that the good and the evil may flow down the stream of time in history, as they move in life, together.
We have recently read a work which contains in a few pages a large record of virtue and vice, of good and evil: the actors, however, were different parties—as far apart in their spheres as the spirits on the right and the left hand on the day of doom.
The Memoirs of the Rt. Rev. Simon Gabriel Bruté, with his sketches of scenes connected with the French Revolution, and extracts from his journal by Bishop (now Archbishop) Bayley, is one of a class of works which is deeply interesting in its nature and striking in its contrasts. The glory and shame of France are strangely brought together. The culmination of the neverending contest between the church of Christ, on the one hand, and the world and the gates of hell, on the other, appeared to be reached in the French Revolution. Heaven-born piety and hell-born iniquity, each in its most potential form, seemed to meet in a death-grapple. Astonished and awe-stricken nations looked on as spectators of the combat, as if upon that field hung the fate of Christianity, of revelation, of, in short, the subordination of the creature to the Creator. The struggle indeed was appalling; and the modern followers of that fool who said in his heart, There is no God, often threw up their fool’s-caps, bonnets-d’âne, or bonnets-rouges in token of victory. But the end was not yet, as it is not yet. In that struggle, as in all others for eighteen hundred years, the divine prophecy was vindicated, and the oracles of Satan for a time were silenced, at least until the father of sin could rehabilitate them in other forms. The American Catholic whose memory serves him for a couple of score of years, may remember to have seen at Mount S. Mary’s College, or in Baltimore, a French priest, whose very physiognomy would strongly rivet attention. We remember once, in early college days, passing from Georgetown College, where we were acquiring the humanities, to Mount S. Mary’s on a holiday excursion. We had fresh in mind as the very ideal of a venerable priest good old Father Jerome Dzierozynski, priest, philosopher, scholar, saint, the pastor of the college, and a model for his younger brethren aspiring to Christian perfection. We found his counterpart in the French priest, Father Bruté, at the mountain. His very presence was inspiring. The man of God was plainly discernible in his calm, placid face, which spoke, without words, of holiness, of wisdom, of learning, of the subjection of self and the man of the flesh, of the age, to the spiritual man, the pilgrim to eternity. Our personal recollections of this eminent man, however, go not beyond appearances and first-sight impressions. We are indebted to Archbishop Bayley’s fascinating work for a knowledge of his eventful career. Born and bred in France in a model Catholic family, he witnessed in his boyhood the practical workings of the French Revolution. He had not the honor to undergo exile or martyrdom, but he knew intimately many of the victims of that reign of Satanas; and his young eyes were made to ache with the lurid coruscations of the philosophy of Antichrist, which swept over France as fire sweeps over a prairie.
Losing his father early in life, his education was conducted by a wise and prudent mother, such as is called in Holy Writ “a valiant woman.” He was sent to the best schools of the day in his native city of Rennes, and he was fortunate in having for his teachers priests eminent for piety and learning, several of whom gave up their lives for the faith. For a short time he worked as a practical printer. “In 1793-4,” he writes of himself, “during the height of ‘The Terror,’ my mother made me work in the printing-office to save me from being enrolled in a regiment of children named ‘The Hope of the Country’; and a hopeful set they were.” A regiment of boys was formed, who acted as so many young demons. “My mother was much pressed to allow me to join them, and was terribly alarmed on this account. I remained in the printing-office nearly a year, and became a pretty good compositor.” To the honor of the craft, we may add that his widowed mother had a printing establishment under her own direction, probably derived from her first husband, Francis Vatar, printer to the king and parliament at Rennes, who prided himself on his hereditary art, his ancestors having been printers for many generations.
After this interruption to his studies, he resumed them, and in due time began the study of medicine. His fondness for the profession, his talents, his industry, gave sure indications of eminent success. In 1799, at twenty years of age, he entered the Medical School at Paris. “At the time this occurred,” he says, “I was entirely wrapt up in my medical studies, and preparing for the prize.” This indeed he obtained. He graduated with the highest honors. There were at that time eleven hundred students attending the course; out of these, one hundred and twenty were chosen by concursus as the best; and among this number M. Bruté received the first prize after another examination. An official appointment immediately followed this youthful triumph. But his thoughts were now turned to another field of labor, and to that vocation alone more worthy than medicine of his high endowments. He determined to study for the church. “He was not led to abandon a profession to which he had devoted so many years of assiduous study, and which opened its most brilliant prospects before him,” as Dr. McCaffrey remarks, “from any feelings of disgust. He always honored it as one of the noblest to which a highly gifted and philanthropic man can devote himself. Delightful as his conversation was to all, and to men of science in particular, it was peculiarly so to the student or to the practitioner or professor of medicine. He turned from it only because he had higher and more important objects in view. His eleven hundred classmates in medicine told him that it was easy to find physicians for the body, but the Revolution had made it more difficult to find physicians for the souls of men. The guillotine and prisons and privations of exile had spared but a comparatively small number of the former clergy, and of these many were occupied in foreign missions. Dreadful as had been the ravages of infidelity and impiety, and the almost entire privation of all spiritual succor, an immense number of the French people still remained faithful to their religion, and a new supply of Levites, to fill the places of those who had perished, was called for on every side.”
The medical student who had gone through the Parisian curriculum with a pure heart and a sinless soul proved thereby his title to join the choicest body of Levites. He not only had gone through the course with virginal purity, but he had already made a fight for the faith amidst its most potent enemies. If he resembled Aloysius at Rennes, he showed the spirit of Bayard at Paris. “Not satisfied with professing and openly practising his religion, he entered into a combination with several of his fellow-students, particularly those from his own province, boldly to oppose the false principles to which they were obliged to listen. They chose such subjects for their theses before the class as to enable them to avow their belief in revelation, and to defend its truth. One of the beneficial effects which followed from this course, was that the attention of the government was called to it. Bonaparte, then First Consul, was laboring to restore Christianity in France, as the necessary means of reorganizing society; and the infidel professors were made to confine their teaching to its proper limits.”
It would be well if infidel or atheistical professors at the present day could be restrained to their respective courses of instruction. Some of them seem to think it incumbent on them to proclaim, ex cathedrâ, their irreligious or atheistical convictions. Such men are entirely unfit for their occupations, no matter what talents or learning they may possess, and they ought to be silenced by authority. This may be considered illiberal by some, but let them make a little change in the order, and suppose a Catholic professor of anatomy to give a daily discourse to his pupils on the infallibility of the Pope before mixed classes of Catholics and Protestants, Jews and infidels: would such teachings, we ask, be greeted with liberal approbation? We think not. Then the infidel professor cannot expect a Christian public to consent to his teachings, beyond his proper course. This is a practical question of the day, and all honest men should demand in the teaching of medicine, or of any science or sciences, that the teachers should confine themselves to demonstrative and demonstrable facts. It is the last degree of folly or of impudence to attempt to prove anything of the relations of the soul to the body by the aid of scalpel or microscope. Professors in the Parisian schools still claim the right to teach covert or overt atheism, and they deem interference nothing less than persecution. They are philosophers, and claim free thought. But their opponents say properly (and this matter has been before the French Senate) that it is not the thought of the professors which is the matter in dispute, but their officious teachings. If they are free to think what they please, says an eminent medical writer, M. Garnier, they are not therefore free to profess or to teach all that they think. Animism, spiritism, materialism, are equally intractable to science. In these matters science can prove nothing; the rights of science, then, are neither compromised nor sacrificed by keeping it within the limits defined by its very nature.
All parents and guardians of youth, whatever their faith, or want of it, should protest against professors of medicine making use of their chairs to inculcate upon their pupils that the soul is subordinate to the body, the immortal to the mortal part of man. These are matters which are not now, never were, and never will be under the dominion of human wisdom or learning.
We will now follow Dr. Bruté rapidly in his career as physician in the higher order, that is, for the souls of men. He made his studies in divinity with the intense earnestness of his nature. “Theology was a science for which his mind was admirably fitted. He loved his religion, and it evidently became his delight thoroughly to explore the very foundations of it.” He was ordained priest in 1808, and was for a short time professor of theology in his native city. In 1810, he came to the United States, and began that active career in Baltimore and at Mount S. Mary’s College which made him so favorably known to the clergy and people of this country. “If Mount S. Mary’s, in addition to all the other benefits it has bestowed upon Catholicity in this country, has been in a remarkable degree the nursery of an intelligent, active, zealous priesthood, exactly such as was needed to supply the wants of the church in this country, every one at all acquainted with the history of that institution will allow that the true ecclesiastical spirit was stamped upon it by Bishop Bruté. His humility, piety, and learning made him a model of the Christian priest; and the impression of his virtues made upon both ecclesiastical and lay students surpassed all oral instruction. The Catholic religion alone can produce such men, and hence their example confirms the faith and elevates the character of all who come in contact with them. The name of Bishop Bruté has been, and ever will be, associated with that of Bishop Dubois as common benefactors to the infant church in this country.”
The church in America has obligations to a considerable body of French priests, driven from their own country for the most part by the ruthless madmen who for a season ruled fair France, which obligations can never be repaid and have scarcely been recognized. Even American Catholics often speak of Lafayette and his followers as the only Frenchmen entitled to our gratitude, forgetting entirely the valiant soldiers of the cross from the same country who Christianized our savages in the wilderness, or who astonished our Protestant civilization with their learning, their talents, and their virtues. Speaking of Bishop Cheverus, first Catholic Bishop of Boston, “which of us,” says Dr. W. E. Channing, the most eminent Protestant minister of his time in that city—“which of us would like to have our lives compared with his?” This candid and generous admission might have applied to others as well as to the almost peerless Cheverus, but none could have deserved it more. How truly is the blood of the martyrs the seed of the church!—including in the martyrs all who suffer in person or property for Christ. The French Revolution sent to our shores as fine a body of priests as the world ever saw—learned, pious, accomplished, refined, and highly cultured in every sense, they left an ineffaceable impression upon their successors in the priesthood in this country. In the order of God’s providence, persecution, in fact, has given the greatest impetus to Catholicity in America. The perpetual persecution of the Irish on account of their religion, the recent or actual persecutions by Garibaldi, Victor Emanuel, and Bismarck, all give laborers to this vineyard, where they are so much needed, and where they are doing a world of good a century in advance of an adequate supply of native priests.
In 1834, Dr. Bruté was consecrated as Bishop of Vincennes; in 1839, worn out with much and faithful service, his pure spirit took its departure. In his poor diocese, he had everything to construct, and everybody to instruct, even some Indian tribes, who received him with great joy as a “chief of the black robes,” a priest of “the true prayer.” He had no sinecure dignity. “At home he was at once the bishop, the pastor of the congregation, the professor of theology for his seminary, and a teacher for one of his academies.” These give a small idea of his labors. When the king of terrors (to most men) came, he found the bishop at his post, on duty, like the faithful Roman sentinel at the gates of Pompeii. But there were no terrors for him. “On the morning of the day before his death, he remarked to the clergyman who attended him with unwearied solicitude and affection: ‘My dear child, I have the whole day yet to stay with you; to-morrow with God!’ To another pious friend he used these simple but expressive words: ‘I am going home!’” And when his pure soul was disengaging itself, as it were, from the body, having received all the last rites of the church, he directed the prayers for the departing to be said, which he answered devoutly and fervently to the last; and then he entered upon that eternal life which he had always been contemplating, and for which his whole career had been one long preparation.
We would wish, if space permitted, to give selections from some of the good bishop’s “Brief Notes” of his recollections connected with the persecutions in France in 1793 and the following years, for they show in their simple details the striking contrasts between the lives and deaths of the children of Christ and the children of Antichrist, among the French people of that day. Never before in the history of the church, or in the history of humanity, did virtue and vice, face to face, reach loftier heights or deeper depths.
The aim of the French rulers was to extinguish Christianity. The “age of reason” had arrived, and its advanced fautors determined that the world should recognize it. But the priests stood in the way, and, by some strange mischance, all the honest and meritorious people of the land made common cause with the priests. To bring these people to a just appreciation of reason, the churches were plundered and dismantled, and turned into temples of reason or barracks and stables, and, if possible, viler uses. To take God’s house from him was to deprive him of a dwelling-place in France, and the example of France would be followed everywhere, so that God should be banished from the earth of his own creation. But the priests—the unreasonable, intractable priests—instead of adopting the new lights, would adhere to the doctrines and traditions of past ages. When the churches were closed, they would worship God by stealth, with their followers, in private houses, in the fields, in the woods, offering their pure and unbloody sacrifice on every hill and in every dale and valley of France. To correct this, their existence, and that of those who harbored them, was demanded in bloody sacrifice. “During the progress of the persecution,” says Bishop Bruté, “the greater number of the priests of the diocese had been either guillotined or shot, or transported to the penal colonies. The more aged and infirm were imprisoned in the Castle of St. Michael. Of the few left in deep concealment, some were almost daily discovered, and, according to the law, led with those who had harbored them to the guillotine within twenty-four hours.” Young Bruté often followed the accused to the criminal court, and listened with palpitating heart to the mock trials of priests and people. His instances are deeply touching. The very capitula arrest attention: as “Trial of the priest and the three sisters of La Chapelle S. Aubert, Diocese of Rennes.” The priest, M. Raoul, was summarily convicted and sentenced; he submitted without a murmur, but attempted to offer a plea for the sisters, who sheltered him, when he was immediately silenced. The ladies were then put upon trial, and convicted and sentenced also. One of them had been a nun, and, driven from her convent home, had returned to her sister’s house. She was a woman of spirit, and when under the sentence of death she had a word to say to the court and the spectators. “When the sentence had been pronounced, the nun could not restrain her feelings of indignation. She rose from her seat, snatched from her cap the national cockade, which even the women were obliged to wear during those days of national delusion, and, trampling it under her feet, she addressed alternately the judges and the people with two or three sentences of vehement reproach: ‘Barbarous people,’ she exclaimed, ‘amongst what savage nations has hospitality ever been made a crime punishable with death?’ I cannot now call to mind her other expressions, except that she appealed to the higher tribunal of God, and denounced his judgment against them.... The same day these four victims were immolated upon the fatal guillotine. They were taken, I think, as was often the case, from the tribunal to the scaffold, which remained permanently erected under the windows.” “A priest and peasant, bound together, were led to the ‘Fusilade’ singing the service for the dead.” One morning early, young Bruté was startled from his studies by the notes of the Libera me, Domine, from the Burial Service of the church, sung by some one in the streets. “I understood too well what it all meant, and ran to the door to go out and follow them, agitated and partially frightened by the usual terror which rested on my heart, but at the same time animated by the song of death, for it was the priest who was thus singing his own Libera, and the poor peasant stepped along quickly by his side, looking, as may be supposed, very serious, but without the least appearance of fear. The impression on my mind is that the soldiers, who generally followed their prisoners with jokes and abuse, accompanied these two in silence.”
Priests and peasants and nobles were victims to the impious rage of those days, and even women and children. It is appalling to read the summary account of “children shot and children drowned; women shot and women drowned; priests shot and priests drowned; nobles drowned, and artisans drowned, besides the hosts who were guillotined or sent into exile.”
We cannot draw further from the pages of this most interesting book, but the reader may do so at his leisure. We have thought sometimes in reading it that Victor Emanuel and Bismarck might find its perusal profitable. While writing this, we see by the papers that the Upper House of the Prussian diet has passed a bill authorizing a complete control of the church—that is, of all religious matter—by the state government. In other words, the church must be the king’s creature, or must perish. We shall see. There is traditional policy in this move. In one of Frederic the Great’s letters to Voltaire, he expresses a wish to break up the Catholic Church first, for then, he adds, the Protestant churches will be very easily disposed of.
The modern persecutors might see, if they were not blind, that after all the follies and crimes and slaughters of the French Revolution—and surely they can bring nothing worse or more potent than this—the church has risen again in France in her glory, and that hers is at this day the only one great conservative influence in France, as everywhere else in Christendom. Surely it is plain that, though often doomed to death, she is fated not to die. But how strange the infatuation of princes or people who would wish to blot out Christianity from the face of the earth, or to make it a mere servile tool of tyrants! To blot it out! and what then the history of man? Some philosophic inquirer has suggested the extinction of the sun, and then on this now bright planet of ours universal darkness, intense cold, the congelation of all the waters, the death of all vegetable life, the death of all animal life, and of the last strong man in the midst of an infinitude of horrors!
Even so in the moral world if the church of Christ, by the malice of man, could be extinguished: darkness, crime, and death, death temporal and eternal, would be poor lost man’s only inheritance. But, thanks be to God, we know that the bark of Peter will survive all tempests in the future as in the past, and that she will float over the stormy sea of time in safety to the consummation of ages; for the divine assistance is promised to her for ever.
In conclusion, we beg leave to express the hope that Archbishop Bayley will give to the world a new and enlarged edition of Bishop Bruté’s life, as his materials are by no means exhausted. It will be no detriment to Mr. Clarke’s excellent work to give to many of the deceased prelates, individually, much more extended biographies than that gentleman could possibly give in his instructive pages. And finally, we may express a hope that, when Lady Herbert edits a new edition, she will not forget to give due credit to the distinguished author whose labors she has in some sense so fully appreciated.[194]