ARE YOU MY WIFE?
BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,” ETC.
CHAPTER VI.
THE DEBUT.
The three days had expanded to ten when Admiral de Winton opened the breakfast-room door on Monday morning, and, standing on the threshold, said in his most emphatic manner: “Harness, I’m going up by the 3.20 this afternoon. Now, not a word, or I’ll bolt this minute. … I can bear a good deal, but there is a limit to everything. You’ve wheedled me and bullied me into neglecting my business for a whole week, in spite of myself; and I’m off to-day by the 3.20.”
“Well, depart in peace whatever you do,” said Sir Simon, “and I suppose you had better have some breakfast before you start? It’s struck nine already, but you will have time to swallow a cup of tea between this and then.”
“The fact is it serves me right,” continued the admiral, advancing to his accustomed seat at the table; “hard-worked drudges of my kind ought never to trust themselves in the clutches of idle swells like you—they never know when they’ll get out of them. Here’s a letter from the Admiralty, blowing me up for not sending in that report I was to have drawn up on the Russian fleet; and quite right, too—only it’s you who ought to get the blowing up, not me.”
“But, uncle, I thought you had settled to remain till Thursday,” said Clide; “you said you would yesterday.”
“One often says a thing yesterday that one has to unsay to-day,” retorted the admiral, clearing for action by sweeping his letters to one side; “I’m going by the 3.20. I tell you I am, Harness!”
“Well, I’ve not said anything to the contrary, have I?”
“But you needn’t be trying to circumvent me, to make me late for the train, or that sort of thing. I’m up to your dodges now. Ryder will be on the look-out; he’s packing up already.”
“I must say its rather shabby behavior to Lady Anwyll,” observed the baronet; “the dinner and dance on Wednesday are entirely for you and Clide.”
“Clide must go and make the best of it for me; an old fellow like me is no great loss at a dinner, and I don’t suppose she counted much on me for the dance. How much longer do you intend to stay here, eh?” This was to his nephew.
“What’s that to you?” said Sir Simon, interrupting Clide, who was about to answer; “you’d like him to do as you are doing—set the county astir to entertain him, and then decamp before anything comes off.”
But the admiral was not to be moved from his determination by any sense of ill-behavior to the county. He started by the 3.20. Sir Simon and Clide went to see him off, and called at The Lilies on their way back.
“It’s perfectly useless, he never would consent to it; and in any case it’s too late now,” Sir Simon remarked, with his hand on the wicket; “it’s for Wednesday, and this is Monday. We should have thought of it sooner.”
“Well, you’ll speak to him anyhow; it may serve for next time,” urged Clide in a low voice; “it’s cruel to see her cooped up in this way.”
It was as Sir Simon guessed. M. de la Bourbonais would not hear of Franceline’s going to Lady Anwyll’s. Why should he? He did not know Lady Anwyll, and he was not likely to accept an invitation that had clearly been sent at somebody else’s request, at the eleventh hour. But quite apart from this he would never have allowed his daughter to go. He never went out himself, and his paternal French instinct repelled as a monstrous inconvenance the idea of letting her go without him—above all, for a first appearance.
“But, happily, Franceline does not care about those things,” he said; “she has never been to a party, as you know. She is happier without amusements of the sort; her doves are all the amusement she wants.”
“Hem!… I’m not so sure of that, Bourbonais,” said Sir Simon; “we take for granted young people don’t care for things because we have ceased to care for them; we forget that we were young once upon a time ourselves. Why should Franceline not enjoy what other young girls enjoy?”
“She is not like other young girls,” replied her father, in a tone of gentle sadness.
“Unfortunately for other girls and for mankind in general,” assented Sir Simon.
Raymond smiled.
“I meant that their circumstances are not alike. You know they are not, mon cher.”
“You make mountains out of mole-hills, Bourbonais,” said the baronet; “however, I give in about this hop of Lady Anwyll’s. It wouldn’t quite do to bring Mlle. de la Bourbonais out in that fashion; she must be presented differently; those youngsters don’t consider these important points.” And he nodded at Clide, who had sat listening with none the less interest because he was silent. “But something must be done about it; the child can’t be thrown any longer on her doves for society; she must have a little amusement; it will tell on her health if she has not.”
It was not without intention that he pointed this arrow at Raymond’s shield. Sir Simon knew where his vulnerable spot lay, and that it was possible to make him do almost anything by suggesting that it might affect his child’s health. He had, so far, no grounds for alarm, or even anxiety about it; but the memory of her mother, to whom she bore in many ways so strong a resemblance, hung over him like the shadow of an unseen dread. It was this that conquered him in the riding scheme, reducing him into acquiescence with what he felt was not frankly justifiable. Sir Simon had indeed assured him that Lord Roxham had declined to take Rosebud; but he did not explain the circumstances. Clide had taken a fancy to the spirited bay mare, and on the very morning after the letter was despatched he announced his intention of riding her while he remained; whereupon the baronet, more keenly alive to the courtesies of a host than the obligations of a debtor, instead of telling him how matters stood, wrote a second letter on receipt of Lord Roxham’s accepting the offer, to say he could not let him have the horse for a week or so, and as Lord Roxham wanted her immediately as a present for his intended bride, he could not wait, and thus £1,000 slipped out of Sir Simon’s hands. Mr. Simpson, his incomparable man of business, had, however, stopped the gap by some other means, and the rascally architect was quieted for the present.
Raymond observed that Lord Roxham was not the only person in England who was open to the offer of a mare like Rosebud, though it might be difficult to meet with any one willing to give such an exorbitant price for her; one does not light on a wealthy, infatuated bridegroom every day. “Yes, that’s just it,” replied Sir Simon, grasping at any excuse for procrastination, “one must bide one’s time; it’s a mistake selling for the sake of selling; if you only have patience you’re sure to find your man by-and-by.” And Raymond, feeling that he had done all that he was called upon to do in the case, recurred to it no more, and was satisfied to let Franceline use the horse. There was no doubt the exercise was beneficial to her. Angélique said her appetite had nearly doubled, and the child slept like a dormouse since she had taken the riding; and as to the enjoyment it afforded her, there could be no mistake about that.
Sir Simon had promised to think over what next should be done to amuse his young favorite, and he was as good as his word. He gave the matter, in ministerial parlance, his most anxious consideration, and the result was that he made up his mind to give a ball at the Court, where Franceline should make her début with the éclat that became her real station and the hereditary friendship of the two families. He owed this to Raymond. It was only fitting that Franceline should come out under his roof, and be presented by him as the daughter of his oldest and most valued friend. He was almost as fond of the child, too, as if she were his own; and besides, it was becoming desirable at this moment that her position in society should be properly defined. He came down to breakfast big with this mighty resolution, and communicated it to Clide, who at once entered into the plan with great gusto, and had many valuable hints to give in the way of decorations; he had seen eastern pageants, and Italian and Spanish festas, and every description of barbaric gala in his travels, and his ideas were checked by none of the chains that are apt to hamper the flights of fancy in similar cases. Sir Simon had never hinted in his presence at such a thing as pecuniary embarrassments, and there was nothing in the style and expenditure at the Court to suggest their existence there. Sir Simon winced a little as Clide unwittingly brought his practical deception home to him by speaking as if money were as plentiful as blackberries with the owner of Dullerton; but he was determined to keep strictly within the bounds of reason, and not to be beguiled into the least unnecessary extravagance.
“Bourbonais would not like it, you see; and we must consider him first in the matter. It will be better on the whole to make it simply a sort of family thing, just a mustering of the natives to introduce Franceline. It would be in bad taste to make a Lord Mayor’s day of it, as if she were an heiress, and so on. We’ll just throw all the rooms open, and make it as jolly as we can in a quiet way. I’ll invite everybody—the more the merrier.”
So they spent a pleasant hour or so talking it all over; who were to be asked to fill their houses, and what men were to be had down from London as a reserve corps for the dancing. They had got the length of fixing the date of the ball, when Sir Simon remembered that there was the highly important question of Franceline’s dress to be considered.
“I must manage to get her up to London, and have her properly rigged out by some milliner there. I dare say your stepmother would put us up to that part of the business, eh?” And Clide committed his stepmother to this effect in a most reckless way. It had already been mooted with Raymond by Sir Simon that Franceline should go to London for a few days to see the sights, and he could fall back on this now for the present purpose. He was surprised to find that Raymond consented to the proposal, not merely without reluctance, but almost with alacrity.
“If you really think the change will do her good, I shall be only too grateful to you for taking her,” he said; “but does it strike you she wants it?”
Sir Simon felt a slight shock of compunction at this direct question, and at the glance of timid inquiry that accompanied it. He had never intended to distress or alarm his friend; he only made the remarks about Franceline’s health as a means of compassing his own ends towards amusing and pleasing her.
“Not a bit of it!” he answered contemptuously; “what could have put such a notion into my head? When I say a little change of one sort or another will do her good, I only judge from what I hear all the mothers say; when their daughters are come to Franceline’s age they’re constantly wanting change, and if they are too long without it they begin to droop, and to look pale, and so forth, and the doctor orders them off somewhere. I don’t imagine Franceline is an exception to the general rule; and as prevention is better than cure, it’s as well to give her the change before she feels the want of it. It’s a good plan always to take time by the forelock; you see yourself that the riding has done her good.”
“Yes, mon cher, yes,” said M. de la Bourbonais, tilting his spectacles, “it certainly has strengthened her. She has lost that pain in her side she used to suffer from, though I never knew it—I only heard of it when it was gone. Angélique should not have concealed it from me,” he added, a little nervously, and with another of those inquiring looks at Sir Simon.
“Pooh, pooh, nonsense! What would she have worried you about it for? All young people have pains in their sides,” returned the baronet oracularly. “She’s not done growing yet. Well, then, it’s settled that I carry her off on Monday. We will start early, so as to be there to receive Mrs. de Winton, who arrives at Grosvenor Square by the late afternoon train.”
“But there is one thing you must promise me,” said Raymond, going up to him and laying a hand impressively on his arm; “you will go to no unnecessary expense. You must give me your word for that.”
“There you are, as usual, harping on the old string,” laughed the baronet, with a touch of impatience. “What expense do you expect me to go to? The house is there, and the servants are there and whether I’m there or not the expenses go on. You don’t suppose Franceline will add very heavily to them, or Mrs. de Winton either?”
“But you talked about taking her to the operas, and so on, and I am sure she would not care for amusements of that sort; they would be too exciting for her. The change of scene and the sights of the city will be quite enough.”
“Make your mind easy about all that. Mrs. de Winton will take care the child doesn’t overdo herself. She’s a very sensible woman, and not at all fond of excitement.”
As the baronet pronounced Mrs. de Winton’s name, it occurred to him for the first time to wonder if it suggested nothing to Raymond, and whether Clide’s assiduity at The Lilies, and prolonged stay at Dullerton after his announcement that he was only to remain three days, awoke no suspicion in his mind. The thing would have been impossible in the case of any other father; but Raymond was so absorbed in his studies, in hunting out and analyzing the Causes of the Revolution, the proposed title of the work that was to be Franceline’s dot, and so altogether unlearned in the common machinery of life, that he was capable of seeing the house on fire, and not suspecting it concerned him until it singed his pen. He knew that Clide’s meeting with him had been a turning-point in the young man’s life; that it was Raymond’s advice and influence that determined him to return to Glanworth, and enter on his duties there with a vigorous desire to fulfil them at the sacrifice of his own plans and inclinations. He was already acting the part of mentor to Clide, who carried him his agent’s letters to read, and consulted him about the various philanthropic schemes he had in his head for the improvement of the people on his estate—notably the repression of drunkenness, which Raymond impressed on him must be the keystone of all possible improvement among the humbler classes in England. Was it possible that this demeanor and the son-like tone of respect which Clide had adopted toward him suggested no ulterior motive on Clide’s part, or awoke no parental fear or suspicion in Raymond? Sir Simon was turning this problem up and down in his mind, and debating how far it might be advisable to sound his friend, when Raymond said abruptly:
“Mr. de Winton is not going with you, of course?”
“No; he is to run down to his own place while we are away. I expect him back when we return.”
Their eyes met. Sir Simon smiled a quizzical, complaisant smile, but it died out quickly when he saw the alarmed expression in Raymond’s face.
“The idea never struck me before,” he exclaimed. “How should it? There was nothing to suggest it; the disparity is too great.”
“How so? They are pretty well matched in age—eighteen and eight-and-twenty—and as to Clide’s family, he cannot certainly count quarterings with the De Xaintriacs, or perhaps even the Bourbonais; but the De Wintons are…”
“Enfantillage,[127] enfantillage!” broke in Raymond with a gesture of wild impatience; “as if it signified in a foreigner living in exile whether his family be illustrious or not, when it is decayed and without the smallest actual weight or position! The disparity I allude to is in fortune. With such a barrier between my daughter and Mr. de Winton, how could any arrangement have entered into my imagination?”
“And you have actually lived all these years in England without getting to understand Englishmen and their ideas better than that!” said Sir Simon. “As if it mattered that”—snapping his fingers—“about any difference in fortune! Why half the wealthiest men I know have married girls without a penny. I did it myself,” added the baronet, with a change from gay to grave in his tone; “my wife had no fortune of her own, and if she had, I wouldn’t have taken a penny with her. No man of spirit, who has a fortune large enough to support his wife properly, likes to take money with her. Clide de Winton has £15,000 a year, and no end of money accumulating in the funds; he hasn’t spent two years’ income these last eight years, I’ll lay a wager; it would be a crying shame if he were to marry a wife with money; but he’s not the man to do it.”
M. de la Bourbonais had risen, and was walking up and down with his hands behind his back and his chin on his breast, his usual attitude when he was thinking hard. It was the first time that the idea of Franceline’s marriage had come home to him in any practical form—indeed, in any form but that of a remote and shadowy abstraction that he might or might not be some day called upon to discuss. He had not discussed his own marriage, and there was no precedent in his mind for discussing hers. As far as his perceptions carried him, those things were entirely arranged by outsiders; when everything was made ready in the business department, the parties concerned were brought together, and the wedding took place. But what business was there to arrange in Franceline’s case? If Mr. de Winton had been a high-born young gentleman without a penny to bless himself with, there would have been some sense in his being proposed as a candidate for Mlle. de la Bourbonais; but it was against all law and precedent that a millionnaire should dream of marrying a girl without a dot.
“This is very foolish” he said, taking another turn up the long room—they were in the library—“if it occurred to you before, you should have told me.”
“Told you what? That Mlle. de la Bourbonais was a deuced pretty girl, and Mr. de Winton a remarkably good-looking young man, neither blind nor devoid of understanding. I should think you might have found that out for yourself.”
“It is not a thing to joke about, Simon. I cannot understand your joking about it.” And Raymond halted before Sir Simon, who was lounging back in his chair, his coat thrown back, and his thumbs stuck into his waistcoat, while he surveyed his friend’s anxious face with a look of comical satisfaction. “Has Mr. de Winton spoken to you on the subject?”
“No.”
“Have you said anything to him about it?”
“Not I!”
“And yet you speak as if you had something to go upon.”
“And so I have. I have my eyes and my intelligence. I have been making use of both during the last ten days.”
“Then am I expected to speak to him?”
“You are expected to do nothing of the sort,” said the baronet, starting from his listless attitude, and speaking in a determined manner; “it does not concern you at this stage of affairs. If you interfere you may just put your foot in it. Leave the young people to manage their own affairs; they understand it better than we do.”
“Not concern me!” echoed Raymond, protruding his eyebrows an inch beyond his nose; “and if this idea, that seems so clear to you, should seem clear to others, and nothing comes of it, how then? My child is compromised, and I am not to interfere, and it does not concern me?”
“You talk like an infant, Bourbonais!” said Sir Simon, changing his bantering tone to one of resentment. “Am I likely to encourage De Winton if I did not know him; if I were not certain that he is incapable of behaving otherwise than as a gentleman!”
“But you confess that he has not said anything to you; suppose he should never have thought of it at all?”
“Suppose that he’s a blind idiot! Is it likely that a young fellow like Clide should be thrown into daily society with a girl like Franceline and not fall in love with her? Tell me that!”
But that was precisely what Raymond could not see. His mental vision was not given to roaming beyond the narrow horizon of his own experience: this furnished him with no precedent for the case in point—a young man falling in love and choosing a wife without being told to do so by his family.
“If it were suggested to him,” he replied, dubiously, “no doubt he might; but no one has put it into his head; even you have not given him a hint to that effect.”
Sir Simon threw back his head and roared.
“Really, Bourbonais, you’re too bad! ’Pon my honor you are. To imagine that a man of eight-and-twenty waits for a hint to fall in love when he has the temptation and the opportunity! But you know no more about it than the man in the moon. You live in the clouds.”
“I have lived in them perhaps too long,” replied Raymond, humbly and with a pang of self-reproach. “I should have been more watchful where my child was concerned; but I fancied that her poverty, which hitherto has cut her off from the enjoyments of her age, precluded all possibility of marriage—at least until the fruit of my toil should have given her a right to think of it. It seems I was mistaken.”
“And are you sorry for it?”
Raymond walked to the window, and looked out for a moment before he answered.
“Admitting that the immense disparity in fortune were not an insuperable barrier, there is another that nothing would overcome in Franceline’s eyes—he is not a Catholic.”
“Yes, he is. At least he ought to be; his mother was a Catholic, and he was brought up one.
“Strange that he should not have mentioned that to me!” said Raymond, musing; “but then how is it that we did not see him in church last Sunday?”
“Hem!… I’m not quite sure that he went; it was my fault. I kept them both up till the small hours of the morning talking over business, and so on,” said Sir Simon, throwing the mantle of friendship over Clide’s delinquency. “You know it does not do to draw the rein too tight with a young fellow. He’s been so much abroad, and unhappy, and that sort of thing, you see; but a wife would bring him all right again, and keep him up to the collar.”
“Franceline would attach paramount importance to that, Harness,” said the father, with a certain accent of humility; he did not dare insist on it in his own name.
“Of course she would, dear little puss, and quite right; but she won’t be too hard on him for all that.”
It required all Sir Simon’s powers of persuasion to make Raymond promise that he would leave things alone, and not speak either to Clide or Franceline on the subject of this conversation. He gave the promise, however, feeling in some intangible way that the possibility of Franceline’s marriage under such unprecedented, such unnatural circumstances, in fact, was a phenomenon too far beyond his ken for him to meddle with in safety. It was decided that she should go to London on the day appointed, as if nothing had transpired between the friends since the proposed visit had been agreed to.
A ball anywhere at Dullerton was always a momentous occasion, stirring the stagnant waters with pleasurable agitation; but a ball at the Court was an event of such magnitude that it set the neighborhood in movement like a powerful electric shock. It was, compared to ordinary entertainments of the kind, what a Royal coronation is to a Lord Mayor’s show. Wonderful reports were afloat as to the magnificence of the preparations that were going on. Nobody had been allowed to see them; but conjecture was busy, and enough transpired to excite expectation to the highest pitch. It was known that men had been brought down from London with vans full of all sorts of appliances for transforming the solemn Gothic mansion into a fairy palace. How the transformation was to be effected no one had the vaguest idea, and this made expectation all the more thrilling.
It was indeed but too true that Sir Simon had abandoned his first wise intention of making it no more than a gay mustering of the clans. Fate so ordained that just at this time he got news of the rapidly declining health of his interesting relative, Lady Rebecca Harness. “She cannot possibly hold out over the autumn; her physician allowed as much to transpire to a professional friend of mine, so we must be prepared for the worst,” wrote Mr. Simpson; “it is certainly providential that the £50,000 and the reversion of her ladyship’s jointure should fall in at this moment.” And Sir Simon felt that he could not better express his grateful sense of the providential coincidence, and at the same time cheer himself up under the impending bereavement, than by giving for once full play to the oriental element of hospitality and magnificence, so long pent up in him by a sordid bondage to economy.
“Clide, that idea of yours about turning the Medusa gallery into a moonlight walk, with palms and ferns, and so on, was really too good to be lost. I think we must have the Covent Garden people down to do it. And then the Diana gallery would make a capital pendant in the Chinese style. It’s really a pity to do the thing by halves; I owe it to Bourbonais to do it handsomely on an occasion like this; and, hang it! a couple of hundreds more or less won’t break a man, eh?”
And Clide being decidedly of opinion that it would not, the Covent Garden people were had down, and preparations went on in right royal style.
M. de la Bourbonais had been informed that a dance was in view for the purpose of introducing Franceline, and accepted the intelligence as a part of the mysterious web that was being woven round him by unseen hands. Perhaps he vaguely connected the event with something like a soirée de contrat, or a forerunner of it, and this would account for his passive acquiescence, and the tender, preoccupied air that marked his manner during the foregoing week. Sir Simon, like a wily diplomatist as he was, managed to keep Clide from going to The Lilies for nearly the entire week, by throwing the whole burden of overseer on him, filling his hands so full of commissions for London, and shifting the responsibility of everything so completely on his shoulders that he had scarcely time to eat or sleep, being either on the railroad or in a state of workmanlike déshabillé that made it impossible for him to show himself beyond the precincts of the scene of action until dinner-hour, when Sir Simon was always abnormally disinclined for a walk, and insisted on being read to or otherwise entertained by his young friend till bed-time.
Franceline, meanwhile, had her own preoccupations. Not about her dress—that had been settled to her utmost satisfaction, being aided by the combined action of Mrs. de Winton and that lady’s French milliner. But there was another important matter weighing heavily upon her mind. It was just three days before the great day. Mr. de Winton had rushed down with the Edinburgh Review for M. de la Bourbonais, apologizing profusely to Franceline, who was sitting in the summer-house, for presenting himself in such a state of undress, and saying something to the effect that it was the servants’ dinner-hour, and they were so much engaged, etc. But he could not keep the count waiting for the book, which ought to have been sent several days ago. No, he would not disturb the count at that hour, if Mlle. Franceline would be kind enough to take the book and explain about the delay. Franceline promised to do so; which was rash, considering that she did not understand a word about it, or that there was any delay whatever.
“Oh! I may as well profit by the opportunity to ask if you are engaged for the first waltz on Thursday?” said Mr. de Winton, turning back after he had gone a few steps, as if struck by a happy thought.
No, Franceline was not engaged.
“Then may I claim the privilege of the first-comer, and ask you for it?”
“Yes, thank you. I shall be very happy.”
And she began immediately to be very miserable, remembering that she did not know how to waltz, never having had a dancing lesson in her life. She shut up her book, and set out toward the vicarage. She never felt quite at home with the Langrove girls; but they were the essence of good nature, and perhaps they could help her out of this difficulty. She was ashamed to say at once what had brought her, and went on listening to them chattering about their dresses, which were being manufactured out of every shade of tarlatan in the rainbow. Suddenly Godiva exclaimed: “I wonder if you’ll have any partners, Franceline? Do you think you will? You know you don’t know anybody? You’ve never even spoken to Mr. Charlton.” And Franceline, crushed under a sense of this and another inferiority, blushed, and said “No.”
“Perhaps Mr. de Winton will ask you? Oh, I should think he’s sure to. Hasn’t he asked you already?” And Franceline, painfully conscious of ten eyes staring at her, blushed deep crimson this time, and answered “Yes”; and then, suddenly recollecting that she had something important to do, she said good-by and hurried away. She had not closed the gate behind her when the five Misses Langrove who were “out” had rushed up to the nursery and informed the five who were not “out” that Franceline de la Bourbonais was engaged to that handsome, rich young Mr. de Winton, who had £60,000 a year and the grandest place in Wales. Only fancy!
“How stupid I was to get red like that, instead of telling the truth and asking Isabella to teach me how to do it!” was Franceline’s vexed exclamation to herself, as she entered the garden, and, swinging her sunshade, looked up at her doves perched on a branch just behind the chimney that was curling its blue rings up against the deeper purple of the copper-beech.
“What is my child meditating on so solemnly?” said M. de la Bourbonais, meeting her at the door; and taking her face between his hands, he looked into the dark, deep eyes that had never had a secret from him. Had they now? He had watched her walking up the garden, and noticed that fold in the smooth, white brow; he was always watching her of late, though Franceline did not perceive it.
“I am worried, petit père. I wish I were not going to this ball!” And she leaned her cheek against his with a sigh.
Raymond started as if he had been stabbed.
“My child! my cherished one! what is it? What has happened?”
“O petit père! it’s nothing,” she cried eagerly, smitten with remorse by his look of anguish. “It’s not worth being unhappy about; only I never thought of it before, and now I’m afraid it can’t be helped. They will ask me to dance, and I don’t know how.”
“Mon Dieu! it is true. We should have thought of that. It was very heedless of us all. But there must be a master here who could give thee some lessons, my child. We will speak to Miss Merrywig. Stay, where’s my hat? There is no time to be lost.”
But Franceline checked him. “Petit père, I should be ashamed to get a master now; every one would know about it and laugh at me; all the young girls would make such fun of me.”
“What dances dost thou want to dance?” inquired her father, knitting his brows, as if searching some forgotten clew in the background of memory; “I dare say I could recall the minuet de la cour a little, if that would help thee.”
“I never hear them speak of it. I don’t think they dance that now; only quadrilles and waltzes,” said Franceline.
“Ah! quadrilles were after my day; but the valse à trois temps I knew once upon a time. Come and let us see if I cannot remember it.”
They went into the dining-room, pushed the table and chairs into a corner, and M. de la Bourbonais, fixing his spectacles as a preliminary step, put himself into position; his right foot a little in advance, his eye-brows very much protruded, and his head bent forward; he made the first steps with hesitation, then more boldly, assisting his memory by humming the tune of an old waltz.
Angélique, who was spinning in the room overhead, came down to see what the table and chairs were making all this clatter about, and burst in on a singular spectacle: her master pirouetting to the tune of un, deux, trois! round the eight-feet square apartment, while Franceline, squeezed against the wall, held up her skirt so as to afford a full view of her shabby little boots, and tried to execute the same evolutions in a space of one foot square.
“Papa is teaching me to waltz,” explained the pupil, not looking up, but keeping her eyes stuck on the professor’s feet lest she should miss the thread of their discourse.
“Well, to be sure! To think of Monsieur le Comte’s remembering his steps at this time of day! What a wonderful memory monsieur has!” was Angélique’s admiring comment.
“Now, then, shall we try it together?” said M. de la Bourbonais, and placing his arm round Franceline, the two glided round the room, the professor whistling his accompaniment with as much emphasis as possible, while the pupil counted one, two, three, and Angélique kept time by clapping her hands.
“Oh, petit père, I shall do it beautifully!” cried Franceline, suspending the performance to give him an energetic kiss that nearly sent his spectacles flying across the room. “Now if you only could teach me the quadrille!”
But this recent substitute for the art of dancing was beyond the scope of Raymond’s abilities; quadrilles, as he said, had come into fashion long after his time. It was a grand thing, however, to have accomplished so much, and Franceline felt a sense of triumphant security in her newly-acquired possession that cleared away all her tremors. She spent the rest of the afternoon practising the valse à trois temps, so as to be quite perfect in it. Sir Simon found her thus profitably employed when he came down just before his dinner with a newspaper.
“What were we all thinking about not to have remembered that?” was his horrified exclamation. “Why, of course you must know the quadrille; you will have to open the ball, child. You must come up this evening to the Court, and we’ll have a private little dancing lesson, all of us, and put you through the figures.”
And so they did; and the result was so successful that, when the great day came, Franceline felt quite sure of being able to behave like everybody else. Her dress came down with Mrs. de Winton on the eve of the ball, and she was, in accordance with that lady’s desire, to dress at the Court under her supervision.
It was a new era in Franceline’s life, finding herself arrayed in a fairy robe of snow-white tulle, with wild roses creeping up one side of it, and a cluster of wild roses in her hair. Angélique stood by, surveying the process of transformation with arms a-kimbo, too much impressed by the splendors of the whole thing to vindicate her rights as bonne, and quite satisfied to see her natural functions usurped by nimble Croft, Mrs. de Winton’s maid. But when that experienced person whipped up the gossamer garment and shook it like an apple-tree, and tossed it with a sweep over Franceline’s head, it fairly took away her breath, for the pink petals stuck on in spite of the shock, and the soft flounces foamed all round just in the right place, rippling down from the neck and shoulders, and flowing out behind like a sea-wave. Then Croft crowned it all by planting the pink cluster in the hair just as if it grew there. Mrs. de Winton came in at this crisis, however, and suggested that they would be more becoming a little more to the front.
“Well, ma’am, if you’ll take the responsibility,” demurred the abigail with pinched lips, and stepping aside as if to get clear of all participation in the rash act herself, “in course you can; but my maxiom always was and is, as modesty is the most becoming ornament of youth; if you put them roses forwarder, anybody’ll see as how it was meant to be a set-off to the complexion—as you might say, putting a garding rose alongside of a wild one, to see which was the best pink.”
“Oh! indeed, it’s very nicely done; it could not possibly be better,” said Franceline earnestly. She was rather in awe of the fine lady’s maid, and looked up appealingly to Mrs. de Winton not to gainsay her; but that serene lady paid no more heed to the abigail’s protest than she might have done to the snarling of her pet pug. With deft and daring fingers she plucked out the flowers, pushed the rich, bright coils to one side so as to make room for them, and then planted them according to her fancy. If the change were done with a view to the effect foretold by Mrs. Croft, there was no denying it to be a complete success. Angélique, by way of doing something, took up a candle and held it at arm’s length over Franceline’s head, making short chuckling noises to herself which the initiated knew to be expressive of the deepest satisfaction.
“Now, my dear, I think you will do,” said Mrs. de Winton, looking up and down the young girl with a smile of placid assent, while she washed her long, tapering hands with the old Lady-Macbeth movement; “let us go down.”
Sir Simon and the Admiral and M. de la Bourbonais were assembled in the blue drawing-room, where the guests were to be received, when the two ladies entered. Mrs. de Winton, in the mellow splendor of purple velvet, old point, and diamonds, looked like the protecting divinity of the cloud-clad nymph tripping shyly after her. An involuntary murmur of admiration burst from the Admiral and Sir Simon, while M. de la Bourbonais, all smiles and joy, came forward to embrace Franceline.
“O my dear child!…”
“Count, take care of her roses!” cried Mrs. de Winton, ruffled into motherly alarm as she saw Franceline, utterly oblivious of her headgear, nestling into her father’s neck.
Raymond started, and looked with deep concern to see if he had done any mischief. Happily not.
“Come here and let me look at you!” said Sir Simon, holding her at arm’s length out before him. “They’ve not made quite a fright of you, I see—eh, admiral?”
“Dear Sir Simon, it’s all a great deal too pretty. It’s like being in a story-book, my lovely dress and everything?” said Franceline, standing on tip-toe to be kissed.
Mr. de Winton came in at this juncture.
“I say, Clide, it’s rather hard on us to have to stand by and not follow suit,” grumbled the admiral.
Franceline crimsoned up; the bare suggestion of such a possibility as the words implied made her heart leap up with a wild throb. She did not mean to look at Clide, but somehow, involuntarily, as if moved by some mesmeric force, their eyes met. It was only for a moment, but that rapid, mutual glance sent the life-current coursing through her young veins with strange thrills of joy. Clide had turned quickly to point out something in the decorations to his uncle, and Franceline slipped her arm into her father’s, and began to admire the beauty of the long vista of parlors leading on to the ball-room, where the orchestra was already inviting them to the dance with abrupt flashes of music, one instrument answering another in sudden preludes, or chords of sweetness “long drawn out.”
“You have not seen the galleries yet,” said Sir Simon; “come and look at them before the crowd arrives.”
They followed him into the Medusa gallery, and the transition from the brilliant glare of wax-lights to the subdued twilight of the blue dome, where mimic stars were twinkling round a silver crescent, was so solemn and unexpected that Raymond and Franceline stood on the threshold with a kind of awe, as if they had come upon sacred precincts. Tall ferns and palms nodded gently in the blue moonlight, swayed by some invisible agent. The change from this to the gaudy brilliancy of the Diana gallery was in its way as striking; myriads of Chinese lanterns were swinging from the ceiling; some peeped through flowers and plants, and some were held by Chinese mandarins with pig-tails and embroidered bed-gowns.
“Are they real Chinamen?” enquired Franceline in a whisper, as she passed close by one of them and met his eyes fixed on her with the appreciating glance of an outer barbarian.
“Real! To be sure they are. I imported a small cargo of them from Hong Kong, pig-tails and all, for the occasion,” replied Sir Simon.
But a twinkle in his eye, and a broad grin on the face of the genuine John Chinaman, belied this audacious assertion. Franceline laughed merrily.
“How clever of you to have invented it, and how exactly like real Chinamen they are!” she cried, intending to be complimentary to all parties; which the mandarin under consideration acknowledged by a slow bend of his skull-capped head and a movement of the left hand towards the tip of his nose, supposed to represent a native salutation.
“Bestow your commendation where it is due,” said Sir Simon; “it’s all that young gentleman’s doing,” pointing with a jerk of his head towards Clide, who had sauntered in after them. “But here comes somebody; we must be under arms to receive them.”
The baying of the bloodhounds chained in the outer court announced the arrival of a carriage; they reached the reception-room in time to hear it wheeling up the terrace.
And now the master of Dullerton Court was in his element. The tide of guests poured in quickly, and were greeted with that royal courtesy that was his especial attribute. No matter what the worries and cares of life might be elsewhere, they vanished as if by enchantment in the sunshine of Sir Simon’s hospitality. He forgot nobody; the absent ones had their tribute of regret, and he remembered the precise cause of the absence: the daughter who had an inopportune toothache, the son forced to remain in town on business, and the father pinned to his bed by the gout; Sir Simon was so sorry for each individual absentee that while he was expressing it you would have imagined this feeling must have damped his joy for the evening; but the cloud passed off when he shook hands with the next arrival, and he was radiantly happy in spite of sympathetic gout and toothache.
Mrs. de Winton seconded her host well in doing the honors. If she was a trifle stiff, it was such a graceful, well-bred stiffness that you could not quarrel with it, and she neglected no one.
“There are Mr. Langrove and the girls!” exclaimed Franceline, in high excitement, as if that inevitable spectacle were an extraordinary surprise.
“Oh! how gorgeous you are, Franceline,” was Godiva’s awe-stricken sotto voce, as if she feared that loud speech might blow away the bubble.
“And what a delicious fan! Do let me look at it!” panted Arabella in the same subdued tone.
“Oh! but look at her shoes,” cried Georgiana, clasping her hands and looking down, amazed, at the white satin toe, with its dainty pink rosette, that protruded from under the skirt.
“I’m so glad you like it all,” said Franceline, delighted at the naïve and good-natured expressions of admiration. They were all as artless as birds, the Langrove girls, and had not a grain of envy in their composition.
“Oh! there’s Mr. Charlton,” whispered Matilda, nudging Alice to look as the observed-of-all-observers in Dullerton appeared in the doorway.
The room was now full to overflowing, and the crowd, swayed by one of those spontaneous movements that govern crowds, suddenly poured out of the blue drawing-room into the adjoining ones, leaving the former comparatively empty. Franceline was following the stream when Sir Simon called out to her:
“Don’t run away; come here to me. I want to introduce you to my friend Lady Anwyll. Mlle. de la Bourbonais—I was going to say, my daughter, but unfortunately she is only the daughter of my oldest friend and second self, the Comte de la Bourbonais; you have met him, I believe?”
Lady Anwyll had had that distinction, and was charmed now to make his daughter’s acquaintance. She had none of her own to dispose of, which the wily Sir Simon perhaps remembered when he singled her out for this introduction.
“You’ll see that she has a few partners. I dare say they won’t be very reluctant to do their duty with a little pressing.”
“It’s the only duty young men seem equal to nowadays,” said the plump old lady, nodding in the direction of a group of the degenerate race; and she drew Franceline’s hand through her arm, and bore her off like a conquest.
“Who’s that girl? She’s awfully pretty! What color are her eyes—black, blue, or brown? I’ve not seen such a pair of eyes this season, by Jove!” drawled a blasé young gentleman from the metropolis.
“You’re a luckier man than your betters if you have ever seen a pair like them,” retorted Mr. Charlton, superciliously; “that’s the belle of the evening, Mlle. de la Bourbonais.”
“You’ll be a good fellow, and introduce me—eh, Charlton?” said his friend.
But Mr. Charlton turned on his heel without committing himself further than by a dubious “I’ll see about it.” His position as native gave him the whip-hand over all interlopers, and he meant to let them know it.
And now the orchestra has burst out in full storm, and engaged couples are hunting for each other amidst the vortex of tarlatan and dress-coats. Clide has found his partner and led her to the top of the room, where Sir Simon and Lady Anwyll are waiting for their vis-à-vis. A little lower down, Miss Merrywig is standing up with Mr. Charlton.
“How very absurd of him, my dear,” the old lady is protesting to Arabella Langrove, who made their dos-à-dos; “but he will have me dance the first quadrille with him. Was there ever anything so absurd!”
Arabella was too polite to contradict her; and Mr. Charlton bent down to assure Miss Merrywig there was no one in the room he could have half as much pleasure in opening the evening’s campaign with; a speech which was overheard by several neighboring young ladies, who commented on it in their own way, while Franceline, who beheld with surprise the ill-assorted couple stand up together, thought it showed very nice feeling on the part of Mr. Charlton to have selected the dear old lady for such a compliment, and that she looked very pretty in her lavender watered silk and full blonde cap with streamers flying. But it was quite clear that Miss Bulpit thought differently. That estimable and zealous Christian had with much difficulty been persuaded by Sir Simon to condescend so far to sanction the vanities of the unconverted as to be present at the ball, and she had discarded her funereal trappings of black bombazine for the mitigated woe of black satin; but the cockade of limp black feathers that sprouted from some hidden recess where her back hair was supposed to be protested sorrowfully against the glossy levity of her dress, and bobbed with a penitential expression that was really affecting. Mr. Sparks was hawking her about like a raven in a carnival. He entered into her feelings; it was chiefly the desire to support her by his countenance and sympathy that had brought him to this scene of ungodly dissipation.
Franceline was terribly nervous in the first figure, and Clide felt it incumbent on him to give her his utmost help in the way of prompting beforehand, and commendation when the feat was over. They got on swimmingly until the third figure, when she became hopelessly entangled in the ladies’-chain, giving her hand to Lady Anwyll instead of Sir Simon, and then rushing back to Clide, while Sir Simon rushed after her and made everything inextricable.
“Really, governor, you’re too bad!” protested Mr. de Winton; “why don’t you mind what you’re about? You’re putting my partner out disgracefully!”
Sir Simon bore the broadside with heroic magnanimity, apologized to everybody all round, except Clide, who ought to have called him to order in time, and not let him go bungling on, confusing everybody. By the time he had done scolding and they had all got into position again, the figure was over. The rest of the quadrille was got through without any mishaps to speak of, and when Clide carried his partner off for a promenade in the moonlit gallery, assuring her that she had done it all beautifully, Franceline felt that the praise, for being a trifle strained, was none the less due. Other couples followed them in amongst the ferns and palms, and Franceline was soon besieged by entreating candidates for the next dances. Mr. Charlton came up with the graceful self-possession that belongs to six thousand pounds a year and a decidedly handsome and rather effeminate face, and requested the favor of a quadrille. It was promised, and he stood by her side and in that earnest tone that was acknowledged to be so captivating by all the young ladies of Dullerton asked Mlle. de la Bourbonais if this was her first ball.
“Ah! I thought so. One can always tell by the freshness with which people enjoy it. For my own part, I confess I envy every one their first experience of this kind; it so soon wears off—the pleasure, I mean—and one feels the insipidity of it. Perhaps you already anticipate that?” There was a depth of expression in her face that suggested this remark. Mr. Charlton considered himself a reader of character—a physiognomist, in fact.
“Oh! no,” exclaimed Franceline, with artless vehemence; “I don’t think I should ever get tired of it; it’s far more enjoyable than I imagined!”
“Ah, indeed! Well, just so; it’s as people feel; for my part I think it’s a mistake—I mean getting blasé of things;” and he ran a turquoise and diamond finger through his curly straw-colored hair.
“I hate people who are blasé,” was the unconventional rejoinder; “they are always so tiresome and woe-begone. Papa always says he feels under a personal obligation to people for being happy; they do him good—like dear little Miss Merrywig, for instance. I’m sure she’s not blasé of anything; how she did enjoy herself in the quadrille! And it was so pretty to see her dancing her demure little old-fashioned steps.”
“She’s a very old friend of yours, is she not, Charlton?” said Clide.
“Oh! yes; since before I was born. She’s a dear old girl, if she would only not bother one to guess what she gave for her buttons,” replied Mr. Charlton. “But just see here! Is our Christian friend trying to deal with Roxham?”
Miss Bulpit was coming across the conservatory out of the Diana gallery, leaning on Lord Roxham, with whom she was conversing in an earnest manner.
“Oh! here you are, Roxham. I’ve been hunting for you this quarter of an hour,” called out Sir Simon, appearing from behind a mandarin who was holding a tray full of tea-cups to the company. “Franceline, my friend Lord Roxham has threatened to shoot me if I don’t get him a dance from you; so in self-defence I had to make over my right to the first waltz. I couldn’t do more, or less. What do you say, Miss Bulpit?”
Miss Bulpit considered Sir Simon was behaving very handsomely.
“It’s easy to be generous at other people’s expense,” observed Mr. de Winton, tightening his grasp on the light arm that was obediently slipping from him; “it so happens that Mlle. de le Bourbonais has promised the first waltz to me.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, my dear fellow, but you might have had a little thought for other people’s rights. You won’t deny that I deserve an early favor?” said the baronet, with playful peremptoriness.
“Dear Sir Simon, I never thought of your asking me,” said Franceline penitently.
“Oh! that’s it,” said the baronet, shaking his head; “that’s sure to be the way of it; we poor old fogies get shoved out of the way by the youngsters. Well, you see I’m letting you off easier than you deserve. Roxham, we’ll change partners, if Miss Bulpit does not object to taking an old man instead of a young one.”
Franceline was again going to draw her arm away, but again the tightening grasp prevented her. She looked up at Clide; but he was looking away from her, his mouth set in a rigid expression, and an angry fold divided the straight brows that lay like bars across his forehead.
“Mlle. de la Bourbonais promised me this dance,” he said, coldly, to Lord Roxham.
“But I overrule the promise; she had no business to give it without consulting me, naughty, unfeeling little person! Come, De Winton, make way for my deputy!” And with a nod and a laugh that were clearly not to be trifled with, he beckoned Clide to follow him.
Franceline looked up with the beseeching glance of a frightened fawn as Clide released her arm, and with a low bow walked away. She was ready to cry; but there was nothing for it but to accept Lord Roxham’s proffered arm, and go into the ball-room where in a moment she was caught up and was whirling mechanically along with the waltzers. She was too preoccupied to be nervous about the performance that she had looked forward to with so much trepidation, and so she acquitted herself admirably. Her partner stopped after the first round to let her take breath.
“Yes, thank you, I am a little giddy; I am not accustomed to dancing.”
So they stood under the colonnade. Lord Roxham would have been a pleasant partner if Franceline had been in a mood to enjoy his lively talk on all sorts of subjects. He saw there were likely to be breakers ahead between Clide and some one about this dance; but he had had nothing to say to that. He felt rather aggrieved than otherwise, being forced, as it were, on a girl against her will, or at any rate without her being consulted. And it was hard on De Winton, whether he particularly held to his pretty partner or not. What the dickens did Harness mean by meddling in it at all? He was not given to putting spokes in other people’s wheels. Lord Roxham was very intelligent, but though furnished with an average share of masculine conceit, it never occurred to him to think that the falling through of his marriage lately, and the fact of his being the eldest son of a peer with a fine estate—a good deal encumbered, but what of that?—might afford any clue to Sir Simon’s odd behavior.
“No, I did not mean in the political issue of the contest; ladies are not expected to take much interest in that part of the business,” he was saying to his partner; “but they are apt to get up very warm partisanship for the candidates, irrespective of politics.”
“Who are the candidates?” inquired Franceline.
Lord Roxham laughed.
“Poor wretches! They are to be pitied. Sir Ponsonby Anwyll on the Conservative side and Mr. Charlton for the Liberals.”
“Mr. Charlton! He is then clever? Can he make speeches?”
Lord Roxham laughed again, and hesitated a little before he replied: “It’s rather a case, I fancy, of the man who could not say whether he could play the fiddle, because he had never tried. We none of us know what we can do till we try. Charlton does not strike you as having the making of an orator in him, I see.”
“Oh! I don’t know. I spoke to him to-night for the first time; he did not give me the idea of a person who could make speeches and laws; one must be very clever to get into Parliament, must he not?”
“If elections were conducted on the competitive examination system, one might assume that; but I’m afraid we successful candidates can hardly take our success as the test of merit,” said her companion. “I see you have rather a high standard about electioneering.”
Franceline had no standard at all, and was full of curiosity to hear about the mysteries of canvassing and constituents, and the poll, from some one who had gone through the various stages of the battle, from being pelted with rotten eggs on the hustings to the solemn taking possession of a legislator’s seat in the Imperial Parliament. A legislator must be a kind of hero. She was glad to have met one. Lord Roxham, who liked to hear himself talk, proceeded to enlighten her to the best of his ability; he had no end of droll electioneering stories to tell, and scandalous tales of corruption through the medium of gin-shops, etc.; he opened her eyes in horror by his account of the rotten-borough system, and the rottenness of the law-making machine in general, touching the heroes of the Liberal party with a light dash of satire and caricature that brought the dimples out in full force in Franceline’s cheeks, and made her laugh merrily; in short, he was so lively and entertaining that she was quite sorry when he held out his arm for them to start off again in the dance. As they stepped from under the colonnade, she saw Clide leaning against a pillar at the other side, with his eyes fixed on her.
“Oh! stop, please,” pleaded Franceline, after one turn over the spacious floor, and they rested for a moment; just as they did so, a couple flew past—Mr. de Winton and a very beautiful girl, as tall as Franceline, but in no other way resembling her; her hair was black as ebony, with black eyes and a clear olive complexion.
“Who is that lady?”
“Lady Emily Fitznorman, a cousin of mine.”
“How beautiful she is! I never saw any one so handsome!”
“Did you not?” with an incredulous smile, then looking quickly away. “She is a very striking person; she is the belle of our county. You look warm; shall we take a turn in the galleries?”
Franceline assented. Passing through the conservatory, they came upon two persons seated in a recess, partly screened by a large fan-leaved plant. It was Clide and Lady Emily; she was talking with great animation, gesticulating with her fan, while he sat in an attitude of deep attention, his elbows resting on his knees, and his head bent forward. Franceline felt a sudden shock at her left side, as if her heart had stopped, while a spasm of pain shot through her, making every fibre tingle. What was this olive-skinned beauty saying to Clide that he was listening to with such rapt attention? He did not even look up, though he must have seen who was passing. Poor Franceline! what tremor is this that shakes her from head to foot, convulsing her whole being with one fierce throb of angry emotion! Poor human heart! the demon of jealousy had but to blow one breath upon it, and she whose life had hitherto been a sort of inverse metempsychosis of a lily and a dove, was transformed into a woman fired with passionate vindictiveness, longing to snatch at another human heart and crush it. But the woman’s pride, that woke up with the pain, came instinctively to her assistance. She began talking rapidly to Lord Roxham, sinking her voice to the sotto voce of confidence and intimacy, so that he had to lower his head slightly to catch what she was saying; thus they swept by the two in the recess, without glancing towards them.
Clide meantime had seen it all. He had been straining every nerve to catch what Franceline was saying, and was voting his friend Roxham a confounded puppy, whose conceited head he would have much pleasure in punching on the first opportunity. He could not punch Sir Simon’s, though he deserved it more than Roxham.
“May I ask you for an explanation of your behavior to me just now, Sir Simon?” he had said to his host as soon as Miss Bulpit had set him free; “what did you mean by interfering with me in that manner?”
“Did I interfere with you?” was the supercilious retort, with a bland smile. “I’m very sorry to hear it; but I think I had a right to the second dance from a young lady whom I consider my adopted daughter.”
“If it had been for yourself I should have yielded without a word; but it was for Roxham you shoved me aside.”
“Well, suppose I choose to elect a deputy to do my duty? I had a right to choose Roxham.”
“I fancied I might have had a prior claim.”
“Indeed! Then you should have told me so. How was I to know it?—Well, vicar, I see your young ladies are in great request; how does Miss Godiva happen to be in your company?”
“What can he be driving at?” muttered Clide, as his host turned away to get a partner for Godiva Langrove; “has he been fooling me all this time—is he playing me off against Roxham? And is she—” He walked into the ballroom, and there saw, as we know, Lord Roxham and Franceline very happy in each other’s society.
He went straight to Lady Emily Fitznorman, and asked her for the waltz that was going on. She was fiancée to a friend of his, he knew; so he was safe so far, and she had plenty to say for herself, and he must talk to some one. He was not a man to show the white feather, whatever he might feel. He kept steadily aloof from Franceline after this, and Lord Roxham, taking for granted that he had been mistaken in his first impressions, secured her for three more dances, which was all he dared do in the face of Dullerton.
Franceline was grateful to him. She felt suddenly forsaken in the midst of the gay crowd, as if some protecting presence had been withdrawn. Her father was playing piquet in some distant region where there were card-tables. But even if he had been within reach, there was something stirring in her newly-awakened consciousness that would have prevented her seeking him. Clide should not see that he had grieved her. She could enjoy herself and be merry without him, and she would let him see it!
“Has the honor of taking you in to supper been already secured, mademoiselle?” said Mr. Charlton, making sure at this early stage that it had not, and coming up to claim it with the air of elaborate grace that springs from the habit of easy conquest.
“Yes, it has,” replied Lord Roxham, quickly taking the answer out of Franceline’s mouth. “I was before you in the field, Charlton, I am happy to say.”
“How could you tell such a story?” whispered Franceline, with an attempt to look shocked when Mr. Charlton had gone away.
“I told you everything was considered fair in electioneering,” replied the member of Parliament.
“Then electioneering must be very bad for everybody who has to do with it, if it teaches them to tell stories and call it fair.”
But she promised, nevertheless, to act as accomplice in this particular case of badness, and to let him take her in to supper. He came to claim his privilege in due time, and they went in together. But the tables were already so crowded that they could not find two contiguous seats. Some one beckoned to Lord Roxham that there was a vacant chair higher up, on a line with where they stood. He elbowed his way through the crowd, and seized the chair, and placed Franceline in it. She was sitting down before she noticed that her next neighbor was Clide de Winton. He was busily attending to the wants of Lady Emily, but turned round quickly on feeling the chair taken, and moved his own an inch or so to make more space. At the same moment he looked up to see who Franceline’s attendant was. “Can’t you find a seat, Roxham? I’ll make way for you presently. We have nearly done.” There was not a trace of vexation in his manner, or in his face.
“No hurry! I can bear up for ten minutes more,” replied his friend, good-humoredly; “but help me to attend to Mlle. de la Bourbonais. What will you begin with?” bending over her chair.
Franceline did not care. Anything that was at hand.
“Then let me recommend some of this jelly; it is pronounced excellent by my partner,” said Clide, politely, and scanning the well-garnished table to see what else he could suggest.
“Thank you. I will take some of these chocolate bonbons.”
“Nothing more substantial?”
“Bonbons are always nourishment enough for me. I think I could live on them without anything stronger; I have quite a passion for them—my French nature coming out, you see.”
She spoke very gayly. He helped her without looking at her. She made a feint of nibbling the pralines, but she could not swallow; her heart was beating so hard and loud she fancied Clide must hear it.
“Roxham, suppose you made yourself useful and get a glass of champagne for these ladies,” said Clide. “Waylay that fellow with the bottle there.”
Lord Roxham charged valiantly through the crowd, snatched the bottle from the astonished flunky, and bore it away in triumph over the heads of the multitude.
“Well done! That’s what I call a brilliant manœuvre,” said Clide, laughing. “No, you must help them yourself; you deserve that reward after such a feat of arms, and Mlle. de la Bourbonais, who has a great admiration for heroes, will drink to your health I daresay.”
“I’ve been trying to excite her admiration by the recital of my heroic exploits at the last elections; but I’m afraid I rather scandalized her instead,” said the young man, as he poured the sparkling wine into her glass.
“Served you right,” said Lady Emily, with cousinly impertinence; “when people fish for compliments they generally catch more snakes than eels.”
“Roxham, will you reach me those sandwiches?” cried a gentleman struggling with a lady on his arm beyond arm’s length of the table. Lord Roxham immediately went to his assistance, and some one else instantly pressed into his place behind Franceline.
“We had better go now, if you have quite finished,” said Clide to Lady Emily.
Franceline made a movement to rise, but sat down again; Clide’s chair was on her dress.
“Oh! I beg your pardon. Have I done any mischief?” he exclaimed, starting up and lifting his chair; the foot had caught in the tulle and made a slight rent.
“Oh! I am so sorry. I beg your pardon a thousand times!” he said with great warmth and looking deeply distressed.
“It’s of no consequence; it will never be noticed,” she answered, gently.
“I am so sorry!” Clide repeated. Their eyes met at last; he was disarmed in an instant.
“Will you dance with me now?” he said almost in a whisper.
“Yes.”
They were soon in the ball-room again.
“Why did you turn me off in that way? Was it that you preferred dancing with Roxham?”
“O Clide!” The words escaped her like the cry of a wounded bird, and, with as little sanction of her free will, the tears rose.
He made no answer—no audible one at least; but there is a language in a look sometimes that is more eloquent than speech. Franceline and Clide dwelt for a moment in that silent glance, and felt that it was drawing their hearts together as flame draws flame.
She never knew how long the dance lasted; she only knew that she was being borne along, treading on air, it seemed to her, and encompassed by sweet sounds of music as in a dream. But the dream was over, and she was being steadied on her feet by the strong protecting arm, and Clide was looking down upon her from his six feet of height, the frown that had made the dark bars over his eyes look so formidable a little while ago quite vanished.
“Is Sir Simon angry with us?” she asked, looking up into his face.
“Not he! Why should he be angry with us? And if he were, what does it matter?” he added, in a voice of low-toned tenderness; “what does anything matter so long as we are not angry with each other?”
He drew her hand within his arm, and they walked on in silence. Franceline’s heart was too full for words. Was it not part of her happiness that this new-found joy should be overshadowed by a vague and nameless fear?
TO BE CONTINUED.
THE CARDINALATE.
SECOND AND CONCLUDING PAPER.
The manner of creating Cardinals has differed in different ages. Moroni[128] (Dizionario, ix. p. 300, et seq.) gives a description of the ancient, the mediæval, and the modern ceremonies used on the occasion. In the earliest period of which there are details we know that the pope created the cardinals on the ember-days of Advent in the churches of the Station. There were three stages in the proceeding: the first on Wednesday at S. Mary Major’s, the second in the Twelve Apostles’, and the third in S. Peter’s. The subjects of the cardinalate were called out in the first two churches by a lector after the pope had read the Introit and Collect of the solemn Mass; but in the last one, the pope himself declared such an one to be elected cardinal-priest, or deacon, by a formula the beginning and essential words of which were: “Auxiliante Domino Deo et Salvatore Nostro Jesu Christo, eligimus in ordinem diaconi Sergium (for instance) subdiaconum.” The cardinal-elect then received from the pope “inter missarum solemnia,” the necessary Order of the diaconate or priesthood. In those days there was a much stricter connection required between the (sacred) character of a subject and his order in the cardinalate than there now is, when a bishop often belongs to the presbyterial and a priest to the diaconal order. In the Middle Ages, cardinals were no longer created during Mass or in church in presence of the people; but at the pope’s residence of the Lateran, before the Sacred College. The season was still the same and the custom of creating them only on a fast-day of December lasted for over six hundred years.
In the mediæval creations three consistories were held in the Apostolic Palace, of which two were secret and one was public. In the first consistory the pope deputed two cardinals to go around to the house of every sick or legitimately-absent cardinal and get his opinion on these points: Ought there to be a creation? And if so, of how many?
On the return of the deputies the pope asked the cardinals present the same questions. All voted thereon; and after the votes had been counted, if the pope saw fit he pronounced that he followed the advice of those who were in favor—“Nos sequimur consilium dicentium, quod fiant.” Then the cardinals voted on the number to be created, and after the counting of the votes, the pope said that he followed the advice of those who proposed that six (for instance) should be created—“Nos sequimur consilium dicentium, quod fiant sex.” After a recommendation to reflect maturely, and deliberate upon the persons proper to be elected, the consistory broke up. On the Friday following it assembled again, and when two cardinals, sent out for the purpose as on the first day, had returned with the names of those suggested by the absent ones, the pope commanded an empty chair to be brought—“Portetur nuda cathedra.” Then the cardinals all stood up behind the two rows of benches that ran down the great aula consistorialis, and the senior advanced and, sitting down beside the pope, was made acquainted in a low voice with the names of those whom the pope wished to create, and was asked his opinion. “Quid tibi videtur?” As soon as the cardinal had answered, the next one went up, and so on until all had been heard. The pope then announced the result of this auricular consultation and declared such and such persons created cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. The next day a public consistory was held in which they were solemnly published; after which the elect were introduced and heard an allocution addressed to them by the pope on the duties and dignity of their office, and received from his hands the large hat, with the designation of their churches. All the cardinals dined that day with the pope, and in the afternoon the new ones went in grand cavalcade to take possession of their Titles or Deaconries, as the case might be.
In more recent times, that is, about 1646, when Lunadoro wrote his celebrated account of the Roman court,[129] the manner of creating was almost as at present, except that the now unheard-of Cardinal Nephew (who was called in Italian—vae, vae!—Il cardinale Padrone) had a large share in the ceremonies, as he doubtless had a decided influence in the nominations, and that the red beretta, or cap, was placed on the head of the elect by the pope himself, with the words Esto cardinalis, and the sign of the cross. According to the modern ceremonial, the pope summons a consistory, and, after delivering an appropriate address, asks the cardinals their opinion with the customary (but, since the XVth century, rather perfunctory) formula, “What think ye?” Then they rise, take off their caps, and bow assent; whereupon the pope proceeds to create the new cardinals in the words: “By the authority of Almighty God, of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and of our own, etc.”
On account of the present Piedmontese occupation of Rome, the subsequent ceremonial has to be dispensed with in the case of those cardinals who may be there at the time of their elevation to the dignity. Those who are absent receive the lesser insignia of their rank from two papal messengers; one of whom is a layman and member of the Noble Guard, carrying the zucchetto, or skull-cap, the other an ecclesiastic of some minor prelatic rank in the pope’s household, bringing the beretta. If the head of the state be a Catholic, he is permitted to place the cap (brought by the ablegate) upon the new cardinal, the function taking place in the royal chapel; but in other countries a bishop or archbishop is appointed by the pope for the purpose.
At one period, particularly during the XVIth century, many serious scandals were occasioned by the practice of betting on or against the advancement of certain individuals to the cardinalate, and some who had staked heavily were convicted of resorting to infamous calumnies to hinder the nomination of those against whom they had betted. Things finally became so outrageous that Gregory XIV., in 1591, issued a bull in which excommunication, already declared, was pronounced against any one who should presume to wager on the promotion of cardinals (Bul. 4, Gregory XIV. cogit nos).
The expression applied to a cardinal of being or having been reserved in petto, means to be created but (for reasons known only to the pope) not published or promulgated as such. It is not certainly known when this practice began, and the subject has been so often confounded with that of secret creation that it is difficult to assign a precise date. The secret creation was simply the creation of a cardinal without the usual ceremonial. It originated with Martin V. (Colonna), probably urged thereto by the jealousies and dangers that still lingered after the great schism of the West was happily ended. The other cardinals were consulted, and notice was given to the honored individual, who was not, however, allowed to assume the distinctive ornaments or the station of his rank. In the in petto appointments, only the pope and perhaps his Uditore, or some extremely confidential person bound to secrecy, know the names of those reserved. It is related of a certain prelate, Vannozzi, who was much esteemed by Gregory XIV. for his varied learning and long services, that having been commissioned one day to take note of the names of a few cardinals to be created in the next consistory, he had the satisfaction to be ordered to write his own name in the list. Although bound to secrecy, he was weak enough to give in to the importunate solicitations of the Cardinal Nephew and show him the paper, which coming to the pope’s ears, he called the prelate and made him erase his name—and that was the end of Vannozzi.
A cardinal created, but reserved in petto, if he be subsequently published, takes precedence of all others (in his order) created subsequently, notwithstanding the reservation. If the pope wish to create and reserve in this manner, after publishing the names of the cardinals created in the ordinary way, he uses the formula: “Alios autem duos (for example) in pectore reservamus arbitrio nostro quandocumque declarandos.” It is believed that Paul III. (Farnese, 1534-49) was the first to reserve in petto; and we think that he may have done so to reward attachment to faith and discipline in that heretical age without seeming to do so too openly, to avoid its having an interested look. The celebrated Jesuit (himself a cardinal) and historian of the Council of Trent, Sforza Pallavicini, gives a curious reason—that certainly shows how great was the idea entertained in his day, the middle of the XVIIth century, of the Roman cardinalate—why the expression creation of a cardinal is officially used; and says (vol. 1. p. xiii.) that it is meant to intimate by the word that the excellence of the dignity is so exalted that all degrees of inferior rank are as though they were not; so that when the pope makes a man a cardinal, it is as if in the sphere of honors he called him out of non-existence into being.
In the first consistory held, in which the newly-created cardinals appear, the pope performs on them the ceremony of Sealing the Lips (more literally of Closing the Mouth). It is done in the following formula: “Claudimus vobis os, ut neque in consistoriis neque in congregationibus aliisque functionibus cardinalitiis sententiam vestram dicere valeatis.” At the end of the consistory, when the junior cardinal-deacon rings a little bell, the pope unseals their lips by saying (in Latin): “We open your mouths, that in consistories, congregations, and other ecclesiastical functions, ye may be able to speak your opinion. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen”; making over them meanwhile three times the sign of the cross. This custom must be pretty old, for it is mentioned in the XIIIth century by Cardinal (Stefaneschi) Gaetani, nephew of Pope Boniface VIII., as already in existence. It has been conjectured that the intention of such a ceremony was to pass the newly-created cardinals through a kind of novitiate before receiving what is called, in canon law, the active and passive voice, i.e., the right of electing and of being elected to the pontificate; but it may also have been intended to impress upon them the necessity of prudence and modesty of speech in such august assemblies.
The College of Cardinals is the seed and germ of the papacy, and the greatest act that one of its members can perform is to take part in a papal election. This is done in a convention called the Conclave, which is subject to many regulations, as becomes so important an occasion. The present order of this assembly dates from the pontificate of Gregory XV., in 1621. When Rome was not occupied by some sacrilegious invader, it took place in the Quirinal Palace by secret voting, the votes being opened and counted in a chapel called, from the circumstance, Capella Scrutinii. When the election was complete, the senior cardinal-deacon, whose office corresponds to that of the ancient archdeacons of the Roman Church, announced it to the people. Originally, however, the cardinals were not the only electors of the pope, but any foreign bishop in communion with the Holy See, who happened to be present during a vacancy, was permitted to take part in the election. Thus, when Cornelius was exalted to the Chair of Peter, in 254, sixteen such bishops, of whom two were from Africa, concurred in the act. The rest also of the Roman clergy had some voice in the election, but it was greatly weakened by Pope Stephen III. alias IV., in a council held at the Lateran in the year 769, who made it obligatory to elect a member of the Sacred College. Alexander III., by the advice and with the approval of the eleventh General Council (third of Lateran), in 1179, considering the difficulties arising out of a great number of electors (no less than thirty-three schisms having already been occasioned thereby), solemnly decreed that in future the cardinals alone should have the right to choose, confirm, and enthrone the pope, and that two-thirds of the votes cast would be necessary for a canonical election. Lucius III., his successor in 1181, was the first pope elected in this manner by the exclusive action of the Sacred College. This wise provision was confirmed for the edification of the faithful, and to show that the bishops dispersed throughout the church did not claim any share in the election of its head, by the general councils of Lyons (IId) in 1274, and Vienne in 1311. But once since have any others had an active voice in the matter, which was at Constance, when the twenty-three cardinals, to put an end to the schism, opened the conclave for this time only to thirty prelates, six from each of the five great nations represented there. This resulted in the election of Martin V. (Colonna) on November 11, 1417. Since the year 1378 no one not a cardinal has been elected pope; but before that time a good many, despite the decree of Stephen III. (or IV.), were elected without being cardinals; six in the XIth, two in the XIIth, three in the XIIIth, and three in the XIVth century. Of these were S. Celestine V. and, before him, Blessed Gregory X. A curious circumstance attended the election of the latter, in which the cardinals were treated as jurymen who are locked up until they agree upon a verdict. After the death of Clement IV., in 1268, the Holy See was vacant longer than ever before, viz., two years nine months and two days, on account of the dissensions of the eighteen cardinals who composed the Sacred College. The conclave was held at Viterbo; but, although King Philip III. of France and Charles I. of Sicily went there to hasten the election, and S. Bonaventure, general of the Franciscans, induced the towns-people to keep the fathers close prisoners in the episcopal palace, nothing availed, until the happy thought struck Raniero Gatti, captain of the city, to take off the roof, so that the rain would pour in on wet, and the sunshine on hot days.[130] This had the desired effect, and after S. Philip Beniti, general of the Servites, had refused the offer of election, the cardinals promptly agreed upon Theobald Visconti, archdeacon of Liege, and apostolic legate in Syria. It was on this occasion that an episcopal quasi-poet improvised the leonine verses:
“Papatus munus tulit Archidiaconus unus,
Quem Patrem Patrum fecit discordia Fratrum.”
About this time it became customary for the cardinals to act as “protectors” of nations, religious orders, universities, and other great institutions, which were liable to be brought into relations with the Holy See more frequently then than at present; but Urban VI., in 1378, without absolutely prohibiting this species of patrocination, forbade cardinals to accept gifts or any kind of remuneration from those whose interests they guarded. Martin V. in 1424, Alexander VI. in 1492, and Leo X. in 1517, issued various decrees to moderate or entirely abolish such an use of their influence by the cardinals for private parties, because it might easily, under certain circumstances, stand in the way of that impartial counsel to the pope and equity of action to which they were bound before all things. Yet it shows the immense importance of the cardinalate in the XIVth and XVth centuries, that powerful sovereigns gave to individuals in the Sacred College the high-sounding title of protectors of their kingdoms. At the present day, cardinals are allowed to assume, gratuitously, a care of the interests of religious orders, academies, colleges, confraternities, and other institutions, mostly in Rome, which may choose to pay them the compliment of putting themselves under their patronage.
In the IXth century, S. Leo IV. made a rule that the cardinals should come to the apostolic palace twice a week for consistory, and John VIII., towards the end of the same century, furthermore ordered them to meet together twice a month to treat of various affairs appertaining to their office. We find here the beginning of those later celebrated assemblies called Roman Congregations, which are permanent commissions to examine, judge, and expedite the affairs of the church throughout the world. Each cardinal is made a member of four or more of these congregations, and a cardinal is generally at the head—with the name of prefect—of each of those the presidency of which the pope has not reserved to himself. It is always from among the cardinals that the highest officials of the Church in Rome and of the Sacred College are chosen. The former are the palatine cardinals, so called because they are lodged in some one of the pontifical palaces and enjoy the fullest share of the sovereign’s confidence and favor. They are at present four in number, viz., the pro-datary, secretary of briefs, of memorials, of state. Next come the cardinal vicar, grand penitentiary, chamberlain, vice-chancellor, librarian. The cardinal-archpriests are at the head of the three great patriarchal basilicas of S. John of Lateran, S. Mary Major, and S. Peter. The officials of the Sacred College number five, who are all, except one, ex-officio; these are: the dean, who is always Bishop of Ostia and Velletri, is head of the Sacred College, and represents it on certain occasions of state, as when he receives the first visit of princes and ambassadors, and expresses to the Holy Father any sentiments that he and his colleagues may wish to announce in a body. The sub-dean supplies his place when absent, or incapacitated from whatever cause. The First Priest and First Deacon, who were anciently called the Priors of their order, have precedence, other things being equal, over those of the same class, besides certain rights and privileges of particular importance during a vacancy of the See. The chamberlain is appointed annually in the first consistory held after Christmas. His office is not so venerable or so significant as the others are in times of extraordinary occurrences; but in days of peace it is of the highest practical importance. It was instituted under Leo X., but received its present development under Paul III., in 1546. Each cardinal habitually residing in Rome must serve in his turn, beginning with the dean and ending with the junior deacon. From this arrangement it may be imagined that few cardinals live long enough in the dignity to have to assume more than once the rather onerous duties of the office.
The pope gives the chamberlain possession in the same consistory at which he has been named, by handing him a violet silk purse fringed with gold and containing certain consistorial papers and the little balls used by the cardinals to vote with in the committees in which they treat of their corporate affairs. The principal duties of the chamberlain are of a two-fold character: as chancellor, to sign and register all cardinalitial acts, and as treasurer, to administer any property that may be held in common by the cardinals. He is assisted in his office by a very high prelate, who is secretary of the Sacred College and consistory. The archives are in a chamber of the Vatican palace assigned for the purpose by Urban VIII., in 1625. The chamberlain is also charged to sing the Mass at the solemn requiem of a cardinal dying during his tenure of office, and on November 5 for all deceased cardinals. But if he be of the order of deacons, even if he have received the priesthood, he must invite a cardinal of the higher order to officiate. This anniversary was established by Leo X. in 1517.
On account of the great antiquity of the cardinalate, there are many things of minor importance connected with it that are buried in the obscurity of ages. Such are appellations of honor and distinctions in dress; but all writers agree that after the IXth century there was a remarkable increase in what we might call the accessories of this great office. Passing over a decree which Tamagna (who yet is an authority on cardinalitial matters) ascribes to the Emperor Constantine, in which the cardinals of the Holy Roman Church were put on the same footing before the state with senators and consuls, and received other marks of imperial favor, it is certain that during the Middle Ages they were frequently called senators, were styled individually Dominus, and addressed as Venerande Pater, as we learn from a memorandum drawn up by a Roman canonist in 1227. In the accounts of the Sacred College from the beginning of the XIVth century up to the year 1378, the cardinals are called Reverendi Patres et Domini. But from this period they assumed the superlative, and up to the whole of the XVth century were styled Reverendissimi.[131] Urban VIII., on the 10th of June, 1630, gave them the title of eminence, which was not, however, unknown to the early Middle Ages, when it was given to certain great officers of the Byzantine Empire in Italy. Urban’s immediate successor, Innocent X., forbade cardinals to use any other designation than that of cardinal, or title than that of eminence, or to put any crown, coronet, or crest above their arms, which were to be overarched by the hat alone. When Cardinal de’ Medici read the decree, with what was then in such a personage considered exemplary submission, he requested his friends and the members of his household never to call him highness any more, and immediately had the grand-ducal crown removed from wherever it was blazoned. In course of time, however, cardinals of imperial or royal lineage were allowed to assume a style expressive of their birth; thus the last of the Stuarts, the Cardinal Duke of York, etc., was always called Royal Highness at Rome. The pope writes to a cardinal-bishop as “Our venerable brother,” but to a cardinal-priest or deacon as “Our beloved son”; and a cardinal writing to the pope who has raised him to the purple should add at the end of his letter, after all the other formulas of respectful conclusion, the words, et creatura. Although the cardinals hold a rank so exalted, they are in many ways made to remember their complete dependence in ecclesiastical matters upon the sovereign pontiff. There is a peculiar act of homage due by them to the pope, which is called Obedience, and consists in going up publicly one by one in stately procession, with cappa magna of royal ermine, and outspread trailing scarlet robe, to kiss the ring after making a profound inclination to the pontiff sitting on his throne. This is surely the grandest sight of the Sistine Chapel, and we have often thought in seeing it what a good reminder it was to those most eminent spiritual princes that, how great soever they might be, they were after all but the rays of a greater luminary without which they would have no existence. The obedience is done at Mass and Vespers; but never twice on the same day, nor in services for the dead.
The color of a cardinal’s dress is red, unless he belong to a religious order, in which case he retains that of his habit, but uses the same form of dress as the others. In 1245, Innocent IV. conferred upon the cardinals at the first Council of Lyons the famous distinction of the red hat, which is so peculiarly the ornament of their rank that, in common parlance, to “receive the hat” is the same as to be raised to the cardinalate. The special significance of the hat is, that it is placed by the hands of the pope himself upon the dome of thought and seat of that intellect by which the cardinal will give learned and loyal counsel in the government of the church; and its color signifies that the wearer is prepared to lose the last drop of his blood rather than betray his trust. Our readers will be reminded here of that angry vaunt of Henry VIII. about Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who was lying in prison because he would not acknowledge the royal supremacy in matters of religion. When news came to England that Paul III. had raised him to the purple, the king exclaimed, “The pope may send him the hat, but I will take care that he have no head to wear it on”; in fact, the bishop was shortly afterwards beheaded. This hat is now one of ceremony only, and serves but twice: once, when the cardinal receives it in consistory, and next when it rests upon the catafalque at his obsequies. It is then suspended from the ceiling of the chapel or aisle of the church in which he may be buried. The form is round, with a low crown and wide, stiff rim, from the inside of which hang fifteen tassels attached in a triangle from one to five. At the ceremony of giving the hat the pope says, in Latin: “Receive for the glory of Almighty God and the adornment of the Holy Apostolic See, this red hat, the sign of the unequalled dignity of the cardinalate, by which is declared that even to death, by the shedding of thy blood, thou shouldst show thyself intrepid for the exaltation of the blessed faith, for the peace and tranquillity of the Christian people, for the increase and prosperity of the Holy Roman Church. In the name of the Father ✠; and of the Son ✠; and of the Holy ✠ Ghost. Amen.” Paul II., in 1464, added other red ornaments, and among them the red beretta or cap to be worn on ordinary occasions; but cardinals belonging to religious orders continued to use the hood of their habit or a cap of the same color, until Gregory XIV. made them wear the red. This point of costume is illustrated by an anecdote which we have heard from an eye-witness; it also shows that one should not be sure of promotion—until it comes.
Pope Gregory XVI. was a great admirer of a certain abbot in Rome, whose habit was white, and rumor ran that he would certainly be made a cardinal. Some time before the next consistory, the pope, with a considerable retinue—it was thought significantly—went to visit the monastery, the father of which was this learned monk, and there refreshments were served in the suite of apartments called, in large Roman convents, the cardinal’s rooms, because reserved for the use of that dignitary, should one be created belonging to the order. When the trays of delicious pyramidal ice-creams were brought in, the pope deliberately took the white one presented to him on bended knee by a chamberlain and handed it to the Lord Abbot sitting beside and a little behind him, then took a red one for himself. No one, of course, began until Gregory had tasted first, and while all eyes were on him he took the top off his own ice-cream, turned and put it on his neighbor’s, saying with a smile as he looked around him, “How well, gentlemen, the red caps the white!” Alas! the poor abbot; he understood it as doubtless was meant he should, but he was foolish enough to act upon it, and procure his scarlet outfit. This came to the ears of the pope, who was so displeased that he scratched him off the list, nor could any friends ever get him reinstated; and it was only when Cardinal Doria said that he was positively wasting away with the disappointment and mortification, that the pope consented to make him an archbishop in partibus.
In the greater chapels, in the grand procession on Corpus Christi, and on other occasions the cardinal-bishops wear copes fastened by a pectoral jewel called Formale, which is of gold ornamented with three pine cones of mother-of-pearl, the priests (even though they may have the episcopal character) wear chasubles, and the deacons dalmatics, but all use white damask mitres with red fringes at the extremity of the bands. In their Titles and Deaconries, also elsewhere, when they officiate, the cardinals have the use of pontificals. The custom of wearing mitres is said to have begun for cardinals of the two lower orders only in the XIth century. One of the distinctive ornaments of a cardinal is the gold ring set with a sapphire, and engraved on the metal surface of the inside with the arms of the pope who has created him. It is put on his finger by the Sovereign Pontiff with these words, some of which are omitted in the case of deacons: “For the honor of Almighty God, of the holy apostles SS. Peter and Paul, and of the blessed N. N. (naming the Title) we commit unto thee the church of —— (naming it), with its clergy, people, and succursal chapels.” The actual value of this ring is only twenty-five dollars, but for many centuries the newly-created cardinal has been expected to give a large sum of money for some pious purpose, which was different under different popes, but was perpetually allotted by Gregory XV., in 1622, to the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. Students of the Propaganda will remember the elegant tablet and commemorative inscription originally set up in the college church, but now encased in the wall near the library. For a long time the sum was larger than at present and was paid in gold, but in consideration of the general distress in the early part of this century Pius VII. reduced it to six hundred scudi of silver, equal to about seven hundred and fifty dollars of our paper money. The last cardinal who gave the full amount before the reduction was Della Somaglia, in 1795.
The Roman ceremonial shows the singular importance of the cardinalate, by the disposition ordered to be made of its members even after death. It is prescribed that when life has departed a veil be thrown over the face, and the body, dressed in chasuble if bishop or priest, otherwise in dalmatic, shall lie in state.
The hat used in his creation must be deposited at his feet, and after his funeral be suspended over his tomb. His body must be laid in a cypress-wood coffin in presence of a notary and his official family, a member of which—the major-domo—lays at his feet a little case containing a scroll of parchment on which has been written a brief account of the more important events of his life. Then the first coffin is enclosed in another of lead, and the two together in a third one of some kind of precious wood, each coffin having been sealed with the seals of the dead cardinal and the living notary. The body thus secured is borne by night with funeral pomp of carriages and torches and long array of chanting friars to the church of requiem, where it remains until the day appointed for the Mass, at which the cardinals and pope are present, and the latter gives the final absolution.
When carriages first came into use in Italy, which was about the year 1500, they were considered effeminate and a species of refined luxury, so much so that Pius IV., at a consistory held on November 27, 1564, in a grave discourse exhorted the cardinals not to use a means of conveyance fit only for women, but to continue to come to the palace in the virile manner that had been so long the custom—that is, on horseback; and reminded them that when the Emperor Charles V. returned into Spain from his visit to Italy, he had said that no sight pleased him there so much as the magnificent cavalcade of the cardinals on their way to the chapels and consistories. After this they always rode or were carried in litters or sedan-chairs, until the beginning of the XVIIth century, when it became impossible any longer to hinder them from using the new and more convenient style which had become general for all people of means. Urban VIII., in 1625, by ordering cardinals to put scarlet head-gear on their horses, seemed to sanction the change; but it appears to have been abused, by some at least, in a manner described by Innocent X. (1676), in a pathetic address, as ill becoming those who had renounced the pomps and vanities of the world. We may get an idea of the ostentation, when we know that but a few years previously Maurice of Savoy (who afterwards by permission renounced the cardinalate for reasons of state) used to go to the Vatican with a following of two hundred splendid equipages and a numerous escort of horsemen in brilliant uniforms. The modern custom (which has been interrupted by the Italian usurpers) is certainly very modest.
The cardinals proceed to the minor functions with a single carriage and two on gala days, but princes by birth have three.
Each carriage is red, finished with gilt ornaments, and drawn by a pair of superb black horses from a particular breed of the Campagna. The scarlet umbrella carried by one of the somnolent footmen behind is seldom taken out of its cover, being merely a reminiscence of the old fashion when their eminences rode, and it might be of service against the rain or the sun.
Cardinals belonging to a religious order of monks or friars who wear beards retain them after their exaltation; but others must be clean shaven. There have been considerable changes in this matter, and cardinals wore no beards in the XVth century. In fact, the long, silky, and well-cultivated beard of Bessarion (a Greek) lost him the election to the papacy after the death of Nicholas V., in 1455. It was also the occasion of his death with chagrin at an atrocious insult offered him by Louis XI. of France; for being on an embassy to compose the differences between that monarch and the Duke of Burgundy, he wrote to the latter stating the object of his mission before having made his visit to the former, which so enraged that punctilious king that when the legate came the first thing he did was to pull his magnificent beard and say:
“Barbara graeca genus retinent quod habere solebant.”
Under the pontificate of Julius II., who gave the example, cardinals wore long beards; but in the next century only mustaches and la barbetta (the “goatee”)—varied among the more rigid by just a little bit beneath the under lip, and called a mouche by the French—were retained until, in the year 1700, Clement XI. introduced the perfectly beardless face, which now shows itself under the beretta (Cancellieri, Possessi de’ Papi, page 327).
Not to mention S. Lawrence, who is generally reckoned an archdeacon (i.e., cardinal first deacon) of the Roman Church, or S. Jerome, in vindication of whose cardinalate Ciacconius wrote a special treatise (Rome, 1581), the Sacred College counts among its members fifteen saints either canonized or beatified. The first is S. Peter Damian, in 1058, and the last Blessed Pietro-Maria Tommasi, in 1712. The cardinals have the privilege of a Proprium for these in the Office. There are besides nine others popularly venerated as Blessed, but without warrant from the Holy See that we are aware of. The noblest families of Europe, imperial, royal, and of lower rank, have been represented in the Sacred College, those of Italy, of course, preponderating: and no other one, we believe, has had so many cardinals as that of Orsini, which claims over forty-two, beginning with Orsino, cardinal-priest A.D. 500. Yet merit has never been refused a place among its members because it made no “boast of heraldry” or other pretension to social superiority. Where so many have been distinguished in a very high degree, it is difficult to select half a dozen names from as many different nations that have been represented in the Sacred College, and that stand out above all the rest in their several countries. Among the Germans, Nicholas de Cusa, in 1448, is superior to all others for his intrepid defence of the Holy See and his immense learning, especially in mathematics. He discovered the annual revolution of the earth around the sun before Copernicus or Galileo were born. Among the Spaniards, Ximenes, in 1507, is easily chief, as a minister of state and encourager of education. In England, Wolsey, created by Leo X., in 1515, although Panvinius (Epitome, p. 377) insolently calls him “the scum and scandal of the human race,” is the greatest figure, and needs no praise. In Scotland, Beaton is first as state minister and patron of learning. He was put to death in hatred of the faith which could not be subverted while he lived. Among the Italians, Bellarmine may be placed first; certainly no other cardinal has filled so often and so long the minds of the adversaries of the faith. Clement VIII., in 1599, when he created him, said that there was no one his equal for learning in all the church. In France, Richelieu, the greatest prime minister that ever lived, and the savior of the government and the church by effectually putting down the rebellious Huguenots. Everything that is good and very little comparatively that is bad has been represented in the Sacred College; but lest we should be thought to flatter we will give a few examples that show how no body of men is entirely above reproach. Moroni has a special article on pseudo-cardinals and another on cardinals who have been degraded from their high and sacred office. We say nothing of the former, or we would be led into an interminable article on the ambition, intrigue, and schisms that have disgraced individuals and injured the church. Boniface VIII. was obliged to degrade and excommunicate the two turbulent Colonnas, uncle and nephew; but doing penance under his successor, they were restored. Julius II. and Leo X. had difficulties with some of their cardinals, and one of them, Alfonso Petrucci, for conspiring against the sovereign, was decapitated in Castle Sant’ Angelo on July 6, 1517. Odet de Coligni, who had been made a cardinal very young at the earnest request of Francis I., afterwards embraced Calvinism, and, as usual with apostates, embraced something else besides. Although he had thrown off his cassock, yet when Pius IV. pronounced him degraded and excommunicated, he resumed it, out of contempt, long enough to get married in his red robes. Cardinals Charles Caraffa[132] and Nicholas Coscia[133] in Italy; de Rohan[134] of the Diamond Necklace affair, and de Loménie de Brienne[135] in France, if, on the one hand, they have not been what we would expect from those so highly honored, on the other, they give us proofs of the impartial justice of the popes, and that no one in their eyes is above the law. Among the curiosities of the cardinalate is that of Ferdinand Taverna, Bishop of Lodi, who was raised to the purple in 1604, and died of joy. This reminds us that Cancellieri, with his usual singularity of research, has a passage in his work on the Enthronement of the Popes, about “persons who have gone mad or died of grief because they were not made cardinals,” and tells of one in particular who hoped to make his way by his reputation for learning, and had a little red hat hung up above his desk to keep himself perpetually in mind of the prize he was ambitiously seeking—and, of course, never found. Poor human nature! The importance of the telegraph as a means of avoiding inconvenient nominations is shown by a good many cases of men elevated to the cardinalate when they were already dead. Three occurred in the XIVth century; but as late as 1770 Paul de Carvalho, brother of the infamous Pombal, was published (having been reserved in petto) on January 20, three days after he had expired.
The Orsini are noted for their longevity, and it has shown itself in the cardinals as well as in others of the family. Giacinto Bobò Orsini was made a cardinal at twenty by Honorius II., and after living through sixty-five years of his dignity and eleven pontificates, was himself elected pope (being only a deacon) at the age of eighty-five, and reigned for nearly seven years as Celestine III. (1191-1198). Another one, Pietro Orsini, after having three times refused the honor, was at length induced to accept it, wore the purple for fifty-four years and finally became Benedict XIII. (1724-1730).
Gregory XI., who brought back the See from Avignon, was made a cardinal by his uncle at seventeen; Paul II. by his, at twenty-one; Pius III. by his, at twenty; and Leo X. by his, at fourteen—but not allowed to wear his robes until three years later. The last example, we believe, of a very young cardinal is that of a Spanish Bourbon, Don Luis, created at twenty-three by Pius VII., in 1810; he was permitted afterwards to renounce it. Although exceptions may occasionally be made in future, a mature age has for many pontificates come to be considered absolutely necessary before being raised to the dignity. Artaud de Montor has an anecdote in his Life of Pius VIII., about the inexorable Leo XII. in connection with the young Abbé Duc de Rohan-Chabot, a Montmorency, and as such, one would think, quite the equal of an Orsini, Colonna, or the son of any other great Italian family. Whenever Leo was pressed on the subject, and he was urged by many and very influential persons, to confer the dignity upon the princely, learned, and virtuous priest, he had a new Latin verse ready in praise of him, but always ending with his inevitable youth, as this one for example: Sunt mores, doctrina, genus—sed deficit ætas (Artaud, i. p. 205). He was thirty-seven at the time.
We conclude with a few words the bibliography of the cardinalate. Not to mention the almost innumerable separate lives of cardinals which have been published in all countries, particularly Italy, the greatest work or series of works connected with the subject is undoubtedly that of the Spanish Dominican, Chacon, who wrote a History of the Popes and Cardinals up to Clement VIII. His work was corrected and continued by the Italian Jesuit, Oldoini, up to Clement IX. inclusive, all with beautiful portraits and arms. At the request of Benedict XIV., a learned prelate named Guarnacci continued this work to the pontificate of Clement XII. inclusive. It was sumptuously brought out in 1751. There is a continuation of this, containing the whole of Benedict XIV.’s pontificate, and later matter from MSS. left by Guarnacci and from other sources, that appeared in 1787, and is actually (if our memory does not deceive us) rarer at Rome than the other parts of the work, although published so much later. We have understood that there are still some precious MS. collections on the same subject in the possession of the noble Del Cinque family, which are probably waiting for a Mæcenas to accept the dedication before being published. These are the full titles of the works referred to:
Alphonsi Ciacconii, Vitæ et res gestæ Pontificum romanorum, et S. R. E. Cardinalium ab initio nascentis Ecclesiæ, usque ad Clementem IX., ab Augustino Oldoino recognitæ. Romæ: 1677 (3d ed., 4 vols. fol.) Mario Guarnacci, Vitæ et res gestæ Pontificum romanorum, et S. R. E. Cardinalium a Clemente IX. usque ad Clementem XII. Romæ: 1751 (2 vols. fol.)
Vitæ et res gestæ summorum Pontificum et S. R. E. Cardinalium ad Ciacconii exemplum continuatæ, quibus accedit appendix, quæ vitas Cardinalium perfecit, a Guarnaccio non absolutas. Auctoribus Equite Joh. Paulo de Cinque, et Advocato Raphaele Fabrinio. Romæ: 1787.
The best work in Italian is Lorenzo Cardella’s Memorie storiche de’ Cardinali della S. Romana Chiesa, in comminciando da quelli di S. Gelasio I., sino ai creati da Benedetto XIV. Roma: 1792.
A recent and probably very excellent work in French is Etienne Fisquet’s Histoire générale des Papes et des Cardinaux. Chez Etienne Repos, 70 rue Bonaparte, Paris (5 vols. 8vo).
The principal work on the cardinalate in general is by Plati: De Cardinalis dignitate et officio, of which a sixth edition was published at Rome in 1836; and an exquisite monograph, small in size (one little volume) but full of research, is Cardinal Nicholas Antonelli’s De Titulis quos S. Evaristus Romanis Presbyteris distribuit, dissertatio. Published at Rome in 1725; rather rare.
The Calcografia Camerale, near the Fountain of Trevi at Rome, used to have for sale at a reasonable price the engraved portraits of all the cardinals from the pontificate of Paul V. (1605-21) to that of Pius IX.; but being an establishment belonging to the papal government, the present occupiers of the city in their zeal for the fine arts may have turned it upside down.
A collection of portraits in oil colors of all the British Cardinals was begun at the English College in Rome in 1864.