Tremblingly Miriamne read the epistle. How formal:
“Miriamne De Griffin:—Thou went’st without my leave. Do not return till sent for. Thou left’st a loving mother for a worthless father, and this is a daughter’s reward. Thou dost say Sir Charleroy is mad. I knew it, and think that the curse is descending on thee. But I doubt not the man has cunning in his madness, and has prompted thee to inveigle me into his toils again. Once he had me in England, and there he put me on the rack of his merciless temper and lust! Shame on him for that time! Shame on me if he have opportunity to repeat it! I send thee a comforter. Put it before his eyes, and tell him that the woman of Bozrah is before him. Tell him that she, like Rizpah of old, is true to the death to her sons, and, while waking, never forgets to curse the vultures!”
No love was added. There was no name appended. Miriamne felt like one disowned. She dreaded to examine the contents of the case; but a servant, who began the opening just then, spread it out. As she suspected, after she had read the letter, it was the (to her) hateful picture of ancient Rizpah.
It was evening, and the maiden sought a refuge from her troubles in the park. It was, on her part, another flight from the face of Rizpah of Gibeah; another seeking of solitude from man that she might gain that sense of nearness to the Eternal Father under the calm, silent stars of His canopy. It was like that flight from the old stone house of Bozrah to the chapel of Father Adolphus that she had made long before.
The maiden’s course brought her to the “White Madonna,” and there she found her counselor and brother, the chaplain. He had heard that Miriamne was desponding that day, and had bent his course hither, confident that the “Consolatrix Afflictorum” would prove a tryst. The scenery around Pallas Athene was the finer by far, but to a troubled heart there was the more allurement in the place where the love of heaven was expressed. The Minerva expressed self-sufficiency; the “White Madonna,” God’s sufficiency. One expressed justice, culture, the perfection of human gifts, regnant and victorious; the other spoke of welcome, healing, mercy, and help for those who were in pitiable needs. The virgin evolved by the philosophers of the Greeks was a concept touching but few of humanity, and fitted to be crowned only in a world of perfections, such as has not yet existed. The “White Madonna” depicted a real character who had a human heart and heavenly traits, and that easily found acceptance in human affections.
The maiden and her counselor sat together for a long time; she speaking of her social miseries, he of God’s remedies; she describing the thickness of the night about her; he telling her in beautiful parables that there was a refuge and an asylum, though the night obscured all for a time. As they conversed the rising moon flooded the “White Madonna” with silvering light, and the chaplain rapturously exclaimed:
“See, the moon gets its light from the sun, and gives it to the image. We do not see the sun, but we see its work and glory reflected! So God hands down from heaven to His children, by His angels and ministers, the powers and blessings that they need. Miriamne, we have a Father who forgets none and is munificent to all!”
Paul Veronese.
THE WEDDING AT CANA.