On one Sunday morning at Rouen we go with 'all the world' to be present at a musical mass at the cathedral, and to hear another great preacher from Paris. It was a grander performance than the one we attended at Caen; but the sermon was less eloquent, less refined, and was remarkable in quite a different way. It was a discourse, holding up to his hearers, as far as we could follow the rapid flow of his eloquence, the delight and glory of 'doing battle for Right'—of fighting (to use the common phrase) the 'fight of Faith.'
But he was preaching to a congregation of shopkeepers, traders, and artisans, and his appeal to arms seemed to fall flatly on the trading mind; whilst the old incongruity between the building and the dress of the nineteenth century, was as remarkable as it is in Westminster Abbey; and the contrast between the unchivalrous aspect of the speaker, and the tone of his language, was more striking still.[47]
What priest or curé, in these days, stands forth in his presence or influence, as the ideal champion of a romantic faith, the ceremonials of which seem more and more alienated from the spirit of the nineteenth century—at least in the north of Europe, where colour, imagination, and passion have less influence? What real sympathy has the kind, fat, fatherly figure before us with soldiers, saints, or martyrs?[48]
He preached for nearly an hour, with frequent pauses and strange changes in the inflexion of the voice. We will not attempt a repetition of his arguments, but must record one sentence in an extempore sermon of great versatility and power; a sentence that, if we understood it aright, was singularly liberal and broad in view. Speaking of the rivalry that existed between the different sects of Christians, and making pointed allusion to the colony of protestant Huguenots established at Beuzeval on the sea-shore, he ended with the words, 'Better than all this rivalry and strife (far better than the common result amongst men, indifference) that, like ships becalmed at sea,—when a religious breeze stirs our hearts—we should raise aloft our fair white sails and come sailing into port together, lowering them in the haven of the one true church.'
He made a pause several times in his discourse, during which he looked about him, and mopped his head with his handkerchief, and behaved, for the moment, much more as if he were in his dressing-room than in a public pulpit; but he held his audience with magic sway, his influence over the people was wonderful—wonderful to us when we listened to his imagery, and to the means used to stir their hearts.[49]
In the picturesque and moving times of the middle ages it must surely have needed less forcing and fewer formulæ to 'lift up the hearts of the people to the Queen of Heaven;' if it were only in the likeness of the black doll, which they worship at Chartres to this day. But until we realise to ourselves more completely the lives of warriors in mediæval days, we shall never understand how chivalry and the worship of beauty entered into their hearts and lives, and was to them the highest and noblest of virtues; nor shall we comprehend their ready acceptance of the adoration of the Virgin as the one true religion.
In such a building as the cathedral at Rouen, it is impossible to forget the people who once trod its pavement; memories that not all the modern paraphernalia and glitter can obliterate. If we visit the cathedral after vespers, when the candles in the Lady-chapel look like glowworm-lights through the dark aisles, we are soon carried back in imagination to mediæval days. The floor of the nave is covered with kneeling figures of warriors, each with a red cross on his breast; the pavement resounds to the clash of arms; there is a low chorus of voices in prayer, a sound of stringed instruments, a silence—and then, an army of men rise up and march to war. There is a pause of six hundred years, and another procession passes through these aisles; the pavement resounds to less martial footsteps,—they are not warriors, they are 'Cook's excursionists'!
Let us now leave the cathedral, and see something more of the town.
It is a fine summer's afternoon, in the middle of the week, the air is soft and quiet; the busy population of Rouen seem, with one consent, to rest from labour, and the Goddess of Leisure tells her beads. One, two (decrepit old men); three, four, five (nurses and children); six, seven, eight (Chasseurs de Vincennes or a 'noble Zouave),' and so on, until the Rosary is complete and there are no more seats.[50] Every day under our windows they come and wedge themselves close together on the long stone seats under the dusty trees, to rest; and thread themselves in rows one by one, as if some unseen hand were telling, with human beads, the mystery of the Rosary.
Why do we speak of what is done every day in every city of France? Because it is worth a moment's notice, that in the day-time of busy cities men can, if they choose, find time to rest. There are gardens open, and seats provided in the middle of the cities, so that the poor children need not play on dustheaps and under carriage-wheels. There is a small open square in the heart of Rouen, laid out with rocks and trees, and a waterfall, which we should dearly like to shew to certain 'parish guardians.'