All the sisters had bitterly, keenly, felt the cruel stroke that deprived them of three such near relatives, and in such a painful manner; but none suffered more enduringly than Madame de Montagu. She was staying with Madame de Tessé, in Switzerland. News had reached her of the execution of her grand-aunt and uncle, M. and Madame de Monchy; but she was completely ignorant of what had become of her mother and sister. Fears, however, were rife. One day she set out to meet her father, whom she had not seen for some time; and he was so changed, that, perceiving him on the way, she only recognized him from his voice. Each alighted, and his first question was to ask whether she had heard the news; but, seeing her excessive emotion, he hastened to assure her of his own perfect ignorance. She felt a calamity impending, but dared not press for information in the presence of a third person. They drove to an inn; and when father and daughter were alone together, he, after some preparation, informed her that he had just lost his mother. [{265}] A deadly paleness overspread her countenance; confused and dizzy, she exclaimed with clasped hands, "And I—," "I am uneasy about your mother and sister," answered M. d'Ayen, cautiously. But she was not to be deceived. His looks belied his words. That was the hour of bitterest anguish in Madame de Montagu's life. Cries and tears gave no relief. Again and again she saw the scene re-enacted. Reason trembled, but still she strove to pray and be resigned. Remembering her mother's pious practice in times of sorrow, she also recited the magnificat; then, with beautiful feeling, in the midst of her own anguish, she knelt down and prayed, all shuddering, for those that made them suffer. But nature struggled still; and days passed ere she recovered sufficient composure to be left alone. When all the details reached her, strong religious feeling transformed the dungeon, the cart, the scaffold into so many steps by which the martyrs had ascended up to heaven. The love unceasingly manifested by the three sisters for their martyred relatives is very touching. They were first reunited at Vianen, near Utrecht, in 1799. The ostensible object was to settle the division of property rendered necessary by their mother's death; but in reality they were much more occupied in calling up sweet memories of her and of their beloved sister. Madame de la Fayette was then about forty years of age; Madame de Montagu had reached her thirty-second year; and Madame de Grammont was rather more than a twelvemonth younger. They remained a month together, their husbands and families being also on the spot. Not a little suffering was caused by cold and hunger, for their united purses could still only produce insufficient means; fuel was wanting, and they had scanty fare. The three, however, would sit up at night to enjoy each other's society, wrapping their mantles round them to keep out the cold, and sharing one wretched chaufferette. They spoke very low, so as not to disturbed husbands and children sleeping in the adjoining rooms. One great subject of conversation was to point out their mutual defects—a Christian habit acquired under Madame d'Ayen's training, and surprisingly brought into play again under such circumstances.
Madame de Grammont remarked that events were graven in letters of fire in Madame de Montagu's countenance, and characteristically advised her to become more calm. She also took the opportunity of teaching her how to meditate—a service which the elder sister gratefully acknowledges in her diary. Madame de Montagu observed with admiration Madame de Grammont's recollected demeanor at mass, which they attended almost daily, saying she looked like an angel, absolutely annihilated in the presence of God. "As for me, I feel overwhelmed at my poverty beside her." Indeed, the two sisters vied in humility with each other. Madame de Grammont having once said, "You excite me to virtue and attract me to prayer," Madame de Montagu quickly replied, "Then I am like the horses in this country; for one sees wretched-looking animals along the canals drawing large boats after them."
But the chief theme at night was ever their mother. Madame de Montagu was accustomed to unite herself with the dear victims in special prayer every day at the "sorrowful hour," and the other two now undertook the same practice. They also composed beautiful litanies in remembrance of them during their stay at Vianen. Madame de Grammont held the pen, writing sometimes her own inspiration, and sometimes what her sisters dictated. They called these prayers "Litany of our Mothers."
One of the most interesting episodes in the life of Madame de Montagu was her intimacy with the celebrated Count Stolberg, whose conversion to Catholicism seems to have been mainly attributable to the influence of her character. She came across him during her residence at Ploen and Wittmold. [{266}] He was at that time at the head of the government of the Duke of Oldenburg; and he assisted her with all his power in her charitable labors for the relief of the French emigrants. The acquaintance between them sprung up in 1796. Count Stolberg, with his wife and sister,—the only one of the three who did not afterward become Catholic,—had already begun to see something of the inconsistencies and deficiencies of Lutheranism. They were calm, thoughtful, upright souls; grave, severe, and simple, after the best type of the German character. They often conversed on and discussed religious matters among themselves; but they were very ignorant about the Catholic Church and its doctrines. Madame de Montagu taught them more about Catholicism, without speaking on the subject directly, than a whole library of controversial theology. Fragile in health, sensitive to excess, overflowing with sympathy and tenderness, tried by long and varied suffering, and strengthened, elevated, and spiritualized by the cross, without having been hardened or made impassible,—her whole character showed a force and power and greatness that was obviously not its own. Such persons have an irresistible attractiveness; and they speak with a strange silent eloquence to intelligent hearts in favor of the religion which can produce and sustain them. Madame de Montagu was not a person to introduce controversial topics; but she won upon her new friends gradually, and at last they could not help telling her so, after listening to the account they had begged her to give of her own and her sisters' sufferings. After a time their hearts strongly turned to Catholicism; but intellectual difficulties remained on the mind of Stolberg, which were not set at rest till 1800, after he had been engaged in a correspondence with M. de la Luzerne and M. Asseline, to whom Madame de Montagu and her sisters had introduced him. The French prelates did their part; but the illustrious convert must ever be considered as in truth the spiritual child of Madame de Montagu.
From All the Year Round
A FEW SATURNINE OBSERVATIONS.
Here is a gentleman at our doors, Mr. R. A. Proctor, who has written a book upon that planet Saturn, and he asks us to stroll out in his company, and have a look at the old gentleman. It is a long journey to Saturn, for his little place is nine and a half times further from the sun than ours, and his is not a little place in comparison with our own tenement, because Saturn House is seven hundred and thirty-five times bigger than Earth Lodge.
The people of Earth Lodge made Saturn's acquaintance very long ago; nobody remembers how long. Venus and Jupiter being brilliant in company, may have obtruded themselves first upon attention in the evening parties of the stars, and Mars, with his red face and his quick movement, couldn't remain long unobserved. Saturn, dull, slow, yellow-faced, might crawl over the floor of heaven like a gouty and bilious nabob, and be overlooked for a very little while, but somebody would soon ask, Who is that sad-faced fellow with the leaden complexion, who sometimes seems to be standing still or going backward?
He was the more noticeable, because [{267}] those evening parties in the sky differ from like parties on earth in one very remarkable respect as to the behavior of the company. We hear talk of dancing stars, and the music of the spheres, but, in fact, except a few, all keep their places, with groups as unchanging as those of the guests in the old fabled banquet, whom the sight of the head of Medusa turned to stone. Only they wink, as the stone guests probably could not. In and out among this company of fixtures move but a few privileged stars, as our sister the moon and our neighbors the planets. These alone thread the maze of the company of statues, dancing round their sun, who happens to be one of the fixed company, to the old tune of Sun in the middle and can't get out. Some of the planets run close, and some run in a wide round, some dance round briskly, and some slip slowly along. Once round is a year, and Saturn, dancing in a wide round outside ours, so that in each round he has about nine times as far to go, moves at a pace about three times slower than ours. His year, therefore, is some twenty-seven times longer; in fact, a year in the House of Saturn is as much as twenty-nine years five months and sixteen days in our part of the world. What, therefore, we should consider to be an old man of eighty-eight would pass with Saturn for a three-year-old.
A hundred and fifty years ago, Bishop Wilkins did not see why some of his posterity should not find out a conveyance to the moon, and, if there be inhabitants, have commerce with them. The first twenty miles, he said, is all the difficulty; and why, he asked, writing before balloons had been discovered, may we not get over that? No doubt there are difficulties. The journey, if made at the rate of a thousand miles a day, would take half a year; and there would be much trouble from the want of inns upon the road. Nevertheless, heaviness being a condition of closeness and gravitation to the earth, if one lose but the first twenty miles, that difficulty of our weight would soon begin to vanish, and a man—clear of the influence of gravitation—might presently stand as firmly in the open air as he now does upon the ground. If stand, why not go? With our weight gone from us, walking will be light exercise, cause little fatigue, and need little nourishment. As to nourishment, perhaps none may be needed, as none is needed by those creatures who, in a long sleep, withdraw themselves from the heavy wear and tear of life. "To this purpose," says Bishop Wilkins, "Mendoca reckons up divers strange relations. As that of Epimenides, who is storied to have slept seventy-five years. And another of a rustic in Germany, who, being accidentally covered with a hayrick, slept there for all autumn and the winter following, without any nourishment." Though, to be sure, the condition of a man free of all weight is imperfectly suggested by the man who had a hayrick laid atop of him. But what then? Why may not smells nourish us as we walk moonward upon space, after escape from all the friction and the sense of burden gravitation brings? Plutarch and Pliny, and divers other ancients, tell us of a nation in India that lived only upon pleasing odors; and Democritus was able for divers days together to feed himself with the mere smell of hot bread. Or, if our stomachs must be filled, may there not be truth in the old Platonic principle, that there is in some part of the world a place where men might be plentifully nourished by the air they breathe, which cannot be so likely to be true of any other place as of the ethereal air above this? We have heard of some creatures, and of the serpent, that they feed only upon one element, namely, earth. Albertus Magnus speaks of a man who lived seven weeks together upon the mere drinking of water. Rondoletius affirms that his wife did keep a fish in a glass of water without any food for three years, in which space it was constantly augmented, till at first it could [{268}] not come out of the place at which it was put in, and at length was too big for the glass itself, though that were of large capacity. So may it be with man in the ethereal air. Onions will shoot out and grow as they hang in common air. Birds of paradise, having no legs, live constantly in and upon air, laying their eggs on one another's backs, and sitting on each other while they hatch them. And, if none of these possibilities be admitted, why, we can take our provision with us. Once up the twenty miles, we could carry any quantity of it the rest of the way, for a ship-load would be lighter than a feather. Sleep, probably, with nothing to fatigue us, we should no longer require; but if we did, we cannot desire a softer bed than the air, where we may repose ourselves firmly and safely as in our chambers.