[Footnote 183: The manner in which, during this very last Easter, the poor Polish Catholics have been treated and forced to receive schismatical communions through a system of treachery unparalleled in the annals of the church, is unfortunately not sufficiently known in England, where alone public opinion could be brought to bear on the instigators of such tyranny. The strife between Russia and Poland has ceased to be anything but a religious struggle: Russia is determined to quench Catholicism out of the land. But the cry of hundreds of exiled pastors of the flock is rising to heaven from the forests and mines of Siberia; in the holy sacrifice (offered in earthenware cups on common stones) they still plead for their people before the throne of the great Intercessor. And that cry and those prayers will be answered in God's own time and way.]
From thence our travellers went on to the orphanage managed by the "Trinitarian sisters." The house was built in the last century, by a charitable lady, who richly endowed it, and placed 200 children there; now, the government, without a shadow of right has taken the whole of the funds of the institution, and allows them barely enough to purchase bread. The superior is in despair, and has scarcely heart to go on with the work. She has diminished the number of the child and has been obliged to curtail their food, giving them neither milk nor meat except on great festivals. But for the intervention of the Duc de Montpensier, and other charitable persons, the whole establishment must long since have been given up. There are twenty four sisters. The children work and embroider beautifully, and are trained to every kind of industrial occupation. From this orphanage our party went to the Hospital for Women, managed by the sisters of the third order of St. Francis. It is one of the best hospitals in Seville. There are about 100 women, admirably kept and cared for, and a ward of old and incurable patients besides. The superior, a most motherly, loving soul, to whom every one seemed much attached, took them over every part of the building. She has a passion for cats, and beautiful "Angoras" were seen basking in the sun in every window-sill.
This hospital, like the orphanage, is a private foundation; but the government has given notice that they mean to appropriate its funds, and the poor sisters are in terror lest their supplies should cease for their sick. It is a positive satisfaction to think that the government which has dealt in this wholesale robbery of the widow and orphan is not a bit the better for it. One feels inclined to exclaim twenty times a day: "Thy money perish with thee!"
But of all the charitable institutions of Seville, the finest is the Caridad, a magnificent hospital, or rather "asilo," for poor and incurable patients, nursed and tended by the Spanish sisters of St. Vincent de Paul. It was founded in the seventeenth century, by Don Miguel de Mañara, a man eminent for his high birth and large fortune, and one of the knights of Calatrava, an order only given to people whose quarterings showed nobility for several generations. He was in his youth the Don Juan of Seville, abandoning himself to every kind of luxury and excess, although many strange warnings were sent to him from time to time, to arrest him in his headlong, downward course. On one occasion especially, he had followed a young and apparently beautiful figure through the streets and into the cathedral, where, regardless of the sanctity of the place, he insisted on her listening to his addresses. What was his horror, on turning round, in answer to his repeated solicitations, when the face behind the mask proved to be that of a skeleton! So strongly was this circumstance impressed on his mind, that he caused it afterward to be painted by Valdés, and hung in the council-room of the hospital. Another time, when returning from one of his nocturnal orgies, he lost his way, and, passing by the church of Santiago, saw, to his surprise, that the doors were open, the church lit, and a number of priests were kneeling with lighted tapers round a bier in perfect silence. He went in and asked "whose was the funeral?" The answer of one after the other was: "Don Miguel de Mañara." Thinking this a bad joke, he approached the coffin, and hastily lifted up the black pall which covered the features of the dead. To his horror he recognized himself. This event produced a complete change in his life. He resolved to abandon his vicious courses, and marry, choosing the only daughter of a noble house, as much noted for her piety as for her beauty. But God had higher designs in store for him, and, after a few years spent in the enjoyment of the purest happiness, his young wife died suddenly. In the first violence of his grief, Don Miguel thought but of escaping from the world altogether, and burying himself in a monastery. But God willed it otherwise. There was at that time, on the right bank of the Guadalquivir, a little hermitage dedicated to St. George, which was the resort of a confraternity of young men who had formed themselves into brothers of charity, and devoted themselves to the care of the sick and dying poor. Don Diego Mirafuentes was their "hermano mayor," or chief brother, and, being an old friend of Don Miguel's, invited him to stay with him, and by degrees enlisted all his sympathies in their labors of love. He desired to be enrolled in their confraternity, but his reputation was so bad that the brotherhood hesitated to admit him; and, when at last they yielded, determined to put his sincerity and humility to the test by ordering him to go out at once from door to door throughout Seville (where he was so well known) with the bodies of certain paupers, and to crave alms for their interment. Grace triumphed over all natural repugnance to such a task; and with his penitence had come that natural thirst for penance which made all things appear easy and light to bear, so that very soon he became the leader in all noble and charitable works.
Finding that an asylum or home was sadly needed in winter for the reception of the houseless poor, he purchased a large warehouse, which he converted into rooms for this purpose; and, by dint of begging, got together a few beds and necessaries, so that by the Christmas following more than two hundred sick or destitute persons were here boarded and lodged. From this humble beginning arose one of the most magnificent charitable institutions in Spain. The example of Don Miguel, his burning charity, his austere self-denial, his simple faith won all hearts. Money poured in on every side; every day fresh candidates from the highest classes pleaded for admission into the confraternity. It was necessary to draw up certain rules for their guidance, and this work was entrusted to Don Miguel, who had been unanimously elected as their superior. Nowhere did his wisdom, prudence, and zeal appear more strongly than in these regulations, which still form the constitutions of this noble foundation. Defining, first, the nature of their work the seeking out and succoring the miserable, nursing the sick, burying the dead, and attending criminals to their execution—he goes on to insist on the value of personal service, both private and public; on the humility and self-abnegation required of each brother; that each, on entering the hospital, should forget his rank, and style himself simply "servant of the poor," kissing the hand of the oldest among the sufferers, and serving them as seeing Jesus Christ in the persons of each. The notices of certain monthly meetings and church services which formed part of the rule of the community were couched in the following terms: "This notice is sent you lest you should neglect these holy exercises, which may be the last at which God will allow you to assist." Sermons and meditations on the passion of our Lord, and on the nearness of death and of eternity, formed the principal religious exercises of the confraternity; in fact, the Passion is the abiding devotion of the order.
His hospital built, and his poor comfortably housed and cared for, Miguel turned his attention to the church, which was in ruins. A letter of his, still extant, will show the difficulties which he had to overcome in this undertaking. "We had hoped," he writes, "that one of our brothers, who was rich and childless, would have given us something to begin the restoration; but he died without thinking of the church, and so vanished our golden hopes, as they always will when we put our trust in human means to accomplish God's ends. I was inclined to despond about it; when, the next morning, at eight o'clock, a poor beggar named Luis asked to speak to me. 'My wife is just dead,' he said. 'She sold chestnuts on the Plaza, and realized a little sum of eighty ducats. To bury her I have spent thirty: fifty remain; they are all I have; but I bring them to you, that you may lay the first stone of the new church. I want nothing for myself but a bit of bread, which I can always beg from door to door.'" Don Miguel refused, the beggar insisted; and so the church was begun: and the story spread, and half a million of ducats were poured into the laps of the brothers; but, as Mañara added, "the first stone was laid by God himself in the 'little all' of the poor beggar." [Footnote 184]
[Footnote 184: How often, when buying chestnuts of one of the old women in the Plaza of the Caridad, did the recollection of this story come into the mind of our traveller!]
This church was filled in 1680 with the chefs-d'oeuvre of Murillo and of Valdés Leal: an autograph letter from the great religious painter is still shown in the Sala Capitular of the hospital, asking to be admitted as a member of the confraternity. "Our Saviour as a child;" "St. John and the lamb;" "San Juan de Dios with an angel;" the "Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes;" but, above all, "Moses striking the Rock," called "La Sed," (so admirably is thirst represented in the multitudes crowding round the prophet in the wilderness,) were the magnificent offerings of the new "brother" toward the decoration of God's house and the cause of charity. Equally striking, but more painful in their choice of subjects, are the productions of Valdés, especially a "Dead Bishop," awful in its contrast of gorgeous robes with the visible work of the worms beneath, and of which Murillo said "that he could not look at it without holding his nose." Other pictures by Murillo formerly decorated these walls; but they were stolen by the French, and afterward sold to English collectors, the Duke of Sutherland and Mr. Tomline being among the purchasers. After the church, the most remarkable thing in the Caridad is the "patio," divided into two by a double marble colonnade. Here the poor patients sit out half the day, enjoying the sunshine and the flowers. On the wall is the following inscription, from the pen of Mañara himself, but which loses in the translation: "This house will last as long as God shall be feared in it, and Jesus Christ be served in the persons of his poor. Whoever enters here must leave at the door both avarice and pride."
The cloisters and passages are full of texts and pious thoughts, but all associated with the two ideas ever prominent in the founders mind—charity and death. Over what was his own cell is the following, in Spanish: "What is it that we mean when we speak of death? It is being free from the body of sin, and from the yoke of our passions: therefore, to live is a bitter death, and to die is a sweet life."