At her church in the Trastevere, the church already mentioned, takes place the ceremony of solemn vespers, in which the artists of Rome assist and take part gratuitously, out of homage to the queen of music. The antiphon “Cantantibus Organis” is magnificent in art, but unresponsive in devotion. The phantom of the unhappy Renaissance breathes in these strains, religious only in so far as they are a fabric built on sacred words. The simple solemnity of the church’s service dwells not in them, and the touching silence of the catacomb recalls the saint to our mind far more sweetly than these outbursts of paganized minstrelsy within the halls she once called her own. Still, if honor to God be meant by this concourse of the artist fraternity, let us be simple of intention, and see in it, as God does, the first-fruits of what they have offered to the God of all.
Reader, if you ever pray before the early shrine of the virgin-martyr in St. Callixtus’ chapel, remember the writer of these few words, and let our prayers go up to God together, “as a morning sacrifice” and “as incense in his sight.”
FLEURANGE.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF MRS. CRAVEN, AUTHOR OF “A SISTER’s STORY.”
PART FIRST.
THE OLD MANSION.
I.
“Young, beautiful, poor, and alone in Paris, what will become of her?”