The Catholic World

A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science

Vol. XIX.

April 1874 to September 1874

The Catholic Publication House.

New York

1874

Contents

Contents.

Anglican Orders, [467], [610].

Artist's Studio, Visit to an, [273].

Assunta Howard, [765].

Cain, What Hast thou Done with thy Brother? [698].

Charles X. at Holyrood, [419].

Church Music, [654].

Coming Transit of Venus, The, [145].

Comparison of Waves with Flowers, [662].

Craven's The Veil Withdrawn, [162], [333], [454], [597], [741].

Dante Gabriel Rosetti, [263].

Deffand, Mme. du, [693].

Discussion with an Infidel, A, [433], [637], [823].

Education, Self, [198].

Farm of Muiceron, The, [39], [187], [308].

Father Louage's Philosophy, [231].

Female Religious of America, The, [362].

Glimpse of the Green Isle, A, [408], [526], [663].

Grapes and Thorns, [68], [247], [388], [480], [671].

Hello's Cain, What hast thou Done with thy Brother? [698].

Home Rule for Ireland, [54].

Infidel, A Discussion with an, [433], [637], [823].

Ireland, Home Rule for, [54].

Jesuit Martyrs of the Commune, The, [505].

Kathleen Waring, [843].

Looker-Back, A, [102].

Madame du Deffand, [693].

Matter, [578], [721].

Music, Church, [654], [785].

National, A, or State Church, [29].

Odd Stories, [137], [570], [714].

Old versus New, [140].

On the Wing, [15], [209], [347], [541], [622], [807].

Origen: Was he a Heretic? [109].

Philosophy, F. Louage's, [231].

Pius VI., [755].

Principles of Real Being, The, [1], [173], [289].

Public Worship, [322].

Relatio Itineris in Marylandiam, [537].

Rheil's The Farm of Muiceron, [39], [187], [308].

Rosetti, Dante Gabriel, [263].

Self-Education, [198].

Social Shams, [125].

Southern Flight, A, [15], [209], [347], [541], [622], [807].

Switzerland in 1873, [375], [557].

Veil Withdrawn, The, [162], [333], [454], [597], [741].

Visit to an Artist's Studio, [273].

Was Origen a Heretic? [109].

Week in Wordsworth's Haunts, A, [795].

Word for Women, A, [277].

Poetry.

Answered Prayer, [332].

Antar and Zara, [226], [303], [521], [592], [735].

Butterfly, The, [186].

Captive Bird, The, [38].

Cora, [418].

Dante's Purgatorio, [450].

Easter, [246].

Epigram on Abraham Lincoln, [387].

Epigram: The Widow's Mites, [139].

For Ever, [272].

Fragment of Early English Poetry, [197].

Hymn of the Flowers, [841].

Legend of Vallambrosa, The, [710].

Material Faith, [407].

One Corpus Christi, [536].

On Hearing the “O Salutaris Hostia!” [14].

Rock of Rest, The, [609].

Sonnet: Good Friday, [67].

There was no Room for Them at the Inn, [225].

To S. Joseph, [136].

Visions, [276].

Who Will Remember? [653].

New Publications.

Adeline de Chazal, [860].

Alexander the Great, [859].

Amelia; or, The Triumph of Piety, [858].

Archdall's Monasticon Hibernicum, [719].

Baltimore Gun Club, The, [575].

Bégin's La Sainte Ecriture et La Regle de Foi, [719].

Bellasius' Cherubini, [719].

Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, [855].

Buckley's Sermons, Lectures, etc., [286].

Castaniza's The Spiritual Conflict, [856].

Catholic Church, The, in its Relations to Human Progress, [575].

Catherine Hamilton, [432].

Catherine of Genoa, [573].

Cherubini: Memorial Illustrative of his Life, [719].

Children of Mary, [576].

Christian Cemetery in the XIXth Century, The, [573].

Church and the Empires, The, [859].

Commonitory, The, of S. Vincent of Lerins, [719].

Complete Pronouncing Gazetteer, A, [720].

Conferences on the Spiritual Life, [143].

Consoling Thoughts of S. Francis of Sales, [286].

Conway's The Sacred Anthology, [574].

Count de Montalembert's Letters to a School-fellow, [281].

Coxe's Catholics and Roman Catholics, [575].

Curtius' History of Greece, [431].

Deharbe's A Full Catechism, [718].

De Vere's Alexander the Great, [859].

Dialogues of S. Gregory, [575].

Dictionary of the English Language, A, [720].

Dr. Coxe's Claims to Apostolicity Reviewed, [281].

Dubois' Madame Agnes, [430].

Ecclesiastical Antiquities of London, [143].

Essay Contributing to a Philosophy of Literature, An, [858].

Fairplay's Notes of the Wandering Jew, [144].

Farm of Muiceron, The, [430].

Favre, B. Peter, The Life of, [142].

Francis of Sales, S., Consoling Thoughts of, [286].

Franco's Tigranes, [575].

French Prisoner in Russia, The, [431].

Full Catechism of the Catholic Religion, A, [718].

Fullerton's Rosemary, [860].

Fullerton's Short Stories, [860].

Garside's B. Margaret Mary Alacoque, [855].

Garside's The Helpers of Holy Souls, [860].

Gaume's The Christian Cemetery, [573].

Glory and Sorrow, [432].

Grapes and Thorns, [856].

Gregory, S., Dialogues of, [575].

Hedley's Who is Jesus Christ? [431].

Helpers of Holy Souls, The, [860].

History of Greece, [431].

Hodge's What is Darwinism? [429].

Holy Places, [718].

In Six Months, [281].

Lancicius' Meditation, [431].

Lasserre's The Month of Mary of Our Lady of Lourdes, [718].

Letter-Books, The, of Sir Amias Poulet, [576].

Letters to a School-fellow, [281].

Lewis' Life of S. John of the Cross, [429].

Life and Doctrine of S. Catherine of Genoa, [573].

Life of B. Peter Favre, S.J., [142].

Life of S. Thomas of Villanova, [573].

McMullen's Snatches of Song, [287].

Madame Agnes, [430].

Manning's Sin and its Consequences, [431].

May Papers, [432].

Meditations for Every Day in the year, [431].

Meditations on the Holy Eucharist, [287].

Meline's In Six Months, [281].

Monasticon Hibernicum, [719].

Montagu's On Some Popular Errors, [573].

Moriarty's The Catholic Church, etc., [575].

Morris' The Letter-Books of Sir Amias Poulet, [576].

Neptune Outward Bound, The, [860].

New Manual of the Sacred Heart, The, [431].

Noel's The Red Flag, etc., [144].

Notes of the Wandering Jew, [144].

Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes, [287].

O'Sullivan's School Hygiene, [576].

Olmstead's De l'Autorité; ou, La Philosophie du Personnalisme. Lettre au Rev. Père J. F. Hecker, etc., [717].

On Some Popular Errors, etc., [573].

Paradise of God, [288].

Personal Reminiscences, [576].

Philippe's, Brother, Meditations, [287].

Pope, The, and the Emperor, [431].

Pride of Lexington, The, [142].

Purbrick's May Papers, [432].

Ramsay's Bishop Grant, [855].

Ravignan's Conferences, [143].

Red Flag, The, etc., [144].

Report of a Committee on a New Bellevue-Hospital, [280].

Rheil's The Farm of Muiceron, [430].

Rivière's Holy Places, [718].

Rosemary, [860].

Ryan's Dr. Coxe's Claims, [281].

Sacred Anthology, The, [574].

School Hygiene, [576].

Selim, Pacha of Salonica, [432].

Seton's The Pride of Lexington, [142].

Short Stories, [860].

Sin and its Consequences, [431].

Sketches of Illustrious Soldiers, [719].

Snatches of Song, [287].

Spiritual Conflict and Conquest, [856].

State Charities Aid Association, [280].

Sweeney's The Pope and the Emperor, [431].

Sylvia, and Other Dramas, [576].

Theologia Moralis Novissimi Ecclesiæ Doctoris S. Alphonsi, in Compendium Redacta, etc., [576].

Thomas and Baldwin's Gazetteer, [720].

Thomas's Dictionary of Biography, [720].

Thomas Grant, First Bishop of Southwark, [855].

Thomas, S., of Villanova, Life of, [573].

Tigranes, [575].

True to Trust, [281].

Twelve Tales for the Young, [576].

Université Laval: Sixième Centenaire de S. Thomas d'Aquin à S. Hyacinthe et à Quebec, [281].

Verne's The Baltimore Gun Club, [575].

Virtues of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, The, [288].

What is Darwinism? [429].

Who is Jesus Christ? [431].

Wilberforce's The Church and the Empires, [859].

Wilson's Illustrious Soldiers, [719].

Wood's Ecclesiastical Antiquities, [143].

Worcester's Dictionary, [720].

The Catholic World. Vol. XIX., No. 109.—April, 1874.

The Principles Of Real Being. IV. Intrinsic Principles of Substance and Suppositum.

We have briefly shown in the preceding article that a complete being, to be a substance and a suppositum, requires no positive addition to its three intrinsic principles, but needs only to be left to itself. This is, in our opinion, an obvious truth. But as there are philosophers of high repute who do not fully share the same opinion, and, on the other hand, the notions of substance and of suppositum are both intimately connected with some theological truths which cannot be well explained without a distinct knowledge of what these two notions really imply, we deem it expedient to enter into a closer examination of the subject, that we may better understand by the light of reason, and confirm by the weight of authority, the traditional doctrine on substance and suppositum, their essential constitution, formal distinction, and supernatural separability.

Substance is very commonly described as “that which is in itself and by itself”—quod in se et per se subsistit. This definition exhibits the “predicamental” substance—that is, a substance ultimately complete, which is at the same time a suppositum also, according to Aristotle's comprehensive conception of substance. And it is for this reason that such a definition is made up of two members; of which the first—viz., “that which exists in itself”—strictly applies to substance as such; whilst the second—viz., “that which subsists by itself”—strictly refers to the suppositum as such, and exhibits substance as possessing its own natural subsistence or suppositality.

Philosophers, when speaking of things as existing in their natural state and condition, are wont to say indiscriminately that substance is a being which “exists in itself,” or a being which “subsists by itself.” [pg 002] This they can do without any danger of error so long as they keep within the bounds of pure nature; since, in the natural order, anything that exists in itself subsists by itself, and vice versa. But natural things can, by supernatural interference, be raised to a mode of existence transcending their natural condition, as we know by divine revelation; and in such a case, the mode of substance and the mode of the suppositum must be, and accordingly are, most carefully distinguished from one another. Thus we know by faith that in Christ our Lord there is the true substance of a human body and of a human soul; and nevertheless we know that his human nature does not subsist by itself, but by the Divine Person of the Word. The obvious inference is that a nature which exists in itself does not necessarily subsist by itself; in other terms, the formality of substance and the formality of the suppositum are entirely distinct from one another, and the one can remain without the other. “What makes substance to be essentially a substance,” as Suarez remarks, “is not its subsisting actually by itself, but its having an essence to which subsistence is naturally due—viz., an essence which is of itself a sufficient principle of subsistence.”[1] From this we learn that the words per se esse, or “to subsist by itself,” are inserted in the definition of substance, not to show what substance as such is, but only to point out what is naturally due to substance—viz., what accompanies it in its natural mode of existing. Substance as such would therefore be sufficiently characterized by the words, “that which is in itself.”

Let us now inquire what is the legitimate meaning of these last words. A thing is said to exist in itself which not only has in itself what is needed for its own sustentation, but is moreover actually unsustained by anything lying under it, while it is itself the first subject of all its appurtenances. Such is the legitimate and traditional meaning of the words, “to exist in itself.” Hence substance may be legitimately defined as “a being which by its intrinsic constitution has no need of being supported by a subject, and which is not actually supported.”

A living author, however, in a valuable work to which I have no access at this moment, and from which, therefore, I do not make any quotation verbatim, asserts that substance “up to the present day” has always been understood to mean “a thing which by its intrinsic constitution has no need of being supported by a subject,” without taking into consideration its actual mode of existing. We shall presently show that this assertion is not true, and that this pretended definition is essentially incomplete. Meanwhile, let us observe that the precise difference between our definition and this new one consists in this only: that whilst the first presents substance as having no actual support, the second presents it as having no need of actual support, whether it be supported, at least supernaturally, or not. This difference, of course, would amount to nothing, and might be entirely overlooked, if things could not exist but in their natural condition; for anything which is in no need of support will naturally exist unsupported. [pg 003] But as philosophy is the handmaid of theology, we must remember that natural things can be raised to a supernatural state, and thus change their mode of existing; and in such a case the difference between the two said definitions may amount to much; because, if a thing which is naturally in no need of support be actually supported, then, according to the first definition, that thing thus actually supported would cease to exist as a substance, whilst, according to the second definition, it would still continue to exist as a substance, as it would still have no need of support. Hence the importance of ascertaining which of the two definitions we are authorized to hold according to the traditional doctrine of philosophers and theologians.

And first, Aristotle, at the head of the peripatetic school which held its sway for centuries, defines substance to be ultimum subjectum—“the last subject”—that is, the undermost subject; by which he unquestionably means that substance is something which not only lies underneath (subjacet), but is moreover the “last” thing which lies underneath. In other terms, substance, according to Aristotle, must have nothing lying under it, and, while supporting all its appurtenances, is itself actually unsupported. Hence it is, that quantity, for instance, though lying under some figure and supporting it, is no substance at all; for, though it is a subject, it is not the undermost.

This definition of the Greek philosopher has been universally accepted and made use of by Christian as well as pagan philosophers of all times, though many of them called the first subject what Aristotle had called the last—a change which does not affect the meaning of the definition, since what is last in the analytic is first in the synthetic process. It is clear, therefore, that both Aristotle and his followers do not define substance simply as that which has no need of support, but as that which is actually unsupported.

S. John Damascene, in the fourth chapter of his Dialectics, defines substance to be “that which is in itself in such a manner as not to exist in anything else”;[2] and after a few lines, “Substance,” he says, “is that which has its existence in itself, and not in anything else”;[3] and again in another chapter of the same work, “Substance,” he says, “is anything which subsists by itself and has its own being, not in any other thing, but in itself.”[4]

According to these definitions, which are identical, substance is a thing which not only is able to support itself, but actually supports itself to the exclusion of any other distinct supporter. This is quite manifest; for, if substance, in the opinion of this great doctor and philosopher, had been only a thing having no need of support, how could he require so pointedly and explicitly the actual mode of existing in itself and not in anything else?

S. Ambrose admits a notion of substance quite identical with that of Aristotle and of all the ancients, and employs it even in speaking of God himself. “God,” says he, “inasmuch as he remains in himself, and does not subsist by extrinsic support, is called a substance.”[5] [pg 004] God, of course, does not fall under the predicament of substance, as philosophers know; and yet the substantiality even of his nature, according to this holy doctor, implies the actual absence of extrinsic sustentation.[6]

S. Thomas, as we might expect, teaches the very same doctrine. “Substance,” says he, “is a thing whose quiddity requires to exist unsupported by anything else”—cui convenit esse non in alio;[7] and he adds that this formality (esse non in alio) is a mere negation; which is evident. And in another place, “Substance,” says he, “does not differ from being by any difference which would imply a new nature superadded to the being itself; but the name of substance is given to a thing in order to express its special mode of existing.”[8] Two things, then, or two constituents, are needed, according to S. Thomas, that we may have a substance: a physical being and a special mode of existing. The physical being is a positive reality, a nature perfectly constituted, both materially and formally, whilst the special mode is a mere negation; but, though a mere negation, is that which causes the thing to be a substance, as the name of substance is given to the thing in order to express its special mode of existing. Therefore the thing itself apart from such a special mode cannot be a substance, any more than a six-pence apart from its rotundity can be a circle.

Toletus includes in his definition of substance both the thing and the special mode of existing. He says: “The first substance is a sensible nature which is not predicated of any subject nor exists in any subject.”[9]

Suarez says even more explicitly, “It is not necessary for the essence of substance that it should have its own subsistence, but that it should have the mode of substance.”[10] We cannot, then, overlook, and much less discard, this special mode without destroying the essential notion of substance as such. Now, he who defines substance to be simply a thing which has no need of support overlooks and discards this special mode; hence he destroys the essential notion of substance as such.

Balmes, in his Fundamental Philosophy, says: “In the notion of substance, two other notions are implied—to wit, that of permanence and that of non-inherence. Non-inherence is the true formal constituent of substance, and is a negation; it is grounded, however, on something positive—that is, on the aptitude of the thing to exist in itself without the need of being supported by another.”[11] This passage establishes very clearly the common doctrine that the aptitude of a thing to exist without being supported is not the formal constituent of substance, but only the ground on which the proper formal [pg 005] constituent of substance (non-inherence) is conceived to be possible.

Ferraris, a modern Italian Thomist, in his course of philosophy, says explicitly that substance is destroyed if its “perseity”—per se esse—be taken away.[12] The word “perseity” stands here for the “special mode” of S. Thomas, the “mode of substance” of Suarez, the “non-inherence” of Balmes, etc.

Liberatore has the following: “Going back to the notion of substance, we may consider three things which are implied in it: the first, that it exists, not in any manner whatever, but in itself; the second, that it consists of a determinate reality or essence, from which its determinate active powers arise; the third, that it is in possession of itself—sui juris—with regard to its manner of existing. Of these three things, the first exhibits properly and precisely the notion of substance; the second presents the concept of nature; the third expresses the notion of suppositum.”[13]

The preceding quotations, to which others might be added, are more than sufficient, in our opinion, to refute the assertion that substance at all times was considered simply as a thing having no need of support; for we have seen that the most prominent philosophers and theologians of all times uniformly consider the actual negation of support as an essential principle of substance. Sanseverino, a very learned modern philosopher of the Thomistic school, treating in his Logic of the predicament of substance, establishes the fact that, according to the common teaching of the scholastics, “not the essence of the thing, but its mode of existing, formally constitutes the predicament of substance.” Although that special mode of existing is not implied in the essential concept of the thing, inasmuch as it is a thing, yet, according to the doctrine of the schoolmen, the same special mode is implied, as a formal constituent, in the essential concept of the same thing, inasmuch as it falls under the predicament of substance; so that, in the constitution of substance, the essence of the thing is to be ranked as its material, and the special mode of existing as its formal, principle. And the learned writer sums up all this doctrine in one general conclusion of Henry of Ghent, which runs thus: “Every predicament arises out of two constituents, of which one is the thing which is to be put under the predicament, the other is its mode of being which determines the predicament, and by these same constituents are the predicaments distinguished from one another”[14]—a doctrine explicitly taught by S. Thomas himself.[15] And here let us reflect that, if all the schoolmen, as Sanseverino with the authority of his philosophical erudition declares, affirm that the mode of substance, the non-inherence, the negation of support, is an essential constituent of substance as such, we are free to conclude that to affirm the contrary is to give a false notion of substance; [pg 006] while to say that philosophers have at all times, or at any time, taught the contrary, is to give a very false statement of facts.

This may suffice to convince the student that the essential formality of substance as such is the negation of actual support. And now let us inquire what is the formal constituent of suppositum. Suppositum and substance, though not identical, are similarly constituted. The positive entity of both is the same, and the difference between them arises entirely from the different character of their negative formality, as we are going to explain. For the essence or nature of every created being is naturally accompanied by two negations, of which neither is essential to it, while either of them, absolutely speaking, can be made to disappear. The first is the negation of anything underlying as a supporter and acting the part of a subject; and it is to this negation, as we have proved, that any complete nature formally owes its name and rank of substance. The second is the negation of anything overlying, so to say, and possessing itself of the created being in such a manner as to endue it with an additional complement and a new subsistence; and it is to this negation that a complete nature formally owes its name and rank of suppositum. The complete nature, or the thing in question, when considered apart from these two negations, does not, therefore, convey the idea either of substance or of suppositum, but exhibits a mere potency of being either or both; as it is evident that there cannot be a substance without the formal constituent of substance, nor a suppositum without the formal constituent of suppositum.

This doctrine, which is so simple and clear, and which fully explains the true meaning of those phrases, “it exists in itself,” and “it subsists by itself,” can be confirmed by what S. Thomas teaches on the subject. And since we have already said enough in regard to the mode of substance, we shall give only what he says concerning subsistence or suppositality. That the words per se—“by itself”—which strictly exhibit the formality of the suppositum, are the expression of a mere negation, is admitted by S. Thomas in a passage above mentioned. This would lead us immediately to conclude that the formal constituent of suppositum, in the judgment of the holy doctor, is a mere negation. But we may find a more perspicuous proof of this in those passages where he explains how the human nature in Christ subsists without the human personality. The absence of the human personality in Christ does not depend, says he, “on the absence of anything pertaining to the perfection of the human nature—but on the addition of something that ranks above the human nature, to wit, on the union of the human nature with a divine Person.”[16] And again: “The divine Person, by his union, prevented the human nature from having its own personality.”[17] It is manifest from these two passages that, according to S. Thomas, the absence of the human personality in Christ is to be accounted for by the addition of something above the human nature, and not by the suppression or subtraction [pg 007] of any positive entity belonging to the human nature. If, then, the absence of the human personality entails no absence of positive reality, it is obvious that the human personality is not a positive reality, but a real negation. Such is S. Thomas's doctrine, endorsed by Scotus and many others.

There are, however, some philosophers and theologians, Suarez among others, who consider personality as something positive; and we must briefly discuss the grounds of their opinion.

They say that, if the human personality is nothing positive, human person will be the same reality as human nature, and therefore the one will not be really distinct from the other; and if so, the one cannot be assumed without the other. How, then, can we say that the Eternal Word assumed the human nature without the human person?

We reply that all negation which belongs to a real being is a real negation, and constitutes a real mode of being. Accordingly, although the human personality is only a negation, the nature existing under that negation really differs from itself existing without that negation, no less than a body at rest really differs from itself in movement, although rest is only a negation of movement. And this suffices to show that the objection is wholly grounded on the false supposition that nothing is real which is not positive.

They affirm that subsistence or suppositality gives the last complement to the nature, as it terminates it and makes it subsistent. Hence subsistence, as they infer, must add something positive to the nature; which it cannot do unless it be a positive reality.

We deny the assumption altogether. Subsistence, in fact, gives no complement whatever to the nature, but, on the contrary, presupposes the complete nature, which, when simply left to itself, cannot but be subsistent by itself, and therefore is said to have its own subsistence. It is not subsistence that causes the thing to subsist; it is the thing which abides by itself that, in consequence of this same abiding by itself, has subsistence, and is called subsistent; just in the same manner as it is not rest that causes the body to be at rest, but the concrete resting; as rest is evidently the consequence of the resting. Hence this second objection, too, is based on a false assumption.

Another of their reasons is the following: In God, personality is a positive reality, therefore in creatures also; for the created person is a participation of divine person, which is a positive reality.

We do not see how this assertion can be true. In God there are three Persons, but neither of them is participated or communicated to creatures. Indeed, creatures bear in themselves a faint imitation of the three divine Persons, inasmuch as they involve three intrinsic principles in their constitution, as we have explained in the preceding article; but these three principles are not three persons. Yet, if divine personality were in any way communicable to creatures, creatures would subsist in three persons; for how could the personality of the Father be communicated in any degree without the personality of the Son and of the Holy Ghost being communicated in the same degree? Personality in God is a relative entity, and cannot be conceived without its correlative; and consequently, if the human personality [pg 008] were a participation of divine personality, it would be impossible for man to be a single person; whence it appears that human personality is not a communication of divine personality, and is not even analogous to it. What we call a human person is nothing but a human individual nature which is sui juris—that is, not possessed by a superior being, but left to itself and free to dispose of its acts. It therefore imitates, not the divine Persons, but the divine absolute Being, inasmuch as it is independent in disposing of everything according to his will. Now, independence, even in God, implies the negation or absence of any necessary connection or conjunction with anything distinct from the divine nature. It is but reasonable, then, to hold that the human nature also exists free and independent by the very absence or negation of personal union with a higher being. We remark, however, that such a negation in God is a negation of imperfection, while in creatures an analogous negation is a negation of a higher perfection, since it is the negation of their union with a more perfect nature.

It has been argued, also, that to be a person is better than not to be a person; whence it would follow that personality is a perfection. On the other hand, negations are not perfections; hence personality cannot be a negation.

To this we answer that the proposition, “to be a person is better than not to be a person,” can be understood in two different manners. It may mean that to have a nature which is capable of personality, and is naturally personal, is better than to have a nature incapable of personality; and in this sense the proposition is true, for it is certainly better to have the nature of man than the nature of an ox. This, however, would not show that personality is a positive formality. But the same proposition might be taken to mean that to have one's natural personality is better than to exist without it, in consequence of hypostatic union with a higher being; and in this sense, which is the sense of the objection, the proposition is evidently false. For the whole perfection of the human person is the perfection of its nature; so that human personality, instead of being a new perfection, is only an exponent of the perfection and dignity of human nature, which is such that the same nature can naturally guide itself and control its actions. We therefore concede that human personality is a formality of a perfect nature, but we cannot admit that it is a perfection of itself. If human personality were a perfection of human nature, we would be compelled to say that human nature is less perfect in Christ than in all other men; for, though the Eternal Word assumed the whole human nature, he did not assume that pretended perfection, human personality. But S. Paul assures us that Christ's human nature “is like ours in all things, except sin.” We cannot therefore suppose that the human nature is less perfect in him than in other men; and this leads us to the conclusion that human personality is not a positive perfection.

Some have pretended that the mystery of the Incarnation would become quite inexplicable if the human person were nothing more than the human nature left to itself. Their reason is that by the Incarnation the human nature is separated from the human person; which they deem to be impossible if the [pg 009] person is nothing else than the nature alone.

This is, however, a manifest paralogism. If, in fact, the human person is the human nature left to itself, the nature assumed by the Word will certainly not be a human person, since it is clear that the nature thus assumed is not left to itself. This suffices to show the inconsistency of the objection. Let us add that it is not entirely correct to say that by the Incarnation the human nature is separated from the human person; it would be more correct to say that the human nature is prevented from having that natural subsistence which would make it a human person.

Lastly, it has been said that, if the human nature which has been assumed by the Eternal Word was entirely complete, the union of the Word with it could not be intimate and substantial. Hence, according to this reasoning, there must have been something wanting in the human nature assumed, which something has been supplied by the hypostatic union.

We cannot but repeat, with S. Thomas, that the human nature assumed by the Word is absolutely perfect, and therefore exempt from any deficiency which could have been supplied by the hypostatic union. And as for the reason alleged, we say that it is grounded on a false supposition. The union of the Word with the human nature is not a conspiration of the divine and the human into oneness of substance, for the thing would be impossible; and therefore it is not wholly correct to say that the union is substantial. The proper term is hypostatic—that is, personal; for, in fact, the human nature conspires with the divine Word into oneness of person, the two natures or substances remaining entirely distinct. Now, the oneness of person is not obtained by supplying any deficiency in the human nature, but by adding, as S. Thomas teaches, to the perfect human nature that which is above it—that is, by the Word taking possession of it in his own person.

Such are the principal reasons advanced by those who consider human personality, and suppositality in general, as a positive mode. We think we have answered them sufficiently.

We cannot better conclude this controversy than by inviting the same philosophers to take cognizance of the following argument. The mode of suppositum, as well as the mode of substance, is not an accidental but a substantial mode, as all agree, and every one must admit. Now, no substantial mode can be positive; and therefore neither the mode of suppositum nor the mode of substance can be positive. The minor of this syllogism can be proved thus: Positive modes are nothing but positive actualities or affections of being; and unless they are mere relative denominations (which is not the case with substantial modes), they must result from the positive reception of some act in a real subject. This is an obvious truth, for nothing is actual but by some act; and all acts which are not essential to the first constitution of the being are received in the being already constituted as in a real subject. And since all acts thus received are accidental, hence all the positive modes intrinsic to the being must be accidental modes; and no substantial mode can be positive. Therefore whatever is positive in the suppositum and in the substance belongs to the nature of the being [pg 010] which has the mode of suppositum or of substance, whilst the modes themselves are mere negations.

This truth, however, should not be misunderstood. When we say that “to be in itself” or “to be by itself” is a mere negation, we do not refer to the verb “to be”; we only refer to the appendage “in itself” or “by itself.” To be is positive, but belongs to the nature as such, as it is the essential complement of all being, whether substance and suppositum or not. The negation consists, in the one case, in not being sustained by an underlying supporter, and, in the other, in not being taken possession of by an overlying superior being. Indeed, when we unite the verb to be with either of the two negations, we unite the positive with the negative. But the positive comes in as determinable, while the negative comes in as determinant. Hence the resultant determination or formality is only the actuality of a negation. Now, the actuality of a negation, though it is real inasmuch as it is the affection of a positive being, yet it is negative; for all actuality is denominated by its formal principle, and such a principle, in our case, is a negation.

A writer in a Catholic periodical has ventured to say that if the formality of substance (and the same would also apply to the suppositum) is negative, then substance “will consist merely in a negation.” It is surprising that a philosopher has not seen the absurdity of such a conclusion. Substance is not to be confounded with its formality. There are many positive things which involve a negation. In an empty pocket, emptiness is a negation; ignorance in the ignorant is a negation; and limit in all things finite is a negation. Yet no one will say that an empty pocket, an ignorant pupil, or a finite being “consist merely in a negation”; and therefore, although the formality of substance is a negation, it does not follow that substance is a mere negation.

It now remains for us to show that neither of the two aforesaid negations is essential to any created being, and that a created being can therefore, absolutely speaking, exist, at least supernaturally, without either of them. Our first proof is drawn from the fact that neither the one nor the other negation is reckoned among the essential constituents of created beings. All complete nature, by common admission, consists “of essence and existence”—ex essentia et esse—the existence being the formal complement of the essence, and the essence itself involving, as its principles, an act with its corresponding term, as the readers of our last article already know. Accordingly, there is nothing essential in a complete being besides its act, its term, and its complement; and therefore neither the mode of substance nor the mode of suppositum is essential to a complete created being.

Our second proof is drawn from the notion of existence. “To exist strictly and simply,” says Suarez, “means only to have a formal entity in the order of nature; and therefore things existing are equally susceptible of the mode of being which consists in leaning on a supporter, and of the opposite mode which excludes all support.”[18] This is a tangible truth; for although a complete being possesses in its [pg 011] own constitution what is required for its own existence, yet it has nothing in its constitution which implies the necessity of existing in itself and by itself. It can indeed, and will naturally, be in itself without anything underlying as a supporter, since it sufficiently supports itself on its own term; but it contains nothing that would make impossible the sub-introduction of a supernatural supporter. And, again, a complete being can subsist by itself without further completion, since it is sufficiently complete by its formal complement; but it contains nothing which would exclude the possibility of its acquiring a further completion and a supernatural subsistence.

A third proof might be drawn from the fact that our own bodies exist indeed in themselves, but do not subsist by themselves, as their material nature is taken possession of by a spiritual being—the soul—and subsists by its subsistence. From this fact, which is alluded to in S. Athanasius' Symbol as an image of the assumption of the human nature by the Word, we might show that suppositality can, even naturally, be supplanted by the union of a lower with a higher nature. But we will not develop this proof, as it requires too long an explanation and many new considerations, which cannot be embodied in the present article.

Last, but not least, it is evident that all negations which are not included in the essence of a thing can be supplanted by the position of their contrary. Hence the mode of substance and the mode of suppositum, which are negations, and are not included in the essence of created things, can be supplanted by the intervention of a supernatural power.

As we must here keep within the bounds of philosophy, we abstain from discussing other cognate questions which can be safely answered only by a direct appeal to dogmatic definitions and theological arguments. We may, however, state that the old scholastic theologians and the fathers of the church, both Greek and Latin, admitted that the mode of substance, as well as the mode of suppositum, can be made to disappear from the thing to which it naturally belongs in the manner above explained. For their common doctrine on the mysteries of the Incarnation and of the Holy Eucharist is, that the two mysteries are analogous to one another,[19] and admit of a parallel mode of reasoning for their explanation. The analogy more or less explicitly pointed out by them involves the admission of a principle which may be expressed in the following words: “As the whole human nature can exist in Christ without the mode of human person, which is excluded [pg 012] by the hypostatic union of the Word with it, so can the whole sensible nature (species) of bread exist in the Holy Eucharist without its mode of substance, which is excluded by the substantive presence of Christ's body under it.” This traditional doctrine has been almost ignored in these latter centuries by those who were anxious to explain everything according to a special system of natural philosophy, and who little by little formed a new theory of the sacramental species; but the physical system on which these theologians took their stand having given way, and their new theory having lost its plausibility, we are of opinion that instead of seeking for new explanations, as some do, it is more prudent to fall back on tradition, and take into consideration the authorized teachings of our old polemic writers, of those especially who so valiantly fought against Berengarius and other heretics in behalf of the Eucharistic dogma.

Before we conclude, we wish to make a few remarks on some ambiguous expressions which may be a source of error in speaking of substance and of suppositum. We have said that Aristotle includes in his first category the suppositum as well as the substance, and that for this reason the words, “by itself,” “to support,” “to subsist,” have been promiscuously applied to the substance as well as to the suppositum. This has been done not only in philosophy, but even in theology. Thus we read in good authors that the divine Person of the Word “supports” or “sustains” Christ's human nature. Yet these words, as also “sustentation,” when applied to subsistence, must have a meaning which they have not when applied to substance; and it is plain that to employ the same words in both cases may give rise to serious mistakes. Some authors, besides overlooking the distinction to be made between “existing in itself”—esse in se—and “subsisting by itself”—per se subsistere—confound also with one another their opposites—viz., “to exist in something else”—esse in alio—and “to subsist by something else”—per aliud subsistere. Suarez, for instance, though usually very accurate in his expressions, says that “the mode of existing by itself and without dependence on any supporter has for its opposite to exist in something else;”[20] which is not correct, for the divinity of Christ exists in his humanity, and nevertheless does not depend on it as a supporter. It would be more correct to say that the mode of subsisting by itself has for its opposite to subsist by something else. And it is evident that to subsist by something else is not the same as to exist in it.

To get rid of all such ambiguous phrases, we observe that the word “sustentation,” as compared with any created nature, can have three different meanings, according as we apply it to the act, the term, or the complement of the created being.

When sustentation is considered in connection with the act or the formal principle of a being, it means positive conservation; for all contingent being comes out of nothing by the positive production of an act, and needs to be kept out of nothing by the positive conservation of the same act, as we know from special metaphysics.

When sustentation is considered in connection with the intrinsic term of a being, it means underlying; and in this sense we say that substance sustains its accidents. This meaning of the word “sustentation” is most conformable to its etymology; and thus, if anything is lying under any reality in that manner in which substance lies under its accidents, we shall say very properly that it sustains that reality. In this sense, sustentation and support may be taken as synonymous.

When sustentation is considered in connection with the formal complement of a being, it means overlying in such a manner as to superinduce a new complement and a new subsistence. Such is the manner in which the Person of the Word sustains Christ's humanity. This kind of sustentation implies hypostatic union and super-completion.

We might, therefore, divide sustentation into conservative, substantive, and hypostatic. The first is usually called conservation; the second might keep the name of sustentation; whilst the third might perhaps be fitly styled personalization, as this word seems adequately to express the nature of personal sustentation.

As to the phrases, “to be in itself” and “to be by itself,” we have seen that their distinction is most important. It may be useful to add that, even in God, to be in himself and to be by himself are to be distinguished by a distinction of reason indeed, but which is grounded on a real foundation. God is essentially a se, in se, and per se—that is, of himself, in himself, and by himself. These three attributes are absolute, and belong to the divine nature as an absolute reality; but as in this absolute reality there are intrinsic relations of personalities, we may reflect that, in this relative order, to be of himself can be considered as owing especially to God the Father, who does not proceed from any other person, but is himself the first principle of their procession; to be in himself can be considered as having a special reference to God the Son, in whom the whole entity of the Father is found as in the substantial term of his eternal generation; and, lastly, to be by himself can be explained by reference to the Holy Ghost, who is the essential complement of the Blessed Trinity, as that is said to be by itself which is ultimately complete in its own entity.

Accordingly, God, as existing essentially of himself—a se—has no need or capability of conservation; as existing essentially in himself—in se—he has no need or capability of sustentation; and as existing essentially by himself—per se—he has no need or capability of super-completion. But with contingent beings the case is quite different. And first, contingent beings are not “of themselves,” as they are from God; and for this reason they have an essential need of conservation, as we have stated, so far as their essential act is concerned. Secondly, although they naturally exist “in themselves,” yet this their mode of existing is not the result of an essential necessity, but only of a natural ordination, which God can supersede. They exist in themselves when the term of their own essence is their undermost support; for then the whole essence supports itself in a natural manner, and is a natural substance. Thirdly, although created beings naturally “subsist by themselves,” yet this manner of existing is not the consequence [pg 014] of an essential necessity, but only of a natural ordination, which can be superseded by the Creator. They subsist by themselves when the formal complement of their essence is their ultimate complement; for then the whole being is left to itself as a natural suppositum.

These explanations will be of some assistance, we hope, to the philosophical student in forming a correct judgment as to the formal constituents of substance and suppositum, and as to the manner of speaking about them with proper discrimination. We wish we had handled the subject in a better style and a less monotonous phraseology; but it was our duty to aim at preciseness rather than ornament. If there is any part of philosophy in which precision is more necessary than in another, it is that which treats of the principles of things; and if we succeed in presenting such principles in their true light, we shall deem it a sufficient apology for the dryness of our philosophical style.

To Be Continued.

On Hearing The “O Salutaris Hostia.”[21]

Song of the soul, whose clearly ringing rhythm

Throbs through the sacred pile,

And lengthened echoes swell thy solemn anthem

Past chancel, vault, and aisle,

An occult influence through thy numbers stealing,

A strange, mysterious spell,

Wakes in the longing heart a wondrous feeling,

A joy no tongue can tell;

A dreamy peace, a sense of unseen glory,

Wells through thy thrilling praise,

And calls a fairy vision up before me,

A dream of brighter days.

I hear the seraphs' sweet-tongued voices pleading,

The cherubim's accord,

And see the sun-robed shadows softly thridding

The gardens of the Lord.

I linger on the sight, and growing weary

Of earthly dross and sin,

Sadly, yet hoping, like the wistful peri,

I long to enter in!

The rolling echoes peal

Whilst glorious above

The face of God smiles on the storied altar,

Well pleased, and rich with love.

And through the living air and slumbrous music,

And through the chancel broad,

The Heart of Jesus glows in mystic splendor,

And lights us unto God!

On The Wing: A Southern Flight.

What induced us to pick our way on foot from the railway carriage to the Hôtel du Parc et Bordeaux, near eleven o'clock at night, on our arrival at Lyons, I cannot possibly conceive.

It was the 3d of January that we performed this unnecessary penance; and the only explanation I can give is that we were all rather dazed by the long journey from Paris, and had forgotten that of course there was waiting at the station an omnibus to carry on the passengers. We had been silent and sleepy for some hours, when the bright lights twinkling up and down the heights of the city of Lyons, and across the bridges, and, corruscating at the station, had roused us all up, and made us exclaim at the fairy sight. I had seen it again and again; but I always look out eagerly for the first peep at that tossed-about town after night has closed in, and I know none more brilliant and picturesque. I thought we all looked rather rueful as we entered the hotel, and that it suddenly struck us we had come on foot, and might therefore look too economically inclined to suit the views of the buxom lady who advanced to meet us. I saw her cast rather a doubtful eye to the rear; but her face brightened when she found we had at least been able to afford a porter to carry such luggage as we might want for one night. We had no valid reason to give in reply to her anxious enquiries as to why we had not availed ourselves of the hotel omnibus; which very soon afterwards came rattling into the yard, quite empty, the guard and coachman viewing us indignantly. Madame, finding we had nothing to say for ourselves, compassionately furnished each with a candle, and allowed us to gather together our scattered wits in sleep.

The “we” consisted of brother Frank, sister Mary, and I; also of Ann, our maid. I suppose I must describe the party. I wish I could draw them instead. Frank is dressed all over in a gray tweed. I sometimes tell him he looks like a gray parrot; but that is absurd, because he is so extremely taciturn, which gray parrots are not. He makes a capital courier. He always knows what we poor women shall want, and how much we can do, which is a great comfort to me; because, as Mary is delicate, and we are travelling on her account, I should be so worried if Frank insisted on doing fourteen hours of railroad per diem. He is such a good fellow that he would never wish us to overtask ourselves. But then he is so strong that I know it must seem very extraordinary to him that we should be such poor creatures, and get tired out so soon. I sometimes wonder what has made Frank so tender and gentle, and so considerate. Perhaps it is the being so much with Mary. She makes everybody gentle who comes [pg 016] near her. Somehow she seems to stroke everybody's fur the right way, no matter how ruffled they were before. Poor Mary! she has for many years been a widow, after a brief and unhappy married life, and having lost both her children, a girl and a boy. She is the eldest of us three, but has a marvellous knack of looking the youngest and the brightest. She has been very beautiful, and is so still in many ways. Now I come! But how shall I describe myself? The more I think of it, the more impossible I find it. As I am the relater of our adventures, I suppose my readers will form for themselves some idea of what I am like. So I will only say that my name is Jane, and that I am an old maid, but that I do not feel old. As to my looks, I really do not know what to say. I am not always altogether dissatisfied with them; but then, on the other hand, when I am inclined to judge them leniently, the unlucky feeling comes over me that it is solely owing to my hat, or the way my hair is done, or some fortuitous circumstance upon which I cannot reckon as a permanency, and which may be gone before any one else has had the time to observe it. So that though I have my lucky moments, I have little or no capital to go on. Now, Mary, with her large, soft eyes, her exquisite mouth, and beautiful teeth, attracts strangers wherever she goes; although she is always insisting upon it she is quite an old woman. And now comes Ann. She is about my age, but does not at all consider herself an old maid, and therefore always contradicts me when I speak of myself in such disparaging terms. I generally say something in reply about the observation being six for me and half a dozen for herself. But this she does not like. Ann is a very good girl, and a capital maid. She has pretty, fuzzy black hair, and bright though small black eyes; she has a very white skin, and a neat figure. But she does not like travelling, and is especially disgusted when the scenery is very bold and magnificent. Mountains are her abhorrence, distant views her antipathy. This is far from being our first journey; and whenever we have found ourselves in the railway carriage from Dover to London Bridge, Ann invariably remarks how lovely the country is as we dash through the flat green fields and monotonous cherry gardens of simple Kent. And her admiration culminates when we pass any gentlemen's seats. The absence of striking features, the unbroken, unaccidental horizon, the universal green, and the level lines, give Ann a sensation of peace and repose; while I, who have something of an artist's soul, am feeling how very difficult it would be to get an effective subject or a “nice bit of color” out of the platitudes of dear England's quiet homesteads.

We were off the next day by daylight, I feeling like a swallow flying south; and very soon we perceived in the clear air a warmer glow than any to be had the other side of Lyons. Even the desert region of La Crau seemed full of charms to me. The dim, gray expanse of thick-lying stones that Hercules persuaded by his prayers the angry Jove to shower down on the Ligurians, broken only by thin tufts of mint and scant rosemary, themselves also of a gray green, and leading on over thousands of acres to the blue distant hills that were blushing into rosy hues when we crossed the desert, were not without delightful “points,” which I could [pg 017] have transferred to my sketch-book had time allowed me. “La Belle Provence” is a very journalière beauty, and requires a bright sun to clothe her in sparkling jewels, and to dye her dress in blue and violet and rose-madder, to be worthy of the name that centuries have agreed to give her. When there are no lights, there is apt to be an air of desolation and barrenness. Those hills, arrayed in many tints, give back the lights from rocky and unproductive cliffs; but down in the valleys, with the exception of La Crau, the culture is rich and varied. The first stunted olive-trees as we approached Marseilles were welcome less on their own account—for they are miserable specimens—than for the association of ideas connected with their pallid leaves, and because they gave promise of the large ones that would gladden our eyes further on.

The station of Hyères is a few miles from the town. We had ordered a carriage to meet us; and all the way Mary was looking out for the large umbrella pine that she remembered so well years ago, when there was no railway so far south. It had been the great landmark on the road from Hyères to Toulon. We measured our rides and walks in that direction by the great pine. There it stood, the same as ever, and brought back all Hyères and the two winters spent there, besides other shorter visits, to our memory with one rush. All else was changed. New houses had sprung up on all sides. Mme. Susanne's old tumble-down hotel, where Mary had stopped for a few days on her wedding-tour, is changed into a magnificent building with caryatides supporting the façade like a Genoese palace; and the palms on La Place des Palmiers, which I had known in their babyhood, have grown to a size that would not disgrace Arabia. The hotel we went to stands in what used to be Le Jardin Frassinet. It had been full of orange-trees when we first knew it, as had all the other gardens in the place. But one very severe winter having greatly injured the trees, the inhabitants have given up the cultivation of oranges, and have planted peach-trees instead, much to the detriment of the beauty of Hyères. I found Mary, the day after our arrival, gazing wistfully at a group of tall cypress and one palm-tree that had marked the boundary of the gardens belonging to the house where she lived with her children the second time she came here. We missed her soon afterwards, and refrained from following her, for we knew she wanted to visit alone the scenes of some joys and many sorrows long ago passed away—so far as anything is really past which is worthy the name of joy or sorrow. She came back with her hands full of the little, dark, mottled arum and its lance-head leaves that grow so profusely on the hills and by the roadside. They are of a dingy-purple hue, shaded off into white; and we exclaimed against them as she put them in a glass, alleging that they had an unpleasant odor. “I know they have,” she answered; “but their quaint, twisted shape, and blossoms like the head of a snake, are so full of memories that I rather like the smell than otherwise.” After that we let her enjoy her arums alone, for we knew how much that meant. Doubtless she had been wandering about, recalling visions of the past: the dead—the lost, but not dead, that worse separation!—and all the tangled maze of the years that are gone. Mary's [pg 018] bouquet of arums was redeemed by a handful of the sweet white alyssum; and these two flowers, with a few of the bold-faced, unflinching daisies of Provence, so unlike our modest northern flowers, were all the wild blossoms we could hope to find in January.

We could not leave Hyères without performing a pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Consolation, the old church on a hill overlooking the coast. The ascent is marked by the Way of the Cross rudely painted in small niches of masonry by the side of the road. When we were last here, there was a daily Mass said by a hermit-priest. He had some years previously tried his vocation at the Carmelites', and had not succeeded. But the impulse to seek utter solitude was too strong to be resisted; and for a long time he had lived in the surrounding mountains, a veritable hermit, subsisting upon the poorest fare, which was brought to him at regular intervals by the peasants. Whether he had erected a hut for himself, or lived in a cave, I never learnt; but when the bishop of the diocese became aware of the fact, he thought it to be regretted that a priest should not celebrate Mass, and proposed to him that he should live in one of the small rooms of the deserted convent which is attached to the Church of Our Lady of Consolation, take care of the church, and say Mass. This offer he gladly accepted; and there he resided for some time. We used to go sometimes, on a bright spring morning, to attend his Mass. Our breakfast was packed in a basket, and hung to the pommel of my donkey's saddle, to be eaten afterwards on the top of the low, semi-circular wall which encloses a piece of ground in front of the church. I always looked with a special interest, not altogether unmingled with curiosity, at the slight, bent figure of the priest, who could not be more than forty years of age, as he emerged from the door of the sacristy, and, with eyes so cast down that they seemed closed, passed by us to the altar. Who shall say what had called up that deep thirst for utter solitude and silence which had driven him to so extreme a life? Was it some calamity, or some crime, or only—as is far more probable—that strange instinct which is implanted in the nature of some men to flee their kind, and be alone with themselves—an instinct which possibly many have felt stirring within them at odd moments, but which, when touched by divine grace, grows into a wonderful and exceptional vocation; once more common, in the early days of Christianity, when the whole world lay in pagan luxury and gilded vice, and which even our subduing, taming, commonplace civilization fails in some rare cases to smother in the soul?

What became of the hermit of Our Lady of Consolation I could never learn. Perhaps the solitude seemed incomplete when ladies could attend his Mass, and picnic afterwards on his premises. At any rate, he has been gone for many years; and Mass is only said on certain feasts, when the peasantry come in crowds, and bring flowers and offerings to the Madonna, as represented by a peculiarly ugly and dark-colored wooden statue, which has grown to be very precious to those who have obtained special favors in answer to their prayers offered here. Many years ago, Mary, in her Protestant days, had brought a lace veil, the gift of a Russian prince, who was leaving [pg 019] Hyères with a sick wife, and who wanted prayers for their safe journey; thereby producing a curious admixture of heretical, schismatical, and Catholic feeling which no doubt had each their separate value and acceptance before God, being all offered in simplicity and good faith; for it was with no unwilling hands that, mounted on one of the prie-dieux in the church, she had arranged the veil over the statue, and then knelt to say a prayer for the prince's intention.

The church is full of votive offerings. The walls are entirely covered from roof to floor. As many of them have been put up by sailors, they more or less have reference to the dangers of the deep. There is a model of a ship hanging up near the entrance, probably because its larger copy was saved from wreck. The pictures representing recovery from sickness or preservation from peril are often extremely grotesque, and might provoke a smile were it not that they carry one's thoughts direct to the faith and gratitude they represent.

I had often wandered through the deserted rooms and cells of the old convent. There is no glass left in some of the windows; but the weather is kept out by the external wooden shutters which are universal in the south. There is a lovely view from all sides. In front, the sea, with Les Isles d'Or (the Golden Islands) hemming it in as if it were a large lake, save to the left, where it opens out into the wide ocean. These islands form some of those originally called Les Larins, which name included the group before the coast of Cannes. And in most of them the first religious houses for men were established by S. Honorius, though only one island, that on which he and all his monks were martyred by the Saracens, bears his name. Les Isles d'Or, or Les Isles d'Hyères, as they are also called, are now but sparsely inhabited. Years ago, “when we were young,” we had landed on one of these islands, where stands a fort, and a few soldiers are stationed. There are also a half-dozen of cottages, inhabited by fishermen and shepherds. We were a joyous band, and had sailed from the mainland in the admiral's cutter, the French fleet riding at anchor off our coast. As we scrambled up the sandy beach, and pushed our way through the tangled undergrowth of myrtle, heath, cytisus, and leutisca, we found ourselves face to face with the solitary sentinel pacing in front of the blind walls of the low but solid-looking fort. His face broke into smiles, and, with a saucy gleam in his dark eyes, he said to the foremost gentlemen of our party, “Comment, Messieurs! vous nous en menez toutes ces belles dames? Mais vous allez révolutionner notre pauvre curé.”[22] We could find no remains of monastic houses on the islands; but there are traces of walls close to the sea, on the mainland, which are said to be the remains of a convent of nuns who met with a severe punishment for an ill-timed jest. Possibly they were not all that as nuns they might have been. At any rate, they seem to have found their life occasionally dull; and when the longing for a little excitement became irrepressible, the abbess would toll the great bell of the convent, which by rights was never used save to ring the Hours and the Angelus, or to summon the neighbors for aid when any of the frequent panics about the landing of [pg 020] the marauding Saracens threatened the safety of the Sisters. The jest had been played too often, and when at length the oft-expected Saracens really came, the poor nuns rang their bell in vain. No one appeared to the rescue, and the Saracens had it all their own way, and the convent was destroyed.

The sea must have encroached since those days, for the waters wash over the scanty ruins, and I have picked my way along the foundations with little salt lakes lying between. Far to the left lie Les Salines, where they evaporize the sea-water in shallow square spaces, and thus obtain a coarse gray salt. They say that sometimes flamingoes may be shot among this marshy land; but I could never obtain one, though I know it abounds in wild fowl of every description. The deep orange-colored boughs of the large willow-trees give a peculiar charm to the distant landscape in the winter when the leaves are off; and close upon the edge of the shore is a fine wood of umbrella pines, whereof three giants, standing apart from the rest, had been great favorites of ours. We had looked out eagerly on our arrival for our three pines. Alas! one was missing. Years ago these three solitary, magnificent trees had had a strange fascination for me. I wanted to find my way to where they stood; but it was beyond the marshes, and near the salines. There was no direct road, and no one could tell me how to get there; not even the young French naval officers, who used to come often and spend the evening with us, and who must have landed not so very far from where they stood. The craving to see my three pines face to face grew, however, too strong to be resisted; and so one day I set off on donkey-back, taking Ann with me, and resolved that I would not return till I had accomplished my end. Great were our difficulties. We had to thread our way along narrow raised paths through the marshes, just wide enough for our donkeys to tread; and as, of course, we dared not leave these paths, which did not wind, but turned at right angles, we as often seemed to be going away from the pines as the reverse. At one moment we were pursued by a couple of savage dogs, who tore after us from the open yard of a farm-house, and who were so very angry at our intrusion that escape along our narrow way, and with our leisurely steeds, seemed questionable. At length I found myself at the base of a high sand-bank, on which the yellow sea-thistle, with its glaucous leaves, found a scanty subsistence and a doubtful root-hold. This I had to scramble up, while for every ten inches I made in advance I slid back six. At last I was at my long-desired goal, and my three giants were really magnificent to behold. It was on my fourth visit to Hyères, with intervals of years between, that I accomplished this feat, and I had always looked at my pines the first thing in the morning, when the strip of sea between the mainland and the isles was still lying gray in the early light. Then, again, I watched for the red glow of the setting sun on their smooth stems, painted, as it were, in burnt sienna. Again, on moonlit nights I had looked for their broad, deep black crests, falling like an ink-spot on the silver sea. And now at last, when they had almost become to me like some mystery, meaning more than met the eye, I could throw my arms [pg 021] about them, and lay my hot cheek on their noble trunks.

It was not till then I knew how tired I was. I could not delay long with my old friends. I do not remember anything about the getting home, save that the dogs who had so guarded my garden of the Hesperides, and stood between me and the fulfilment of my desire, now that I had accomplished the feat, let me return in silence. I was very weary; but I was thoroughly contented and satisfied. And now one of my old friends was laid low! How he came to his end I know not. But I felt that he had died, not that he had been cut down; and for a moment a strange, weird melancholy stole over me at finding I had outlived a noble tree. It seemed as if I must be very old to have done that, and that it was hardly natural. I remember I asked myself then, at the very time of my culte of the pine-trees, and I have repeated the question since, whether there was not in my feelings something of that dim instinct which binds man in an obscure affinity with all nature, down to its lower strata and its primeval developments. As man contains something of all in his own being, so must he have a sympathy with all; for, as has been wisely said, man is a universe in himself, with another universe to wait on him. Most people have a special attraction to some race of animals. Some have a love for, and a power over, the horse and the dog greater than others; and this not always nor only as the results of habit, but as a natural gift. Certain flowers have a peculiar attraction for many people, in preference to others equal in beauty and perfume. All these preferences may point to hidden laws of affinity, of which we know very little more than the bare fact that all in creation finds its portion in each man, and that in his own single self he is chemical, vegetable, animal, and spiritual. I am afraid to say any more, lest my readers should think I believe we are in general descended from the little open-mouthed sea-squirts called ascidians, but that I claim for myself in particular some higher origin in the shape of a conifer great-grandfather. I assure them it is nothing of the kind. With regard to my sympathy with animals, of course, being an old maid, I ought to prefer cats and gray parrots. On the contrary, I prefer dogs, and Frank is the only gray parrot I ever thought of loving.

Before leaving Hyères, I made a sketch from the top of the hill (which in my younger days, for want of knowing better, I used to call the mountain) on which stand the picturesque ruins of the old château which formerly belonged to the French branch of the huge family of Fox; who, varying their name, if not their nature, according to the sky under which they flourished, had taken root in England, France, and Germany in the old feudal times. They possessed certainly a magnificent abode at Hyères, and probably kept all the neighborhood in awe. It is a glorious situation. It overlooks a long stretch of the road to Toulon as that winds through the fertile, well-cultivated valley; and to the right rises the rocky summit of Le Coudon, the point of land that first strikes the sailor's eye as he leaves the coast of Africa, and which on exceptionally clear days is dimly visible even from the coast itself. Next to it comes Le Phare Pharon, a lower mountain crowned by a fort. I know few views which [pg 022] combine such an exquisite variety of form and color as this. The small cork-trees and the stunted oaks, equally beautiful, whether wearing their russet leaves through the brief winter, or almost matching the cork-trees in dark-green foliage; the olives, here of a very respectable size, with their gnarled trunks and fantastic shapes; and then the patches of vivid-green corn, winter peas, and the green artichokes; the undulation of the land, assuming every shade from deep violet to light red—make altogether one of the loveliest views I know anywhere. But then, I am bound to acknowledge that there are not many such in the neighborhood of our much-loved Hyères, and that, on the whole, the simple little place has far less beauty to recommend it than many of the towns along the Riviera. Its great merit for invalids arises from the air being a good deal softer than at most of the sea-coast resorts of the sick. Mary could sit out for hours in the open air at Hyères, when at Cannes, and even at San Remo, she could only have driven in a close carriage; for, in spite of the brilliant sunshine in those places, the air is apt to be too exciting both for irritable lungs and susceptible nerves. One reason—probably the principal reason—for this is that Hyères is three miles from the sea, and more in the mountains than are the towns of the Riviera generally.

We had a lovely afternoon journey from Hyères to Cannes; passing numerous little bays and creeks where the blue waters lay in deep repose, or fringed with tiny wavelets that but kissed the shingly shore, and died in a gleam of light. As you looked down on them from the railway-carriage, you felt you might have seen a mermaid combing her sea-green hair, or a cupid astride a dolphin, as quite an expected vision. The intense blue sky and deeper blue sea, the various-tinted rocks, and perhaps a solitary pine hanging over, and near by a group of the same, with their dense crowns of ever-murmuring boughs, through which the evening air sings like the hum of winged insects, were each so full of harmonious and yet gorgeous color that they leave on the mind the impression of a Greek idyl, full of serene beauty—mere beauty, it may be—but intense, placid, and eternal. There are scenes in nature that are like the forms in Greek art. They are one; and they are typical. No wide view, albeit glorious, can produce this effect, however much it may appeal to the imagination. But a rock-bound cove on the Mediterranean, with its sparse vegetation and its depth of color, is as suggestive of thoughts beyond itself as is the pure grace of a Greek statue. It belongs to another world than ours, and to a region of thought rarely lighted on in these times, and then by a few only. When I question myself of the “why,” I am at a loss to answer. Perhaps it lies in the fact that, to produce this abstract effect on the mind, the objects in nature must be few, simple, and perfectly beautiful of their kind. Then they recall Greek art, in which there is no multiplicity, no overlaying, but which represents as absolutely a pure idea as it is possible for art to do. It is without subtlety, as it is without crowding. It can be felt better than described, for the feeling is too deep for words. Nothing in English scenery, no accidental combination of beauty, has ever brought the Greek geist before my mind. Never for a second, amid [pg 023] the birchen groves and flower-fringed lanes of my own land, had I thought of old Greece and the old Greek feeling. Pantheism would not be the natural religion of our northern skies. Never had I so strongly felt the tie between nature and art, and, as a necessary sequence, between nature and Grecian thought, till I had wandered on the pale sands by the calm blue waters of the tideless sea. It is like a floating essence, too intangible for words. If I could express it, the expression would perforce be brief and veiled. I would sing my idyl to a three-stringed lute, or paint my white nymph against a whiter sky.

It was essential to Mary not to live close to the sea, therefore we engaged apartments at Cannes in one of the hotels situated among the hills, and full a mile and a half from the coast. It so happened that nearly all the people whom we met at the table-d'hôte were English like ourselves, or rather British, for some came from the Emerald Isle; and amongst these a family of three charming girls, full of the spirit and humor of the race. They had with them an elderly maid, who had been their nurse, and whose quaint sayings afforded us much amusement while we were there. She had joined them only just before we arrived, bringing out the third sister, who had shown symptoms of delicacy like the second, and both were under the supreme care of the elder sister. Mrs. O'Brien had managed her journey in foreign parts very cleverly, though making every inch of the way under protest at the heathenish customs and abominable practices of these “foreigners,” as she deigned to call the French in their own land.

It had been with the greatest difficulty that she had, on leaving Ireland, been prevented from taking with her a large boxful of household stores, which, as she expressed it, would be such a comfort to “those poor darlints, just starvin' in foreign parts, with nothing but kickshaws and gimcracks to keep the life in them.” In spite of all the remonstrances of her master, she had actually succeeded in so far cheating the custom-house that she had smuggled “jist a nice little hand of pork, salted down at home,” among the young ladies' linen. Norah flew into our room, amid fits of laughter, to show it to us, and to consult upon how we could possibly get it boiled. We could not insult the hotel by asking that it might appear at the table-d'hôte; and a hand of pork was rather a peculiar dish for three young ladies to keep up in their bedroom for private eating. On the other hand, Mrs. O'Brien would never recover it if her eleemosynary offering were discarded. It ended in my explaining the state of the case, under seal of secrecy, to the landlady; and then we actually held a supernumerary feast in our drawing-room, at a late hour, all to show Mrs. O'Brien that her kindness was appreciated. We did not sleep particularly well that night, and the rest was made into sandwiches and eaten on our next excursion up the mountains.

Mary and Mrs. O'Brien became great friends; for Mary's sympathetic nature and marvellous control of countenance at once drew the old lady out, and prevented her discovering how intensely amused her listener was. Amongst other topics, she was very eloquent upon the subject of the Prince of Wales' recovery from his serious illness, [pg 024] declaring how she, “as is a nurse myself, know well what a fine healthy man he must have been born ever to have got over the like of that. And now, sure, we must pray that nothing may happen to the blessed, darlint prince; for if he were to be taken, the country would be just ruined, and nothing left us but the constitution!”

She would talk by the hour of her “darlint” young ladies, sometimes blaming their conduct, sometimes extolling them to the skies. Occasionally, to tease her, they would pretend to walk lame, and tell her that was all the fashion, and was called the Alexandra limp. “Och! now, honeys, you, with straight limbs as God has made you, mocking at the darlint princess, as may be isn't lame at all. If I saw you mocking at me, as is no princess, but is blind, and me groping round the table, don't you think, honeys, as I should feel it?” Then turning to Mary: “Ah! your honor, they was always as wild as a litter o' pigs on a windy day, good luck to them. I've seen them all come into the world, bless their hearts, one after the other, pretty nigh as fast as nature would let them. And a nice handful I've had wid them, too, bringing the most of them up by hand like a weaned calf. Children's stomachs is just like sponges. But if you overdo the binding, may be you'll give them obdurate bowels.” Mary bore even this without a smile; but we all laughed together when the morning after her arrival she found the nice little boy Celestin, who brought in the lamp and the basket of wood, and helped in the house generally, and who could not have been above fifteen, innocently aiding Marie, the housemaid, in making the beds. She could not understand a word of French, and of course he knew no English; but she seized him by the collar, and ejected him violently from the room, exclaiming, “Get out o' that, you young varmint!” and protesting that he should never touch one of her “darlints' sheets in this heathenish land, where they made no difference between a man and a woman, but put the men to make the beds and the women to tend the cattle.” The end of it was that she took the bed-making into her own hands, though she never got reconciled to the mattresses stuffed with the outer sheaths of the Indian corn, or the pillows with wool. “That pillow is as hard as a dog's head, and won't do for my young lady; and the other's as limp as a dead cat,” she remarked aloud to herself one day that Elina was going to bed early with a bad headache.

By degrees we became rather well acquainted with the other visitors at the hotel, which arose, no doubt, from the fact of our all being fellow-countrymen. For a long time Mary was the only married woman of the party; and with the exception of the three merry Irish girls, the ladies were all old maids like myself. Frank found Cannes rather slow, as he expressed it, and spent the greater part of the six weeks we were there in making excursions in the neighborhood, stopping away three or four days at a time. It was long before we got thoroughly comfortable with any of our fellow-sojourners in a strange land. In the first place, we were the only Catholics, and most of the others were very decided Protestants, and so rather shunned us at first. Some of them especially objected to Mary, and seemed to think that her good looks and her accurate French pronunciation were [pg 025] rather offensive than otherwise. It made no sort of difference to her, and I am sure she never even found it out. One day, as I was coming down-stairs, Miss Marygold was crossing the wide passage which went from the entrance to the dining-room door. As I passed her, she tossed her head, and said, “I have just met your sister, Miss Jane, going out for a walk, and looking about five-and-twenty. I must say I think it must be very inconvenient not to show one's age better than that.” “At any rate,” said I, “it is an inconvenience, Miss Marygold, that many would be happy to share with her.” And I swept along the wide passage lined with oleanders, myrtle, and cypress in large pots, sat down to the piano in the public salon, and dashed through the overture of “Robert le Diable” with much brilliancy of execution. I afterwards found out that both the Miss Marygolds strongly objected to a little red bow which Mary was apt to fasten in her hair when we went down to dinner. Their own coiffures resembled either a doll's apron stuck on the top of her head, or a small “dress-improver” of stiff lace. I suppose they thought there was some virtue in wearing what was at once ugly and ridiculous.

No one, on first arriving at Cannes, can form any idea of the exquisite beauty that will be within their easy reach as soon as they get beyond the long, straight street parallel with the flat coast. The town itself has no pretensions to beauty, except from the picturesque, fortified old church, standing high above the town, and whose mouldering walls assume so many different tints against the dark-violet background of the Estrelle; that beautiful line of mountains that runs far out into the sea, and forms the most prominent object of the scenery. The market is held down the one long street, where it opens on the small garden and esplanade by the shore. This is planted with magnificent plane-trees, and nothing can be more picturesque than the groups of peasant-women, with their bright-colored kerchiefs crossed over their shoulders, and their thick woollen skirts, sitting each at her little booth of cakes, or sweets, or household utensils, and especially the charming little crocks, pots, and pans of native manufacture. At a short distance from Cannes, at Valory, there is a very fine establishment of pottery works, well worthy of a visit. The native clay produces the most beautiful colors; and as the numerous visitors at Cannes have taken pains to supply the manufactory with very good models taken from the antique and from some of the best specimens of Minton and Staffordshire china, the result is most satisfactory. We found that they are in the habit of sending very large crates of garden-vases, besides smaller and more delicate articles, all over Europe. The road along the coast towards Antibes is bordered by beautiful villas with gardens running down towards the sea, and generally laid out in terraces. Even now, in the month of January, they were full of roses, geraniums, ageratum, and violets in bloom. Part of this picturesque spot is called California, on account of the bright yellow blossom of the mimosa, which, when fully out, is truly “a dropping well of gold.” The light, feathery flower covers the whole tree, and there is scarcely a leaf to be seen. The beautiful eucalyptus, or blue gum-tree, is [pg 026] much cultivated here. The peculiar variety of its foliage, the lower and older leaves being almost heart-shaped, and the upper ones often a foot in length, and hardly two inches wide, makes it very remarkable. The lower leaves are of a blue green, shading off into deep bronze, and the new shoots are almost yellow. It is quite recently that this beautiful tree has been transplanted from Australia to Europe; but as it makes twenty feet in a year, there are already magnificent specimens. It has a highly aromatic gum; and it is supposed that in time it will greatly supersede the use of quinine, having medicinal properties which resemble that invaluable remedy, while it will be less expensive. When Mary is suffering from one of her neuralgic headaches, nothing relieves her so much as steeping the long leaves of the eucalyptus in hot water, and holding her head over the perfumed steam. A branch hung near the bed is also, they say, conducive to sleep.

The beauties of the position of Cannes are far outdone by that of the little town of Cannet, distant about three miles, and built among the mountains, and where the air is softer. Nothing can exceed the loveliness of the view from the Place, shaded by splendid plane-trees, of the half-deserted little town, or the same view seen from the terrace of the one Pension, where we found every preparation for receiving guests, but which was locked up and entirely empty. You overlook numerous orange-gardens of the most vivid green, the starry blossoms and golden fruit gleaming amid the foliage. Then, far down the valley, and clothing an amphitheatre of hills and mountains, are groves of olives, with their soft velvet folds, mass overlapping mass of tender, dim green, shimmering all over with silver touches, as the air stirred the branches, and turned upwards the inner lining of the leaves—after which all other foliage is apt to look crude and hard. The blue sea lies beyond, and the sharp, purple outline of the Estrelle; while to the right the mountains fade off further and further, ending in snow-capt heights.

From amid the dense, soft shadows of the valley rise the old tower of the church and the picturesque cupolas of the strange Moorish villa where poor Rachel, the famous French tragedian, breathed her last, and which is fast falling to decay. It is no longer let to strangers; but we made our way through the tangled gardens and wilderness of orange-trees. Everything looked tumbling to pieces. The house itself is in ruin; and being painted in bright colors externally, and chiefly built of wood, at least in the ornamental parts, it looks like the cast-off decorations of a dismal theatre. Two white pigeons were picking up the scattered grain in the little, untidy court. A few mutilated plaster figures of gods and goddesses near the entrance added to the tawdry and unreal aspect of the whole. It was as if the poor actress had selected it to die in for its scenic effect, and so had closed her life on a mute and deserted stage. I fancied I could see her lithe form and her sinuous glide (for she never seemed to walk like a common mortal) along the veranda. I could recall the intense passion of her matchless voice as she thrilled you through with the words:

“Je ne me verrai point préférer de rivale.

Enfin, tous tes conseils ne sont plus de saison:

Sers ma fureur, Œnone, et non pas ma raison.”

And then she came here, alone, to die! As I turned away from the place, so beautiful even in its desolation, I wondered if the rumor might be true which was prevalent at the time—that her maid, a French Catholic, seeing her poor mistress in a state of coma just before her death, had dared to baptize her—and thus give us a large-hearted hope for the woman and the Jewess.

We drove through the narrow, sharp-angled streets of the little town of Cannet to the church in the valley. The streets were so narrow, and the turnings were so sharp, that it always seemed that our horses were in one street while we and the carriage were in another. Three little children, with bright, dark eyes and tangled hair, hung over a wall, each with a rose in its mouth. They looked as if they would drop the flowers, and themselves after, into our laps. The church was very clean and well cared for; full of tawdry decorations, but fresh and neat, as if all were often renewed by loving hearts, if not by cultivated taste. M. le Curé is very old, and has not sufficient help for the wants of so large a parish; and there are no Sisters to teach the children. They seem a simple people; and if only there were a habitable house, what pleasure might be found in living in this earthly paradise, and working amongst them!

It is said that the Englishman carries Bass' pale ale and Warren's blacking with him where-ever he goes, to say nothing of Harvey's sauce. At any rate, he has established his own special amusements at Cannes, with no apparent consciousness of their incongruity with the scene around them. Of course we took our share, though denouncing and protesting all the way at the horrors of pigeon-shooting. We drove over sandy lanes close to the shore, through groups of pine-trees on either side; a glorious panorama of mountains and snow-clad peaks beyond, the dark-blue sea, and the purple Estrelle. There was a vulgar booth and a shed, and some rickety benches like those at a country fair. We sat down, facing three boxes, in which the innocent birds were concealed until the moment—unknown, of course, to the sportsman himself—when, bursting open, the pigeons spread their wings at liberty, to be perchance instantly killed by a clever shot. I acknowledge that I tried not to look, and that my heart gave a spasmodic leap every time I heard the clap of the lid of the box and then the sharp shot. I looked at the pine-trees and the far-off mountains, with the many-tinted, undulating middle distances, and tried to forget the coarseness and cruelty of the scene I was supposed to have come to as an amusement. The nuts and the ginger-bread were wanting, and Aunt Sally was distinguished by her absence; but there was nevertheless a milder reflection of everything that might have graced this same kind of scene in England; and so the English gentleman of the XIXth century, brought by fortuitous circumstances into a new and exquisitely beautiful land, was doing his best to make himself “at home,” and to inspire the natives and foreigners with his own tastes. I am fond of sport, though I am but an old maid; but somehow this does not strike me as being sport in the true acceptation of the word. And I sat wondering how long it will be before [pg 028] my own brave countrymen, who are already addicted to battues, will build one-storied, round summer-houses in their woods, painted inside with arabesques, Cupids, Venus, and Diana, and having six or eight small windows all round it; then, seated in a large gilt fauteuil, with a bottle of choice Chambertin by his side, he will languidly pop his short gun at the thrushes or the finches as they flutter from bough to bough before him; and so, at the end of a couple of hours, saunter home with a bagful of “game,” wearied with the exertions of la chasse au tire, like the gentlemen in France in the times of La Régence.

The Duc de P. was there, and the Duc de C., and the Duke of H., and actually one of the men—what may they be called?—who preside over the pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham, and who had been got over to ensure everything being en règle. What more could any one want? I wondered to myself whether the extraordinary beauty and sublime majesty of the surrounding scene had anything to do with enhancing the pleasure of the pigeon-shooters; whether, in short, the successful slaughter of the poor birds was rendered more enjoyable by the fact of its taking place under a sky and in a spot fraught with exquisite beauty; noble and serene, vast and varied.

And if not, why did they not stop among the cockney flats of Hurlingham? When all was over and we returned home, I actually found myself semi-conscious of a sort of pride that the best shot, in this decidedly trying proof of skill, was an Englishman! So much for the inconsistency of human, especially of female, nature.

We are in the land of perfumes. Acres of roses, violets, and other scented flowers are cultivated solely for the perfume manufactories at Grasse, a few miles from Cannes. Of course, this is not the time of year to benefit by this exceptional form of farming; but in the spring it must be lovely.

We are preparing to leave Cannes, and, as I write these lines, Frank silently lays a sheet of paper by my side. And I see—a Sonnet.

The Olive-Tree.

That dusky tree grows in a noted place—

A garden on the rocky mountain's side,

O'erlooking (in the evening of its pride)

The doomèd city of the chosen race.

There, as the swathing evening mists efface

Temple and fane, in sunset glory dyed,

And round the city walls the shadows glide,

Beneath the dappled gloom our hearts may trace

The ling'ring footsteps of the Holy One.

Our Master walks alone; and who can know

All the deep myst'ry of his awful woe,

As on the earth sinks God's eternal Son?

But ever shall the gray-green olive-tree

Recall the image of his agony.

A National Or State Church.

Fifty-three peers protested against the disestablishment of the Protestant Church in Ireland, “because it is impossible to place a church disestablished and disendowed, and bound together only by the tie of a voluntary association, on a footing of equality with the perfect organization of the Church of Rome.” Mr. Disraeli had previously said the same thing in the House of Commons: “The discipline, order, and government of the Roman Catholic Church are not voluntary. They are the creation of the simple will of a sovereign pontiff” (if he means Jesus Christ, the phrase is Catholic), “and do not depend at all on the voluntary principle.... I maintain that as long as his Holiness the Pope possesses Rome, the Roman Catholic religion, in whatever country it is found, is an establishment.” In fact, there is a great deal of truth in these remarks. How, indeed, can undisciplined guerrillas contend against a well-trained army of veterans? How can a number of voluntary associations, like so many insurance or stock companies, liable at any moment to disband, with no cohesive power, compete with a grand organization whose charter is divine, whose officers are divinely appointed, and whose laws bind in conscience in spite of adverse imperial, royal, or republican legislation? The peers were right; Mr. Disraeli is partially right. No sect or combination of sects can for any length of time, in a fair field, compete with the Catholic Church. Hence the cry of the sects in this country for state aid. The Catholic Church never asked for it except as a matter of justice or restitution. Whenever it was bestowed on her institutions, it was because they deserved it. If much was given to her, it was because her hierarchy or her religious orders, inspired by divine zeal, had founded and organized charitable institutions while the sects were asleep, lacking even in sufficient philanthropy, not to say charity, to provide for the wants of their own suffering members. The Catholic Church built and organized her asylums, schools, and other institutions, tried to support them, and did bravely support them, as she still does in this country, by the voluntary contributions of generous Christians, before the state gave anything. The sects did very little. They were too indolent, too deficient in vitality, to do much. They begged from the state. They threw the burden on the state; so that, whereas in Catholic times there were no state poor-houses, state asylums, or state charities, now they swarm. Protestantism is too cold a system to warm the hearts of men into life-giving charity; so it depends, except in rare cases, on the state for the support of the poor and the orphans. The money is taken from the public treasury for the support of schools, asylums, and kindred institutions.[23] Such being [pg 030] the case, who can blame Catholics for receiving a portion of their own taxes to help their own institutions, mainly supported on the voluntary system? Are not the frequenters of Catholic schools and the inmates of Catholic institutions the children and citizens of the state as well as others? Will the state educate or support as cheaply as the church has done, or make as good citizens as she makes? If Catholic charitable institutions are abolished, if Catholic schools are broken up, how much will it annually cost the state for the building of new institutions and for their maintenance? Are the Sisters of Charity as safe custodians of the morality of orphans as the spinsters and political hirelings of the state institutions? Are teachers and matrons who work primarily from a religious motive as apt to discharge their duty faithfully as those who labor primarily for the “consideration” attached to their services? Well do the gentlemen who attack the Catholic Church know how futile it is for any sect to strive against her unless backed up by state aid; and hence, perhaps, the cry which has recently resounded throughout our country for a national or state church—a national Protestant church in opposition to the never-ceasing progress of Catholicity.

The late “Evangelical Alliance” publicly endorsed the cry of a national church. The Rev. W. H. Fremantle, M.A., of London, an ecclesiastical functionary of the national church of England, in “a manner,” as the report in the Tribune has it, “quick and energetic, and, as he warmed to his subject, eloquent to a degree which elicited great applause,” on October 9, 1873, at a meeting of the “Alliance,” urged on his hearers the advantages and necessity of having a national church, “the true ruling elders” of which should be “our statesmen, our judges, and our officers who bear the supreme mandate of the whole Christian community.” With laconic pith, he said: “The Christian nation is a church.” The applause elicited by his remarks was no doubt due to the fact that his auditors remembered how admirably the Christian “statesmen” in Congress and our late Vice-President, some of our “judges,” our “Evangelical” bankers and merchants, represented the interests of the Alliance in their respective avocations! The Rev. W. J. Menzies, of Edinburgh, emissary of the national church of Scotland, seconded and approved the doctrines of his Episcopalian brother. In vain did a sturdy American, the Hon. J. L. M. Curry, LL.D., of Richmond, try to defend the American system and the principles of our Constitution against these well-fed and well-paid gentlemen. The rubicund foreigners of the church establishments of Denmark, Sweden, and Germany came to the rescue of their English and Scottish brethren. They had preached to the “Alliance” in favor of the tithes, taxes, and intolerance of their own establishments, and were not willing to allow Mr. Curry to oppose them. The very president of the “Alliance,” himself an American, was obliged to coerce the honorable gentleman [pg 031] into silence. His voice was drowned in an “evangelical” chorus of national churchmen. We are no longer, then, astonished to read that the Rev. Dr. Stoughton, of England, was greeted in a Protestant Sunday-school in this city with the anthem of “God save the Queen.” It was not a religious hymn, mark it well, but an anthem in praise of the head of a church establishment, who is more than pope, for she is impeccable as well as infallible, according to the axiom of English law that “the king can do no wrong.” No longer are we surprised to learn that the head of another national church, the would-be pope-Emperor of Germany, gave the “Evangelical Council” his blessing; that several of our highest magistrates, unless they are belied, have been secretly leagued against the Catholic Church in favor of a state Protestantism. Newspapers of reputed rank have been continually striving to create a Protestant public spirit in the state, and thus, as it were, to prepare the way for an absolute union of church and state on a Protestant basis. Indeed, we have a national, or at least a state, church already; although it has so far been administered to us only in homœopathic doses. Have we not a state school system with a Protestant Bible on its rostrum? Have we not “Juvenile Asylums,” “Soldiers' and Sailors' Homes,” state charitable institutions all controlled on the Protestant system, conducted to a great extent by Protestant clergymen? Are not the Bibles used in them Protestant? Are not the school-books essentially sectarian in which such expressions as “gor-bellied monks,” the “glorious Reformation,” the “great and saintly Martin Luther,” are frequent? Have we not a Protestant Indian policy and a Protestant “Freedman's Bureau”?

It is true you cannot call the colorless Protestantism of these institutions peculiarly Methodist, or peculiarly Episcopalian, or peculiarly Baptist; but it is nevertheless Protestantism. We have a name for it. The late “Evangelical Alliance” gives it to us. The word “Evangelicalism” will express the Protestantism of our incipient national and state churches. We defy any impartial visitor to the so-called “non-sectarian” state institutions to deny that their chief male officers, superintendents, guardians, and teachers have been chosen on account of their “Evangelicalism.” Every one that knows the inner working of our state institutions for charitable purposes is aware that they are mere pastures in which Evangelical ministers are retired on salaries of thousands a year taken from the state pocket.

The desire for having a state or national church is growing stronger. German imperialism, or pagan Roman Cæsarism revived, has given an impetus to it in Europe, in order to create a foreign public opinion to sanction its own persecutions of the Catholic Church at home. Switzerland has been moved by the pull of the German wire. Perhaps the same influence is at work in our republic. Or is it that a certain class of the Protestant clergy, dreading starvation if left depending on the bounty of flocks that are losing their Christianity and its generous impulses, envious of the portly frames and plethoric purses of the foreigners of the European establishments who lately visited our shores and banqueted at our expense, long to draw nutriment from the bosom of an established mother, rather than risk death from marasmus [pg 032] at the breasts of a dry and barren voluntary system? If this be the cause of the growing “Evangelicalism” of the sects, of their effort to combine for the purpose of giving us a national church, let us devoutly pray that the next delegates from abroad will be as spare in person and purse as our own country parsons. For the sake of our republican institutions, may his divine and imperial majesty of Germany and her gracious ecclesiastical majesty of England send hither no more of their rotund and jocund functionaries, to make the hearts of our Evangelical clergymen yearn after the flesh-pots of Egypt!

Or can it be that the venerable heads of our “Evangelical” mayors, governors, and their compeers, returning in their senility, as is not uncommon with decaying brains, to their early loves, are striving to restore the state establishments of the old Puritan colonies? The recollection that all the original colonies except Catholic Maryland had a state church has not yet died out among these “Evangelical” ancients. They remember that so late even as 1793 an attempt was made even in New York to saddle an Episcopalian establishment on the back of our state, and this, too, at a time when the members of the Holland Reformed Churches were in the proportion of fifteen to one Church-of-Englander! Perhaps Governor Dix has an agreeable recollection of this beauteous trait in the character of his sect. Perhaps he remembers how well she had battened on the flesh and blood of the Irish people for centuries, though her votaries were not one-twentieth part of the Irish population. In 1643, the “orthodox” Episcopalian colony of Virginia expelled two New England Puritan ministers; while the New England Puritans, by way of “Evangelical” retaliation, sent back to Old England two professors of Anglicanism. The poor Quakers were driven out by all the colonies except Catholic Maryland. Indeed, even our modern “Evangelicals” had not the courtesy to invite them to their “Alliance.” In Virginia, the man who refused to have his child baptized was fined two thousand pounds of tobacco. In the colonies of Massachusetts and New Haven, for a time only church members could exercise the full powers of citizenship. The legislatures of the New England colonies convoked even the church synods. These were truly “Evangelical” times, and after these do the “Evangelicals” hanker. So late even as 1779 tithes were collected by law in some of the colonies. In fact, it was only in 1818 that the separation of church and state was effected in Connecticut. But in those days the Catholics were few, and nobody feared them. If they had been as numerous and formidable then as they are now, the disestablishment would never have been accomplished. These were the halcyon days when, in the words of Rev. Mr. Fremantle, already quoted, “the Christian nation was a church,” “the true ruling elders of which were statesmen, judges, and officers who bore the supreme mandate of the whole Christian community.” What a yearning there is for the return of those good times when none but “Evangelicals” may hold office to defraud the revenue, invest in Crédit Mobilier stock, or manage banking houses for the purpose of swindling credulous “Evangelical” depositors!

It is timely to warn all good citizens against the Protestant effort to restore the state-church system of the early colonies. The Rev. W. H. Campbell, D.D., of New Brunswick, at one session of the “Alliance” said: “Revolution has everywhere borrowed the force of its political ideas from the Protestants of the XVIth century.” Never was language more correct. Rebellion against lawful authority, the overthrow of legitimate governments, the subversion of civil society, the destruction of law and order in modern times, are all traceable to Protestant principles. Nor can you ever tell where they will stop. As there is no fixity or certainty or unalterable code of doctrine or morals in Protestantism, a statesman can never tell when its councils will be impelled by whim, fanaticism, or prejudice. There is no telling but that the Protestant assembly which to-day favors the state to-morrow will be in revolt against it. It has been on the side of unbridled license, of the extreme of liberty; and, again, it has been the creature, the slave, the blind instrument of despotism. A statesman always knows what to expect from the Catholic Church and her assemblies. Her principles are patent, her system plain, her doctrines unchanging, her secondary discipline modifiable according to law or necessity, but only by the spiritual power. She is always conservative, never revolutionary. She gives to Cæsar what belongs to him, but no more. She makes a reserve in her allegiance to the state: she reserves the rights of God, the rights of conscience. She must obey God rather than men when men try to alter or subvert God's revelation. If the state wishes to persecute her, it may begin at once. She has nothing to hide from the state; and she will alter nothing of her doctrines. If the state dislikes her, at any rate she is an open foe. But Protestantism is a fickle subject. Like the ancient pagans, she admits the supremacy of the state over her; admits that the church is only a voluntary corporation subordinate to the state; yet practically she is never to be depended on. Fickle by nature, the state can never tell when a fit of madness may seize on her; when her imagination may be possessed by some idea subversive alike of good order and even of morality. We all know the history of the Anabaptists and Antinomians in Germany; the deeds of violence of the Independents in England. Protestantism, like a wanton filly, carries the state as a rider, but always at the risk of its neck. Let our statesmen, then, beware of the attempt which is being made to give us, if not a national, at least a state church. The threat has been made that when slavery was abolished, the next thing to undertake would be the destruction of the Catholic Church by the establishment of a state church.

It is easy to show that a national church is essentially opposed to our American principles, and that consequently all attempts to establish one are anti-American. On this point many rationalists and infidels agree with Catholics, as they logically must when they argue from sound principles of pure reason or of pure politics. The Catholic religion recognizes the competency of reason in its own sphere, and admits its logical inerrancy. All the principles of the natural, political, metaphysical, or moral order known with certainty even by those who do not believe in revelation at all, are the common property of the [pg 034] Catholic Church; for although she insists on the subordination of reason to faith, she asserts emphatically the autonomy of reason, and condemns those who would abridge its powers. Hence true statesmen who judge our Federal or State constitutions from the viewing-point of reason alone agree with Catholics in opposition to the so-called “Evangelicals,” the chief of whom believe in “total depravity,” the loss of free will, and unmerited damnation. The ablest lawyers in the country teach that the fundamental idea of our civil government is that there shall be no interference of the state in church affairs. Absolute independence of the church; no interference of the state in religious matters—such is the American idea. It is expressly laid down in the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States that Congress shall have no power to legislate on religious questions. The ablest commentary perhaps ever written on the Constitution is the Federalist; some of the best articles in which were written by Alexander Hamilton, whose son has recently published them. The teaching of this great man is that the framers of the Constitution were especially anxious to eschew church establishments or state religions in the policy of our republic. Indeed, some of the leading authors of the Constitution were rationalists, and more afraid of Protestant sectarian interference in state affairs than they were of the Catholic Church, which in their days was not strong enough to be feared. “Our theory is,” writes Gerrit Smith, “that the people shall enjoy absolute freedom in politics and religion.” Of course this freedom could not exist if we had a state church. Mr. Smith, whose intelligence and Americanism no one can dispute, in his celebrated letter on the school question,[24] from which the above phrase is taken, adds: “A lawyer than whom there is no abler in the land, and who is as eminent for integrity as for ability, writes me: ‘I am against the government's being permitted to do anything which can be entrusted to individuals under the equal regulation of general laws.’ ” How few of the “Evangelicals” would be willing to act on this correct interpretation of our Constitution? How could they so easily give up the government pap that nourishes the Methodist preachers of the “Freedman's Bureau” and the “Indian Bureau,” not to speak of the other countless branches of our homœopathic national church?

The attempt to establish a state church is also opposed to most of our State constitutions, and notably to that of New York. The first constitution of this State was so essentially hostile to a church establishment that it contained an article incapacitating any minister of the Gospel from holding any office, civil or military. Tradition has it that some Episcopalian minister, playing the political marplot in the preliminary convention, had so annoyed Mr. Jay that he had the article inserted. In 1846, this article was expunged; and ever since our State legislature, our public offices, and even our judiciary, have been afflicted by ambitious, incompetent, sometimes even illiterate, and always bigoted, political preachers. They are always striving to inflict on us more and more of their bigotry, while their acts show that one of their chief [pg 035] aims is to gratify the “Evangelical” appetite for power. We must especially guard our State constitution from the treacherous assaults of the sects. Even now their express provisions are violated or evaded.[25] They are easily modified.[26] Some of them are not inconsistent with a church establishment, and may at any moment become the prey of “Evangelical” bigotry or fanaticism.

Catholics are by conviction opposed to a change in the character of our Federal and State—we speak of New York—constitutions. They do not conflict with the Catholic idea. There is nothing in or out of the Syllabus that is opposed to our system of government. This we shall now proceed to show. Pius IX., on December 17, 1860, in an allocution condemned a proposition which begins with these words: “National churches may be established.” It is number 37 in the Syllabus. We know that it will be objected to us that the Pope also condemns the attempt to separate church and state in countries in which they are by law united, and the abstract principle that they ought to be separate. It is true that where church and state have been united, not by force, but by the nature of things and the sanction of laws, it is condemnable to attack their union as iniquitous or improper; but it is also true that it is not always obligatory or expedient on the part of the state, as such, to establish a church, build its institutions, and salary its clergy out of a common fund. The Roman pontiffs, in the height of their temporal power, never compelled the Jews to build with their money Catholic churches and pay the salaries of Catholic priests. Let us historically examine the character of the union of church and state in the Catholic countries of Europe, and we shall find how just, fair, and honorable such an union becomes. What was the title to most of the Catholic church property in Europe? None better. The barbarian baron or king, grateful to the priest, the monk, or the bishop who had civilized him and taught him to save his soul, generously built a church or a monastery and endowed it. Legacies, donations, free gifts—these were the means by which the bishopric and monasteries grew rich. No title to property is better than this, which a thousand years had sanctioned. Of course every new donation increased the power of the church. The temporalities of the church had natural influence in the state. The abbots and bishops were peers of the realm. The church lived on her own resources—neither asked nor received anything from the state except protection and liberty. Before the Reformation, this was the character of the close union between the church and state. After the Reformation, when the church had lost her power chiefly through the corrupting influence of the kings and barons on the [pg 036] bishops and abbots, despite the protests and the efforts of the popes, the politicians confiscated the church property. This confiscation was simply robbery, for the church corporations, as well as individuals, had rights which the state was bound to respect. But it happened, as it often happens, that wicked kings or mercenary and unprincipled politicians used the political machinery of the state legally to rob the church. They abused the right of eminent domain. Gov. Dix himself, in his annual message for 1874, limits the exercise of this right. “The right,” says he, “of every individual to be secured in the undisturbed enjoyment of his property lies at the foundation of all responsible government. It is, indeed, one of the primary objects for which governments are instituted. To this fundamental rule there is but one proper exception. If private property is needed for public use, it may be taken by making just compensation to the owner; but the use must be one which is common to all, or which is indispensable to the accomplishment of some object of public necessity. This right of eminent domain, as it is denominated, is an incident of sovereignty, and it is one of the most arbitrary of all the powers of government.”[27] It is unquestionably the “most arbitrary of all the powers of government,” if we consider how many are the demagogues, political traders, and mercenary corruptionists who help to make the laws in parliaments, congresses, or State legislatures to regulate the property of respectable people; and how often the executive power in the state, be it imperial, regal, presidential, or gubernatorial, is wielded by despotic and corrupt hands. Imagine a parliament of Communists using the right of eminent domain of the state against the lands and tenements owned by the Trinity Church corporation of New York; or an assembly of “Evangelicals” legislating in regard to Catholic church property! The state in France, for instance, during the Revolution stripped the church of her lawful possessions; Napoleon endeavored to bring order back to the Republic by re-establishing the church. But it is plain that the salary allowed by his concordat in a.d. 1801 to the clergy, and the revenue allowed by the state for the maintenance of church edifices, was not a tithe of the interest accruing from the property stolen by the state from the church. The sum now allowed to support the Catholic clergy of France is, therefore, only a fraction of restitution money due to them by the state. So it is in other countries in which the state, after confiscating the church property, salaries the clergy. The church in those countries does not get her due. She asks no favor from them; she does not even get her rights. The propositions in the Syllabus referring to the union of church and state must be explained in the light of these facts. The Catholic Church does not go to China or to Turkey, and say to the governments of those countries: “You must establish me here; you must build my temples and schools and asylums.” No, she claims no right of eminent domain over the pockets of infidels; and even when she converts them, she only asks their voluntary aid. All she asks is liberty to work and protection [pg 037] in her legitimate duties. She and her converts will do the rest. This was all she asked of the Roman emperors; this she asked of the mediæval kings. If they gave her liberty and protection, she thanked them, blessed them, worked for them, and civilized them. If they refused, still she blessed them and worked in spite of them; for she must “obey God rather than men.” She might with justice ask more than this in Prussia or England or Sweden; for there she might ask back her stolen property. But in this country she only asks a fair field and no favor. Contrast her conduct with that of Protestantism. Protestantism goes to the state begging on her knees; admitting the state's supremacy over her; confessing that she is the humble servant of the king; and asks his gracious bounty. She will gladly sit on the foot of his throne as his slave, though a dangerous and treacherous one, if he will only smile on her, clothe and feed her. She will even stoop to become the receiver of stolen goods. Is it not so? Where is there a national Protestant church really established that is not living on property stolen by the state from the Catholic Church? Look to England and Scotland. Are not the Protestant establishments in those lands the possessors of ill-gotten goods—of lands and churches iniquitously stolen from the Catholic Church? Surely the orthodox Catholic laity of the middle ages who gave these demesnes to the monasteries and churches never intended that the king should turn them over to a heretical establishment. The Prussian establishment is a theft from beginning to end; for every one knows that the apostate head of the Catholic religious order which ruled the duchy of Brandenburg, and laid the foundation of the Prussian power, had no right to transfer the property of his order to a Protestant clergy. Who could defend such a proceeding? Would our “Evangelical” brethren approve the conduct of a Protestant board of trustees or vestrymen who, on being converted, or a majority of them being converted, to the Catholic faith, should by a trick transfer the property of their congregation, their church, or college to the Catholic authorities to be used for Catholic purposes? How, then, can they approve the conduct of the English, German, and Scandinavian clergy who have received the lands and buildings taken from the Catholics by violence and regal usurpation? There is truly a very great difference between the Protestant and Catholic church establishments of Europe—a difference in origin, as well as in the manner of their continuance—and this difference is by no means flattering to the honesty or manliness of the sects. Correctly, therefore, did we say that Catholic principles as well as true American principles are opposed to a state church establishment in this country, and that nothing in the Syllabus condemns our system of government.

It is time, therefore, for all true American citizens to unite under the Catholic standard of opposition to national or state church establishments. The rights of conscience, the rights of religion, are the rights of God. They are not national, but universal; that is, catholic. We are not willing to come back to the pagan régime of Roman Cæsarism, and admit the ruler of the state or the state itself as supreme master of religion as well as of politics. The “Evangelical” [pg 038] semi-paganized Protestants of Germany may bow the knee to the modern Cæsar, and admit him to be supreme pontiff; but they must keep their despotism at home. The Swiss “Evangelicals” may revive the ancient Spartan worship of the state, and assert its supremacy in spiritual matters; but they must keep their statolatry from our shores. The true American, like the true Catholic, will bow the knee to no idol, not even to the state, much as he may love it. He adores only his God. The state shall not interfere with his conscience, or dare to come between him and his God, no matter how much these foreign “Evangelical” emissaries may wish it. He is Catholic, even when he least suspects it. He hates despotisms, as the Catholic Church does; he suspects that German “Evangelicalism” is only a livery stolen to cover unbelief, as the Catholic Church knows it to be. He suspects the sincerity of those foreign “Evangelical” emissaries and their native hypocritical associates who preach in favor of state-church establishments; he suspects them as traitors to American liberty or as seekers for notoriety or a full purse. When his suspicions have been clearly proven correct, he will turn from the sects in disgust, to love the grand old church which can be controlled by no national or state limits, and which has been battling all her lifetime against emperors and kings for the very principles of liberty that constitute the glory and the greatness of our republic.

The Captive Bird.

From the French of Marie Jenna.

He is all yours—'tis true—for life or death,

The hollow of your hand contains his fate,

You have the power to still his dulcet breath

And make the grove he dwelt in desolate.

You hold him!—He is weak and you are strong,

But pity may his liberty restore.

Let him to shade and summer still belong,

It is so sweet to live—with wings to soar!

The Farm Of Muiceron. By Marie Rheil.

From The Revue Du Monde Catholique.

XIX.

Now, to quiet your mind—for you must be as shocked as I am at all these horrors—we will speak, if you please, of our friend Jean-Louis. On the afternoon of the day which proved the last for the innocent Barbette, Jeannet, knowing that the wood-cutters would be dismissed, and that consequently he would have some leisure time, went off to the Luguets' to have a little consoling conversation with good Solange. He kept no secrets from her, and expected great relief in recounting faithfully all that had happened; but, on entering, he instantly perceived something new had occurred in the house. The men were out at work; Mme. Luguet was seated by the fire, weeping bitterly; and Solange, sitting on a stool at her feet, was speaking to her in an angelic voice of her desire to enter a convent. Jeannet discreetly wished to withdraw.

“Don't go,” said Solange to him; “isn't it so, mother? Jeannet will not disturb us?”

“No, dear; on the contrary, my child, I am happy to see you, Jean-Louis. Is it true that you will be free to accompany Solange to Paris?”

“Alas! Mme. Luguet,” replied Jeannet, “why should I not be free, having neither family nor friends, save only you and yours? The only roof that sheltered me from infancy is henceforward forbidden to me, without counting that, before many hours, the only thing that I can call my own—on condition that God leaves it to me—and that is my life, may be taken also.”

“What has happened?” asked Solange. “You speak in a quiet, serious tone that frightens me.”

“I have done my duty, dear Solange, and often in this world, after performing an act of conscience and justice, any consequence may be expected.”

And he related that, having discovered the criminal dealings of Isidore with the brigands of La Martine, he had been obliged to threaten the future husband of Jeannette, and give him warning that he must leave the country.

“But,” cried Solange, “that is just what I hoped; this fortunate event divine Providence has allowed, that Jeannette might be saved. Rejoice, then, Jeannet, instead of indulging in such gloomy ideas.”

“You are very kind to think so,” replied Jean-Louis sadly; “but I, Solange, see things differently. Jeannette, already so irritated, will not pardon me for saving her at the expense of Isidore, who is not the man to let himself be crushed like a wolf caught in a snare. Much will be said against me; I will be rashly judged, and less than ever will I have the right to present myself at Muiceron. No, no; from that dear spot I am for ever separated. I have been already accused of jealousy; shall I expose myself to Jeannette's reproaches that I have denounced Isidore to prevent her marriage?”

“I acknowledge,” said Solange, [pg 040] “that your reflections are just. The truth will one day be known, but it will take time; I see it as well as you.”

“I must expect the vengeance of the Perdreaux,” continued Jean-Louis, “as well as of their friends, whose violent passions I know, and who will not leave me in peaceable possession of their secrets. Michou has discharged the workmen; apparently, they went off contented. But Isidore, meanwhile, received my letter; no doubt before this he has communicated it to his cut-throat companions, and the easiest thing for all of them will be to get rid of me at the shortest notice.”

“My God!” said Solange, “why didn't you think of all that before writing the letter? At least, you need not have signed it.”

“I thought of all that,” replied Jeannet, smiling; “but even if I had been sure of risking my life in saving Jeannette, I would not have stopped. Her father and mother preserved my existence, Solange, and therefore it belongs to them. And as for not signing such a letter, thank God! you think so because you are a woman, that you love me, and that you feel I am in danger; but if you were in my place, you would think as I do.”

“My children,” said Mme. Luguet, “you are both right. But my advice is that just now you had better plan for the future than discuss the past.”

“Tell us what shall be done, mother,” said Solange. “In the first place, Jean-Louis must not return to the wood to-night; isn't that so?”

“Don't think of such a thing,” cried Jeannet, as he rose hastily from his chair. “Did I come here to hide?”

“Be still,” said Solange with authority; “don't be so proud. We all know you are brave, who, then, can accuse you of flying from danger? But courage does not consist in throwing yourself headlong in the midst of it, but in providing against it.”

“I will return,” said Jeannet, “Michou expects me.”

“You will not return, my child,” said Mme. Luguet. “I will direct you for one day; my age and friendship permit me. I order you to remain with us to-night.”

“But,” said Jean-Louis, “tomorrow the danger will be still greater; and, my good mother, you surely cannot count on keeping me a prisoner?”

“When you came in,” said the good woman, “Solange was asking my permission to leave home. It was very painful for me to decide, and I sought to gain time from the good God—a little time only, to become more courageous; for never will I be so bold as to refuse to give my child to the Lord. Well, what you have just related makes me think the good God has directed all with his own voice. My dear children, you will leave tomorrow.”

Solange threw herself on her knees, and laid her head on her mother's hands, which she kissed, weeping. Jean-Louis turned pale. His courage, which prompted him to face the danger, and his desire to oblige his friends, struggled violently in his heart.

“Listen to me,” said he. “I gave my word to Solange that I would accompany her; but circumstances have changed since then. Cannot Pierre take my place? They have gossiped about Solange and me, dear Mme. Luguet; what will they say when they hear we have gone off together?”

“Pierre!” cried Solange; “but he knows nothing, nor my father either. My mother alone has my secret; otherwise, it would be impossible for me to leave.”

“It is true,” said Mme. Luguet; “my men are good Christians, but not pious enough to understand Solange's wishes. However, with the blessing of God, I will manage them. It is decided that I will tell the father she has only gone for a fortnight, to see how she likes it; there will be a fuss at first, and then we will go to see her; and if, as I believe, the good God will take her entirely to himself, then the sight of her happiness will satisfy all our hearts.”

Thus spoke that good Christian woman; and to the shame of many great ladies of the city, who show themselves so unreasonable under similar circumstances, I must say, with truth, she was not the only one in our village you might have heard speak in the same manner.

Jean-Louis could urge no further objection. The public stage, which would carry them to the nearest railway station, passed the Luguets' house every morning at six o'clock. At that time of year, it was still dark, and the men, who rose at four, that they might go to the barn and comb the hemp, went to bed very early in the evening. Pierre and his father entered and supped, without anything being said before them, and Solange and her mother found themselves again alone with Jeannet as the village clock struck eight.

It was then that Jeannet wrote the short note to Jacques Michou which we have already read; he ran and placed it in the box in the suburbs of the village, and quickly returned, as Solange had told him she would be half dead with fear during his absence, and that she would pass the time on her knees, saying her rosary.

You see it was very evident the Lord and his angels watched over these good people. At this very hour, when it would have been so easy to have attacked Jean-Louis, he came and went through the wood, without incurring any risk, while the unfortunate Isidore uselessly committed a great crime.

Good Mme. Luguet and her daughter remained up until late in the night, busy making up Solange's little bundle, in praying, and often embracing each other, mingling their tender and holy kisses and tears. Jeannet aided them to the best of his ability, admiring the courage of heart, which was worth more than that of the head and arms. Then the two women retired for a little rest, and he, in his turn, ended by falling asleep in his chair.

At five o'clock, Solange came herself to awaken him, and told him, in a low voice, that she had made her poor mother promise the night before not to get up, and so she had just kissed her softly for the last time without disturbing her sleep. At that instant could be seen the heroism of that holy soul in thus wishing to bear alone the weight of the sacrifice. Her face, without ceasing to be calm, was bathed in tears, and from time to time she kissed a little crucifix suspended from her neck, in order to sustain her brave heart.

“Come,” said she at last, “it is time, Jeannet; let us say the Our Father together, and then we will leave.”

“Courage, Solange,” said Jean-Louis, much moved; “the good God will bless you.”

They repeated the prayer, and went out noiselessly, and just then [pg 042] was heard the jingling of the bells on the horses of the country stage.

Solange was well wrapped up in her black cloth cloak, with the hood drawn down over her face. Jean-Louis carried her little bundle, in which she had slipped two of Pierre's shirts; for the good Jeannet carried all his baggage on his back—to wit, a woollen vest, a blouse, and his plaid scarf. But, as we have already seen, it was not his habit to think of himself.

They arrived safely at Paris that very day, rather late in the evening, to be sure; and little did they dream of the great rumpus going on at that very time in our poor neighborhood. All along the route the strong family resemblance between Solange and Jeannet made every one think them brother and sister; and by good luck, owing to the severity of the weather, none of the travellers in the coach belonged to the village or its environs, so that they reached the station without the risk of being recognized.

The Sister-Superior of the Sisters of Charity had been notified several days before of the coming of Solange by our curé, who was the good child's confessor; but they had left home so suddenly, Jeannet was obliged to find a refuge for his companion the first night. Happily, in Paris all is at your service—people and things—where there is money, and our children were rich with Solange's savings; therefore, there was no difficulty in finding respectable lodgings, where they passed the night in two beautiful rooms, well furnished, the like of which they had never thought existed, at least for their use.

The next day their first action was to go and hear Mass, after which, having inquired the way to the Convent of S. Vincent de Paul, which is situated in a very pious quarter of the city, they went there with hearts rather saddened; and one hour later Jeannet found himself alone in the vast city.

But no one is alone in this world when he carries in his heart faith in the Lord. All the children of God belong to one family, and feel in their souls a fraternal tenderness for each other. Jeannet, on taking Solange to the convent, found a mother in the good superioress, who received them both. She made him relate his story to her in a few words, and, learning that he was alone in the world and desirous of some engagement, she gave him the address of a good priest who passed his life in aiding young working-men who, owing to unfortunate circumstances or lack of employment, ran the risk of becoming dissipated from the want of a helping hand.

He was called Abbé Lucas; and as he is now dead, and enjoying, I trust, the celestial happiness well merited by his great devotion, I do not think it indelicate to tell his name.

He received Jeannet with great kindness, and the good boy soon won his heart with his frankness and amiability. The abbé tried his hand, and seeing that he wrote well, and turned off a very good letter under dictation, advised him not to think of joining a regiment, as the conscription would be after him soon enough without his running to seek it. Therefore, he took him in his own house, and employed him with his correspondence, of which there was never any deficiency, owing to the great number of men who daily claimed his charitable assistance.

The arrangement was perfectly [pg 043] to Jeannet's taste, who applied himself to his new occupation with joy and confidence; and you can well imagine that Solange was very happy, and redoubled her prayers that her dear school-fellow might come as triumphantly out of his heart-troubles as he had been preserved from the dangers that threatened his life.

She immediately wrote home, informing M. le Curé of all these little events, but left it to his great wisdom to decide whether he should tell more or less of everything to the Ragaud family, Michou, and M. le Marquis. This should make us thoroughly understand the true virtue of this good child; for she had not been ignorant of the base insinuations made in relation to her and Jean-Louis, and what ugly conjectures would be based upon their departure, Pierre joining with the rest, at least at the first news. These things go straight to the heart of a good, honest girl, and Solange, being of a quick, nervous temperament, had suffered martyrdom from all this gossip without speaking of it, except to God. It was to him, then, that she remitted the care of her full justification, as she knew many persons would not have believed anything she might have said. This beautiful tranquillity of soul is not an ordinary thing, and our curé judged rightly that it proceeded from great holiness, as in the end he did not fail to speak of it, with profit to his hearers, in his Sunday sermons.

This excellent pastor, who had been careful to keep clear of the whole affair before the downfall of the Perdreaux, contenting himself with praying and awaiting the good pleasure of the Lord, reappeared like an angel of consolation when nothing was left but tears to wipe away, hatreds to calm, simpletons to make hold their tongues, and truths to make known. It was wonderful to see how he forgot his great age and infirmities to fulfil his task, which was not the easiest in the world.

With the château it was quickly done. In a conversation of two hours with M. le Marquis, who was a man of great good sense—except in what touched his political hopes—he made the scales fall from his eyes, and decided his departure; and as, after all the villany of the Perdreaux, our master's fortune had not suffered as much as might have been expected—as it was very great, and could have stood a much larger rent—our good pastor reserved his pity and real work for a corner of the country where it was infinitely more needed.

You can guess that I wish to speak of Muiceron. There truly sorrow, shame, and unhappiness were at their height.

So many blows at once had crushed the Ragauds, who no longer dared go out, and remained at home, devoured with grief. The old farmer, struck on the tender side of his pet sin, which was vanity, thought really that heaven and earth had fallen upon his shoulders, and that he should only leave his home for the cemetery. Pierrette, long accustomed to receive implicitly her husband's opinions, thought also nothing wiser could be done; and as for Jeannette, overwhelmed with grief to see herself abandoned by all her friends at the same time, although apparently the strongest, it looked as though she would go the first to the grave, so plainly did her pallor and hollow eyes show the ravages of internal grief.

All the joy and life of rural labor had disappeared from around this [pg 044] house, formerly so happy. The door was closed, the shutters also, save one or two in the back rooms, where these poor people kept themselves hidden, afraid to speak, as they knew one subject of conversation was alone possible, and just then no one would approach it. The passers-by, seeing the house shut up, and not supposing all the inhabitants were dead, ended by feeling uneasy as they passed the buildings, but not one ventured to inquire about them, not even Ragaud's most intimate acquaintances. It is only truth to add that these, understanding well the sorrow that reigned within those silent walls, acted thus from respect, and not from indifference.

Big Marion went twice a week to the market in Val-Saint, to buy provisions needed for immediate use, and returned at a gallop, to shut herself up with her master's family.

Since Muiceron had belonged to the Ragauds, it was certainly the first time any food had been cooked but the beef and poultry raised and killed on the place. Poor Pierrette, like all good housekeepers, had always prided herself upon supplying the table with the fruit of her labors; for with us, a farmer's wife who buys even a pound of butter or loaf of bread passes, with good reason, for a spendthrift; but, alas! self-love was no longer thought of, and La Ragaude cared little what was said of her management, after she knew tongues could wag about affairs of much greater importance. Poor woman! she must have been fearfully depressed. Judge how the chickens ran wild, scratching up the gravel during the day, and perching on the trees, stiff with snow, during the night, at the risk of freezing. The pig, so fat it could no longer stand on its legs—as for a fortnight its true place would have been in the salt-tub—continued uselessly to eat his allowance. The hens that recommenced to lay deposited their eggs at random, without any one taking the trouble to go after them, notwithstanding the little coricoco of warning, which showed that they never failed to cluck at the right time most faithfully. But Marion could not see after everything; and besides, as she had always been very stupid during the time that all were well and happy at Muiceron, she became more and more stupid and bewildered after affairs went so badly.

Such was the miserable condition in which our curé found his old friends on the first visit which he made them, about two weeks after Barbette's funeral, with the sole object of raising them from the deep despondency into which they had fallen since the terrible shock.

Pierrette received him in the big parlor, which was very dark, as the shutters were closed, and for a quarter of an hour he could get nothing out of her but sobs; then Ragaud came in, looking thin and miserable, as much from want of air and exercise as from shame; and finally Jeannette, who, with a remnant of her old pride, tried to keep from weeping, but was nearly suffocated in the effort.

“My children,” said the dear, good man, “God tries those whom he loves, and I certainly do not approve of your shutting yourselves up in this manner, so as to avoid the society of your neighbors and friends, on account of a sentiment which doubtless you think good, but which I call honor ill placed—that [pg 045] is to say, wicked pride, to speak frankly.”

“Alas!” said Pierrette, “who wishes to speak to us now?”

“Whom have you offended?” replied the curé. “And why has the esteem in which you have long been held diminished?”

“Monsieur,” said Ragaud, “my daughter was on the point of marrying a revolutionist and an assassin. That is enough to kill a family like ours.”

“I acknowledge,” said the curé quietly, “you could have made a better choice; but, in reality, since all has ended without your playing any other part in this unfortunate affair than that of victims, I do not see why you should hide yourselves from the eyes of the world as though you were criminals.”

“As for me,” said Ragaud, “I can never reappear again in public, and support the looks and words of the people around, who certainly despise us.”

“Ragaud,” replied the curé, “when a man's shoe hurts him, he usually sits down by the roadside, and looks to see whether it is a thorn or a flint that causes the pain; then he takes it out, and all is over. But if, instead of that, he continues walking, his foot would swell, the wound would inflame, and the cure would no longer be easy. Do you understand me?”

“Not at all,” said Ragaud.

“Nor I either,” added Pierrette, still continuing to weep.

“Well,” said M. le Curé, “it means that a wise man like you who fears anything of that kind should seek after the cause, to see if by chance it would not be as easy to drive such an idea out of his head as to take a thorn out of a shoe. And, between ourselves, it is precisely your case. Far from despising you, each and every one in the neighborhood only feels for you compassion, sympathy, and kindness, which they would willingly show in words and actions. I am constantly asked about you, and all desire you to return to the common life. They do not come to disturb you, through pure discretion; but for which, your house would be well filled. But as long as you live like wolves in their den, the pain increases in your heart, and soon it will be with you as with the man, wounded in the foot, who will continue to walk—you cannot be cured.”

“M. le Curé is right,” said Jeanne; “we must reappear, dear father.”

“Without counting,” resumed the pastor, “that you are not acting as Christians when you show so much pride. A Sunday has passed, and you were not seen at Mass, and nevertheless it is an obligation. Do you, then, intend to neglect your religious duties?”

“I would go to church if no one were there,” said Ragaud.

“Is it you, my friend, whom I hear speak thus?” replied the curé sadly. “So you prefer the esteem of men to the blessing of God? And you, Pierrette, whom I have always known as such a good parishioner, have you the same miserable ideas?”

The Ragauds lowered their heads without replying. They felt they were wrong, especially for the bad example given their daughter. Little Jeanne, on her side, came to a resolute decision.

“Father and mother,” said she, “M. le Curé makes me understand all my sins; for it is on my account you are thus borne down with grief. I, then, must be the first to trample pride under foot. Well, then, I [pg 046] will go to Val-Saint on Sunday, and assist at Mass and Vespers in our usual place.”

“You shall not go alone, my poor child,” said Pierrette.

“That is right,” said the curé; “I expected as much. As for you, my dear Ragaud, as I know you to be truly honorable, you will not, I suppose, allow these two women to bravely fulfil their duty, and leave you behind?”

“I will see; I can't promise any thing,” answered Ragaud.

“I count upon you,” said the curé, pretending to take these words as an engagement, “and I beg that you will come after Mass and dine with me; Germaine will have a nice dish of larks, which will not be much expense, as in this snowy weather they only cost five cents a dozen.”

“Monsieur,” said Ragaud, who felt greatly relieved by this pleasant conversation, which he very much needed, “commence by taking supper with me this evening; it will be a charitable deed to stay with people who are so unhappy.”

“Willingly,” replied the curé; “but with these closed shutters and cold rooms, that make me think of a tomb, I will not have any appetite. You must change all that, and let in some light. Come, madame, show us if you still can turn a spoon in the sauce-pan.”

Pierrette could not repress a pleased smile at this apostrophe, and all her old occupations and favorite habits came back to her at the remembrancer, which tickled her heart. Just as in nursery-tales a wicked fairy enchants a house for a time, and suddenly a good one comes, and with a wave of her wand changes affairs; at Muiceron, which appeared desolate and dead, the words of the curé restored the old life and animation which were so pleasant to behold in the former prosperous days. Ragaud made a great fire to drive out the close, damp smell; Pierrette threw open the shutters with a quick hand, and, seeing her garden ruined by the poultry, she blushed from shame, and grumbled aloud at her neglect. That was a true sign that her courage had returned. During this time, Jeannette and Marion got out the linen for the table, wiped the dishes, gray with dust, and prepared the fricassée, which consisted, for this meal, of a ragout of wild rabbits that M. le Curé looked at with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, as he knew well this game could only be the result of poaching.

“There,” said he, trying to the best of his ability to cheer up his poor friends, “is a dish which does you honor, Mme. Ragaud, and that will be perfectly delicious if you will put a glass of white wine in the sauce. But if you will let me give you a word of advice, don't feed those little animals with cabbage.”

“Why not?” said Pierrette, astonished, thinking that M. le Curé mistook the game for a tame rabbit.

“Oh! yes,” said he, “that animal smells of cabbage, unless I have lost the sense of smelling; and it spoils the taste very much.”

“But, monsieur,” answered Pierrette, half offended, “this is a wild rabbit, caught in the wood of La Sange.”

“Not possible!” cried M. le Curé, feigning great astonishment. “And since when has the farm of Muiceron, which I have always seen the best supplied in the country with poultry, sheep, pigeons, and [pg 047] all other productions, been reduced to buy game stolen from its master for food?”

“Marion bought it,” said Pierrette; “the poor girl goes after provisions, and don't look far; she brings back what she finds, without thinking of evil.”

“So Marion is mistress of the house now?” said the curé. “My dear friends,” he added, “this is a little incident which carries a great moral with it. I wish no further evidence to prove to you how much your grief, just at the bottom, is hurtful and wrong in reality. When I came in, Pierrette, I was pained at the disordered appearance of everything around. In a little while Muiceron will resemble the estate of an idle, lazy man who lets the ground lie fallow. What an example for the neighborhood, who looked upon you as models! Come, come, you must change all this, my good children. Commence your work; there is enough to do. I bet, Ragaud, your horses have not been curried for two weeks?”

“Alas! monsieur, you are half right—not curried as they should be,” answered Ragaud in a penitent tone.

“I must have lost more than six dozen eggs,” said Pierrette, looking down.

“I know nothing about the eggs,” resumed M. le Curé; “but as for your chickens, who have not had a grain of food but the gravel they have scratched, they are so lean I wouldn't eat one of them if you gave it to me.”

These reproaches piqued the self-respect of our good people more than any number of long and learned speeches uttered in a severe tone. Pierrette was deeply contrite for her faults. On setting the table, she could not keep from the eyes of M. le Curé, who spied everything designedly, the six-pound loaf of white bread which Marion had that very morning brought home from the baker's. This loaf, that was long and split in the middle, was not the least in the world like the bread made in the house, and proved that Pierrette had not kneaded the dough for a long time. Our curé would not let the bread pass unnoticed any more than the rabbit-stew, said it was dry and tasteless—which was true—and seized this opportunity also to make his friends promise to resume their ordinary train of life.

The supper was not very gay, it must be acknowledged, but passed off quietly, and thus this visit of the curé, which was followed by many others, began to bring back peace in those hearts so crushed with sorrow.

The following Sunday, Jeannette, according to her promise, went to Val-Saint, accompanied by her parents. She appeared neither too proud nor too subdued, but just between the two—that is to say, she moved along with a look of perfect modesty, which won every one's respect, and made all the hats come off as she approached the church. Unfortunately, it is too true that human nature is apt to rejoice over the misfortunes of others. It is as though each one said, at the sight of a thwack received by his neighbor, “So much the more on his back, so much the less on mine.” And I do not conceal from you that the people of Val-Saint were not exempt from this culpable weakness. On this very occasion even they were disposed to be severe; for, in fact, the Ragauds' misfortunes were a little their own fault; and each one observed that if [pg 048] the parents had not been too proud and ambitious of making their daughter a young lady, she would not have been exposed to choose for husband a scoundrel whom they thought a gentleman. However, sincere pity replaced every other sentiment when they saw this afflicted family reappear in broad daylight in such an humble attitude; and poor Ragaud, who had made a violent effort to come, gradually recovered his ease at the sight of the kind faces that surrounded him. During the Mass, his old heart recovered its balance while praying to God. He felt that affliction is a good means of becoming better, because it draws the soul to its Creator, whom we are too often tempted to forget in the days of uninterrupted happiness; and when the divine office was ended, he could without difficulty stop in the village square, and shake hands with several of his friends.

Then they went to the pastoral residence, where the curé received them joyfully, and they ate with relish the dish of larks, which was done to a turn. At the dessert, the Ragauds looked like people restored to life, so much balm had that genial morning infused into their blood. Jeannette alone did not share the general happiness, and her bitter sadness, which could not be disguised, in spite of the care she took to smile and speak at the right time, was visible to all. It must be said to her praise that her vanity, which had been so crushed, was the least wound of her heart; she felt there another so much deeper, so much more painful, nothing, she thought, could ever cure it.

Where was Jean-Louis? What had become of that brother she had driven out so roughly and unjustly? Her great seclusion since the terrible event had prevented her hearing a single word about him, and she dared not question any one.

As for the Ragauds, father and mother, they never mentioned him either, but for another reason. Ignorant that Jeannette had turned the poor boy out of the house, they were still firmly convinced of his jealousy; and as they believed him to be employed on some farm in the neighborhood, they were very much incensed at his prolonged absence, which, in view of the present circumstances, appeared the act of an ungrateful and hard heart.

M. le Curé, who knew all, and had Solange's letter in his pocket, designedly prolonged the grief of Jeannette and the mistake of the Ragauds, in order that the lesson might be duly profitable to all.

“You see,” said he, “everything has happened as I foresaw. Fearing to displease you, I did not invite any one to our little entertainment; but understand well, my children, if I had had fifty vacant places at my table, I would have had great difficulty in choosing my guests; so many would have desired the pleasure of dining with you, I would have been afraid of exciting jealousy.”

“M. le Curé,” said Ragaud, “I thank you, and hope that your kindness was not mistaken. I speak the truth when I say that, but for you, I would have died rather than ever again have shown my face in public.”

“Well, now that it is all over, let us talk of our friends,” replied the curé. “Are you not curious to hear some news?”

No one replied; the tender chord was again touched.

“I do not conceal the fact,” said [pg 049] Ragaud, “that more than one of those so-called friends have pained us by their neglect.”

“Let us be just,” said the curé; “do you forget that your house was so tightly closed no one dared knock at the door? I even hesitated to visit you, and yet you cannot doubt my affection for you. Why, then, should others have been bolder?”

“Oh!” said Ragaud, “any one that wished could easily have found his way in. You had no difficulty, dear monsieur.”

“That I grant, but I was in the country. Do you know how many of your best friends are here yet? In the first place, the whole of the château are in Paris.”

“Yes, I know it,” said Jeanne. “My godmother did not bid me good-by.”

“She was very sick, my daughter; you must not ill-judge her.”

“And Michou?” asked Ragaud.

“Michou was at Mass, directly behind you,” said the curé; “and if he did not show himself, it was from delicacy; but he is not far off, and will come at the first signal.”

“And Solange?” asked Jeanne, in such a low tone she scarcely could be heard. That was the name the curé was waiting for. He looked at Jeanne in a serious manner.

“Solange,” said he, “left also on that unfortunate day, and knew nothing of it. She, Jeanne Ragaud, was your most faithful friend, and is so still. You have calumniated her, my daughter. I know it; but I hope you have sincerely repented; above all, when you hear that she is now at the novitiate of the Sisters of Charity.”

“Ah! is it possible?” cried she, clasping her hands. “Dear Solange! how unjust I have been to her!”

“Have you not been unjust to others also, my child?” asked the curé with gentleness. “Confess it, Jeannette; you should do so from a sense of justice.”

Jeannette hid her face in her hands, and burst into tears. The question had pierced her soul.

“M. le Curé,” said Pierrette, “I know of whom you wish to speak; but he, I believe, has not left the country, and his conduct, therefore, is scarcely excusable.”

“Ask your daughter,” replied the curé; “she, undoubtedly, can answer that question.”

And as Jeannette could not speak on account of her tears, he continued:

“What could he do, poor boy! but disappear when the only roof that could shelter him refused to receive him. He is no longer here, Mme. Ragaud, that child who loved you so dearly, and who had proved it so well. An inconsiderate word has driven him from your arms, and, having no other resource in this world, he is going to become a soldier, doubtless in the hope of dying honorably in fighting for his country.”

“Never did I drive off Jean-Louis, monsieur,” said good Pierrette; “no, never, I can truly swear.”

“Nor I,” said Ragaud; “and at this very moment I am ready to redeem him from the conscription.”

“However, he is gone,” replied the curé; “and he, like Solange, did not know you were in trouble.”

“Oh!” cried Jeanne, falling on her knees, “I did it all. Heaven has justly punished me. Tell me where he is, M. le Curé; he will not refuse to pardon me, I am so unhappy.”

“What did you do?” asked Pierrette. “Alas! all this worry has turned the poor child's head. Of what do you wish to accuse yourself, my daughter?”

Old Ragaud, who was not easily moved, approached the little thing and placed his hand on her head. He was very much affected to see her thus, kneeling and weeping, in the posture of a guilty person. He looked at M. le Curé, who looked at Jeannette, and Pierrette looked at all three.

Then that young girl did something very touching and unusual. She wiped her eyes, and, without rising, commenced in a sweet, low voice the true confession of all her past conduct, not sparing herself, as was right and just, and yet neither showing excitement nor too great bitterness against herself, which was the mark of sincere repentance. As she spoke, her face regained its color, and her eyes shone with holy joy; for the Lord, who saw her laudable intention, rewarded her with great interior relief for doing what for many others would have been the greatest mortification. When she had finished, she remained with her hands clasped, and her head bent low, before her parents and M. le Curé; but no person broke the silence. Of the three witnesses of this affecting scene, two wept behind their handkerchiefs, and the third, wishing to preserve his gravity as pastor, was too much moved to articulate a word.

“Father,” continued Jeannette in the same humble and firm tone, “judge me, now that you know how guilty I am. It is to you I speak, in presence of my mother and M. le Curé, and I am ready to submit to whatever punishment you may inflict upon me. I have deprived you of a son who made you happy, that you might keep a daughter who has only drawn misery and sorrow on your house. But that daughter is still capable of loving you; let her remain with you, that she may make reparation for her sins. I know I do not deserve it,” added she after a moment's silence.

“My daughter,” said M. le Curé, “you have done well. Rise; the good God pardons you, and your parents also, very certainly.”

“O my poor darling! most surely,” said Pierrette, pressing her child to her breast.

“And you, Ragaud, will you not embrace your daughter?” asked M. le Curé.

The good farmer, you may well think, had no desire to be severe. He kissed Jeannette with great tenderness, and made her sit down by him. But his heart was much troubled; now that he understood his injustice towards Jean-Louis, and his rash judgment, and remembering how easy it would have been for him to have prevented his departure by speaking a friendly word at the right time, he reproached himself as bitterly as Jeannette had done; and if his paternal dignity had not prevented him from humiliating himself before his child, he would have been tempted to confess in his turn.

“M. le Curé,” said he, “if God one day will let us know where Jean-Louis is, do you think he would consent to return?”

“Hem!” said the curé, “he is proud; that remains to be seen....”

“Oh! I would beg him so hard,” replied Jeanne.

“In the first place, my child, we must put our hands on him; and there is the difficulty. Jeannet is not a boy to change his resolution like a weathercock that turns to [pg 051] every wind. And if he has enlisted, you will have to run after his regiment.”

“Poor child!” said Ragaud, “he don't know that he has a little fortune stowed away in a safe place, and that it increases every year. If it should cost three thousand francs, I will redeem him, no matter where, no matter when.”

“Father,” said Jeanne, “before leaving M. le Curé, let me ask you one favor in his presence.”

“Speak, my child, I promise it to you in advance,” answered the good man.

“That you will never speak to me of marriage,” replied the little thing in a firm voice, “and that you will let me assist my mother in all her labors in the fields.”

“And when mademoiselle comes back?” asked the curé, with a spice of mischief.

“Oh! I understand too well that my place is no longer at the château; all our troubles have come from my having lived there too long,” said she.

“Jeanne Ragaud,” said M. le Curé, “always think so, and conform your conduct to your words; and if you will persevere in your resolution, in the name of the Lord I promise you that these trials will pass, and that you will yet have many happy days.”

M. le Curé pronounced these words in such a serious tone they all three felt wonderfully comforted. We can truly say that this Sunday was one of the happiest days in the life of the Ragauds. They went back to Muiceron with courage and peace in their souls, and on the next day each one set to work to repair the damage that two weeks of discouragement and gloom had introduced into that poor forlorn house.

The days passed rapidly between work and household duties faithfully accomplished. Gradually the remembrance of the recent misfortunes lost its bitterness, and they were even able to speak of them sometimes to Jacques Michou, who came frequently to visit his friends. As the police sought in vain for Isidore, people ended by letting him drop; and, as always happens, each one having resumed his usual course of affairs, they came to the conclusion that perhaps he was not so guilty as had seemed at first sight; so that, but for their ignorance as to the fate of Jean-Louis, one month after the catastrophe the Ragauds appeared as happy and tranquil as before.

M. le Curé was not so ignorant, being kept fully informed by Jean-Louis, who wrote to him regularly, but left to his wisdom to confide what he chose to the family at Muiceron. He preferred to keep a strict silence, for the very good reason that he wished to prove, by a long trial, the sincerity of Jeannette's conversion. Thank God! on that side there was nothing to apprehend. Solange, with her great charity of soul, had not been mistaken in thinking Jeannette's head weaker than her heart.

Misfortune had so purified and strengthened the little creature, Jean-Louis would have loved her more than ever, could he have seen her thus changed; for although nothing is perfect in this world, I can truly say, without exaggeration, she was now as near perfection as could be expected of anything human.

Pierrette, who at first wished to spare her little hands, so unaccustomed to work, did not wish her to undertake any of the heavier labor; but Jeannette was so quick and [pg 052] ready, the hardest and most difficult tasks were always accomplished by the time her mother came to give directions. She was the first at the stables in the morning, which she never left until all was in order, the fresh milk placed aside, and the cream taken off that of the evening before; on churning days she prepared the wheels of the machine, which would afterwards be turned by Marion. It was she also who measured the ashes for the lye used in the big wash the fifteenth of every month; and every week gave out the flour, half wheat, half rye, for the family bread. So great was her zeal she even wished to knead the dough, and put the loaves in the oven, which is terribly hard work; but this time Pierrette showed her authority, and declared she would sooner give up baking at home than see her daughter wear herself out at the kneading-trough like a baker's son-in-law.

From time to time, M. le Curé visited Muiceron at unusual hours, so that his appearance would be entirely unexpected, and always found Jeannette busy with her household labors, or, if it was late in the day, seated by the window, mending the clothes and linen of the family.

Her dress was always very simple, even on Sunday, and you may well think that mademoiselle's beautiful dresses were left hanging in the closet without being even looked at occasionally. For another girl it would have been advisable economy to make some use of them by altering the style, so as to fit them for the farm; but Jeannette was too rich for any one to accuse her of extravagance for not using them, and it was every way better she should not reappear in costumes that would recall a time which, although passed, still left a painful memory.

She generally wore a serge skirt, striped in black and white, with a woollen basque which corresponded; and her Indian neckerchief from Rouen, covered with little bouquets of bright flowers, crossed in front, under her apron, was in no way more pretentious or coquettish than that of her mother Pierrette.

She even wore the cap of our country-girls, which consists of a head-piece of linen, with long ends of lawn, which they cross above the head on the days they wish to appear very fine. Coquettes know how to make themselves very elegant by adding embroidery and lace; but Jeanne Ragaud, who could have bought out a mercer's shop, thought no longer of beautifying herself, much less her cap. Thus dressed, she looked more like a quiet little outdoor sister of some convent than the sole heiress of a large estate. She was told so sometimes, which highly delighted her, as she wished to appear in everything totally different from what she had been.

It needed a little courage to act thus before the eyes of the whole commune. Jeannette knew that after being called for ten years the vainest, silliest little peacock in the country, she was now looked upon as an exaggerated devotee; and, what was worse, some said she had thrown herself into the arms of the good God because her marriage had been broken off.

“Wait and see,” said the busy tongues; “only let her dear Perdreau come back, and all the fine dresses will be taken from the hooks, as before his departure.”

For they were persuaded she [pg 053] adored him, and that she still preserved, in the bottom of her heart, a tender remembrance, mingled with regret, which only waited an opportunity to show itself. Now, one's nature is not changed, no matter how great is the desire to correct it, and you know that Jeannette was passionate and excitable. She therefore had much to suffer, and did suffer in silence, thinking that all these mortifications would aid her to expiate her sins, and to merit from the good God the favor of Jean-Louis' return, which now was the sole object of all her thoughts, desires, and prayers.

To see again the friend of her childhood; to soothe together the declining years of her old parents; to converse with him as in old times; to resume the gentle friendship, which now was so ardently desired by her poor little heart; to ask his pardon; and to make him so happy that he would forget the past—this was what this repentant, loving child thought of by day, and dreamt of all night, waking or sleeping. As her conversion had not deprived her of penetration, she quickly guessed that the good curé knew every movement of Jean-Louis from A to Z; and it was amusing to see the way in which she would turn and turn again her questions, in the most innocent manner, so as to obtain some enlightenment on the subject. But our curé read this young soul like an open book, and, although he admired all that the Lord was working in it for her good, pursued the trial, and, under the manner of an old grandfather, kind-hearted and tender, did not allow her to gain from him one foot of ground. However, occasionally he pretended to be surprised, taken by storm. It was when he would see the little thing sadder than usual, and ready to be discouraged. Then he would loose the string two or three inches—that is to say, he would say a word here and there, to make it appear he would speak openly at his next visit; and when that day came, he played the part of a person very much astonished that anything was expected from him.

However, like everything else, this had to come to an end. Half through pity, half through wisdom, the dear curé thought—as he said himself—that if the bow was too much bent, it would break; so one morning, having finished his Mass and eaten his frugal breakfast, he went to Muiceron, with the intention of conversing seriously with the Ragauds, and telling them all that he knew of good Jean-Louis.

To Be Continued.

Home Rule For Ireland.

The term Home Rule as applied to British politics, in its local signification, has been a very unfamiliar one to American readers until quite recently, and even yet it is not generally recognized as the watch-word of a powerful and growing political party in and outside of the English Parliament, which has its headquarters in Ireland, and numerous ramifications extending throughout the principal cities and towns of England, Wales, and Scotland. In its leading features and designs this new organization may be said to be in fact the revival by another generation of the one formerly founded and led by O'Connell, and, like its prototype, is established for the purpose of effecting by constitutional means the abrogation of the treaty of union between Great Britain and Ireland, which was so delusively concocted and ratified, in the name of those countries, at the close of the last century; and the consequent reconstruction of the Irish Parliament on a footing of equality with that of England.

It is by no means what might be called a revolutionary movement, for it seeks neither to pull down nor destroy, by force or conspiracy, those bulwarks which society has raised for its own protection against lawless and unscrupulous demagogues; its object is simply to restore, as far as desirable and practicable, the old order of things, and to redress, even at this late day, an act of flagrant wrong and injustice done three-quarters of a century ago to a long misgoverned people, by restoring to them the right and power to regulate their own domestic affairs, subject, of course, to the authority of the common sovereign of the United Kingdoms.

The history of the treaty and acts of legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland, and of the motives which conduced to the formation of the conspiracy against the independence of an entire nation; of the plots formed in the fertile brain of Mr. Pitt against the civil and religious liberties of the sister kingdom, and but too successfully carried out by Castlereagh, Cooke, and other officials in Dublin, has never been sufficiently studied, even in this country, where every measure affecting the freedom of mankind, in what part of Christendom soever, possesses peculiar interest. This defective knowledge of a subject comparatively modern may be attributed partly to the fact that we Americans have been too much in the habit of looking at foreign politics through English spectacles, and in part because there seems to be a principle in human nature which inclines us to ignore, if not despise, the sufferings of the needy and unfortunate. Vanquished nations are regarded generally as are poor relations whom no one cares to know or acknowledge.

And yet the circumstances which eventually led to the destruction of the Irish Parliament were almost contemporary with, and to a certain degree grew out of, our own Revolution. The causes that effected the severance of the North American colonies from the mother country, [pg 055] and facilitated the consummation of our aspirations for independence, operated, paradoxical as it may seem, to bind Ireland firmer in the chains of alien thraldom, as well as to extinguish the last spark of her freedom.

It is generally conceded that the Irish Parliament, from its inception in the XIVth century till 1782, was not only not the legitimate legislative representative of even a moiety of the people of that country, but was actually a very efficient instrument in the hands of their enemies. At first it was merely an irregular gathering of the nobles and chief men of the “Pale”—a term applied for hundreds of years after the invasion to four or five counties on the eastern and southeastern sea-board, over which the Anglo-Normans held sway. Whenever a raid on the native chieftains was projected, or a scheme of spoliation to be adopted, it had long been the custom of the lord deputy, or other representative of English authority, to summon the heads of Anglo-Irish houses and a few of the principal burghers of the larger towns and cities within his jurisdiction, to meet him at Dublin, Drogheda, or Kilkenny, and, having given the motley gathering the sonorous title of parliament, to demand the enactment of new statutes against the “Irish enemy,” or to extort fresh levies of men and money for his incursions into the interior.

Gradually, however, those erratic assemblies began to assume form and regularity, and even to display a certain independence of action distasteful to the governing power. As English conquest in Ireland gradually widened its sphere, particularly in Leinster and Munster, the number of members who attended those sessions increased; and as the descendants of the invaders, having lost the attachment of their forefathers to England, naturally evinced a desire to legislate for themselves, it was thought desirable in London to nip in the bud a flower which might insensibly expand into national independence. Accordingly, in the reign of the seventh Henry, the Irish Parliament being still weak and yielding, a bill was passed by it acknowledging the dependence of that body on the king of England and his council. This act, called after its originator, Poynings, most effectually repressed the aspirations of the only representative body in the kingdom, and produced the desired results. But as if this were not enough, we find subsequently, in the reign of William and Mary especially, instances of the English Parliament legislating directly for Ireland; and in the sixth of George I. there was passed a declaratory act which, if any vestiges of freedom or manhood yet remained in the Irish Parliament, most effectually destroyed them. These efforts, thus made from time to time to destroy the liberty and efficiency of the Parliament, naturally disgusted a great many of its members who had the least spark of self-respect or personal honor left, and drove them from the nation's councils; those who remained being almost without exception government officials or newly-arrived and needy adventurers, ignorant of the character, wants, and wishes of the people, who hoped, by the display of extraordinary zeal and sycophancy, to push their fortunes and find favor in the eyes of the Castle authorities. It is not surprising, then, that a body composed of such elements should have unhesitatingly voted away the royalty of the ancient [pg 056] kingdom to Henry VIII., whose predecessors never claimed a higher title than that of lord; that at the bidding of the same monster, it officially and almost unanimously declared for the Reformation, and with equal alacrity, in the reign of his daughter Mary, explicitly repudiated everything it had done a few years previously.

Yet it still bore the semblance of a national legislature; and, gradually yielding to the influence of a growing public opinion, some good men, Catholics as well as Protestants, were again to be found among its members in the subsequent reigns, until that of William III., when, by an unconstitutional law of the English Parliament, the former were for ever excluded, and never during its existence was one of that proscribed faith allowed to sit on its benches. From this reign also may be dated the many cruel penal enactments, over one hundred in number, which disgraced its statute-books; though, to do its members justice, they never went so far in ferocity and ingenuity as did their brethren of London at the same period and even long previously.

But though four-fifths of the people were disfranchised and their co-religionists denied a seat in the Parliament, that body was again gradually approaching the assertion of its right of self-legislation. A new generation had sprung up during the later half of the XVIIIth century who knew not William of Orange nor the bitter anti-Irish prejudices that characterized his followers. The bold, incisive, and satirical writings of Swift, the learned disquisitions of Molyneux, and the homely but vigorous appeals of Lucas, had not been without their effect on the young students of Trinity and other colleges, fresh from the study of the lessons of human liberty so frequently found in classic lore; and the consequence was that when they entered the Parliament as members, confident in their position as gentlemen of fortune, and self-reliant, not only from their aristocratic connections, but from their innate sense of mental superiority, language began to be heard and applauded which, for elegance, grace, and manliness, had never been equalled in that hall before. The outbreak of our Revolution, the broad principles of justice and humanity laid down in the speeches and writings of our ancestors, and the trumpet-toned Declaration of Independence occurring at the same time, gave an impetus and a clarity of ideas on questions of government which, up to that time, had assumed neither form nor consistency.

The first symptoms of active agitation for their political rights may be said to have sprung up at this period among the Irish of all conditions and creeds, but more especially in Ulster and the cities of Dublin, Cork, and Limerick—the homes of manufactures and the centres of produce, exports, etc. Their grievances were of two classes: restriction on foreign trade, and parliamentary dependence and corruption. Under the first head, it was charged, and with great truth, that Irish merchants were prohibited by English laws from trading with France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, many of the West India Islands, and the whole of Asia, for the purpose of benefiting their rivals in England; thus utterly crippling the manufacturing interests of the country, and completely stopping the exportation to these markets of farm products, of which she had [pg 057] even then a superabundant supply. This limitation of commerce had long been not only the principal cause of the impoverishment of the nation, but a fruitful source of clamor and popular discontent, which had invariably been unheeded by the dominant power as long as it was able to repress them by the strong arm. At length, however, a change was about to take place. Soon after our War of Independence broke out and the French alliance was cemented, England was obliged to withdraw from Ireland nearly the whole of her military and naval forces, thus leaving the latter undefended by either regulars or militia, and at any moment open to attack from the allies. Indeed, Paul Jones several times appeared on the coast, and in 1779-80 the Franco-Spanish fleets were absolute masters of the Channel. The people, kept in a constant state of alarm, at last determined to arm for mutual protection; and thus was originated that short-lived but remarkable body of citizen soldiery known as the Irish Volunteers.

The movement began in Belfast in August, 1778, and before two years elapsed it had spread over the whole country, and counted on its muster-rolls nearly one hundred thousand men, fully armed and equipped at their own expense. Noblemen, judges, magistrates, and prominent members of Parliament were proud to serve in the Volunteers as company or field officers; and Lord Charlemont, one of the most accomplished and liberal members of his order, accepted the office of commander-in-chief.

The external security of the island having thus been amply provided for, attention was naturally turned to internal evils. Various meetings of Volunteers were held in the several counties, and strong resolutions passed in favor of the freedom of foreign trade. The Castle authorities were not in a position to resist a demand so made; the Irish Parliament, led by such men as Grattan, Flood, and other nationalists, voted in favor of the immediate emancipation of commerce; and the British premier, Lord North, in December, 1779, submitted three propositions to the English Parliament to permit the export of glass and woollens from Ireland, and permission for her to trade with the American colonies, Africa, and the West Indies. During the following February, a bill embodying these provisions was introduced by the ministry, and passed with little opposition.

This point gained, the Volunteers set to work to free the Irish Parliament itself from all dependence on the London Privy Council and the Parliament of the sister kingdom. In April, 1780, Grattan moved his Declaration of Rights, which avowed, among other truths, “that his most excellent majesty, by and with the consent of the lords and commons of Ireland, are the only power competent to enact the laws to bind Ireland.” This resolution was, however, opposed on technical grounds, and withdrawn. During the following year, Mr. Yelverton asked leave to bring in a bill virtually repealing Poynings' law, which was granted by a vote of 167 against 37, though later in the session Flood's motion of a similar purport was defeated by a majority of 72. The people, who had anxiously watched the action of their representatives, were now in a ferment of excitement, and numerous meetings of civilians and Volunteers were held throughout the provinces, the most noteworthy of which was the [pg 058] convention of the Ulster Volunteers at Dungannon, February 15, 1782. This powerful assembly passed a series of manly resolutions in favor of the right of the subject to bear arms, to express his opinions freely on political affairs, and to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience; but the one most to the point read as follows: “Resolved, unanimously, That a claim of any body of men other than the king, lords, and commons of Ireland to make laws to bind this kingdom is unconstitutional, illegal, and a grievance.” This was followed up by like meetings in the other sections of the country, at which similar resolutions were adopted. A few days after there was a change of ministry in England, and of course a change of policy. Messages were sent in the name of the king to both Parliaments, ordering them to take into their most serious consideration “the discontents and jealousies prevailing among his loyal subjects of Ireland, in order to such a final adjustment as may give mutual satisfaction to both kingdoms.” The answer of the Irish Parliament to this demand met with no opposition on the question of its adoption, though it declared emphatically “that there is no body of men competent to make laws to bind this nation except the king, lords, and commons of Ireland; nor any other parliament which hath any authority or power of any sort whatever in this country save only the Parliament of Ireland.” There was no mistaking or avoiding this expression of public opinion, endorsed as it had been by a national army able and willing to second their demands; so in May, 1782, the act of sixth George I. was repealed in the English Parliament, and the old objectionable law of Poynings simultaneously suffered a similar fate in that of Ireland.

Irish trade was now free, and Irish legislation independent at least of alien dictation; but another great task lay before the Volunteers, which unless accomplished, their well-won victories were likely to prove barren indeed. This was the purification of their own House of Commons, and the right of representation for the people at large. That the popular branch of the legislature wanted reformation badly may be judged from the status of its members as given by contemporary writers. Only seventy-two of them were returned by vote; one hundred and thirty-three sat for “nomination” or “close” boroughs, absolutely controlled by a few peers; ninety-five were similarly sent to the Parliament by about fifty commoners; so that, out of the three hundred members of the house, two hundred and twenty-eight were wholly and solely dependent for their seats on less than half their own number. When we consider, also, that of those creatures at least one-half were officials, pensioners, or expectants of pensions and government favors, we can well imagine how little reliance could be placed on their integrity or honesty in a struggle between a hostile, inimical power and the people; and it must also be remembered that at that time neither the right of representation nor of suffrage was allowed to the Catholics, who comprised seventy or eighty per cent. of the entire population.

The Volunteers, therefore, set to work to do for their countrymen what fifty years afterwards was at least partially effected by the Emancipation and Reform Acts for the United Kingdoms. They again held meetings, passed resolutions, and [pg 059] even called a national convention to meet in Dublin during the Parliamentary session of 1783-4. One hundred and sixty delegates accordingly met in the Rotunda amid the general congratulations of the citizens and the high hopes of the nation. But, alas! this sanguine confidence in the manliness and liberality of the delegates soon received a shock so rude that its effects were felt in the most remote parts of the island, and carried with them gloom and dismay to the masses of the people.

The Volunteers were an essentially, and it might be said an exclusively, Protestant organization from the beginning, but it was earnestly supported by the Catholics from a feeling that unrestricted trade and legislative independence were national boons of the first importance, as well as from an apparently well-founded trust that, these being obtained, the abrogation of the penal laws and the right of representation would speedily follow. They could not believe that an influential but very small minority, seeking liberty for themselves, would persistently deny it to the large majority of their countrymen. They were now about to be undeceived. One of the very first resolutions passed at the convention read as follows: “Resolved, That the Protestant inhabitants of this country are required by the statute law to carry arms and to learn the use of them,” etc.; and, lest any doubt should remain of the bigotry and narrow-mindedness which pervaded the representatives of the Volunteers, the plan of reform, as drawn up by Flood and subsequently adopted, was made to read thus: “That every Protestant freeholder or leaseholder, possessing a freehold or leasehold for a certain term of years of forty shillings' value, resident in any city or borough, should be entitled to vote at the election of a member for the same.”

The limitation of the right to bear arms and to vote to Protestants only was the destruction of the moral as well as physical power of the Volunteers, and a death-blow to the longings and aspirations of the patriotic Catholics. It was more than a blunder, it was a crime—a piece of rank, selfish hypocrisy, which ill became men who had the words of freemen on their lips, but, it appears, the feelings of tyrants in their hearts. In vain did the Irish Catholics protest in a series of resolutions; in vain did the Earl of Bristol, then Protestant Bishop of Derry, vehemently advocate the claims of the people to something like religious and social equality. The convention was deaf to all remonstrance and entreaty, and blindly rushed to its own destruction.

It had taken the only step that could have gratified its enemies, and, by throwing away the friendship and support of the vast majority of the population, it left itself exposed and naked to the attacks and machinations of the Castle authorities. Pending the American war, England looked with fear and anxiety on that large body of armed men that could at any time, and with little risk, sever the connection between the two countries, for she was powerless to resist them; yet, when somewhat recovered from her humiliating defeats in her quondam colonies, she turned all her attention and used all her art to destroy not only the Volunteers, but the Parliament that had recognized and fostered them. She was determined, if possible, that such a dreaded contingency should not occur again. The convention, as we have seen, [pg 060] had rejected the moderate demands of the Catholics, many of whom, despairing of justice in that quarter, naturally looked to the government for some modification of their disabilities; while the Parliament, always under official control, took advantage of the occasion to sow division and discord among its members. When Flood, fresh from the Rotunda, moved for leave to bring in a reform bill embodying the plans of the convention, it was refused by a majority of eighty in a total vote of two hundred and thirty-four.

The history of Ireland from this time till the close of the century could well be blotted out, for the sake of human nature, from the annals of the race. The Volunteers, who ought not only to have been the defenders of the country from foreign enemies, but the protectors of the civil rights of their countrymen at home, after the scornful rejection of their claims by Parliament and the adjournment of their convention, ceased to be either feared or respected. Many of their most prominent officers went over to the government, others of more advanced views joined the secret society known as the United Irishmen. The English authorities, having thus succeeded in their first project even beyond their expectations, applied themselves with extraordinary industry to carry out the second. Agrarian outrages became more frequent; “Peep-o'-day boys” and “Defenders” terrified the peaceful farmers of one or other side; Orangemen were petted and armed, while Catholic bishops and priests were deluded with false promises; the royal grant to Maynooth College was increased at the same time that martial law was proclaimed in the most peaceful Catholic districts; and churches were being burned to the ground unrestrictedly by those who wore the king's livery. At the general election, which took place in 1790, the most scandalous means were adopted to secure a thoroughly subservient majority in the lower house; and, lest this should not be sufficient, new peers were created through corrupt influence, in order that the lords might not offer any opposition to the behests of the Castle.

It is difficult to imagine the scenes of outrage, rapine, private revenge, and general consternation which grew out of a persistence in so wily and nefarious a policy. Supported secretly by the authorities, the Orangemen became utterly regardless of the lives of their Catholic neighbors; while they, with a choice only between the oppression of an armed faction of bigots on one side, and the tender mercies of English law on the other, naturally inclined to the latter as the lesser of two evils, and began to long for imperial protection. There were many, however, who joined the United Irishmen, and here again arose another division. That society was a sworn secret organization, and, as such, the hierarchy and the priesthood were bound to condemn it, no matter how much they may have sympathized with its aims, and to denounce all who were in its ranks.

But notwithstanding the state of fear, confusion, and disruption to which the country was reduced, the English officials still feared to bring before the Parliament the question of a union. A blow must first be struck that would drive terror into the hearts of the whole people; so terrible and sanguinary that even the greatest lover of his country's independence would, it was hoped, [pg 061] gladly desire peace and order, even at the price of British connection. This was done in 1798. The United Irishmen proposed to resort to armed insurrection and an appeal for French support, but as yet had committed no overt act of treason. The government, which had all along been cognizant of their schemes and movements, resolved to anticipate them by driving the country into premature rebellion; its tactics differing, however, in various localities. To Wexford, always a very peaceful, Catholic county, where there were very few United Irishmen, they sent the infamous North Cork militia, whose cruelty was only surpassed by their abject cowardice. These miscreants were to a man Orangemen, and their line of march to the town of Wexford, for miles on both sides, was marked by the ruins of burned chapels and the corpses of slaughtered peasantry. It was only then that the people of that country rose up in arms, seeking “the wild justice of revenge,” and waged on the murdrous brood a war which, for bravery and decisiveness during the time it lasted, has few parallels in modern history. In Dublin, the chiefs of the intended insurrection were suddenly seized, imprisoned, and many of them finally executed. The Presbyterians of Ulster, the originators of the United system, were hurried into untimely outbreaks by the knowledge of the discovery of their designs, and, after three or four detached efforts at rebellion, were easily put down by the militia and regular troops. Then came the judicial murders, drum-head courts-martial, torture and death. No man, no matter how innocent, considered himself safe, and no woman was free from insult and outrage. The spirit of the government seemed to be infused into all its officials from the highest judge on the bench to the lowest constable, and that spirit was one of terrorism and slaughter.

Ireland was now prostrate, defenceless, and bleeding from every artery and vein, and this was considered a fitting time to rob her of her Parliament, and snatch from her enervated grasp the last remnant of her independence. The measure was introduced into both Parliaments almost simultaneously, at first with doubtful success, but afterwards carried with little difficulty, except the expenditure of enormous sums by the government in bribing and pensioning members. The most alluring prospects were held out to the Catholics to induce them to support the measure out of Parliament—they had no voice inside of it—but, to their credit be it said, not even a moiety of them were deceived by such treacherous proposals. They were assured that, after the union, English capital would flow free as water into the country; that protection for their persons and property against Orange fanatics would be fully guaranteed; and that many of the more oppressive clauses in the penal code would be repealed—all of which, it is unnecessary to say, were conveniently forgotten by Pitt and his successors once the abominable bargain had been closed. The act of union passed the Irish House of Commons June 7, 1800, and the House of Lords on the 13th of the same month, to take effect on the 1st of January following.

The deed was at last accomplished, and Ireland, deceived, betrayed, and dejected, sank down into the lethargy of despair till once more aroused to action by the magnificent genius of the great agitator, [pg 062] O'Connell. For a long time he dared not hope or ask for a repeal of the union, but confined himself to the removal of Catholic disabilities, as the operation of the nefarious penal laws was elegantly called; though occasionally, in his more comprehensive speeches, he alluded to the future possibility of such a demand. Emancipation gained, the Reform Bill carried, and the tithe, poor law, and other questions of minor importance more or less satisfactorily disposed of, O'Connell turned his serious attention to the restoration of the Irish Parliament.

He initiated the movement in 1840, but for some time with very little appearance of making it in any sense a national one. The people were supine, and those who should have been their leaders rested content with comparative religious equality and the friendship of the Whigs, who, when in power, were always generous of petty offices to the poor relations and dependants of those who could influence elections in their favor. But the great Liberator, though he had nearly reached that term of threescore and ten allotted as the span of man's life, was still full of vigor and determination. He travelled through every part of Ireland, arousing the dormant, reassuring the timid, arguing with the disputatious, and hurling his anathemas against those who, from cowardice or venality, refused to join in the crusade against English influence in Ireland. His success was more than wonderful. The hierarchy unanimously declared in favor of “repeal,” the priesthood almost without exception became his warmest and most efficient supporters, and of course the mass of the people, always on the right side when properly led, greeted him everywhere with the wildest applause. Money poured in from all sides to help the national cause; not Ireland and the British Islands alone contributing their quota, but the continent of Europe and the ever-generous people of America lavishly advanced funds for the purpose of aiding the people in obtaining self-government.

Then came the year 1843—the year of the monster meetings at central and time-honored localities, such as Mallow, Tara, Mullaghmast, and Clontarf, where assembled countless thousands of well-dressed, well-conducted, and unarmed peasantry, to listen to the voice of their champion and his co-laborers, and to demand in peaceful terms the restoration of their filched legislative rights.

The British government was decidedly alarmed, and with good cause. It tried to stem the torrent of popular opinion by the most extravagant distribution of patronage, by landlord intimidation, the denunciations of a venal press, and even by intrigues at the court of Rome; but all to no effect. Rendered desperate, it even projected a general massacre at Clontarf; but this savage project was defeated by the judicious conduct of the repeal leaders. Next it evoked the terrors of the law; for in Ireland, unlike most free or partially free countries, the law has actual terrors for the good, but very little for the wicked. O'Connell and eight of his associates, including his son John, three editors, and two Catholic priests, were arrested, indicted for “conspiracy,” tried, and all, on the 30th of May, 1844, were sentenced to imprisonment, with the exception of F. Tierney, who had died before the trial. The effect on the [pg 063] country was the reverse of what was expected. O'Connell's popularity, if possible, increased, the repealers became more numerous, and several Protestant gentlemen of fortune and influence, who had hitherto held aloof, joined the association. But when three months had elapsed, and the decision of the packed Dublin jury and the rulings of the stipendiary English judges were set aside by the House of Lords, led by Brougham, the enthusiasm of the people knew no bounds.

These indeed were the halcyon days of Ireland. Never were her people so numerous, prosperous, and contented, so full of thankfulness for the present and hope in the future. Of the nine millions of her population, at least two-thirds were active repealers or in sympathy with their cause. No nation, in fact, was ever more unanimous on any public question than were the Irish of the years 1844-5, and never was the country so free from crime of every degree. Much of this enviable condition was to be attributed to the oft-repeated admonition of O'Connell, that “he who commits a crime gives strength to the enemy”; more, perhaps, to the unceasing admonitions and personal presence of the priesthood at the monster gatherings; but most, we think, to the workings of F. Mathew's beneficent projects. It was a fortunate coincidence that the Apostle of Temperance and the great Liberator were contemporaries. For the one teetotaler the first could show, the other could point out an ardent repealer.

But a change was impending that, amid the sunshine and gladness of the hour, was undreamt of—a change that was to spread woe and desolation over the face of the fair island. Famine, gaunt and hideous famine, with her attendants, pestilence and death, was knocking at the door, and would not be denied admittance.

The first symptoms of the failure of the potato crop, then almost exclusively the food of five or six millions of people, appeared as early as 1845, and, though it created much alarm and distress in certain neighborhoods, was not of so widespread a nature as to excite general anxiety till the close of that year and the beginning of the next. O'Connell, the mayors and corporations of the large cities, and many other prominent persons, lay and clerical, having exhausted all the resources of private charity, strenuously but vainly urged on the government the necessity of taking some steps to save the lives of the people. They represented, and truly, that the grain crop alone of the country was sufficient to feed twice the number of inhabitants, and asked that its exportation might be prohibited; that a large portion of the imperial revenue was raised in Ireland, and suggested that a portion of it might be expended there on useful public works, and thus afford employment to the famishing and needy; that a great part of the lands then unproductive might be reclaimed with benefit to the holders, and proposed that the government ought to loan money to the landlords for that purpose, to bear interest, become a first lien on the land, and to be repaid at the expiration of a certain number of years. Their appeals were answered by coercion and arms acts, and by the repeal of the Corn Laws, by which the Irish producer, who was obliged to sell his cereals in English markets in order to pay his rent, found himself undersold by importers from [pg 064] the great grain-producing countries, like Russia and the United States. In truth, England did not want to stay the famine, for it was her best and only ally against the repeal movement; and the “providential visitation,” as it was blasphemously called by her politicians and clerical demagogues, was allowed to take its course. Thus unchecked, the dire destroyer swept on from county to county during the years 1846-7-8-9, till the island, so fair to view in 1844, became almost a deserted graveyard, and its inhabitants who had neither sunk beneath its curse nor fled the country became a nation of paupers. It is now proven by trustworthy statistics that during those five years over one million fled for ever from their homes, and that at least a million and a third perished on their own soil, amid plenty, from want of food and the ravages of the fatal typhus!

No wonder, then, that the great repeal organization drooped, quarrelled, and finally ended a lingering and impotent existence a few years after. The bone and sinew of the land, who had given vitality and strength to its labors, were either far across the Atlantic or rotting in pauper-graves. No wonder, also, that its great founder and chief, overburdened with years, but more by national misfortunes, should have sickened at the sights around him, and, fleeing from the ills he could not cure, should have died on a foreign soil, far from his beloved fatherland.

But though the famine had mortally wounded the repeal movement, its demise was hastened by dissensions among the leaders themselves. In 1846, in a discussion on the expediency of the use of moral force solely as a means of obtaining national redress of grievances, hot and personal remarks fell from the lips of the speakers on both sides; great excitement was created among the audience, and finally O'Brien and many of the ablest and most active of the repeal writers and speakers withdrew, and formed what was called the Confederation or “Young Ireland” party. Though thoroughly honest, high-toned, and brilliant as orators and journalists, the Young Irelanders could never win any appreciable amount of popular support; and though up to February, 1848, when the French Revolution threw Europe into a ferment of excitement, they never contemplated armed resistance, the people generally looked upon them with suspicion, and refused their co-operation. In the summer of that year, however, they did make an attempt at revolution, and, as might have been expected, miserably failed. Thus the “Association” and the “Confederation” disappeared almost at the same time; and now that a quarter of a century has passed, and a new generation has come to the front, we find the principles and aims of the original organization revivified and incorporated into what is called the “Home Rule League.”

In its demands, this association is more moderate than was O'Connell. He wanted repeal of the treaty and act of union, pure and simple, and the restoration of the national legislature as it was in 1782, with the emancipation and other kindred acts superadded. The Home Rulers, if we may judge from the resolutions passed at a very large conference held lately in Dublin, only ask for a parliament to regulate their domestic affairs, leaving to the British imperial Parliament full power and authority over all matters concerning the entire empire, or, in other words, placing Ireland [pg 065] in the same position with regard to the law-making power as that now held by Canada, except the right of Ireland to send a proportional number of members to the imperial assembly. The success of such a scheme in Ireland would naturally lead to the restoration of the old Scotch Parliament, and possibly to imperial representation for Canada and other trans-marine colonies of Great Britain. Hence the widespread interest it has excited throughout the empire.

The objections to the home-rule plan, as far as we can gather them from the English and Tory Irish press—for the politicians have carefully avoided its discussion—are principally three:

I. The confusion and possible conflict of authority which might arise from having two co-ordinate legislative assemblies under the same government.

II. That the people of Ireland are unable to govern themselves, and, as the last Parliament was lost by the corruption and venality of its members, a restored one would be open to the same deleterious influences.

III. That as the Catholics, from their numbers, would necessarily have a majority in the Commons, the rights of property and the guaranteed privileges of their Protestant fellow-subjects would be in danger.

IV. That the granting of legislative power would be only a step to complete independence.

To these objections it is answered, first, that as the advocates of home rule merely require power to regulate affairs purely domestic, and not touch on those within the jurisdiction of an imperial Parliament, there would be little possibility of a collision of the two bodies; secondly, they admit the premises, but deny the conclusion regarding the probability of bribery and corruption, for the conditions are altered. The rotten and presentation boroughs, from whence the tools of the Castle sprung, have been swept away by the Reform Bill, and landlord influence has received a decided check by the adoption of the ballot. They further allege that the Catholics now, particularly since the Encumbered Estates Act was passed, are the most numerous body of landholders in the kingdom, and are consequently conservative, and would be exceeding jealous of any agrarian law that might be proposed; that the late Church Disestablishment and Land Acts have done away with many of the causes of quarrel between Catholics and Protestants growing out of tithes, endowments, etc.; and triumphantly point to the numerous Protestant gentlemen, many of whom are clergymen, who have joined their movement. As to the idea of total separation, they very properly retort that if Ireland will not rest satisfied with the concession of her just demands, it is not likely that she will be more loyal to the crown as long as they are withheld.

This repeal movement, in another shape, like its predecessor, had a very obscure birth and a small christening. About three years ago, a few gentlemen met in a private room in the city of Dublin to chat over political affairs, amongst whom was Isaac Butt, a member of Parliament, and a lawyer of large experience and great eminence in his profession, who suggested the outlines of the present plan of operation. Like most hardy plants, its growth was at first slow, but it has [pg 066] recently sprung up a hale, hearty tree, with boughs overshadowing all classes and creeds at home, and roots extending through the sister island and its dependencies. From the first the leadership has been accorded to Butt, who, though by no means a man of the gigantic calibre of O'Connell, is still a very competent political guide and an energetic organizer. Though a Protestant and a great favorite with the more liberal sectarians, he seems to enjoy the confidence and friendship of many of the Catholic bishops and a large number of the priesthood, particularly those of the venerable Archbishop McHale, whose name we find appended prominently to the call for the late conference in the capital. With Butt are such men as Sir John Gray, Mr. Mitchell-Henry Sullivan, Dease, Major O'Reilly, Digby, Synan, Murphy, Blennerhassett, the O'Connor Don, and other prominent laymen; while the Catholic clergy in great numbers, headed by Dean O'Brien, of Limerick, are active sympathizers. The Home Rulers count in their ranks in Ireland alone about sixty members of Parliament, besides nearly half that number representing English constituencies. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, one of the most profound and the best organizing minds that Ireland has produced for many generations, is, it is said, about to return from Australia, and again enter the British Parliament as the representative of an Irish constituency. Duffy is a Catholic, a man of varied and remarkable experience in public affairs, and would be a most valuable acquisition to the nationalists in council or Parliament.

The movement, as we have stated, is not merely confined to Ireland. It is nearly as popular and has almost as many supporters in England and Scotland; and in every liberal newspaper published in those countries that reaches us we find reports of numerous meetings in the principal towns and cities, and even villages, of Great Britain. The English Catholic press particularly favor it, and this adds greatly to its strength. A late number of the London Tablet says in reference to the home-rule conference: “We can all know at present what is demanded under the name of home rule; and we may frankly say at once that we have been agreeably impressed by the moderation and evident thoughtfulness which have presided over the preparation and adoption of the various resolutions that embody the proposed home-rule constitution. It is superfluous to say that there is not a trace of revolution about them.... What, however, is not superfluous to say is that the new programme of the Home Rulers appears to us to have discarded with discrimination almost everything which could prejudice their cause, and to have retained almost everything calculated to render their project acceptable to the British public and imperial Parliament.”

The Weekly Register, on the same subject, makes the following sensible remarks:

“From Tuesday to Friday, both inclusive, hundreds of Irishmen from the north and from the south, from the east and from the west, Protestants and Catholics, alumni of Maynooth and of Trinity College, met in the Rotunda to discuss the expediency of demanding of the imperial Parliament such a modification of the act of legislative union as will allow the people of Ireland to manage their purely domestic concerns without in the least interfering with matters of an imperial character; and during these memorable four days, as we have already observed, the most admirable temper was manifested and the most perfect order [pg 067]maintained, or rather observed; for the chairman had throughout only to listen like others and put the question. The principal, if not the sole, ground of difference of opinion was the constitution of the domestic Parliament. To some members of the conference the House of Lords seemed a difficulty. Undoubtedly there cannot be in these realms any Parliament without a House of Lords, and there ought not to be. Equally certain is it that differences—serious differences—will sometimes arise between the Irish peers and the Irish commons. But does nothing of the sort ever occur in the imperial Parliament? Yet, notwithstanding the dissensions, occasionally of a very violent character, that happen between the Houses at Westminster, the constitution works and the business of the empire is done, not always in the best fashion, we admit, but still so to keep the vessel of state well afloat.”

Many of the bishops and clergy in England, also, are warm sympathizers, if not active advocates, of the proposed repeal, as the following extract from a recent letter of the Rt. Rev. Dr. Turner, late Bishop of Salford, will in part demonstrate. With regard to home rule, writes that prelate, “it seems to me that some measure of home rule for Ireland is certain. It is but a question of time and amount. Parliament will, sooner or later, be obliged to grant it, if only for the despatch of imperial business. A strong feeling prevails in favor of large powers of local and municipal self-government even in England, and the extension of this principle must inevitably come to Ireland.”

We cannot but agree with the good bishop in his views of the necessity of some change in the parliamentary system of the United Kingdoms, at least as far as Ireland is concerned, and trust, sincerely trust, that his predictions will be justified by events, and that very quickly. With a home government, a denominational plan of education, and a fostering public opinion for ability and native genius, which would surely follow, that long-suffering but faithful island might in the near future equal, or even excel, the glories that shone around her in her first ages of Christianity.

Sonnet: Good Friday.

Behold the highest Good! there on the cross

'Tis pictured on a canvas so sublime

That God's own thought, conceived before all time,

Is fitly told; the universe at loss

To fathom it, its mighty forces toss

In darkened struggles that do wildly chime

In thund'rous mutt'rings with the monstrous crime

That man conceives; yet all the varied dross

Of nature's agitations but compose

The adjuncts to that central Form, where God,

Enthroned in pain, all suffering doth enclose

In one brief day, that never might be trod

A path more hard than that did interpose

'Twixt Pilate's hall and Calvary's blood-stained sod.

Grapes And Thorns. Chapter X. The Descent of Avernus.

By The Author Of “The House of Yorke.”

It was Annette who told Miss Pembroke the result of the trial, taking it on herself as a sort of mission. Without saying a word on the subject to each other, perhaps without defining it clearly in their own minds, they had yet acted on an impression that she was to be treated with peculiar delicacy and tenderness in the matter.

As young Mrs. Gerald came down the street toward her mother-in-law's home, she saw Miss Pembroke approaching her slowly from the opposite direction, a child at either side. She was just coming from her school, and these two little ones lived in the neighborhood, and were privileged to walk home with their teacher, each holding in its little hands, for warmth, a fold of her large sable cloak.

It was a still, frosty day, with a sparkling depth of cloudless blue overhead, and a spotless carpet of newly-fallen snow, white as swan's-down, underneath. But the mid-air, rosy now with sunset, imparted a tinge of violet to the sky and a soft blush to the earth. Sleighs, with their gay bells, flew to and fro, the drivers muffled to the eyes from the stinging cold; and the planks of the sidewalk crackled under the steps that trod them.

“What a motherly look she has!” Annette Gerald said to herself, as she stood waiting at the gate, and watching her friend.

Honora had quite a matronly appearance, indeed, in the thick furs she always wore in winter. She was fond of warmth, and scarcely quick enough in her motions to resist the cold of a northern climate by means of exercise alone, and the cap, muff, boa, and mantle made her look like a Juno exiled to the court of Odin. The cold melancholy of her expression, the face as untouched with color as a white camellia, was in keeping with the fancy.

She did not hasten when she saw a visitor waiting for her, nor give any smile or word of welcome. If there was a sign of emotion, it was in the slight gesture with which she detached herself from her two little attendants, who, for the first time, missed the leave-taking they prized so much. They had been wont to be stroked on the cheeks, with a gentle “Good-by”; and, running, hand in hand, down the street, to turn at the first corner, and see their teacher wave her hand to them as she stood on the piazza.

“My dear Annette, why did you not go in, instead of freezing here in the snow?” she said, and seemed too much occupied in opening the gate to be able to look in her friend's face, though her disengaged hand held that of her visitor closely.

“Oh! I never feel the cold in this still weather,” Annette said lightly. “Besides, I do not like to enter alone a deserted house. There is no one here but the servant. Mamma Gerald is with us, and we persuaded her to stay to dinner. I wish you would go up too.”

They had entered the house. Miss Pembroke paused a moment at the foot of the stairs, then led the way up to her chamber. Evidently she knew that there were tidings for her, and suspected that they were not good. “I shall not dine at home to-day,” she said, catching sight of the servant.

But she did not, apparently, mean to go out, for she deliberately removed her wrappings, and put them away; then seated herself beside her friend, and looked at her with an expression that bade her speak out her errand, whatever it might be.

“It has gone as badly as it could,” Annette said quickly.

“He is, then, found guilty?” Miss Pembroke asked, without the slightest sign of emotion.

Annette nodded. “He is convicted on circumstantial evidence. It is as plain as such evidence can be, but not plain enough to shake my hope, at least, of his innocence. Lawrence is utterly disgusted and indignant with the whole affair. He says he would at any time head a party to rescue Mr. Schöninger. He felt so angry that he wouldn't stay at home after coming up to tell us, but started off again somewhere.”

“Is he sentenced?” Miss Pembroke asked, speaking with some difficulty.

“Yes!” And since the eyes fixed on her still waited for more, Mrs. Gerald added: “There is a year solitary.”

Honora's eyes opened a little wider. “A year solitary?” she repeated.

“Why, yes, dear. You know it is the custom to give a year of solitary imprisonment before....”

Miss Pembroke put her hand up, and seemed to clear some mist from before her eyes. “Before what?” she asked in a confused way.

“Dear Honora!” exclaimed her friend, “need I say what?” And then started up with a little cry; for Miss Pembroke, without a word or sign of warning, had slipped out of her chair, and fallen heavily to the floor.

It is not necessary to make an outcry because a lady has fainted, unless there is no person of sense present. Annette Gerald did what was needful without calling for help, and her efforts were soon rewarded. The cold hand she held suddenly became warm and moist as the recoiling wave of life rushed back, and in a few minutes Miss Pembroke was able to rise from the floor, and go to the sofa. Annette sat by her in silence, now and then touching her hand or her hair with caressing fingers, and waited for her to speak.

If she had to wait some time, it was not because her friend had not returned to full consciousness. Miss Pembroke was too strong and healthy to creep back to life, even after so violent and unaccustomed an attack. It was, perhaps, the first time she had ever fainted, and she was left almost ignorant of what had happened to her; but of the cause she was not a moment in doubt. It came back clearly on the first wave of returning consciousness. She lay with her eyes closed, and strove to set her mind in order again, and set it so firmly that this terrible and entirely unexpected fact should not again derange its action. She had not once anticipated such a conclusion. Her thoughts had occupied themselves with the horrors of the accusation, and the worst result she had looked for was that, though the prisoner would doubtless be acquitted, [pg 070] he would not be able to shake off the disgrace of having been suspected, and would go out into life branded with an ineffaceable mark—a mark which his name would bear even in her own mind. She had said to herself that, pity him as she might, she desired never to see him again, not because she believed him capable of any great crime, but because his image would always be associated with painful recollections, and because his dignity had been soiled by such circumstances and associations. Now, however, he was presented to her mind in quite a new light, more pitiful, yet with a pity far more shrinking and remote from its object. In this woman, confidence in, and obedience to, authority was an instinct; and as she contemplated the decision of the law against Mr. Schöninger, she began to look on him somewhat as a Catholic looks upon those whom the anathema of the church has separated from the fellowship of the faithful, “so that they are not so much as to say to them, God speed you.” A silent and awful distance grew up between them.

After a while, she sat up, and began calmly to put her hair and dress in order.

“It is very terrible, Annette, and we may as well try to put it quite out of our minds,” she said. “We can do nothing, that I see, but pray for his conversion. I thank you for coming alone to tell me of this, for I would not have had any other person see me so much affected by the news. People imagine things and tell them as facts, and there are many who are capable of believing that I had loved Mr. Schöninger. I never did.”

There were times when Honora Pembroke's soft eyes could give a look that was almost dazzling in its firm and open clearness; and as she pronounced these last words, she looked into her companion's face with such a glance.

Mrs. Gerald rose and walked somewhat impatiently to the window. She had hoped and expected to startle Honora into some generous expression of interest in Mr. Schöninger, and to win from her some word of pity and kindness which, repeated to him, would be like a drop of cooling water in his fiery trial.

“I am sure I should never imagine you capable of having an affection for any one whom the whole world does not approve,” she said rather pointedly, having snatched the curtain up and looked out, then dropped it again. “If you can put the subject out of your mind, and remember Mr. Schöninger only when you are praying for the heathen, so much the better for your tranquillity. I am not so happily constituted. I cannot dismiss the thought of friends because it troubles me, nor because some person, or many persons, may believe something against them.”

“What would you have me do?” Miss Pembroke asked rather loftily, yet with signs of trouble in her face.

“Nothing, my dear, except that you put on your bonnet and come home to dinner with me,” Annette replied, assuming a careless tone.

Miss Pembroke hesitated, then refused. It would be certainly more sensible to go if she could, but she felt herself a little weak and trembling yet, and disinclined to talk. The best distraction for her would be such as she could find in reading or in prayer, if distraction were needed. She felt, moreover, the coldness that had come over her [pg 071] friend's manner more than Annette was aware, and for a moment, perhaps, wrung by a cruel distrust of herself, envied her that independence of mind and ardor of feeling which could at need strengthen her to face any difficulty, and which rendered her capable of holding firmly her own opinions and belief in spite of opposition. Miss Pembroke seemed to herself in that instant weak and puny, not because she did nothing for Mr. Schöninger, but because, had she seen the possibility or propriety of her doing anything, she would have lacked the courage. It was a relief to her, therefore, to find herself alone, though, at the same time, she would gladly have had the support and strength which her friend's presence could so well impart to one in trouble.

The door closed, and she looked from the window and saw her visitor walk briskly away without glancing back.

“I wish I had some one,” she murmured, dropping the curtain from her hand, and looking about the room as if to find some suggestion of help. “I am certainly very much alone in the world. Mother Chevreuse is gone; I cannot go to F. Chevreuse about this; and the others jar a little with me.”

And then, like a ray of soft and tender light coming unexpectedly to show the path through a dark place, came the thought of Sister Cecilia and her gentle companions. They had asked her to come to them, if they could ever be of any use to her, and Sister Cecilia particularly had spoken to her with an affectionate earnestness which was now joyfully remembered. “I cannot hope to be to you what Mother Chevreuse was, but I would be glad if I could in a little, even, supply her loss to you. Come to me, if you ever wish to, quite freely. You will never find me wanting in sympathy or affection.”

And she had scarcely been to them at all!

She dressed herself hastily, and called a carriage. It was too late to walk there, for already the sun was down; and it was nearly two miles to the convent.

The sharp air and brisk motion were restorative. They brought a color to her face, and sent new life through her weakened frame. Besides, when one feels helpless and distressed, rapid motion gives a relieving impression that one is doing and accomplishing something, while, at the same time, it saves the necessity of effort.

Sister Cecilia was in her own room, writing letters, her little desk drawn close to the window for the light. She looked out when she heard the carriage, and beckoned Miss Pembroke to come up-stairs then hurried to meet her half way. She had guessed her visitor's motive in coming, and it needed but a glance into her face to confirm the thought.

“Come into my chamber, dear,” she said. “It is the pleasantest room in the house at this hour. See what a view I have of the city and the western sky. I sit here to write my letters, and every moment have to leave off to admire the beautiful world outside. It is a sort of dissipation with me, this hour of sunset. This arm-chair is for you. It is my visitor's chair. I should feel quite like a sybarite if I were to sit in it.”

She seated Honora by the window, drew up her own chair opposite her, and went on talking cheerfully.

“I sometimes think that all the [pg 072] earth needs to make it heaven is the visible presence of our Lord and his saints. It would require no physical change. Of course I include the absence of sin. There is so much beauty here, so much that we never notice, so much that is everyday, yet miraculous for all that. Look at that sky! Did you ever see such a rich air? It needs the cold purity of the snow to keep it from seeming excessive.”

A long, narrow cloud had stretched itself across the west, and, drawing to its bosom the light of the sun, now hidden behind the hills, reflected it in a crimson flood over the earth. Through this warm effulgence fell, delicately penetrating, the golden beams of the full moon, changing the crimson of the air to a deep-opal color, and putting faint splashes of gilding here and there beside the rosy reflections.

“How the earth draws it in!” said the nun dreamily. “It never wastes the beauties of the sky. It hoards them up, and gives them out long after in marbles and precious stones. Did it ever occur to you to wonder how those bright things could grow in the dark underground? I used to think of it in Italy, where I first saw what marbles can be. I remember my eyes and my mind wandering to that as I knelt before the Confession of S. Matthew the Evangelist, in Santa Maria Maggiore, where the walls of the atrium glow with marbles; and the lesson I learned from it was this: that even though pains and sorrows of every kind should intervene between us and the joy of life as thickly as the clay, and rock, and turf had intervened between the sunshine of heaven and the dark place where those marbles took form and color, we could yet, if we had real faith, be conscious of all the glory and joy taking place overhead, and reproduce them for ourselves down in the dark, and make that beauty more enduring because we were in the dark. At the sunny surface, the brightness slips off and shadows succeed; but that solid jewel in the depths is indestructible. My dear”—she turned to her companion with a soft suddenness which warmed but did not startle—“do you remember S. Paul's recommendation, ‘always rejoice’? It is possible. And now tell me why you do not.”

Her eyes, beaming with religious enthusiasm and tenderest human affection, searched frankly the pale face before her, and her hand was laid lightly on Miss Pembroke's arm. No reserve nor timidity could stand before her. They melted like snowflakes beneath the heavenly summer of her glances. Honora told freely and simply what had distressed her.

How sweet is the friendship of one true woman for another!—sweeter than love, for it is untroubled, and has something of the calmness of heaven; deeper than love, for it is the sympathy of true natures which reflect each the entire being of the other; less selfish than love, for it asks no merging of another into itself; nobler than love, for it allows its object to have other sources of happiness than those it can furnish; more enduring than love, for it is a life, and not a flame.

“But can you not see, my dear,” the nun said presently, “that it would have been better if you had not had any friendly intercourse with him, even though this terrible thing had never happened? The injunction not to be unequally yoked with one another refers, I [pg 073] think, to all ties as well as to marriage. The gulf is too wide between the Christian and the Jew to be bridged over for familiar friendship. It is too wide for anything but prayers to cross. Once admit any intercourse with unbelievers, and you peril your faith; and, besides, you cannot set a barrier firmly anywhere when the first one is down. I have heard it said that this Jew loved you, and even fancied it possible that you would marry him.”

“People ought not to say such things!” exclaimed Miss Pembroke, blushing deeply.

“People ought not to have the chance to say such things, my dear girl,” replied the nun. “It was offering you an insult when he offered you his hand.”

“O dear Sister! is not that too severe?” expostulated Honora. “Setting aside what has happened since, should I not recollect, when a man makes me such an offer, what his intention is, and how the subject looks to him? And cannot I refuse him, and see that it is impossible for me to do otherwise, yet feel kindly toward him, and wish him well, and believe that he has meant to show me both affection and respect?”

“Honora,” said the Sister, “if any man had struck your mother, then turned to offer you his hand, would you not have recoiled from him in disgust and indignation?”

“Surely I would!”

“And is your God and Saviour less dear and sacred to you than your mother?” the other pursued. “Can you allow your thoughts to dwell with kindness and complacency on one who blasphemes the crucified Redeemer, and calls him an impostor? Because you have not heard this man talk against your faith, you forget what he must think of it. I tell you they mock at him, these Jews, and they call us idolaters. And what could he think of you, when, knowing that you adore Christ as God, he asked you to be the wife of one who would laugh, if he did not rave, when he saw you making the sign of the cross? He must have thought your faith so weak that he could in time make you renounce it. And the reason why he thought so was because he saw you receiving him in a friendly way, as if friendship were possible between you. I speak of what he was. What he is, we have nothing to do with.”

Miss Pembroke's eyes were down-cast. “When you place the subject in that light, I am forced to think myself all in the wrong,” she said. “But most people do not think in that clear, positive way. They act on an inherited motive, and their beliefs are moss grown, as it were.”

“They have no faith,” was the quick reply.

Honora was silent a moment, then said, with some hesitation: “I am always afraid of being uncharitable and illiberal, and perhaps I err the other way.”

“My dear, it is easy to make a mistake there, and very dangerous too,” the Sister replied with decision. “What is charity? You must first love God with all your heart; and if you do that, you will be very shy of the enemies of God. You cannot serve two masters. As to liberality, there is no greater snare. It is not liberal to squander the bounty and honor of God; it is not ours to spend. It is not liberal to praise those whom he condemns, and bless those whom he curses. It is not liberal to love those who refuse to acknowledge and obey [pg 074] him, and to contradict what he has clearly said. Or if these things are liberal, then liberality is one of the worst of vices, and one of the most futile too. Why, if I were to desire the reputation of being generous, and, having nothing of my own, should take what is not mine and give it away, I have stolen, it is true, and I have obtained a reputation that I do not deserve, but, also, I have enriched some one; whereas, if I put my hand into the treasury of God, and try to bestow on another what he has denied, the hand comes out empty. I have insulted the Almighty, and have not benefited any one. Do not suffer yourself to be deceived by sounding phrases. What are these people who talk so much of liberality? Are they liberal of what is theirs to give? Far from it. Do they give away all they have to the poor? Do they forgive their enemies? Do they give up their pride and vanity, and spend their lives in laboring for the needy? Quite the contrary. They are lavish only of what is not theirs to give. It has been reserved for those whom they call bigots to show an ardent and unsparing liberality in sacrificing their private feelings, their wealth, their comfort, their reputation, their lives even, for the glory of God and the saving of souls. There is the true liberality, my dear, and all other is a snare.”

“I wish I could shut myself up with God, and get into the right path again. I am all wrong.”

“Why not come here and make a retreat?” the Sister asked.

It was so precisely and unexpectedly what she needed that Honora clasped her hands, with an exclamation of delight. “The very thing! Yet I had not thought of it. When may I come? Very soon? It was surely an inspiration, my coming here to-night.”

Immediately her troubles began to lift themselves away, as fogs begin to rise from the earth even before the sun is above the horizon. The certainty of approaching peace conferred a peace in the present. She was going to place herself in the hands of Him who can perform the impossible.

Sister Cecilia had supplied her need perfectly. Hers was not one of those impassioned natures which need to be, soothed and caressed into quiet. A certain vein of gentle self-sufficiency, and a habit of contentment with life as she found it, prevented this. She wanted light more than warmth.

It was already dark when they went down-stairs, and since, from economy, the nuns did not have their entries lighted, the two had to go hand-in-hand, groping their way carefully, till they came to a turn in the lower passage; and there, from the open door of the chapel at the further end, a soft ray of light shone out from the single lamp that burned before the altar. By daylight both chapel and altar showed poor enough; but in the evening, and seen alone by this small golden flame, the imperfections were either transformed or hidden. Dimly seen, the long folds of drapery all about gave a sense of seclusion and tenderness; one seemed to be hiding under the mantle of the Lord; and the beautiful mystery of the burning lamp made wonders seem possible. Kneeling there alone, one could fancy all the beautiful legends being acted over again.

Sister Cecilia and Honora, still hand-in-hand, knelt in the entry the moment they saw that light.

“You remember the chalice of the bees?” whispered the nun.

“I never come here in the evening, and see that bright little place in the darkness, but I think of that sweetest of stories. And I would not be surprised to hear a buzzing of bees all about the sanctuary, and see the busy little creatures building up a chalice of fine wax, as clear as an alabaster vase with a light inside.”

They walked slowly and noiselessly by the door, and, as they passed it, saw beside the altar what looked almost like another lamp, or like that illuminated vase the Sister had fancied. It was the face of Anita, which reflected the light, her dark dress rendering her form almost invisible. That face and the two folded hands shone softly, with a fixed lustre, out of the shadows. No breath nor motion seemed to stir them. The eyes fixed on the tabernacle, the lips slightly parted where the last vocal prayer had escaped, she knelt there in a trance of adoration. But one could see, even through that brightening halo and sustaining peace, that a great change had taken place in the girl during the last few weeks. Her face was worn quite thin; and the large eyes, that had been like dewy violets bending ever toward the earth, burned now with a lustre that never comes from aught but pain.

“How the innocent have to suffer for the sins of the guilty!” sighed the nun, as she led her visitor away. “That child has received a blow from which I am afraid she will never recover. She is like a broken flower that lives a little while when it is put in water. Her conscience is at rest; she does not say now that she is sorry for having had anything to do with that trial; she does not complain in any way. She seems simply broken. And here she comes now! She has heard our steps, and is afraid she has stayed too long in the chapel.”

The young girl came swiftly along the passage, and held out her hands to Miss Pembroke. “I knew you were here,” she said, “and I was waiting to hear you come down. Mother told me I might come and say good-by to you.”

“But you have not yet said a word of welcome,” Miss Pembroke replied, trying to speak cheerfully.

“Oh! yes, when I saw you come, I welcomed you in my own mind,” she replied, without smiling.

Honora waited an instant, but Anita seemed to have nothing to say except the good-by she had come for. “Our whispering did not disturb your prayers?” she asked, wishing to detain her a little longer.

“Oh! no.” She glanced up at Sister Cecilia, as a child, when doubtful and lost, looks into its mother's face, then dropped her eyes dreamily. “I do not say any prayer but ‘amen.’ Nothing else comes. I kneel down, thinking to repeat, perhaps, the rosary, and I am only silent a while, and then I say amen. It is as well, I suppose.”

Honora kissed the child's thin cheek tenderly. “Good-by, dear,” she whispered softly. “Say one amen for me to-night.”

She went out into the still and sparkling night, and was driven rapidly homeward. On her way, she passed the prison, and, looking up, saw over the high wall a light shining redly through the long row of grated windows. It was a painful sight, but no longer unendurable. “No prayer but amen,” she repeated. “What does it matter by what road we go, so long as we reach heaven at last; whether it be in peaceful ways, or through sin and suffering?”

Another carriage drew up at the gate as she reached home, and Mrs. Gerald descended from it, having just returned from Mrs. Ferrier's.

“Upon my word, young woman!” Annette's voice called out from a pile of furs in the carriage. “We have been saying our good-nights in whispers, and hushing the very sleigh-bells, so as not to disturb your slumbers; and here you are out driving.”

Her bright and cheerful voice broke strangely into Honora's mood. Was there, then, anything in the world to laugh about, anything that could possibly excite a jest?

“Good-night, Mother Gerald!” the young woman added. “Don't stand there taking cold. And if you do not see Honora in the house to-night, make up your mind that I have carried her off with me, as I shall try to. Come here, my dear, and give an account of yourself. Where have you been?”

As Honora reached the carriage door, young Mrs. Gerald leaned out and caught both her hands. “Come with me to find Lawrence,” she whispered hurriedly. “He has not been home yet, but he will go for you.”

Though recoiling from the errand, Miss Pembroke would not refuse it. She stepped into the carriage, and suffered herself to be driven away. It was the first time such a service had ever been demanded of her. “Where is he? Do you know?” she asked.

“Oh! yes. He is only playing billiards,” the young wife answered, and a sharp sigh seemed to cut the sentences apart. “It is the first time for a long while, and I want to break it up in the beginning. John went down and told him that his mother was dining with us, but Lawrence paid no attention.”

She leaned back a little while without saying a word as they sped over the smooth snow. “It seems a shame to drag you into such an affair, Honora,” she said presently; “and I had not thought of it till I saw you, and then it came like a flash that you could help me. What I want of you is to write on a card that you and I are waiting for him. John will carry it in to him, and he will recognize your writing.”

The horses were drawn up before a large marble hotel, lighted from basement to attic. The shops underneath were all closed; but from three broad lower windows a bright light shone around the heavy lowered curtains, and in the stillness they could hear the faint click of billiard-balls. There was no sound of voices from inside, and it was impossible to know if the players were few or many.

Honora wrote hastily, by the moonlight, as she was bid, “Annette and I are waiting for you,” and John took the card.

“Why doesn't he go to this door?” she asked, seeing the man disappear around a corner of the house.

“You child!” said her friend compassionately; “are you so innocent as to suppose that any one can walk into one of those places when he pleases? These charming réunions are held with locked doors, and one has to have the password to go in.”

Honora was silent with indignation. To her mind, Lawrence could not do his wife a greater injury than in allowing her to become acquainted with such places, and she was half disposed to be vexed with Annette for not leaving him to himself, and refusing to be drawn into any objectionable scenes and associations.

Annette divined the last thought, and replied to it.

“It is impossible for a wife to be scrupulous as to the means by which she shall withdraw her husband from danger,” she said with quiet coldness. “They are one. If he is soiled, she cannot be quite clean, except in intention, unless she is very selfish; and then her intention is not good, which is worse yet. Of course she should be careful not to draw others into her affairs.”

“You must know far better than I, Annette,” her friend said quickly, feeling as though she must have spoken her thought. “At all events, you cannot be called selfish. And, indeed, if the angels of heaven were over-scrupulous with regard to their associations, we should lack their guardianship.”

Here John appeared, walking briskly round the corner of the hotel, and immediately after Lawrence Gerald came to the carriage-door.

“You here, Honora!” he exclaimed. “What could have induced you?”

“We had better not ask each other questions,” she replied coldly. “It is late. Will you come home with us?”

She drew back into a corner, and made room for him, with an air almost of disgust; for the moonlight showed his face flushed with drinking, and, as he spoke, a strong odor of brandy had been wafted into her face.

He was too much confused for anything but simple obedience, and in rather a stumbling way took the seat assigned him.

“Honora has been driving this evening, and is sleepy and chilly,” his wife made haste to say in explanation, inwardly resenting her friend's hauteur, and regretting having brought her. “She is going home to stay all night with us. I am sure you did not know how late it is.”

She furtively picked up his hat, that had fallen off, went on talking lightly, to cover his silence or prevent his saying anything senseless, and tried in every way to screen him from the scorn that she had exposed him to. He leaned back in the carriage, and took no notice of her. The presence of Honora Pembroke had confounded him, and he had just sense enough left to know that he could not keep too quiet. What had stirred her to interfere in his affairs he could not guess, for Annette had always so screened him that it never occurred to him she could have asked her friend to come. Had he known, it would have fared hard with his wife. He had, however, prudence and temper enough to keep him from making any disagreeable demonstration. John was at hand when they reached home, and, as the ladies went hastily up the steps and into the house, they were not supposed to be aware that it was his arm which enabled Mr. Gerald to go in without falling. Then Mrs. Ferrier stood in the open drawing-room door, and, under cover of her welcome to Honora, he managed to get up stairs unnoticed, fortunately for all.

For the truce between Annette's husband and her mother was over, and their intercourse was assuming a more unpleasant character than ever. Now, it was nearly always Lawrence who was the aggressor. Even when Mrs. Ferrier showed a disposition to conciliate, he found something irritating in her very good-nature. Partial [pg 078] as his mother was, she was moved to expostulate with him after witnessing two or three of these scenes.

“You ought to recollect her good intention, Lawrence, and try to overlook her manner,” she said. “I know well she does not show very good taste always; but you cannot criticise a woman in her own house.”

“I am seldom allowed to forget that it is her house,” returned the son rather sulkily.

“At least, my dear, do not provoke her into reminding you of that,” Mrs. Gerald urged.

Lawrence wished to stand well with his mother, and had, indeed, improved in his behavior toward her in proportion as he had grown more impatient with Mrs. Ferrier. He seemed now to regret having answered her unpleasantly. “If you knew, mother, all the little annoyances I have to bear from her, you wouldn't blame me so much,” he said coaxingly. “With other frets, she has a habit of asking any of us who may be going out where we are going, and when we are coming back; and Annette has humored her in that till she thinks she has a right to know. Teddy always tells her, too; but then he tells lies. That makes no difference, though, to her. Well, I have broken her of asking me when I am alone; but if Annette is with me, she asks her. Can't you imagine, mother, that it would get to be irritating after a while? It makes me so nervous sometimes that I have really skulked out of the house slyly, as if I had no right to go. And then, when I come in, she will say, ‘Why, where have you been, Lawrence? I didn't hear you go out.’ If a door opens anywhere, she goes to see who is about. I believe if I should get up in the middle of the night, and try to creep out of the house without being heard, I should see her head poked out of the chamber-door before I'd got half-way down-stairs. Then she peers and finds out everything. Annette and I had a bottle of champagne the other night in our room, and the next morning she spied out the bottle, and spoke of it. I suppose she heard the cork pop when I drew it. You never looked after me half so closely when I was a little boy, always in mischief, as she does now I am a man. She knows what my clothes cost, every rag of them, and how many clean collars and handkerchiefs I have in the week.”

“I am sure she need not trouble herself about how much your clothes cost, since you pay for them yourself,” Mrs. Gerald said, her face very red. “And if she grudges you clean collars, send your linen home, and I will have it washed there.”

“Oh! she has no such thought,” Lawrence made haste to say. “She doesn't mean to be cross about any of these things, but only prying. She wants to overlook everybody and everything in the house, and it annoys me. I only tell you so that you may not wonder if I do speak out now and then about some small thing. Then what do you think she has proposed about my going into business?”

“Well?” Mrs. Gerald said uneasily.

“She has selected a partner for me.”

His mother waited for an explanation.

“And who should it be but John!”

“John who?” asked Mrs. Gerald wonderingly, trying to recollect [pg 079] some notable person of that name among her youthful acquaintances.

“Why, I do not know that he has any other name. The big English fellow who lets you in here, and waits at dinner, and opens and shuts the carriage-door.”

“What! you do not mean the footman?” Mrs. Gerald cried.

Her son laughed bitterly. “I asked her if he was to open the shop-door, and carry parcels, and if he would have the same sort of cockade on his hat, and she got quite angry about it. She says he has saved a good deal of money, and means to go into business, and she thinks I couldn't have a better partner. What do you think of it, mother?”

Mrs. Gerald leaned back in her chair, and put her hand up to her face, half hiding a blush of vexation.

She was not willing to tell Lawrence all she thought of the matter. “What does Annette say?” she asked.

“Annette vetoed the proposal up and down. I've heard nothing of it for a week or more. I only told you because you seem to think me too difficult.”

Mrs. Gerald sighed. She had hoped to see her son busy and contented after his marriage, and she found him only more idle and dissatisfied than before. With the partiality of a mother, she tried still to find him unfortunate instead of blameworthy, and, rather than see any fault in him, looked only at his difficulties, refusing to recollect how easily he could now overcome them all. She fancied erroneously that to suggest to him that his trials had a good deal of brightness to relieve them, would be to show a lack of sympathy and tenderness, and that the best way to comfort him was to let him see that his annoyances showed in her eyes as misfortunes. It was a mistake which, in her over-sensitive affection, she had always made with him.

His wife acted otherwise. “There is no use in anticipating evil, Lawrence,” she said. “Perhaps that may be the means of bringing it about. Fortune loves a smiling countenance. As to mamma's plans and wishes with regard to John, the best way for us is to assume that it is impossible she should ever regard him as anything but a servant. And, indeed,” she concluded with dignity, “I think she never can do otherwise.”

But this assumption did not prevent young Mr. Gerald from going privately to F. Chevreuse, and begging him to interfere and try to bring her mother to reason; and perhaps Mrs. Ferrier was never so near being in open revolt against her pastor as when he undertook to show her that there were certain social distinctions which it was her duty to recognize and respect.

“I think, F. Chevreuse,” she said stiffly, “that a priest might do better than encourage pride and haughtiness.”

“He could scarcely do worse than encourage them,” he replied calmly; “and it is precisely against these sins that I would put you on your guard. Persons are never more in danger of falling into them than when they are complaining of the pride of others, and trying to reform what they conceive to be the abuses of society and the world. The only reformer whom I respect, and who is in a thoroughly safe way, is that one who strives to reform and perfect himself. When he is perfect, then he can begin to correct the faults of others. Moreover, the established customs and distinctions of society have often a [pg 080] good foundation, and are not lightly to be set aside. What would you say if your chambermaid should insist on sitting down to dinner with you and driving out with you?”

Mrs. Ferrier found herself unprepared to answer. Indeed, no lady could be more peremptory and exacting than she was with all her servants except John. She was not yet ready to explain that her generalities all had reference to one exceptional case.

“But John is not at all a common servant,” she ventured to say. “He never lived out but once before, and then it was with a very grand family in England; and he wouldn't have come here with us, only that he wanted to look round a while before setting up business. I had to coax him to come, and give him the very highest wages. And Annette did all she could to persuade him.”

“John is an excellent man, I am sure,” F. Chevreuse replied. “I hope he will succeed in whatever good work he attempts. But we were speaking of your daughter's husband. My advice is that he return to the office where he was before, and remain there till something better presents itself. I do not approve of any large and showy enterprise for him. It would not suit him. In that office his salary would be enough to render him quite independent, and leave him a little to lay up.”

“Lay up!” repeated Mrs. Ferrier, with an incredulous circumflex.

“He will put one-half his income into his wife's hands, and she can do as she will with it,” F. Chevreuse replied. “Annette has spoken to me about it, and it is his own proposal. She will put the money in bank every month. What he keeps will be his own affair, and what she takes will be a small fund for the future, and will relieve a little that painful feeling he must have in living here without paying anything. It is decidedly the best that can be done at present. Besides,” he added, seeing objection gathering in her face, “it may save you something. The young man is not to blame that he is not rich, and he is quite ready to take his wife home to his own mother, and Annette is quite willing to go, if necessary. They might live there very happily and pleasantly; but as, in that case, Lawrence would be the one on whom all the expense would fall, I presume you would make your daughter an allowance which would place her on an equality with him.”

Mrs. Ferrier was forced to consent. Nothing was further from her wish than to be separated from her daughter, not only because she was more than usually solicitous for Annette's happiness, and wished to assure herself constantly that her husband did not neglect her, but because she had an almost insane desire to watch Lawrence in every way. Nothing so piques the curiosity of a meddlesome person as to see any manifestation of a desire to baffle their searching. The annoyance naturally felt and often shown by one who finds himself suspiciously observed is always taken by such persons as a proof that there is something wrong which he is desirous to conceal. Moreover, John had let fall a word of advice which she was not disposed to disregard.

She had been complaining of her son-in-law.

“You had better let him pretty much alone, ma'am,” the man replied. “You'll never drive him to being a sober fellow, nor industrious. Scolding doesn't mend [pg 081] broken china. I have a plan in my mind for them which I will tell you after a while, when the right time comes. He wouldn't thank me for it now; but by-and-by, if he doesn't drink himself to death first, he may think my advice is worth listening to.”

John had a quiet, laconic way which sometimes impressed others besides his mistress, and she did not venture to oppose him openly, nor even to insist on hearing what his mysterious plan might be.

It was, altogether, a miserable state of affairs, one of those situations almost more unbearable than circumstances of affliction, for the cares were mean, the annoyances and mortifications petty; and the mind, which is ennobled by great trials, was cramped and lowered by the constant presence of small troubles which it would fain disregard, but could not. For, after all, these small troubles were the signs of a great one threatening. It was plain that Lawrence Gerald, if not stopped, was going to kill himself with drinking. His frame was too delicately organized to bear the alternate fierce heats and wretched depressions to which he was subjecting it, and more than one sharp attack of illness had given warning that he was exhausting his vitality.

F. Chevreuse came upon him suddenly one day when he was suffering from one of these attacks. The priest had called at Mrs. Ferrier's, and, learning that Lawrence was in his room, too unwell to go out, went up-stairs to him somewhat against Annette's wish.

“I will take the responsibility,” he said laughingly. “The boy wants me to wake him up; you women are too gentle. You are petting him to death. No, my lady, I do not want your company. I can find my own way.”

And accordingly Lawrence opened his eyes a few minutes later to see F. Chevreuse standing by the sofa where he lay in all the misery of a complete physical and mental prostration.

The priest drew a chair close to him, taking no notice of the evident disinclination of the young man to his society. “Now, my boy,” he said, laying a hand on the invalid's shrinking arm, “are you dosing yourself up to go through the same bad business again? What has come over you? Come! come! Wake up, and be a man. You are too good to throw away in this fashion.”

The young man turned his face away with a faint moan of utter discouragement. “I am not worth bothering about. I've played my stake in life, and lost, and what is left is good for nothing. Besides, if I tried, I shouldn't succeed. Why do you trouble yourself about me? I tell you that what there is left of me isn't worth saving.”

He spoke with bitter impatience, and made a gesture as if he would have sent his visitor away.

F. Chevreuse was not so easily to be dismissed.

“The devil thinks differently,” he remarked, without stirring. “He is fighting hard for you. Rouse yourself, and join with those who are fighting against him! You have an idea that, because you have made mistakes and committed sins, you must lay down your arms. Nonsense! There are all the lives of the saints against you. Some of them never began to try till they found themselves on the brink of destruction. You fancy, too, that because you and your family have had misfortunes, and because you [pg 082] have not been very successful in trying to become a rich man, you must stand humbly aside for cleverer men, and ask no favors. You're all wrong. God made you, and put you into the world, just as he has the rest of us, and you have a right to the light and air, and to repair your mistakes and repent of your sins, without troubling yourself too much about what people say and think, and to do the best you can in worldly affairs without being humbled or ashamed if you can't fill your pocket with money quite as readily as some can. Let the money go, but don't let your manliness go, and don't throw away your soul. You are talking nonsense when you say that you are worthless. Respect yourself, and compel others to respect you, Lawrence. Nerve yourself, call up your good resolutions, and ask God to help you. Despair is a crime!”

The young man put his arm up, and covered his face with it, as though to hide an emotion he was ashamed of; or, perhaps, because the light hurt his eyes. “If I could forget everything, and sleep for a month without waking, I don't know but I could begin again and try to do better,” he said faintly. “But there is no life in me now for anything.”

F. Chevreuse rose immediately. “Rest, then, if that is what you need,” he said kindly. “Rest, and forget everything painful. If any tormenting thought comes, say a little prayer, and tell it to begone. Don't drink any liquor to quiet your mind. Let Annette get you some gentle sedative. I'll tell her to keep everybody away from you, and let you lie here six months, if you want to. But when you are better, come to see me.”

He was standing, ready to go, but waited for an answer. There was none. He spoke more earnestly.

“You know well it is for the best, Lawrence; and I want you to promise to come to me when you are able to go out, before you go to see any one else.”

“Well, I will. I promise you.”

But the promise was given, apparently, only to get rid of the subject, and F. Chevreuse went away feeling that he had accomplished nothing.

Annette went directly to her husband, somewhat timid as to the reception she might meet with; but if he was displeased at having had a visitor, he did not seem to hold her responsible. He took the glass containing the opiate from her hand, and set it down beside him. “After a while,” he said. “And now I am going to lock every one out of the room, and try to go to sleep. If I want anything, I will ring.”

She began to make some little arrangements for his comfort, but, perceiving that they irritated him, desisted, and left him to himself. As she went along the passage, she heard the lock click behind her. Oddly enough, this little rudeness gave her a feeling of pleasure, for it showed that he felt at home there, and claimed a right to all that was hers.

“If only he will sleep!” she thought.

He did not sleep. His first act was to throw away the opiate she had brought. “Some such dose as they give to teething babies, I suppose,” he muttered. Then he seated himself on the sofa, and, clasping his hands over his head, as if to still the bursting pain there, remained buried in thought. One [pg 083] could see that he was trying to study out some problem in his mind, but that difficulties presented themselves. More than once his eyes wandered to a little writing-desk opposite him, and fixed themselves there. “It would remove the only obstacle,” he said; “and yet how can I? That would be going over it all again. Now I am not to blame, but only unfortunate; but if I do that....”

It was pitiable to see a young face so distorted by pain of mind and body, and to see also that the pain was stinging him into still more angry revolt.

He began pacing up and down the room, and, in his doubt and distress, seized upon one of those strange modes of solving the question in his mind which, trivial as they are, most persons have at some time in their lives had recourse to.

“If there is an odd number of squares in the carpet from corner to corner of the room, I will do it,” he said, and began to count them. The number was odd. But, apparently, he wished to make assurance doubly sure, for he next counted the stucco ornaments on the ceiling. “Odd again! Now for the third trial.” He glanced about in search of the object which was to decide his fate, and spied a large patriarchal fly that had crawled out of its winter hiding-place, and was clumsily trying its wings.

“If he can fly over that cord, I will go,” he said; and since this was the last trial, and the poor insect seemed to him something like himself at that moment, he watched with breathless interest its efforts to surmount the great obstacle of the curtain-cord that lay in its path. The little creature attempted to crawl over, but, losing its balance, tumbled off and lay helplessly on its back. The young man set it carefully and tenderly on its feet once more. “Now do your best,” he said. “You and I have made a failure, but we will try once again.”

Inspired, it would seem, by this encouragement, the fly put out its wings, gathered all its energies, and flew over the cord, tumbling ignominiously on its back again at the other side.

Lawrence Gerald did not give himself the trouble to assist again his fallen friend, but went promptly to pull the bell-tassel. He had thrown off all responsibility, and, choosing to see in these trivial chances the will and guidance of some intelligence wiser than his own, resolved instantly on following where they pointed.

“I dare say I shall stumble like that clumsy fly, but I shall succeed in the end. At all events, I will try. I can't and won't stay here any longer. It is torment for me, and I don't do any one else any good.” He seemed to be arguing with some invisible companion. “They will be better without me. Besides, it was not I who decided. I left it to chance. If it was....”

His wife entering interrupted the soliloquy. She found him lying down, as she had left him, but with a color in his face that would have looked like returning health, if it had not been a little too deep.

He stretched his hand out, and drew her to the footstool by his side. “Now, Ninon,” he said coaxingly, “I want you to be a good girl, and arrange something for me so that I shall not be annoyed by questions nor opposition. It's nothing but a whim; but no matter for that. I want to go to New York for a day or two, by myself, you know, and I must start to-night. [pg 084] I'm not going to do any harm, I promise you. I feel a good deal better, and I believe the little journey will cure me. The train starts at eight o'clock, and it is now five. It won't take me half an hour to get ready. Will you manage it for me, and keep the others off my shoulders?”

She consented promptly and quietly, asking no questions. If he should choose to tell her anything, it was well; if not, it was the same. She knew the meaning of this coaxing tenderness too well to presume upon it. It meant simply that she could be useful to him.

“What is he going to New York for?” demanded Mrs. Ferrier, when Annette made the announcement down-stairs.

“Mamma, you must not expect me to tell all my husband's business,” the young woman answered rather loftily.

Poor Annette did not wish to acknowledge that she knew no more of her husband's affairs or motives than her mother did.

“Then he will want his dinner earlier?” was the next question, Mrs. Ferrier having, by an effort, restrained her inclination to make any further complaints.

No; all he wanted was luncheon, and his wife had ordered that to be carried up-stairs.

“I suppose I am not allowed to ask how long he will be gone?” remarked the mother.

“Oh! certainly, mamma; but that is not quite settled,” Annette said pleasantly. “It depends on circumstances. A few days, probably, will be the most.”

When Annette went up-stairs again, her husband was dressed for his journey. A valise, locked and strapped, lay on the sofa at his elbow, and his wrappings were strewn about. She observed that the oak writing-desk, that had not been opened for months, to her knowledge, had been opened now. The key was in the lock, and the lid was slightly raised. She noticed, too, that a little inner cover had been torn out, and lay on the carpet, broken in two.

“The carriage will be round in a few minutes,” she said. “I thought you would want plenty of time to buy your ticket and get a good seat.”

He merely nodded in reply, but looked at her wistfully, as if touched by her ready compliance with his wishes, and desirous to see if any pain or displeasure were hidden under her quietness.

But he detected no sign of any such feelings. She was merely examining his fur gloves, to make sure that the buttons were on, looking narrowly to the strap of his cloak, busying herself in the most commonplace manner with his preparations.

“Shall I go to the station with you?” she asked carelessly.

“I wish you would.” His tone was quite earnest.

Annette had arranged it so that they went down-stairs while her mother was at dinner; and though the dining-room door had been left ajar, before Mrs. Ferrier had time to leave her seat or call out, the two had left the house, and were driving through the clear starlight.

“Annette,” her husband said suddenly, “I've been thinking that if I had a boy, I would bring him up very strictly. No matter how much I might wish to indulge him, I would resist the wish. He should be taught to control himself from fear, if he had no other motive. He should be made hardy, and healthy, and active. I wouldn't [pg 085] allow him much time to dream and think of himself; he should be kept busy; and I would never let him depend on any one, or sit still and fancy that some great fortune were going to drop into his hands without any effort on his part.”

Mrs. Gerald was silent, astonished by this unexpected lecture, of which she quite well understood the meaning. He would have no child of his brought up as he had been. But why should he speak of it now?

“There's too much liberty and recklessness among young men,” he went on. “They have too much their own way. Parents ought to see what misery it will lead to. If they don't care for what the child may make them suffer, they ought to recollect what the child has got to suffer when at last it wakes up to life as it is, and finds itself with ruinous tastes and habits, and not one right idea of anything. I am inclined to believe that it would be better for half the children in the world if they were brought up and trained by the state instead of by their own parents.”

They had reached the station, and he stepped slowly out of the carriage. His wife ventured to ask how long he would stay away.

“Oh! I've nothing to do in New York,” he said carelessly. “I shall not stay there more than two or three days.”

He leaned into the carriage, and took her hands. In the darkness she could not see his face, though the light from outside shone in her own; but his voice was tender and regretful, even solemn. “Good-by, dear,” he said. “You have been only too good to me. May God reward you!”

He bent to kiss the hands he held, then hurried away before she had recovered herself sufficiently to speak.

“What a good-by it was!” she thought with a startled heart. “One would think he were never coming back again.”

He did come back, though, and sooner than he was expected. He appeared at the door the next evening, nearly falling in, indeed, so that John had to steady him. Annette had run out of the drawing-room on hearing the servant's exclamation, but, at sight of her husband in such a state, was about to turn back in disgust.

“It isn't liquor, ma'am,” John said. “Something's the matter with him. I told you yesterday that he wasn't fit to go away. Just push that chair this way for him to sit down in, and bring him a glass of wine.”

“I had to come back,” the young man said. “I was sicker than I thought, and not able to go on. I don't know how I reached Crichton; and just now, walking up from the station, the cold wind on my forehead made me dizzy. I thought I should feel better to walk. Don't be frightened, Annette. I can go up-stairs now.”

He had every symptom of fever, and before morning had grown so much worse that a doctor was sent for, though much against his will.

“I don't believe in doctors,” he protested. “My mother always cured me when I was sick without sending for a doctor. It's all guess-work. They only know what you tell them, and they sit and stare at you, and ask you questions when you don't want to speak a word. I hate to have a doctor look at me.”

Mr. Gerald was indeed a very difficult patient for both doctor and nurse, irritable beyond expression, and nervous to the verge of delirium. [pg 086] At first no one was allowed near him but his mother. Then he found her tender sadness depressing, and insisted on having his wife in her place. Finally he begged John to take care of him.

“Keep the women away, if you don't want me to lose my senses,” he said to the man. “They start and turn pale or red every time I cough or speak in my sleep; and even when they pretend not to notice, I know they are watching me all the time. I don't dare to groan, or sigh, or rave, though it would sometimes do me good. I want somebody by me who doesn't care whether I live or die, but who just does what I ask him to. Let Louis open the door and sit up in the dicky. It's what he was made for. He's far more of a footman than you.”

“I wouldn't give either of you your salt as footman,” John retorted, smiling grimly. But he did not refuse to assume the post of nurse, and, having undertaken it, rendered himself so useful and unobtrusive that the others all gave way to him, and the sick man had no disposition to change again. He seemed a rather hard, dry man, but he was patient, and showed none of that obtrusive attention which is sometimes more troublesome to an invalid than neglect. If Lawrence groaned and tossed about, the attendant took no notice of him; if he said, “John, don't leave me alone a minute,” the man would sit by his side all night, as untired, apparently, as a man of wood.

So three nights passed, and still the invalid grew worse.

“Wouldn't you like to have me read some prayers to you, sir?” the watcher asked one night. “They might quiet you.”

Lawrence broke out impatiently:

“Do you think I am going to die? I am not. That is what the women are all crying about. Mrs. Ferrier came in to-day, and told me she was having Masses said for me, and sprinkled me with holy water till I was drenched. And Bettie, when she sat here to-day while you were away, rattled her beads and cried all the time, till I told her to get out of the room. That's the way with some people. The minute a fellow is sick, they try their best to scare him to death. Why don't you offer to read the paper to me, or tell me an amusing story? Give me the opiate now.”

“The doctor said you were not to take another till twelve o'clock,” the attendant said.

“I don't care for the doctor's orders. Give it to me now. I know best what I need.”

“I believe you do,” John said quietly, and gave him the opiate.

But in spite of care, and of a determination to recover, the illness grew upon him, till finally the physicians intimated that if he had any religious preparations to make, they had better not be delayed any longer, for his strength was rapidly wasting, and they could not promise that the result would not be fatal.

Mrs. Ferrier went in great distress to F. Chevreuse.

“What shall we do?” she asked. “After having refused to see a priest, and flown into a rage whenever we mentioned the subject, at last he is willing to have one. But he will see no one but F. O'Donovan; and F. O'Donovan is laid up with gout, so that he cannot move hand or foot. I went out to him to-day, and I thought that if he could possibly be wrapped up and brought in in a carriage, I would ask him; but, father, I couldn't have the face to [pg 087] speak of it. The doctor doesn't allow him to stir out of his room. Even Mrs. Gerald sees that it can't be done. I've begged Lawrence to listen to reason, but he is so set that if he had asked to have the Pope himself, he'd be mad if we didn't send a messenger to Rome. I could send to L—— for a priest, but that might be too late. He is failing very much. I do wish you'd go once again, father.”

F. Chevreuse had already been twice, and had been denied admittance in terms anything but respectful.

“Certainly I will go,” he said. “I should have come up this evening, if I had not been sent for. Poor Lawrence! I cannot understand why he should have such a prejudice against me.”

It was early twilight when they reached the house, and, as they entered, the lamps burned with a faint ray, as if they, like all sounds and sights in that place, had been muffled.

“You go right up and tell him there's no one to be got but me,” F. Chevreuse said.

But Mrs. Ferrier shrank back. “He never will consent if I ask him.”

“Annette, then.”

“He won't allow Annette near him,” the mother sighed.

“John,” said the priest, “will you go up and tell Mr. Gerald that I am here to see him?”

“I wouldn't venture to, sir,” John answered. “I don't believe it's of any use; and if you'd take my advice, sir....”

Even Mrs. Ferrier was scandalized by the man's presumption, and faltered out an “O John!”

“I will go myself,” F. Chevreuse interrupted. “Stay down here, all you people, and say the rosary for my success. Say it with all your hearts. And don't come up-stairs till you are called.”

As he went up, a door near the landing softly opened, and in it stood the young wife with a face so woful and deathlike that tears would have seemed joyful in comparison. She said not a word, but stood and looked at the priest in a kind of terror.

“My poor child!” he said pityingly, “why do you stay here alone, killing yourself with grief? Go and stay with your mother and Honora till I come down.”

She made that painful effort to speak which shows that the mouth and throat are dry, and, when words came, they were but a whisper. “O father!” she said, “don't go in there if you have any human weakness left in you! You have to be an angel and not a man to hear my husband's confession. Find some one else for him. He will not speak to you.”

“Never fear, child!” he answered firmly. “I may have human weakness, but I have the strength of God to help me resist it.”

She watched him as he softly opened the door of the chamber where her husband lay, heard the faint cry that greeted him: “Not you! not you!” then the door closed, and she was alone again.

The priest approached the bed, and spoke with gentleness, yet with authority: “F. O'Donovan is too sick to come; and if you wait for another to be sent for, it will be too late. Think of your soul, and let everything else go. In a few hours you may be in the presence of God, listening to your eternal doom. What will you care then, my poor boy, who helped you to loosen from your conscience the sins you have committed in this [pg 088] miserable world? It cannot be because you hate me so much, this unwillingness. Is it because your sins have been so great? There is no sin that I have not heard confessed, I think; and the greater it was, the greater was my comfort and thankfulness that at last it was forgiven. Come, now, I am putting on my stole. Ask the help of God and of our Blessed Mother, and forget who I am. Remember only what I am—the minister of the merciful God—and that I have no feeling, no thought, no wish, but to save you.”

The bed-curtains made a still deeper shade in that shadowed room, and out from the dimness the face of the sick man gleamed white and wild.

“I cannot!” he said. “You would not want to hear me if you knew. You would never give me absolution. You do not know what my sins are.”

The priest seated himself by the bedside, and took in his strong, magnetic hand the thin and shaking hand of the penitent. “No matter what you may tell me, you cannot surprise me,” he said. “Though you should have committed sacrilege and every crime, I cannot, if I would, refuse you absolution. And I would not wish to. I have only pity and love for you. Tell me all now, as if you were telling your own soul. Have no fear.”

“No priest ever before heard such a confession!” The words came faintly. “You do not know.”

“Confess, in the name of God!” repeated the priest. “The flames of hell are harder to bear than any anger of mine can be. God has sent me hither, and I have only to obey him, and listen to your confession, whatever it may be. It is not my choice nor yours. We are both commanded.”

“Promise me that I shall have absolution! Promise me that you will forgive me!” prayed the young man, clinging to the hand that he had at first shrunk from. “I didn't mean to do what I have done, and I have suffered the torments of the damned for it.”

“I have no right to refuse absolution when you are penitent,” was the answer. “The person who repents and confesses has a right to absolution.”

“You will give it to me, no matter what I may tell you?”

“No matter what you may tell me,” repeated the priest. “The mercy of God is mighty. Though you should hem yourself in with sins as with a wall of mountains, he can overlook them. Though you should sink in the lowest depths of sin, his hand can reach you. A sinner cannot be moved to call on the name of the Lord, unless the Lord should move him and have the merciful answer ready. I have blessed you. How long is it since your last confession?”

The sick man half raised himself, and pointed across the room.

“There is a crucifix on the table,” he said. “Go and kneel before that, and ask God to strengthen you for a hard trial. Then, if you come back to me, I will confess.”

F. Chevreuse started up, and stood one instant erect and rigid, with his face upraised. Then he crossed the room, knelt before the crucifix, and held it to his breast during a moment of wordless prayer. As a sigh reached him through the stillness of the chamber, he laid the crucifix down, and returned to the bedside.

“In the name of God, confess, [pg 089] and have no fear,” he said gently. “Have no fear!”

The penitent lay with his face half turned to the pillow, and the bed was trembling under him; but he no longer refused to speak.

To the company down-stairs it seemed a very long interview. Mrs. Ferrier, Mrs. Gerald, and Miss Pembroke, kneeling together in the little sitting-room near the foot of the stairs, with the door open, had said the rosary, trying not to let their thoughts wander; then, sitting silent, had listened for a descending step, breathing each her own prayer now and then. Their greatest trouble was over. Evidently F. Chevreuse had overcome Lawrence Gerald's unwillingness to confess to him; and the three women, so different in all else, united in the one ardent belief that the prayer of faith would save the sick man, and that, when his conscience should be quite disburdened, and his soul enlightened by the comforts and exhortations which such a man as F. Chevreuse could offer, his body would feel the effects of that inward healing, and throw off its burden too.

In an adjoining room sat Louis Ferrier, biting his nails, having been forbidden by his mother to seek distraction in more cheerful scenes. He watched the women while they knelt, and even drew a little nearer to listen to their low-voiced prayer, but lacked the piety to join them. He was both annoyed and frightened by the gloomy circumstances in which he found himself, and, like most men of slack religious belief and practice, felt more safe to have pious women by him in times of danger.

John had taken his place on a low stool underneath the stairs, and had an almost grotesque appearance of being at the same time hiding and alert. With his head advanced, and his neck twisted, he stared steadfastly up the stairway at the door within which the priest had disappeared.

For nearly an hour there was no sound but the small ticking of a clock and the occasional dropping of a coal in the grate. Then all the waiting ones started and looked out eagerly; for the chamber-door opened, and F. Chevreuse came out.

One only did not lift her face to read what tidings might be written in the face of him who came forth from the sick-chamber. Kneeling, almost prostrate on the floor, Annette Gerald still remained where F. Chevreuse had left her. She did not look up even when he paused by her side, and she felt that he was blessing her, but only bowed still lower before him.

“Take comfort, my child,” he said. “You have no reason to despair.”

She looked up quickly into his face, with an almost incredulous hope in her eyes.

He was pale, but some illumination not of earth floated about him, so that she could easily have believed she saw him upborne in air with the buoyancy of a spirit. The heavenly calm of his expression could not be described; yet it was the calm of one who, reposing on the bosom of God, is yet aware of infinite sin and suffering in the world. It was such a look as one might imagine an angel guardian to wear—heavenly peace shorn of heavenly delight.

He motioned her to rise, and she obeyed him. She would not then have hesitated, whatever he had bade her do. His imposing calm pressed her fears and doubts to a perfect quiet. There was nothing possible but obedience.

“Go to your husband, and see if he wants anything,” he said. “Let him be very quiet, and he may sleep. To-morrow morning I shall bring him the Viaticum; but I think he will recover.”

She went toward the chamber, and he descended the stairs. John, bending forward eagerly, caught sight of his face, and drew quickly back again, blessing himself. “The man is a saint!” he muttered, and took good care to keep himself out of sight.

F. Chevreuse was met in the sitting-room door by Mrs. Gerald, and the other two pressed close behind her; and when they saw him, it was as though a soft and gentle light had shone into their troubled faces.

“You are afraid that so long an interview has exhausted him,” he said. “It has not. The body is seldom any worse for attending to the affairs of the soul, and a tranquil mind is the best rest. Annette is with him now, and, if left undisturbed, I think he will sleep. Pray for him, and do not lose courage. God bless you! Good-night.”

Not one of them uttered a word. The questions they would have asked, and the invitation they would have given the priest to remain with them, died on their lips. Evidently he did not mean to enter the room, and they felt that his doing so was a favor for him to offer, not for them to ask.

They glanced at each other as he went away, and Honora Pembroke smiled. “He looks as though he were gazing at heaven through the gate of martyrdom,” she said.

But the next morning, after seeing Gerald, he stopped a few minutes to talk with the family, and still they found that indefinable air of loftiness lingering about him, imposing a certain distance, at the same time that it increased their reverence and affection for him. The familiar, frequently jesting, sometimes peremptory F. Chevreuse seemed to have gone away for ever; but how beautiful was the substitute he had left, and how like him in all that was loftiest!

Lawrence was better that morning, and gained steadily day by day. Nothing could exceed the care and tenderness with which F. Chevreuse watched over his recovery. He came every morning and evening, he treated him with the affection of a father, and seemed to have charged himself with the young man's future.

“I think you should let him and Annette go to Europe for a year,” he said to Mrs. Ferrier. “It would be better for him to break off entirely from old associations, and have an entire change for a while. His health has not been good for some time, and his nerves are worn. The journey would restore him, and afterward we will see what can be done. I am not sure that it is well for him to live here. When a person is going to change his life very much, it is often wiser to change his place of abode also. The obstacles to improvement are fewer among strangers.”

The young man received this proposal to go abroad rather doubtfully. He would not go away till spring, and was not sure that he would go then. As he grew better in health, indeed, he withdrew himself more and more from the priest, and showed an uneasiness in his society which not all F. Chevreuse's kindness could overcome.

“You must not shun me, Lawrence,” the priest said to him one day when they were alone. “You have done that too long, and it is not well. Try to look on me as [pg 091] very firmly your friend. Let me advise you sometimes, and be sure that I shall always have your good in view.”

Lawrence had been very nervous and irritable that day, and was in no mood to bear expostulation. “You can't be my friend,” he replied with suppressed vehemence. “You can only be my master. You can only own me body and soul.”

“That is a mistake,” was the quiet answer. “I do not own you any more than I do others.”

But he patiently forbore to press the question then.

“Encourage him to come to me whenever you think I can benefit him,” he said to Annette. “You can tell best. He has not quite recovered his spirits yet, and it will do no good for me to urge him. Make everything as cheerful as you can for him. It sometimes happens that people get up from sickness in this depressed state of mind.”

“Yes!” she replied, looking down.

She also had grown shy of F. Chevreuse, and seemed willing to keep out of his sight.

But to others she was perhaps rather more gay than they had known her for some time. Her mother found her at once kinder and more exacting, and complained that they seemed now to have become strangers.

“And how nervous you have grown, Annette!” she said. “You crush everything you take hold of.”

“What have I crushed, mamma?” asked the daughter, with a light laugh. “Have I made havoc among your bonnets or wine-glasses?”

“It isn't that,” Mrs. Ferrier said fretfully. “You squeeze people's hands, instead of touching them. Look at that baby's arm!” They were entertaining a baby visitor.

Annette Gerald looked as she was bid and saw the prints of her fingers on the soft little arm she had held unconsciously, and caught an only half-subsided quiver of the baby lip as the little one looked at her, all ready to cry with pain.

Every woman knows at once how she atoned for her fault, by what caresses, and petting, and protestations of sorrow, and how those faint red marks were bemoaned as if they had been the stripes of a martyr.

“If you touch any one's arm, you pinch it,” the elder lady went on. “And you take hold of your shawl and your gloves and your handkerchief as if somebody were going to pull them away from you. I've seen your nails white when you held the evening paper to read, you gripped it so; and as to taking glasses and cups at the table, I always expect to see them fly to pieces in your hands.”

“Isn't she an awful woman?” says Mrs. Annette to the baby, holding it high and looking up into its rosy, smiling face. “Isn't Annette a frightfully muscular and dangerous person, you pink of perfection? What shall we do with her? She pinches little swan's-down arms, and makes angelic babies pucker up their lips with grief, and sets tears swimming in their blue violets of eyes. We must do something dreadful to her. We must forgive her; and that is very terrible. There is nothing so crushing, baby, as to be forgiven very much.”

And then, after one more toss, the infant was let suddenly and softly down, like a lapful of roses, over the face of its friend, and for an instant Annette Gerald's eyes were hidden in its neck.

“Come and have a game of chess, Annette,” her husband called out across the room.

“Yes, dear!” she responded brightly; and, setting the child down, went to him at once, a red color in her cheeks.

“Why do some people always notice such little things,” he said frowningly, “and, instead of attending to themselves, watch how people take hold of cups and saucers, and all that nonsense, and fancy that some wonderful chance hangs on your eating butter with your bread, or preferring cheese?”

Annette was engaged in placing the men, and did not look in her husband's face as she answered in a gentle, soothing voice:

“It is rather annoying sometimes, but I find the best way is to treat the whole jestingly. If one shows vexation, it looks serious. But you can ridicule a person out of hanging mountains by threads.”

He was going to answer, when something made him notice her face. The color was still bright there, but the cheeks were hollow, and dark circles had sunk beneath her eyes.

“Why, you are not looking well,” he said, only just aware of the fact. “Are you sick? Did you get worn out taking care of me?”

She waited an instant till the others, who were leaving the room, should be out of sight, then leaned across the table, careless that her sleeve swept away the two armies she had just placed, and took her husband's hand in hers, and bowed her cheek to it with a sob.

“O Lawrence! Lawrence!” she whispered.

He made a motion to draw his hand away, but let it remain. “My God! what is the matter with you?” he exclaimed.

She leaned back instantly, and made an effort to control herself. “It must be that I am not well. Don't mind me. And now, you will have to place your own men, and give me the first move.”

He placed the men, and appeared to be thinking pitifully of his wife as he glanced now and then into her face. “It seems selfish of me not to have taken better care of you, Annette,” he said.

“Oh! you needed care yourself,” she replied lightly. “Don't imagine that I am sick, though. It is nothing. You didn't marry me to take care of me, you know, and I am not very exacting.”

She would have caught back the last words, if she could, before it was too late. They escaped her unawares, and were a remembered, rather than a present, bitterness.

He blushed faintly. “Whatever I married you for, I have no desire to exchange you now for any one else,” he said, moving a pawn sideways instead of forward. “If you were ever so poor, I wouldn't want a rich girl in your place. But then, you know, I'm not sentimental. I never was much so, and it's all over now. I'm thirty years old, and I feel a hundred. I can't remember being young. I can't remember being twenty years of age. I wish to God I could!” he burst forth.

His wife made a careful move, and said, “I have a presentiment that I shall give you check in three moves more. Look out for your queen.”

“My only romance,” he went on, “was about Honora. I thought that I could do and be anything, if she would only care about me. What a stately, floating creature she always was! I used to think she looked as if she could walk on clouds and not fall through. Yes,” [pg 093] he sighed, “that is where she belongs—among the clouds. I never blamed her for not having me; she was too good. I never was worthy of such a woman.”

Slowly, while he spoke, the bright blood had deepened in his wife's face, and swept over her forehead. Had he been less preoccupied, he would have seen the slight, haughty movement with which she drew herself up. It was only when he had waited a moment for her to move that he glanced up and met her eyes fixed on him with an expression very like indignant scorn.

“By what strange contradiction is it, I wonder,” she said coldly, “that the woman who does most for a man, and is most merciful and charitable toward him, is never too good for him, while the one who scorns him, and will not come a step off her pedestal to save him, is always the ideal woman in his eyes?”

Bitter tears of utter grief and mortification welled up and wet her eyelashes. “In another world,” she said, “when the faults and mistakes of this are set right, you may think yourself worthy of the companionship of Honora Pembroke, and of any union and closeness of affection which that life may know. And then she may be given to you. And, Lawrence, if she would and could consent to take you now, I would not refuse to give you up. At this moment, if, without any wrong, I could see her enter the room, and hold out her hand to you, and tell you that she was ready to take what she had refused, and be to you all that you could wish—if it could be right that it should happen so, I would not utter one word of objection. I would leave you to her without a moment's hesitation.”

While she spoke, his hand had played tremblingly with the chessmen before him. “So you give me up too,” he said in a low voice.

Her proud face softened. She looked at him, and recollected herself and him, and pity sprang up again and effaced indignation. “I do not give you up, Lawrence,” she said gently. “I cannot and have no wish to; I only spoke of what I would do in circumstances which cannot take place. You had insulted me, without intending to, I know, and it was but natural that I should retort. You know that I would not leave you, nor give you up on any provocation. If you should leave me, I should follow you, because I should feel sure that you would sooner or later need me. We are one. You are mine; and I always stand by my own.”

He looked at her with an expression at once penetrating and shrinking. “You would stand by me, Annette, whatever should happen?” he asked.

“Certainly!” she replied, but did not meet his eyes. “There is no imaginable circumstance which could make me desert you. And now, what of this game? To your queen!”

He made a motion to save his queen, then pushed the board aside. “I cannot play,” he said; “I cannot confine my mind to it. Sing me something. It is long since I have heard you sing.”

He threw himself into a deeply-cushioned chair, and leaned his head on his hands while she sang to him—knowing, how well! that a cheerful song would not cheer him nor a pious song soothe—of

“Waters that flow

With a lullaby sound,

From a spring but a very few

Feet under ground—

From a spring that is not very

Far under ground.”

She was a magical singer, surely; and the still, cold melancholy of her tones was the very spirit and essence of death; and, like death, it pierced to the heart. She sang:

“And, oh! let it never

Be foolishly said

That my room it is gloomy,

And narrow my bed.

For man never slept

In a different bed;

And to sleep, you must slumber

In just such a bed.”

She turned quickly at a sound behind her, and saw that her husband had buried his face in the cushions of the chair, and was trembling violently. She went to him, but there was no comfort to give nor to receive. Death alone could bring release for him and for her. She could only surround him with her arms while he sobbed with the terrible hysterical sobbing of a man utterly broken down, and let him feel that he was not alone and unpitied.

“I don't know what ails me,” he said at length, trying to control himself. “Don't mind me, Annette. My nerves seem to be all unstrung. It must be that fever.”

“Oh! don't, Lawrence; please don't!” she said faintly.

He became silent all at once, and it seemed as though a chill had passed over him. She sighed drearily, and smoothed his hair with her hand. “Trust your wife,” she said. “I am by you always.”

“You are not afraid of me?” He seemed to ask the question with a kind of terror.

“My poor Lawrence! no. I do not fear you as much as you do me. Don't have such fancies.”

She did not explain in what confessional she had learned his secret; in what troubled sleep wherein the unwary tongue speaks; in what more troubled waking, when the eyes and actions speak; or in what sudden suspicion and enlightenment, coming she knew not whence. She told nothing, and he asked nothing, only leaned on her bosom, and wept again as though all his manhood had departed.

“O Annette!” he said, “I dreamed last night that I was a little boy, and that I stood by my mother while she brushed my hair into curls round her finger. I thought I had been away a long distance, and come back again, and I stood quite still, and remembered another childhood before I took that journey. I was so glad to be back—as glad as I should be now if I could go back. Some way I could see that my hair was golden, and that my mother smiled as she brushed it, though I did not look at her. Such dreams are always coming to me now. As soon as I go to sleep, I am a child that has been away and is solemnly glad to be back again. And then I wake, and am in hell!”

She went on smoothing his hair steadily.

“Some time soon the dream will come true,” she said. “Do the best you can. Do justice to the wronged. Come away with me, and we will hide ourselves somewhere in the world, and try to find peace for the days that are left. And by-and-by, Lawrence, will come the day when we shall both be as little children again, and all our terrible burdens will slip off. You must do justice to the wronged.”

“In some way, yes!” he said. “I have tried to think. He must be saved. But I cannot go away. Do you remember ever having been afraid to go up-stairs in the dark, of having felt sure that there was some one behind just ready to grasp you, till you screamed out in [pg 095] terror? It would be like that with me. If once I turn my back on this place, my life will become a crazy flight.”

“The world is wide,” she urged, “and there are safe places enough in it. Besides, money can buy anything; and he has forgiven you. He will screen you.”

“My mother!” he exclaimed. “Who will screen and save her? I will not destroy her, Annette. No, everybody in the world may perish first. I never will destroy my mother. I have done harm enough.”

“He will die in prison,” she whispered. “He has sent to Germany for help, and it did him no good. He has demanded a new trial, and there was not enough to justify them in granting it. He is in a net from which there seems to be no escape. They say that he will die.”

“You want to make me crazy!” her husband cried out, pushing her fiercely from him. “Go away! You are worse than the rest.”

There was no way but to yield to him. “Well, well, Lawrence! I will try to think of some other means.”

The season had reached early spring, and one tempestuous evening in March, as F. Chevreuse sat at home, making up some church accounts, feeling quite sure that he should not be interrupted, he heard the street-door softly open and shut, then a tap at the door of the room.

“Strange that Jane should leave that street-door unlocked!” he thought, and at the same moment heard the servant coming up-stairs from the kitchen. Her quick ear had caught the sound, and she, too, was wondering how she could have omitted to fasten the house up.

The door of F. Chevreuse's sitting-room was quickly opened, and shut again in Jane's face, and a woman stood inside. It was Annette Gerald, wrapped in a large waterproof cape, with the hood over her head.

“Send Jane away!” she said hurriedly. “Don't let her in here! Don't let her see me!”

Here Jane opened the door and put her head in, eyeing curiously the visitor, whose back was turned to her. “I'm sure I shut the door and bolted it, father,” she began, and took a step into the room. “I....”

“No matter! I'll see to it,” the priest said, waving her away.

“Oh! well, only I'm sure I locked it. And perhaps you'd like to have this lamp....”

“Jane!” he exclaimed, standing up, “when I dismiss you, you are to go.”

Jane retired, grumbling.

“She will listen at the door,” his visitor said.

F. Chevreuse flung the door open, and discovered his domestic lingering about the head of the stairs, affecting to examine an imaginary hole in the carpet.

“Once for all, Jane,” he said, “if you wish to remain in my house, you must not presume, nor show any curiosity about my affairs, nor the affairs of those who come to me. Go down into the kitchen, and shut the door, and stay there.”

Jane, albeit not very subordinate, was completely awed by a display of authority such as she had never seen before. She did not venture to resist nor complain, but returned without delay to her own place.

F. Chevreuse waited till he heard the kitchen-door close with somewhat unnecessary force, then returned to his visitor.

“What has brought you out to-night?” he asked in a low voice.

“Let me get my breath!” She was almost gasping. “Jane gave me such a fright that my heart is in my mouth.”

He set a chair for her, and seated himself near, waiting till she should be able to speak. “You had better shake the snow off your cloak,” he said.

She made a gesture of impatient refusal.

The rude mantle had slipped aside, and revealed a strangely contrasting toilet beneath. There was a shining of lustrous pale-green silk with delicately-wrought laces, a glimmer of emeralds and diamonds, and glimpses of pink roses set in bunches of green grass.

“I have been to the prison,” she whispered.

F. Chevreuse frowned, and dropped his eyes.

“The man is a fool!” she exclaimed. “He will not be saved. I had bought one of the guard. It was the hour for supper, and the man let me in, and promised that for ten minutes I might do as I pleased, and he would see and know nothing. I went into the corridor, and found the cell-door unlocked. Everything was ready, was perfect; for the storm would prevent any loungers from coming about the prison or the guard-room, and would give an excuse to any one who wanted to muffle up and cover their face. I had a large cloak all ready. But he would not go. He will not fly as though he were guilty, he said.”

“What did you say to him?” the priest inquired, without looking up.

“I told him that he could save himself, and prove his innocence afterward. I said that may be the real criminal would some day confess, and then he could come out before the world more than justified. I said that we loved and pitied him, and were unhappy at the thought of him there, and would do anything for him. He was to be secreted in our house till a way could be got for him to escape. I had left the carriage just round the corner, and John would have thought that it was Lawrence who got in with me. Mamma and Louis have gone to the President's dinner, and Gerald was to watch and let us in, and afterward come out again with me. But, no; the stubborn simpleton would not be saved. I went on my knees to him, and he was like a rock. Then the watchman knocked at the door, and I had to run. The other guard were coming in from their supper, and, if I hadn't hid behind a door, they would have seen me face to face. Oh! why did he not consent?”

She wrung her hands slowly till the jewels on them twinkled in the lamp-light.

F. Chevreuse still sat with his eyes downcast. “My poor child!” he said, “your pity for this man has led you into an almost fatal error. Never attempt such a thing again. It is not for you to cast yourself under the wheels of Juggernaut. I command you to try no such experiment again. Pray to God. That is all that you can do.”

“Yes, I know that now,” she answered despairingly. “I am utterly helpless. It is your turn. You must save him.”

“What can I do?” he asked wonderingly. “I have tried all I could, but in vain, as you know. I have left no stone unturned, and the only good result I can see is a probability that the sentence will not be executed to the utmost, and that in time something may happen to bring his innocence to light.”

“In time!” she repeated. “Have you seen the man? Why, I did not know him till he spoke. He will not live. No, there must be no delay. What you must do is this: You must go to the authorities, and say that you know who the true criminal is, but cannot tell, at least not now, and that Mr. Schöninger is innocent.”

The priest looked in her face with a gaze of calm surprise. “You mistake,” he said. “I do not know who the criminal is. If I did know, I should immediately go to the authorities, and denounce him.”

She looked him steadfastly in the face, but his calmness baffled her. He showed only a cool and dignified surprise.

“Oh! these men,” she muttered. “I feel as if I were being ground between stones.”

She stood, and the shining folds of her dress, that had been gathered up in her arms, dropped about her, and lay on the floor.

“Have you been walking through the snow in a ball-dress?” the priest asked. “Have you anything to protect your feet?”

“Oh! I have fur shoes, and my carriage is near by,” she said absently, and seemed to be considering what to do next.

“Go home now, my child, and try to put all this wild work out of your mind,” F. Chevreuse said with emotion. “Perform your own duty simply and in the fear of God, and do not try to take the burden of others on those shoulders of yours. Go home and warm yourself well, or you will be sick.”

“Oh! I am not going home,” she said, her glance caught by the sparkling of a bracelet on her arm. “To-night is a dinner and ball given to the President, you know; and since he is going away to-morrow it couldn't be put off. It must be time I was there, and I have to go home after Lawrence.”

“What! you will go to a dinner and ball to-night?” exclaimed the priest. “You feel yourself fit for company?”

She smiled faintly. “I shall doubtless be the gayest of the gay. There is not much danger of my feeling sleepy.”

“Well, women are wonderful beings,” remarked F. Chevreuse to himself.

The young woman drew her wrappings about her, and gathered up again her flowing skirts, looking to see that no stain had fallen on them; and, in arranging her toilet for a new scene, she appeared to arrange her mind also. A gentle tranquillity settled upon her face, and her head was slightly lifted, as though she were already the centre of observation to a brilliant throng.

“But you are looking very pale,” the priest objected.

“That always mends itself,” she answered carelessly. “When I have need of color, it usually comes.”

Some way, in this firm self-control, he found her more pitiful than in any abandonment of sorrow. She accepted the situation uncomplainingly, since she could do no more, and steeled herself to bear what she must.

“God bless you!” he said, when she was ready to go.

Her face stirred a little at the words. It seemed that she would rather not listen to anything of serious kindness then. Yet at the door she hesitated, and turned back. For once it was necessary that she should speak.

“I have no difficulty about company or anything but silence and darkness,” she said hurriedly, looking [pg 098] down. “I like a crowd, though I am always on the lookout for something to be said I will not wish to hear. When he and I are alone, I turn cold and creeping, for fear he should speak; and I keep close and cling to him, lest, if I should get a little way off, I should grow afraid of him. If we were to be separated for one week, I think we would never again dare to approach each other. But recollect”—she lifted her eyes for one quick glance—“I have told you nothing.”

“Certainly not,” he replied gravely.

In a moment she had gone out, and was running through the flying snow to find her carriage, left in the next street to baffle some possible watcher.

Young Mrs. Gerald was quite right in saying that she should probably be the gayest of the gay that night; and if any other person appeared to enjoy the scene more than herself, it was, perhaps, her husband.

“A very happy couple,” remarked a sympathizing friend to Mrs. Ferrier.

“Oh! yes,” the mother sighed, nodding her head. “He is always gay when he is doing no good, and as glum as a spade when he is behaving himself. I was in hopes that his sickness would sober him, but he is wilder than ever. You should see him drive my horses!”

Her son-in-law, passing by at that moment, caught the last words, and immediately joined the two ladies. “I know that Mrs. Ferrier is complaining of me,” he said gaily. “She will never forgive me for putting her precious bays out of breath. But the truth is, I am trying to save their lives; for they are so fat now that you could drive them to death at six miles an hour.”

“O Lawrence!” Annette said at his elbow—she was always hovering near when he spoke with her mother—“they say that Strauss, the composer, you know, is really coming to America next year, and will lead his own waltzes at the concerts.”

“And, by the way, Ninon,” said her husband, “is that the Strauss who always was? I have had a waltz-writing, violin-playing Strauss in my mind ever since I was born, and he had lived ages before, and was something like Mephistopheles, to my fancy. Perhaps he is the Wandering Jew.”

“Speaking of Jews—” began Mrs. Ferrier's companion.

And here Annette drew her husband away, hanging on his arm, smiling and whispering to him, the brightest, prettiest woman in the room.

“And yet last night he was off somewhere, and she sat up for him till a quarter before two o'clock,” Mrs. Ferrier said, looking after them. “I looked to see what time it was when I heard him come in. It is wearing her out. I shall not allow her to do it again.”

It was easier for Mrs. Ferrier to say what should not be than to find herself obeyed, for the next night her daughter again kept vigil. “All I ask of you, mamma, is to let me attend to my own business,” she said decidedly.

So “mamma” toiled up-stairs to bed, and the daughter lowered the lights, took out her rosary, and began her nightly task of fighting away thought, and trying to fix her mind on the future.

After an hour or two, John, the footman, put his head in at the door. “You'd a great deal better go to bed, ma'am, and leave me to let Mr. Gerald in,” he said. “I've something that will keep me up to-night, [pg 099] and it's a pity two should lose their rest. It is past twelve now.”

She felt faint and weary, and sleep was beginning to steal over her. “I believe I will go, then,” she said. “I have not slept for three nights.”

She went, with a dragging step, over the bright carpet roses. “What would become of him if I were to break up?” she thought.

When she had gone, the man put out the hall gas, opened the doors of the vestibule, and set himself to wait. He meant to have speech of Mr. Gerald that night without Mr. Gerald's wife for a witness or any likelihood of other interruption.

About one o'clock he heard unsteady steps on the sidewalk, and, as he went to the door, Lawrence Gerald came reeling up the steps, and almost fell into his arms.

“Come into the sitting-room, sir, and lie down on the sofa. It will be easier than going up-stairs,” he said.

When he had been drinking, the young man was easy to lead, and he now submitted readily, and was in a few minutes in a deep sleep.

John locked the street-door, shut the door of the sitting-room behind him, and, seating himself, waited for the sleeper to wake.

A nervous man might have grown uneasy during that watch. There is something not always pleasant in hearing one's own breathing, and the faint occasional sounds in floor and wall, and at one's elbow, even, which, in the stillness of night, seem like the movements of unseen beings drawing near. Besides, there is a terror in the thought that we are going to terrify another.

But this man was not nervous. He was made of wholesome though rough material, and he had a strong will. He had been waiting for others to act, and had waited in vain, and now he had made up his mind that it was for him to act. Justice was strong in him, where he had the ability to perceive what was just, and he would no longer see the innocent suffer for the guilty. Besides, he reflected, there was no one else who could speak. Self-defence, or the defence of one dearly loved, or a yet more sacred motive, sealed the lips of all who knew. His lips were not sealed, and justice commanded him to speak.

Three o'clock came and went, and still the young man slept. The other sat and studied him, noting how slight and elegant was his form, how fine the hands and feet, how daintily he was dressed and cared for.

John was stout and heavy, a man of delf, and the size of his boots had once provoked from Lawrence a very provoking quotation:

“What dread hand formed thy dread feet?”

and more than once the young man had mockingly pushed his two white hands into one of John's gloves.

This sleeper's hair was glossy, scented, as soft as floss, and curled in many a wilful ring; John's was coarse and straight, and he wisely wore it closely cropped. Lawrence Gerald's face was delicately smooth; the lines melted harmoniously into each other; his brows were finely drawn; the teeth, that showed through his parted lips, were pearly white; and as he lay with closed eyes, the lashes made two exquisitely curved shadows on his cheeks. John's face was plain, he had no eyebrows nor eyelashes to speak of, his eyes were more for use than ornament, and his nose went about its business straight from end to end, stopping [pg 100] rather bluntly, and utterly ignoring that delicate curve which made this man's profile so perfect.

This man? This drunkard, rather, John thought; this spendthrift, and gambler, and robber. This murderer!

The nerves of the serving-man stiffened; and if he had felt any relenting, it was over. The insolent daintiness before him stirred all his bitterness. It was for such men as this that humbler honest folks were to bow and serve, and women's hearts to break!

It must be nearly four o'clock, he thought, and glanced round at the clock. Looking back again, he met Lawrence Gerald's eyes fixed on him steadily, and he returned the look with as immovable a stare. In that instant the meaning of each leaped out of his face as clearly as lightning from a cloud. Young Gerald's eyes began to shrink in their depths, and still the other held them; he drew slowly back on the sofa, cowering, but unable to turn away.

And here John's eyes released him, for another object drew them up to the mirror that hung over the sofa. Reflected there he saw that the door was partly open, and Annette Gerald's white face looking in. She came swiftly gliding toward them, silent as a ghost, and melted, rather than fell, on to her knees before her husband, between him and the other. Her arms and bosom hid him from that relentless gaze which told that all was known, and her own face turned and received it instead, firmly and almost defiantly.

“Well, John?” she said. “Speak out what you have to say.”

“This can't go on any longer, ma'am,” he whispered; “and I should think you would have the sense to see that. If you're willing to let an innocent man suffer for him, even that won't serve you long, for he will betray himself yet. You must go.”

“Yes, yes, we will go!” she replied hurriedly. “It is the only thing to do. We will go right away.”

“I will give you three weeks to get out of danger,” he went on; “or, if that isn't enough, a month. But you mustn't lose a day. I won't see that man down in the prison die for nothing. After the four weeks from to-morrow morning are up, I shall go to F. Chevreuse with a paper that your husband will write. He may tell his own story, and make what excuses he can for himself, and it shall be for everybody to read. F. Chevreuse will carry the paper to the judges, and take that man out of prison. That is all I've got to say,” he concluded. “Four weeks from to-morrow morning!”

Annette made no further reply, only watched the man out of the room, and locked the door after him. Then she returned to her husband, and, for the first time since she had entered the room, looked in his face. He was lying back with his eyes closed, as though from faintness. She brought him a glass of wine, knelt by his side while he drank it, then took his hand in hers.

“There is no other way, Lawrence,” she said.

He was sitting up now, but kept his eyes closed, as if he could not meet her glance, or could not endure to look upon the light. He answered her quietly, “Yes, it is the only way.”

“And now,” she continued, “since there is no time to lose, you will tell me the whole, and I will [pg 101] write it down. You can sign it afterward.”

He nodded, but did not speak. The blow had fallen, and its first effect was crushing.

She brought a writing-table close to the sofa, and seated herself before it. As she arranged the paper, pens, and ink, heavy tears rolled down her face, and sigh after sigh struggled up from her heart; but she did not suffer them to impede her work—scarcely seemed, indeed, conscious of them. Everything was arranged carefully and rapidly. “Now, Lawrence!” she said, and seemed to catch her breath with the words.

He started, and opened his eyes; and when he saw her, with eyes uplifted, making the sign of the cross on her forehead and bosom, he knelt by her side, and, bowing his head, blessed himself also with the sacred sign.

Then he began his confession, and she wrote it as it fell from his lips. If now and then a tear, not quickly enough brushed away, fell on the paper, it only left its record of a wife's grief and love, but did not blot out a word of the clear writing.

When the last word had been written, and the name signed, a long ray of white morning light had pierced through a chink in the shutter, and lay across the red lamp-light.