II.

We have endeavored to follow thus far the progress of that general revolt of the world against the divine authority which has marked the pontificate of Pius IX. and embraces the Holy Father’s heroic life of constancy and suffering. But simultaneously there has gone on a contrary movement—a clearer development and consolidation of the authority of God’s church over the minds of the faithful; and herein we trace his glorious life of triumphant action. For his attitude towards the revolution has not been one of mere passive resistance. He has fought a stout fight for the imperilled truth. It is a time of corruption and unbelief, when the world is lifted up with satanic pride to defy Heaven, and society is sacrificing all the guarantees of order, and even the elect are sorely tempted. History will record that the great mission of Pope Pius IX. was to expose the fallacies and illusions of these evil days, to stamp every error as it arose with the reprobation of the infallible judge, and, after empires, and kingdoms, and republics have been racked by a century of the pagan revolt, to prepare again the foundations of Christian civilization. “God has laid on me,” said he to the great assembly of bishops in 1867, “the duty to declare the truths on which Christian society is based, and to condemn the errors which undermine its foundations. And I have not been silent. In the Encyclical of 1864, and in that which is called the Syllabus, I declared to the world the dangers which threaten society and I condemned the falsehoods which assail its life. To you, venerable brethren, I now appeal to assist me in this conflict with error. On you I rely for support. I am aged and alone, praying on the mountain, and you, the bishops of the church, are come to hold up my arms.” “There is perhaps hardly any pontiff,” says Cardinal Manning, “who has governed the church with more frequent exercises of supreme authority than Pius IX.”; and surely there is something magnificent in the courage with which he has met every attack of the world by a new and bolder assertion of the everlasting truths against which the world is in arms. There is not a characteristic heresy of the time for which we Catholics cannot find in the utterances of this great pontiff a complete antidote; there is not a loss inflicted upon the church by her enemies for which we cannot trace a compensation in some clearer recognition of her spiritual power, some sublime restatement of her sovereign authority. Our Holy Father has healed divisions, abolished national and doctrinal parties within the pale of the church, and displayed to the universe the household of Christ one not only in the bonds of faith, but in unity of sympathies. Four times he has summoned the bishops to meet him at the tomb of the apostle. In 1854 more than two hundred bishops and cardinals assembled for the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception—an act which, besides its importance in a doctrinal sense, had a special significance as illustrating the supreme authority of the see of Peter. In 1862, just after the first spoliation of the temporalities of the Papacy by Victor Emanuel, two hundred and sixty-five bishops assembled in Rome for the canonization of the martyrs of Japan, and their meeting, both for the circumstances under which it was summoned and the strong terms in which the prelates expressed their union with the Holy See and their absolute submission to its teachings, made a profound impression throughout Christendom. Five years later the revolution had made immense progress; yet in the midst of political disturbance the world not only saw five hundred bishops gather at Rome to celebrate the centenary of St. Peter’s martyrdom, and again to testify their devotion to Peter’s successor, but it heard the announcement of a general council, the first in three hundred years, called at a time when to the unaided human eye the papal throne seemed tottering to its fall. Here was an inspiring example of faith and Christian courage!

Cardinal Manning’s admirable sketch of the history of the Vatican Council,[49] now in course of publication, shows the reasons for calling that grand assembly, and the reasons especially for the definition of infallibility, its supreme and most glorious achievement; and it brings out in clear light the fact that it was with Pius himself that the idea of the council originated. If it could ever be said that a general council was the work of one man, the Council of the Vatican might be called the crowning work of the long life of Pius IX.—one which alone would place him among the most illustrious of all the Roman pontiffs, and make his reign a remarkable era in the history of the Catholic Church. The circumstances of the time which give such immense importance to the convocation of this council are summarized in the opinions of the cardinals to whom the Pope submitted the question as early as 1864, and we find an excellent synopsis of them in the papers by Cardinal Manning already cited. “The special character of the age,” say their eminences, “is the tendency of a dominant party of men to destroy all the ancient Christian institutions, the life of which consists in a supernatural principle, and to erect upon their ruins and with their remains a new order founded on natural reason alone.... From these principles follows the exclusion of the church and of revelation from the sphere of civil society and of science; and, further, from this withdrawal of civil society and of science from the authority of revelation spring the naturalism, rationalism, pantheism, socialism, communism of these times. From these speculative errors flows in practice the modern revolutionary liberalism which consists in the supremacy of the state over the spiritual jurisdiction of the church, over education, marriage, consecrated property, and the temporal power of the head of the church.” These and a multitude of other prevalent errors Pius IX. had condemned in the Syllabus and Encyclical which Cardinal Manning elsewhere refers to as “among the greatest acts of this pontificate,” summing up the declarations of many years, and giving them “a new promulgation and a sensible accession of power over the minds not only of the faithful, but even of opponents, by the concentrated force and weight of their application.”[50] But it was expedient that the declaration should be published again with the united voice of the whole episcopate joined to its head. Thus the council was almost unanimously approved as a sovereign remedy for the disorders of the time, an encouragement for the faithful, a cure for dissensions, an antidote for evil tendencies within the church, an impulse to the new and nobler life which even amid the political and social confusion had already begun to spring up among the Catholic peoples. And so, even while the pagan revolution was preparing its last assault upon the pontifical throne, an astonished world witnessed this most majestic demonstration of the authority, the unity, and the power of the church, and the whole body of the faithful were filled with courage and fresh enthusiasm. Driven from his capital, robbed, and insulted, the captive of the Vatican, whose voice rings out clear and firm above the din of the century, whose strong arm sustains, whose saintly example inspires, is yet victor over the world in the council and the Syllabus.

Footnote 49:

_The Nineteenth Century_ (London), March and April, 1877.

Footnote 50:

_Petri Privilegium._ London. 1871.

It would be pleasant, if space allowed, to follow the course of his beautiful private life. It is a model of devotion and simplicity. In his great palace he occupies only a plain bed-chamber with a bare stone floor, and a working-cabinet with little furniture except a table and two chairs. He rises, summer and winter, at half-past five. He says Mass, and hears a second Mass of thanksgiving; or if sickness prevents him from celebrating the Holy Sacrifice, he does not fail to receive communion. His hours of work are long and regular. His fare is plain, even to meagreness. Every day he takes exercise in the Vatican gardens, and one of his favorite resorts is a beautiful alley of orange-trees, where the pigeons come to feed from his hand. One day he was discovered with three cardinals, playing “hide and seek” in the gardens with a little boy. Yet with all his gentleness he has a keen and caustic wit. The author of a pious biography sent his book to the Pope for approval. The pontiff read till he came to these words: “Our saint triumphed over all temptations, but there was one snare which he could not escape: he married”; and then he threw the book from him. “What!” said he, “shall it be written that the church has six sacraments and one snare?” Of a Catholic diplomatist whose conduct and professions were at variance he said: “I do not like these accommodating consciences. If that man’s master should order him to put me in jail, he would come on his knees to tell me I must go, and his wife would work me a pair of slippers.” During the French occupation of Rome a certain French colonel was guilty of so gross an offence to the Pope’s authority that the Holy Father demanded his recall. Before his departure he had the effrontery to present himself at the Vatican and ask for a number of small favors, ending with a request for the Pope’s autograph. The Pontiff wrote on a card the words which our Lord addressed to Judas in the garden, “_Amice, ad quid venisti?_” (“Friend, wherefore hast thou come hither?”), and the colonel, who did not understand Latin, showed it to all his friends as a testimonial of the Pope’s regard, until somebody unkindly supplied him with the translation. It is the etiquette of the Vatican that carriages with only one horse must not enter the inner court. This rule was enforced one day in 1867 against the Prussian ambassador, Count von Arnim, and Bismarck, for purposes of his own, endeavored to make a diplomatic scandal of the transaction, instructing the ambassador to close the legation and quit Rome instantly unless he was allowed to drive with one horse to the very foot of the papal staircase. But Bismarck was no match for Pius IX. The Pope caused Cardinal Antonelli to write that “His Holiness, taking compassion on the difficulties of the diplomatic body, would in future allow the representatives of the great powers to approach his presence with one quadruped _of any sort_”—avec _un quadrupède quelconque_. It is believed that the Prussian minister never availed himself of this permission in its full extent.

The newspapers bring us bad news from time to time of the Pope’s health. Let us not be alarmed. He comes of a long-lived family. His grandfather died at ninety-three, his father at eighty-three, his mother at eighty-eight, his eldest brother at ninety. “I am in the hands of God,” he said to an English gentleman; “I shall bless my hour when it comes. But, my son, when I take up certain newspapers nowadays, and do not find in them an account of my last illness and my end, it always seems to me as if the editors had forgotten something.”

A VISION OF THE COLOSSEUM, A.D. 1873

O God, the heathens are come into thy inheritance, they have defiled thy holy temple: they have made Jerusalem as a place to keep fruit.—_Ps._ lxxviii.

I had been idly reading, through the quiet afternoon, A poet’s passionate verses, falling softly into tune Of even, measured rhythm, and of fine, melodious words, Rippling along with easy grace like careless song of birds; Now warblings, half unconscious, like the happy songster’s trill Poured from some wind-swayed bough when all the woods are still; Now shriller notes that rose above harsh, grating sounds of war, Loud clarion-notes, above the drums, proclaiming peace afar— Loud pæan sounds triumphant that Italy was free, United, and one mighty realm from smiling sea to sea; From Sicily’s smoke-crowned peak to Savoy’s Alpine chain One flag met every rambling breeze that breathed o’er hill and plain; And haughty Rome, in truth, the Cæsar’s city now once more, The perilous reign of Peter passed for ever safely o’er. “_Io!_ _triumphe!_ onward! All ye guarding eagles, come! And with its ancient glory fill your old imperial home.”

I, sighing, closed the volume. Ah! for me how sadly dim The poet’s glowing setting of pale Freedom’s Roman hymn, Whose music, as I heard it, only direst discord made. The martial beat of rattling drum, the trumpet’s mellowing shade, Hid all the sweeter utterance of a happy people’s voice Or sound of pealing church-bells bidding kindly skies rejoice. I heard above the loudest note the dull, persistent sound Of forging iron fetters—even riveted while crowned, Sweet Freedom saw, indignant, built her frail and crumbling throne Of consecrated marble newly stolen, stone by stone.

“_Io!_ _triumphe!_ onward! But the shouting could not drown The psalm of homeless friars, weary exiles, marching down, Chapel and cell denied them; for of these the state has need. And from the cross’s folly must St. Francis’ sons be freed! I heard in plaintive chorus nuns sad _Miserere_ sing, As ceased for them for ever their old convent’s sheltering— Let them seek aid from Him on high whose faithful sheep they are; The horses of the hero-king seek not their help so far!

I heard, above th’ exultant fife, the loud-voiced auctioneer Strike down the church’s garment 'mid the idle jest and jeer Of souls that trembled not to see the sacred chalice borne By hands that would have helped of old to press the twisted thorn, Who would for thirty pieces once their loving Lord have sold— Why not his spouse’s raiment for twice that, glittering gold? I heard the heavy rustle of quaint, figured tapestry By pious fingers cunning wrought in days of chivalry. Loud chimed the strangers’ clanking coin that paid the moneyed worth, But faint the modern anthem’s notes proclaiming Freedom’s birth!

Of wandering peoples, too, I heard the tired and restless tread, Their little harvest grown too scant for even daily bread, Fair Freedom’s added burden grown too heavy to be borne; While Italy, sad-hearted, watched her children sail forlorn To seek across the western sea the life she could not give; For her cannon must be cast, and a nation she must live. A nation crowned! Ah! royal state is very heavy dole; All too quick the world’s pulse beats to heed plaint of weary soul. Still with triumphant pæans did the poet’s verses ring: “Shout, Italy, our Italy! all-joyous anthems sing! Clang out, sad-voiced Roman bells! hail Piedmont’s Victor,—king!”

“_Miserere, miserere_,” Sounded church and convent steeple; “In thy mercy spare us, Saviour, Leading back thy erring people.”

And as the clanging belfries trembled strangely with the sound, The _Miserere_ drifting to the peoples gathered round, Methought the quiet afternoon had faded from my sight, And I, beneath a Roman sky, alone with deepening night, Stood in the Colosseum’s shade, with many a wondering thought, No touch of moonlight falling on the walls the Romans wrought; The calm stars, gazing earthward, seemed to give nor light nor shade; No torches’ fitful splendor through the lonely arches played; And, even as the shade was deep, so deep the silence fell, So calm the night it scarce could wake the wind-harp’s sighing swell; No beaded _aves_ drifted from cowled pilgrims of the cross, No murmur of atoning prayers pleading the nations’ loss; No tourists’ idle laughter broke the silence of the scene, While the shrouding arches sheltered my thoughts of what had been.

Years, centuries had vanished as my wingèd thoughts flew fast To days when Rome imperial o’er the world her robe had cast; O’er the wild, barbarian legions I saw her eagles shine, While her nobles quaffed Greek learning in draughts of Grecian wine— Expounding, too, with easy art, the Christians’ foolish faith: How traitorous to Cæsar’s state was every Christian breath. And then I saw the glitter of their perfumed robes no more, As gleaming wings of seraphs stroked my eyelids softly o’er.

Then I heard the sweet intoning of the Christians’ matin psalm, And I saw them lowly kneeling before the mystic Lamb: Maid patrician bent in prayer with the dark slave of the East, Egypt’s sage, Juda’s captive, meeting at the angels’ feast. Before that holy altar all one sacred likeness wear— His who, on the cross outstretched, all our sin and weakness bare: Subtle Greek before the cross laying down his pride of art; Falling meekly peace divine on some savage Scythian heart; Hapless Jew, haughty Northman, Roman proud, and cowering slave, Bound together by the blood of Him who died all men to save; One by the bond of suffering, one in the voice of prayer That rose with solemn sweetness through the catacombs’ dull air:

“_Miserere, miserere_,” Rose the sad and earnest pleading; “In thy mercy spare us, Saviour, Unto thee the nations leading.”

Lo! as entranced I listened, there mingled with the song A sound as if of many steps passing the streets along, And the ancient Roman arches 'neath which I dreaming stood Grew peopled with the city’s fierce and restless multitude. What noble game should fitly while the idle hours away, What gracious pastime fill with joy the Roman holiday? Should some strong-limbed barbarian lay his life down in its strength, That the day for Roman matrons should have less of weary length? Nay, daintier sight the maiden tells, binding her mistress’ zone: To-day, by Cæsar’s lions, Christian maid shall be o’erthrown!

Within the dread arena pale and firm the martyr stood— A strange and dazzling sight she seemed amid the soldiers rude; So slight the little, childish form, so young the radiant face, Whence streams of holy glory flooded all the pagan place; The happy lips half-parted with a love that fain would speak, And the eyes to heaven uplifted beneath the forehead meek— The eyes whence earth had vanished, heaven’s shadow resting there, The glimmer of its shining falling softly on her hair. Ah! happy maid, that, listening, heard above the tumult wild The loved voice of the Father calling home his little child; The voice of the Belovèd bidding sweet his loved one come: “Arise, my Dove, my Beautiful”—it sounded o’er the hum Of wondering crowds who could not guess whence came the martyr’s strength, Her heart with joy nigh breaking that it should rest at length On His whose love had bought it with a price exceeding far The spoils of all the nations gracing Cæsar’s triumph-car. One little grain of incense still might save the martyr’s life, But one little breath for Cæsar still win release from strife— Unto Cæsar what is Cæsar’s, to God the life he gave; Less duty could she offer Him who died that life to save? And then the vision faded, and once more I stood alone Where thought of sainted martyrs seemed to consecrate each stone, And stars as calmly watching o’er as once in days bygone When Cæsar’s dearest pastime won his slaves a deathless crown.

“_Miserere, miserere_,” Seemed the night-wind lowly sighing; “Call thy erring sheep, O Saviour, Dearest Lord of love undying!”

Soft then I saw advancing through the darkness’ mighty shade A tall and stately figure in wide, trailing robes arrayed, The fair, white arms in longing stretched, as if in woe to seek The comfort of the broken heart, the strength of all the weak— Christ’s blessèd cross with arms outspread, as if to mutely plead For mercy for the sinner, from tender hearts love’s meed; Of mightiest love the symbol true, the link ’twixt heaven and earth, The sign by which earth’s frailest one is cleansed for heavenly birth. In vain! No craving hand can touch that sacred symbol now, Its holy vision bring no rest to world-tossed, aching brow; The modern Cæsar has no need to mark where martyrs fell: “Unto Cæsar what is Cæsar’s”—that word they kept too well. And murmuring monks but echo, their chaplets telling o’er, The words these stones repeated in the Roman days of yore; To earthly science dearer far the walls the pagans built Than the precious blood of martyrs for love of Jesus spilt. Perchance beneath these stones might lie rare treasures of old Rome— The cross in Christian kingdom must not wander from its home!

“_Miserere, miserere_,” Seemed the very stones outcrying; “In thy mercy spare the nations. Heed, O God! the prisoners’ sighing.”

A sound of low lamenting then filled all the silent place, Whose darkness won unearthly light from out the stranger’s face— A face so fair not Paphos’ queen could claim a grace so rare; Ah! only she, the much-desired, such peerless mien could wear. And low I heard her murmuring: “Ah! me, woe, woe is me! So weary are my ears with sound of shouts that speak me free. Free! Am I free? Upon my head rests weight of royal crown, And Piedmont’s soldiers guard me, fearing lest I lay it down. Italy! Am I Italy? That name indeed I bear; And among the nations standing a nation’s crown I wear— Proud empires that salute me fair, green lands beyond the sea, Crying aloud: 'Shout, Italy! Thank Victor thou art free; Thy peoples shall no longer 'neath the tyrant’s scourge bend low, And, too, thy seemly garment no unseemly rent shall show; Among thy peers come thou once more to take thy place and name, Fair Southern queen, King Victor has ta’en away thy shame.’

“O gold-haired northern peoples! know ye not the sound of chains? Ne’er heard ye clink of German spur along my Lombard plains? O rosy-cheeked barbarians! do ye deem that I am free Because my rulers speed you when ye prate of liberty!’ When ye the wide arms shorten of the world-redeeming cross Since too far its shadow falls, and ye deem that shade your loss! Far, far across the western seas I hear their poets sing, While Freedom’s joy-bells pealing, loud, exulting anthems ring: 'Rise up, dear Italy unchained; thank Victor thou art free, And bend, oppressed, at Peter’s throne no more thy trembling knee. Thy sons shall waste in convent cell no more their manhood’s strength; See! open wide, their prison-doors: free men they are at length! Dark tyranny and priestcraft prostrate fall before thy king; Thy children freemen rise once more beneath his sheltering.’

“O strong-armed western people! in your home beyond the sea, Bearing even as your birthright the grace of liberty, List not the songs such poets sing: they know not me or mine; Studded with cruel thorns for me each laurel wreath they twine. A mournful queen I am, alas! crowned in another’s place— The mighty One from whom my face hath won its look of grace. I sit as a usurper where I fain would kneel and pray, Crowned with Rome’s earthly circlet from her forehead stol’n away! The world’s imperial mistress once, now queen of love and peace, Holds she her life and liberty but as earth’s monarchs please? Fain would they on her gracious brow my coronet have set, Its lustre dimmed with Savoy’s loss, with Naples’ tears all wet! The handmaid of her Maker, fair with lustre not of earth. Should she to Piedmont’s Victor bend her brow of heavenly birth? The mother of all peoples where the cross’s light is shed, Was my dull, narrow diadem fit crown to grace her head? In her old palace I sit throned, crowned with her earthly crown, With jealous care watched ever, lest I cast the honor down. I see my children wander wide in exile from their own, And, when they ask for living bread, my masters give them stone. I sit beside St. Peter’s chair; like his, my hands are bound; My eyes weep bitter sorrow at your pæans’ wild, glad sound; Beneath the heavy cuirass that is girded on my breast I bear the wreath mysterious St. Peter’s hand hath blessed. Upon the cannon rests my hand craving to lift the cross, And 'neath Sardinian colors I bewail the blind world’s loss.

“_Miserere, miserere_,” Seemed the weary voice outcrying, “Spare thy heritage, O Saviour! Hearken thou the prisoners’ sighing.

“O credulous Western people! cease shouting I am free. My masters have no knowledge of the truth of liberty, Who murmur with ignoble lips my old and honored name, And seek to rebaptize me with unholy rites of shame. Are ye drunk with Freedom’s dregs that ye have forgot her face, And bend before th’ unworthy thing men show you in her place? Stretch not your hands, God-fearing race, to welcome such as these: God, who your shepherd is, and judge, gives not to such his peace.

“_Miserere, miserere_, Mighty Lord of all the living, In thy mercy spare the erring, Sacred Heart of love forgiving!”

“The great arched walls sent echoing back the sad, indignant plaint, The light from that fair, mournful face grew evermore more faint, Till, fading in the darkness, light and shadow both were gone, And I sat where crimson sunset with southern splendor shone, Lighting the western city with a flood of harmless fire, With a glory, quickly fading, enwreathing mast and spire; Whence no mellow bells pealed earthward, sounding the angel’s call, Nor _Miserere_ drifted from roof and tower tall; The busy craft went sailing up and down the crowded stream— Upon my lap the poet’s book, the conjurer of my dream. Vision and sound had vanished, only still dim echoes fell Of pleading voices rising on the night-wind’s scarce-felt swell:

“_Miserere, miserere_, Hear, O God! the prisoners’ sighing; Spare thy heritage, O Saviour! Dearest Lord of love undying.”

THE DOOM OF THE BELL.

Two men were sitting in a garret at the very top of one of the craziest old houses in Bruges—_not_ a house dating from the fifteenth century, such as those we admire to this day, but a house that was already two hundred years old when those were built. It stood on the brink of the canal beyond which are now the public gardens that have displaced the ramparts of the once turbulent and independent city. _Then_ the houses crowded into the wide fosse of not too fragrant water, and leaned their balconied gables over it. This was not in the busy or the splendid quarter; it was far from the cathedral and the Guildhall. And in those prosperous times of the Hanseatic League, of the Venetian and Genoese merchant-princes visiting and marrying among their full peers of the city of Bruges—the times of the grand palaces built by those royal and learned traders—these two men I speak of were poor, obscure, and with little prospect of ever being anything else. Yet one of them had it in him to do as great things as the Van Eycks, and to take the art-loving city by storm, if he could only get “a chance.” It was the same in the year 1425 as it is now, and men in picturesque short-hose and flat caps were marvellously like those we see in ugly chimney-pots and tight trousers. The rivalry of other artists—none _very_ eminent—and the ungetable patronage of rich men stood in this young painter’s way, and he got disheartened and disgusted. This garret was his studio, his bedroom, and his kitchen. It was cheap, and the light could be managed easily and properly to suit his painting; but it was not one of those elaborately artistic studios, a picture in itself, which we associate with the idea of the “old masters.” The things that were there had evidently drifted there and got heaped up by accident—homely things most of them, and disposed with the carelessness natural to a man who had little belief or hope in his future. There was an air about the whole place as well as its owner that seemed to say as plainly as any words, “What is the use?” But the other man was a contrast to him. He was much older; a wiry form, and eager, small eyes, and an air of resistance to outward circumstances, “as if he could not help it,” but not in the sense of what is popularly called an “iron will,” were his chief distinguishing marks. He was neither artist nor merchant, and he lived “by his wits.” In those days, just the same as now, that meant something bordering on dishonesty; and such men were known as useful, but scarcely reputable. This individual was seated on a low trunk or chest of polished wood, but not carved, nor even adorned with curious hinges or iron-work; the other stood opposite, leaning on the high sill of a window in the gable, looking down into the canal.

“Peter,” said the latter after a pause, “have you heard of any one dying lately in the great houses, or, for that matter, in the rookeries?”

“No, not _dying_—at least, not lately,” said the other slowly.

“Not _dying?_” said the first, laying the same emphasis on the word as his friend had done, and not showing any lack of understanding or sign of surprise.

“Well, I mean she recovered; but she was pretty near death, and of course will be again as soon as it is safe. It put some of his lordship’s plans out a little when he heard how badly Simon had done his work. But you know it was not at his house, but in a kind of prison, and she was put there on a charge of stealing her mistress’ Genoese pearl-embroidered robe, and _it was said_ the lady begged as a favor she might not be publicly executed for the attempt, but allowed some time to repent and prepare; and when she was ready, she was to be told that one day, within the week, she would be poisoned by something in her food, which she could not taste and which would give her no pain, but put her to sleep—_for ever_. But no one believed that this was her mistress’ request, nor that she ever stole anything, of course. Every one knows that poor Dame Margaret is a cipher in her husband’s house—a worse victim of my Lord Conrad’s than any one there, many as they are; and he is just now out of reach of punishment, being, by the Count of Flanders’ influence, a member of the government, a councillor, and I know not what besides. But it seems Simon did not do his work aright, and the poor girl is still there, and no doubt, in a week or two, the experiment will be quietly tried again and with success. Jan, are you listening?”

“Yes,” said the artist as he turned round with absent look and a gesture, as if he had unconsciously been picking off some buttons from his sleeve and dropping them in the canal below.

“Well, what do you think of it?”

“Peter,” said the other abruptly, “is Simon your friend?”

“Well, we have had dealings together sometimes. He sells me clothes now and then; you know he has a good deal of such stuff on his hands.”

“If I could pay him,” said the artist bitterly, “I should not need any go-between; but I have nothing. I want something he could give me, and, if I had it, I should not need any patron, and would take none, short of the Count of Flanders himself.”

“Riddles again,” said Peter quietly; “poverty makes you mysterious.”

“I’ll tell you plainly what the riddle is, if you’ll help me.”

“For friendship’s sake?”

“Oh! no, indeed. Is there one in all Bruges would do it, or I expect it of him?”

“Well, well, do not croak; but _you_ know by experience that it is hard to live.”

“If you will get me what I want of Simon, you shall have one-fourth of my future reward and Simon one-fourth.”

“Too mean terms, those, Jan,” said Peter quietly, but intently watching his friend’s face.

“Very well, each a third, then; I knew you would want no less. But, look you,” he added, brightening up, “no one can share the fame, and I shall be known all over Flanders and Brabant, and France—ay, even Italy and Germany; and who knows if the Greek merchants will not carry my name to the court of Constantinople itself?—and you two poor wretches will have nothing but a pitiful handful of gold.”

“Quite enough for me, at any rate,” said Peter composedly; “it will be more than I ever had before. But do not let us 'count our chickens before they are hatched.’ What is it, though, that you want to work this miracle with?”

“Only a vial of her blood after the girl has been dead four hours.”

Peter betrayed no emotion.

“Rather an unusual request,” he said meditatively, “and one that savors strongly of witchcraft, which you know is scarcely less dangerous than heresy. You remember what happened at Constance scarcely more than ten years ago?”

“Nonsense! What has heresy to do with the mixing of my colors? And who but a leech will find out the mixture? And after all, if a fool were to use this potion just mixed as I shall mix it, and paint a picture with it, his picture would be only fit for a tavern-sign, and no one could tell the difference. If you need the ingredients, you need the skill more.”

“Why, Jan, you are getting enthusiastic—a miracle, that, in itself. I thought you had made up your mind that you would never do anything that would get known.”

“Well, I have a feeling, since you mentioned this case, that I _shall_ be known before I die, and known by _this_ means too. Can you get me what I want?”

“I dare say I can. But shall I tell the old sinner Simon that I want it for you, or say it is for a leech?”

“Why lie about it?” said the young man fiercely.

“Prudence, you know,” said the other, perfectly unabashed.

“No; tell him the bare truth, but swear him to secrecy. If he tells it, he shall forfeit his share.”

“He could get twice as much for denouncing you.”

“Let him! Where is his interest to denounce me? He is not a fiend, and _he_ knows it is hard to live.”

“He _did_, but may be he has forgotten it in his present position. All the grandees know him now.”

“But you forget, Peter, that his own business is more dangerous than my undertaking could be, even taking it for granted I should be suspected of witchcraft, and he would scarcely like to draw attention on his own delicate doings.”

“So far true,” said Peter. “I respect your shrewdness; you _can_ talk sense sometimes. I will get that vial for you some time this week or next.”

“Do not forget the _exact_ time after death—four hours. The perfection of the mixture would be gone if you did not attend to that. I shall come with you to the door, and wait for you and the vial, any night and any hour you mention.”

“Very well,” said Peter, as he got up and stretched himself. “I suppose your larder is empty?”

“Oh! I forgot. You can have what there is—cheese three days old, and some fresh brown bread, and two eggs, new-laid yesterday morning, which my friend the washerwoman gave me for sitting up at night with her sick boy. She _would_ make me take them, and I am glad now _I_ need not eat them myself. I should feel mean, if I did; and yet, if they stayed there till to-morrow, hunger would drive me to it. You are welcome to them.”

Meanwhile, Peter had silently helped himself to all the articles mentioned except one “hunch” of bread, and left the garret with a cool “Thank you.” Jan turned back to the window, and stayed nearly an hour looking down into the drowsy canal with its fringe of dark, huddled houses, each, as he thought, a frame for a picture full of the same agony of hopeless aspirations and submission to grim and sordid circumstances as his own. But he saw through glasses of his own staining; for many of those wretched, crazy, but beautiful houses held pictures of a bright home life and love that looked no higher or farther for happiness, and was, in truth, the outcome of a mind more philosophical than the future glory of Flemish art, staring into the flood from his garret window, could boast of possessing.

Three months went by, and no one saw the young artist, save the man who sold him his meagre provisions, Peter, and his friend of the eggs. Five days after the conversation we have recorded Peter and he were walking home at two o’clock in the morning through the streets, where no one but the watchman had leave and license to be, calling out the hour when the chimes struck it. It was bright moonlight, and the two men would gladly have dispensed with the beauty of the night, much as it enhanced the charm of the great mansions they passed, the carved doorways, the delicate balconies, the ponderous, magnificent iron bell-pulls, the lions’ and griffins’ heads on the many bridges over the narrow canals. Even Jan passed hurriedly by, standing nervously back in a doorway if he heard the clear cry of a watchman, starting as a loose stone rattled under his feet in the pavement, and even when his companion ill-naturedly put his hand in a fountain and noisily disturbed the water with a “swish” that made the other turn pale and look around in horror of being pursued.

As the weeks went by and the young man worked on alone, feverishly and battling with his own superstitions as well as the fear of being denounced by his two associates, an odd change came over him. Peter noticed it about one month after the day they had procured the vial of blood. Jan was taken with a pious fit that day, and insisted on spending some miserable pence he had on candles offered for the soul of the poisoned girl, and which he, with genuine devoutness, put on the iron spikes provided for the purpose in the church of Notre Dame. That day, having spent all in this way, he fasted altogether and nearly fainted at his easel; but when he left off work Peter saw that a startled, expectant look was in his eyes, which he directed furtively every now and then to one particular corner of his room. When questioned he hurriedly turned the conversation; but the scared look grew more and more intense as time went on. At last, one night, the young man asked Peter seriously and with great trepidation to stay and sleep with him.

“I believe I am getting nervous,” he said, with a laugh that was anything but genuine. Peter made no objection, but in the middle of the night he was awakened by Jan. The poor fellow was in a violent cold perspiration, and, pointing excitedly to the same corner, cried:

“There she is; and she never says a word, but only looks at me reproachfully! She has been there every night since the first Month’s Mind!”

“Pshaw!” said Peter, “I see nothing there, Jan; you should be bled—that is all. You have been overworking yourself.”

But nothing would persuade the artist that the ghost of the poisoned girl was not there, silent and reproachful; and there, day after day and night after night, he saw her, and, though he longed to speak to her, he never dared.

Three months were over and his picture was done; but he was only the skeleton of his former self, and he looked, as Peter said, like what the Florentine woman had said of Dante—“the man who had gone down to hell and come back again.” His bitterness was gone, so was his hopelessness, but there was no healthy joy or youthful enthusiasm in their place; he seemed to have grown old all at once, except for the feverish, eager haste to show his picture and win the name that should darken that of the national pets and the popular favorites. Where to show it? was a question Peter put more than once, but Jan waived it as not worth any anxiety. He should write a notice, and post it on the church doors and those of the Guildhall and the Exchange, to the effect that a new and unknown painter had a picture for sale and exhibition at such and such a place; and if the public did not care to come there to see it, they might see it once on next market-day in the Grande Place, where the artist would show it himself, free to all.

The subject was “Judith and Holofernes”—a common subject enough in those days, but the artist thought that no one had ever treated it in the same way before. When we see it in the market-place and hear the comments of the people, we shall understand in what lay the difference.

The day appointed by the artist came. All the rich and learned men had noticed the placard on the church doors, and the connoisseurs and critics were on the alert. This unpatroned and self-confident painter stung their curiosity, and the merchants, native and foreign, were also eager to see and, if they liked it, “buy up” the new sensation. The people, too, had heard of the exhibition, and many crowded earlier than usual to the market-place to get a glimpse of the mysterious picture being set up by the artist.

No one did see it, however. A good many stalls, booths, and awnings were up long before daylight, and no one noticed the stand of the new-comer, put up in a corner, and screened all round with the commonest tent-cloth. As soon as dawn made it possible to see things a little, the stand was found to be open, and a picture, unframed, was seen set up on trestles, and some coarse crimson drapery skilfully arranged round it, so as to take the place of the frame which the artist was too poor to buy. A few loungers came up, and, fancying this was the screen to some mystery-play to be acted later in the day, sauntered away again, like uncritical creatures as they were. Presently a priest and a merchant came up, evidently searching for some particular booth, and soon stopped before the picture.

“Here it is,” shortly said one of them.

“So _that_ is the picture?” said the other; and for a while they both stood in silence, examining it in detail.

“Wonderful!” said the merchant presently. “It beats the hospital 'St. John.’”

“There _is_ a strange power about the drawing,” said the other.

“But the coloring!” retorted the merchant. “See the depth, the life-likeness, the intensity; and yet there is nothing violent or merely sense-appealing. It is horror, but rather mental than physical horror.”

“True,” said the priest. “I wonder if he had a model.”

“Most likely, but there is more than he ever saw in any common model; the merit rests with himself alone, I should judge.”

“Well, do you think of buying it?”

“I am inclined to do so, but want to examine it more closely first. Besides, I see no one here to represent the painter, or even guard the picture.”

“Oh! I have no doubt there is some one hovering about—perhaps that countryman who looks so vacant. You know the professional tricks of our worthy artists!”

And with this he called the person in question, who surely looked vacant enough to be in disguise.

“Can you tell me what you think of this picture, friend?” he asked.

“Very fine, messire.”

“You do not think it like one of Hendrick Corlaens, do you?”

“I never saw that, messire,” bashfully said the countryman.

“But you think _this_ is fine?”

“Very, very.”

“Why do you like it?”

“It seems like life.”

“Like death too?”

“Yes, messire.”

“How far did you come this morning?” asked the merchant, fancying his companion’s shrewdness had overshot the mark this time.

“Forty-three miles. I started before midnight from Stundsen.”

“I think,” said the merchant to his brother-critic, “we shall make nothing of this man. He must be one of my brother-in-law’s men at Stundsen. He is quite genuine in his stupidity.”

And the pair moved nearer the picture, while others came up and stopped, till there was soon a little knot of admirers talking in whispers. The crowd grew as the day went on. In the side street leading into the Place the doors of Notre Dame opened to let out the flood of worshippers that had flowed in since dawn from the country, and who now rushed from their devotions to their business. Noise was uppermost, trade was brisk; the sun got hot and men got thirsty. It was soon a riotous as well as a picturesque scene, and a spectator on that balcony of the curiously-carved corner window on the same side of the Place as the Guildhall could scarcely have told which stalls the hurrying masses most besieged, so tangled was the web of human beings jostling and jolting each other along the uneven pavement. A good many had stared and gazed at the picture. It was the subject of many comments and disputes that day; men quarrelled over its merits as they drank their sour wine, and women talked of it in whispers over their bargains. Some children had screamed and kicked at first sight of it; altogether it had not failed to be known, seen, and talked about. Our two friends of early morning had hung about it all day and overheard most of the remarks of the crowd. Some people had been disappointed in finding that it was not the sign of a play representing the slaying of Holofernes, but only a picture; a Venetian and a Greek, daintily dressed and speaking some soft, foreign tongue—a wonder to the sturdy Flemish peasants from the dykes and canals by the sea—lounged near the unpainted railing that protected the picture from the crowd. No one could see behind the picture, but many thought the artist was hidden within the closely _sewn_ curtains, that never flapped in the breeze like the rest of the market awnings. These two and the first critics listened in eager silence to the judgment of the crowd, put forth in short sentences at long intervals. On coming up one woman said to her companion:

“Why, I thought they always painted Judith with black hair; this one has hair the color of mine.”

“Perhaps it was his betrothed he painted,” said the other, “and in compliment to her he made it a portrait.”

“Then I should not like to be he. A ghostly bride he would have.”

“But look at her eyes; they seem like a corpse’s just come back to life.”

“Pshaw! how could a _corpse_ come back to life? You mean a ghost.”

“No—Lazarus, you know. I can fancy how frightened and reproachful he might have looked when he woke up and found himself in his shroud.”

“_I_ think he would look glad and thankful. But come away. It seems as if I should dream of that face.”

“Yes; it makes me feel very strange the more I look at it.”

And the two women moved off.

Presently another voice was heard in a muffled tone.

“See the blood in Holofernes’ throat. It looks as if it were moving.”

“Judith looks too weak and small to kill him,” said another.

“So she does,” said a third, and he added, in a lower tone: “I once had a cousin very like that picture.”

“Is she dead?” asked a woman, a stranger to the speaker.

“Yes,” said the man, with some surprise.

“I thought no live person could remind you of _this_ face,” answered the woman, as if in explanation.

The two couples of critics glanced appreciatively and with a smile at each other, and the Greek said to his friend:

“Your _boors_ are no bad critics, after all. I think the barbarians rather beat us in painting.”

“Beat _you_!” laughed the Venetian. “Speak for yourself. But it is your religion that has fossilized your art; otherwise you would have been—”

“No,” said the other thoughtfully, “I think you mistake; I doubt if we have the gift you, and the Flemings also, have for painting. Our literature is as far above that of this northern people as heaven is above the earth, and our sculpture, of course, is unrivalled; but they have the gift of music, and of architecture, and of painting—the two last marvellously developed. And in the first I think your people—I do not mean Venetians, but some of your other Italian neighbors—have just now reached a good climax. At Milan I heard some chanting that would put us to shame, and even here I have heard something not unlike it. Yes, I cede the palm to the barbarians in the arts of Euterpe and—”

“But in architecture yours is the peer of any northern style,” said the Venetian.

“I doubt it,” said the Greek. “There is a strange impression comes over me in these vast, sky-high, delicately-carved cathedrals, dim and resonant, that comes nowhere else—not in our gold-colored, mosaic-paved, dome-crowned churches, nor your St. Mark, the daughter of our St. Sophia.”

“Every one knows how liberal are your views,” said the other, with a smile.

“Yes?” asked the Greek, evidently in innocence. “But I am only fair to others. I would rather be a Greek than a barbarian, as the adage of one of our old heathen philosophers has it; but I can see that God has not rained every blessing on one spot, and that my native land, as he did on the Garden of Eden before Adam fell.”

“Hush!” said the Venetian, interrupting him. “Some girl has fainted.”

Some little stir was taking place in the crowd; it _was_ a girl who had fainted, and an old woman, strong and powerful, was holding her.

Among the many questions tossed to and fro and never answered, our four friends all managed to hear the words of the old woman to her nearest neighbors.

“Yes, that is the portrait of her sister and my granddaughter, just as if the poor lost girl had sat for it herself. But then this must have been painted since she lost her rosy color. And I believe the painter knows what became of her, and where she is, if she is alive; and, God forgive me! I always accused the Lord Conrad of Schön of her ruin and disappearance. I _will_ know, too, if this painter is to be found anywhere in Flanders. Oh! yes, Agnes is very well; she will be herself again directly, nervous little thing!” And the old woman, with a kind of savage tenderness, shielded the face of her granddaughter in her bosom, while the girl slowly revived.

Some people hinted that the painter was hidden in the closed tent behind the picture, and others brought out shears to cut the curtains; but the priest here interposed.

“I think, my friends,” he said in a clear, authoritative voice, “that you had better leave this matter to the proper authorities. Messire Van Simler and I will see that this good woman is heard, and, if need be, helped to find her granddaughter, or any news of her death and fate. It would be an unwarrantable act to cut these curtains open: if there is no one there, you will feel like fools, the dupes of the childish trick of an unknown painter; if you find the person you are looking for, you may do him a mischief and come yourselves under the eye of the law. I advise you to let the matter rest. And you, my good friend, here is an address you may find useful whenever you wish to make further inquiries. It would be best to take your charge home.”

The manner rather than the words of the speaker took effect at once, and the group dissolved to make room for other sight-seers, all gaping, all admiring, and all ending by feeling uncomfortable and leaving the stand with muttered words of equal wonder and fear. But it is impossible to follow each comment, and we have yet other scenes to look at before we close the history of this picture.

Among the crowd that day had been Peter and Simon, and the former, familiar as he was with the painting, had ceased to feel impressed by the weird, indescribable beauty and awe that were its very essence. But he had been, in a business-like way, alive to everything connected with what was to him the instrument of future success, and the fainting scene and its close were especially observed. He noticed the drift of all the remarks made on the picture; he had foretold it himself—for he was nothing if not worldly-wise—and he carefully scanned the faces of the four critics who had so pertinaciously lingered round the stand all day. He knew them all for enlightened men, above the nonsense of the age, good art-critics, and men born to be masters of their kind. Even the young Venetian had the making of a statesman in him; the Greek was as simple-minded as he was generous, and, though his countrymen had a bad name at Bruges for conventional sins of which not half of them were really guilty, he was, even with the most ignorant, a signal exception. The other two were trusted native citizens, bosom friends, patrons of all that was good, learned, and improving, and, what was more, powerful in the council and civic government. The first, by the way, was a canon of the cathedral, by private inheritance a rich man, and, by dint of charity to the starving and liberality to men of letters, raised above the scandal that attended on rich ecclesiastics. These four were representative men, and though each a representative of the best type of his own class and nation, still no less entitled to be called representative men.

Peter noted the way Messire Van Simler went that evening; the canon he knew well by reputation. Then he came back to the Place and helped a young peasant to lift and pack the picture, leaving on the planks in front of the booth the address of the artist and a notice that purchasers were asked to meet the painter at his own studio any time each day before dark. The peasant seemed slim and tall for a Flemish countryman, but his cap concealed his face, and his loose vest was well calculated to increase his seeming bulk; still, when he got to the studio in the old garret over the canal, and threw off his cap, he proved to be the person you must have suspected—the painter himself. He said nothing, and Peter did not offer to speak; but the former, as soon as he came in, glanced hurriedly into one corner and then back at the picture. Over their scanty supper the two exchanged a few monosyllables as to the result of the show, but each was uneasy and spoke as if compelled by the suspicion of the other. Next morning Peter went to Van Simler’s house before the latter was out of bed, and was received during the merchant’s ample breakfast. No one came to Jan’s garret the first day, and he stayed at home alone with his work, now and then retouching it, as if drawn to it by a spell he could not master; but each time he worked at it he seemed more ill and nervous. Towards dusk he heard a footstep on the stair, and opened the door to let in some light on the break-neck place, full of corners and broken steps, where some stranger was evidently groping his way. It was the Greek. He greeted the painter with grave earnestness and more interest than is usual with a purchaser.

“I have come,” he said after the first civilities, “to buy both your pictures and _you_, and pack both at once, as my ships will be in port by the night after to-morrow night, and it needs time to meet them. They cannot wait—at least, _that_ one cannot which happens to be most convenient for you to go in. Have you any objection to go with me to Greece?—any tie to detain you here?”

Jan looked into the corner before he answered, and shuddered. “I fear I have,” he said unwillingly. The Greek looked fixedly at him.

“I will not keep you any longer than you like, and you probably like travelling? There are scenes in Greece and the East that will delight you, if you have a liking for Scriptural subjects; and the journey need not be longer than the interval between this cargo _from_ here and the next cargo back.”

Jan said nothing.

“You see I am bent on having _you_ as well as your picture,” the merchant went on; “but if you insist on refusing me your company, I will take the picture at once. I have men below ready to carry it away, and I will give you your own price at once, in gold coin.”

And Jan still gazed into the furthest—and empty—corner.

“I have reasons for my haste,” said the Greek, slowly, at last. Jan turned inquiringly.

“Good reasons,” said his visitor gravely and gently, “which I will tell you when we are at sea, if you will trust me till then; if not, I will even tell you now, though the proverb says that 'walls have ears.’”

Jan seemed to need no immediate explanation, but said:

“Take the picture, and welcome, and believe in my gratitude, though I cannot put it into words; but I can take no gold for the picture.”

“Why, you invited purchasers to come here to you!”

“I have learned to-day that I cannot sell it.”

“Well,” said the Greek, with a look of intelligence, “I think you and I understand each other, then, and I may as well take you and the picture too.”

“No,” said Jan, “you do not understand _me_, but I understand you and am grateful. If I am in danger, it matters little; I prefer meeting such a danger as you fear for me to seeing what I should see always, on the ship, in the East, as well as here—or at the stake.”

“Your mind is—preoccupied, my young friend,” said the merchant. “But let me take the picture; at least, it is better to have the evidence put out of the way in time. Let me call to my men.”

“Yes, but no gold for it,” said Jan without emotion, as he pushed away the purse on the table. “Take the picture; there will be only _one_ face then, and I shall not be torturing myself as to whether the likeness is faithful enough or not.”

The Greek bent out of the window and whistled to two men sitting on the narrow stone-work of the canal; one of them struck a flint, lit a pine torch, and, beckoning the other to follow him, came up the winding stairs. Jan said not a word, and the picture was packed and carried away, while the merchant lingered yet, pressing gold, protection, and future patronage upon the benumbed artist. Even the hint of fame could not stir the young man.

“I have done my life’s work,” he said gloomily. “I shall never paint the equal of that picture again, and I do not wish to,” he added with a shudder; “and for the sake of my reputation I must not paint anything below that standard.”

“But why should not you do even better?” said the Greek.

“I thought you knew,” said the young man, in puzzled uncertainty.

“I _know_ nothing, and my suspicions are too vague to shape my judgment on the merits of this particular work of yours. I gathered all I _do_ know, or even suspect, from the remarks of the people to-day. I am used to watching indications of men’s fancies, prejudices, passions, say even superstitions, and I thought it a pity that such people as we heard to-day should have it in their power to end or mar the career of an artist of your genius. We want some young, rising painter—one who can rival the Italians; one who can show that there is a future for art, that it is progressive and improvable; one especially who will defy conventionalities—for I own that your independent treatment of a 'Judith’ fascinated me. But if I cannot prevail upon you to accept my services at present, you will not refuse to take this address; it will find me, no matter where I may be, and it will be even a personal safeguard for you in my absence and during the interval that may elapse before I hear of your appeal.”

“Thank you a thousand times for your unprovoked and generous interest!” said Jan more warmly than he had spoken before. “I shall never forget it. God grant my life or death may be guided and determined by the highest Power! I should not trust myself to decide wisely, if I had the choice offered me; but if it is ordained that I should live long, I prefer _your_ being the instrument of my salvation.”

The merchant left, and Jan stayed alone all night; he was stonily calm, watching, thinking, waiting as if for an expected event, and never breaking his fast through the long, dark hours. When early morning came, two men in gray cloaks opened his door and respectfully _ordered_ him to come with them to Van Simler’s house, which he did without surprise and without remonstrance. Here he found the canon, who with Van Simler told him briefly that they thought it for his good to be taken into the country to the castle of Stundsen, belonging to the merchant’s brother-in-law. They did not tell him why, and it did not even occur to him to ask. As he passed from the large dining-hall where this short interview took place to a room furnished with Spanish leather and carved oak—_his_ room, he was told, for a few hours—he thought he recognized the Greek anxiously and quickly open a door that led to the passage, as if to assure himself of the presence of some expected person.

Van Simler and his friend, meanwhile, had a short and significant talk, a few words of which are here set down to explain facts that may look to the undiscerning reader like the conventional tricks of modern mediævalists, to whom plots and kidnapping are “daily bread.” “Now,” said the merchant, “if that scoundrel Peter goes no further, there is every hope of getting this obstinate young genius out of the city in safety; but he may try to get _two_ prices and hint the matter to Conrad Schön.”

The canon shrugged his shoulders. “Of course, in that case,” he said, “all would be in vain, for Count Conrad has the sovereign’s ear; and you know the hobby the Count of Flanders has lately bestridden.”

“The youth ought to have gone with the Greek; but the latter says he believes him half-mad, which accounts for his staying in the jaws of the lion.”

“I have heard of Jan the painter before,” said the priest, “and, had he been a different person, I should have gone to him myself; but, from my general knowledge of his character, any one would do better than one of us, and I am glad the Greek forestalled me. Why did not you keep Peter under lock and key when he came here?”

“It was a mistake, I own,” said the other; “but still, if I had, there was Simon in the secret.”

“Simon is a fool, and nothing of this would have occurred to him.”

“I doubt about his being a fool; at any rate, he is a dangerous one.

“He _is_ a fool in such matters as these, though dangerous enough in his way, as you say. Now, our Greek friend has just left the house, I see, and there is nothing to detain _me_ here just now. You take the transport business in your hands? Well and good; while I attend to any foolish charge made in the city. I expect I shall see old Mother Colette before dark to-night.”

There is no need to go through the details of the few days that followed. In one word, Peter was more powerful than Jan’s four protectors put together, but only because he had Conrad Schön at his back, and behind him a greater “presence” yet—no less a person than the Count of Flanders, who had lately taken a mania about witchcraft. It was easy to play upon his vanity and tickle his supposed superior sense of discovery, and Conrad had reasons for diverting to the young artist the opprobrium which even he, with all his power, could not fail to have brought upon himself in such an independent and proud burgher-city as Bruges for the wrong done to the orphan daughter of one of her citizens and an attendant of his wife; for there was still a lingering in Flanders of the old knightly feeling of the earlier days of chivalry, which made it the duty of a knight to consider every house-maiden within his walls as his own daughter or sister, and protect, and even defend, her as such.

The dark accusations of Conrad and his informant against the defenceless painter were but too readily listened to, and, before his friends could conceal him, the sovereign had already sent to demand his person. We will pass over the mock examination which the count held, more with a view to satisfy his own curiosity than to assure himself of the prisoner’s guilt; over the honest but bitter malignity with which old Mother Colette, an unconscious tool sought out by Jan’s enemies, testified against the man who, to make such a startling and mysterious likeness of her lost granddaughter, must have been intimately acquainted with her; and, lastly, over Jan’s strange apathy and silence, his refusal to deny the charges brought against him, and his seeming relief at being condemned to die.

He never told any one the reason of all this, and the secret would have died with him, if Peter, years afterwards, when the picture again came to light and became famous, had not made known the hallucination of the painter, to which was really due the success others had stupidly attributed to forbidden practices. The last thing that concerns us is the strange sentence and fanciful doom pronounced by the Count of Flanders, the carrying out of which will take us up into the belfry of the Guildhall, just above the market-place where the unlucky picture had first roused the ignorant suspicions of the mob.

Here, where swings the largest bell of the famous carillon, we find the artist once more. The great dark mass hangs dumb beside him; very little light is here, but enough to see by dimly, and make out some of the maze of beams and iron-braced stays that uphold the old bell. Even some of the inscription is visible; its gilt letters in relief gleam out of the dimness and naturally fix the eye in that kind of magnetic gaze which some say is favorable to sleep. Jan was half crouched in one corner, wondering why he was there and how long it was intended he should stay; the two men who had brought him had simply told him that the count had sent him up there to see if he could rival the penance of St. Simeon Stylites, for a few hours at least. Presently the bell began to stir and sway softly, slowly; one dull, muffled tone came out as the tongue touched the outbent lips of the mighty bell; the next stroke came louder, the next swing was wider, and Jan’s head already throbbed with the unwelcome noise. Now the monster was alive in earnest. Warming to its work, it swung further and further; it tossed its base upwards, till the beams groaned and creaked, and all kinds of hideous minor noises seemed to be embroidered on the constant dull echo between each stroke. A strange wind blew in Jan’s face; it was the breath of the bell, whose relentless beat grew more and more regular, more and more monotonous, as it went on. The artist dared not move; one hair’s breadth nearer the terrific engine would be his death, one blow of its lips would be more effectual than any stroke of axe or pile of faggots. He shrank close to the wall, but, as his body just cleared the bell in its mad flingings and tossings, his mind seemed to be struck by it at every toll, almost absorbed in it, drawn to it with fatal curiosity. Was that the bell whose sound had been so majestic, so solemn, so beautiful in his ears as a child, so grand when it rang out above the others—eighty of them—that chimed on the great church holidays and welcomed the victorious sovereign when he came back from war? Was this the heart of the great angel that poetry and popular belief had endowed the belfry with—this terrible, maddening, brazen-tongued, relentless engine? It only just missed touching him each time it flung itself on his side of the beam-chamber; if it were to swing only a little more fiercely, as it seemed easy for it to do, one blow would crush him. Already the air seemed to suck him in under the bell, into some dark vault, no doubt—some bottomless pit; had his conductors known, when they put him there, that it was time for the bell to toll, or had they forgotten him? How long would this go on? His brain could not stand it much longer, he felt, but to scream was useless; the great, dread voice hushed all other sound. It seemed presently as if the gilt lettering got brighter; it took the shape of a glaring yellow eye; now redder, like fire, now alive, now like the eyes in his “Judith,” that the woman had said were the “eyes of a corpse just come back to life.” But had bells eyes as well as tongues? he asked himself helplessly. He remembered learning about the Cyclops and their single eyes in the middle of their foreheads; now he really saw a worse monster, with an eye of flame set in its huge, black, bulging lip. Was that the gold the Greek had offered him? Surely it was that, and no eye. Of course his fancy had betrayed him. But how could the gold have got there and got stuck to the rim of the accursed bell? How long had he been there, and when were they coming to fetch him? But they could not get in while that fiend was tossing and bellowing in these narrow walls. What was that other noise now?—a whirring of a thousand wheels! Where? It seemed all round; and now the bell appeared to him in a network of wheels, all going round faster than the eye could follow—a mass of moving air formed of many hazy circles intertwined; he _knew_ they were wheels, but could not actually see them. He dared not hold his ears and head with his hands, for between each fling of the bell there was not time to lift his hands; and if they were caught—Some one was there now—come to bring him away. How did he get in? But it was not a man; it had long, fair hair and a misty sort of covering. He knew the face. Was there an angel of the bell, after all, who was going to stop the great tongue and deliver him? No; that face was a dead face—Judith just as he had painted her, just as he saw her in the corner of his room; and _this_ was his room, and he had been dreaming of the bell. Scarcely—he could not dream of such a noise; then the devil must have got into his room and changed everything. But the clangor never stopped, and never spoke either louder or softer—one eternal, dreary, vexing, maddening ring. He would go mad, no doubt, if he stayed there another quarter of an hour; how long had he been there? Now he was fascinated by the unerring accuracy of the strokes, and, in a trance, expected feverishly the next dull boom, and mechanically counted on his fingers till the next was due again, and so on for five minutes. Suppose he should hang on to the tongue; would it make a feather’s weight of difference in the time or the sound of the stroke? He wondered how the bell sounded to those in the Place; they did not heed it at all, most likely, or some thought it must be getting near their time for dinner, while pious women were reminded to say a prayer, and some gleeful child would clap its hands and count the strokes. He could count the beats of his heart and the throbs in his head. He was not mad yet, he hoped, and his thoughts came regularly, and he saw pictures burned into the air one minute and gone the next; if he could have put them on canvas, they would have made his name and fortune. He was sure he could catch their shading; they looked as if fire had been made liquid and colored. It was better than any of the windows in the cathedral, famous as they were through the art-world for their undiscoverable secret of vivid, jewel-like coloring. But one picture followed the other so soon that, had he painted them all, it would have taken him twice the threescore years and ten of an ordinary life, and they would have filled every Church in Flanders fuller than twenty chapels in each could require. What was the coloring of “Judith,” with the pitiful chemical combination for which he had risked so much, to these rich, mellow, miraculous tones, with a thousand new, unnamable shades, and shadows that looked more like the depths of a dark-blue Italian lake than the darkness of common air? But through all these meditations of a second’s length, though they seemed like the reveries of hours, the boom of the pitiless bell went on, crashing through the brain of the prisoner, shattering each new picture which the last interval had stamped on his fancy, sounding to him now like a roaring fall of water, now a ploughing avalanche, now a thunder-clap, now the fall of a burning house, now the thud of earth upon a coffin, now the blow of a massive cudgel on his own head. Instinctively he cowered lower, and a beam struck him on the back with a sudden violent blow that made him stand upright and remember that the bell was there, but no cudgel; but as he rose he had stretched out his hand, blindly feeling for support, and touched the great rocking monster. A thrill went through his frame; he looked upward and vaguely wondered if this was the end, and he saw his “Judith” again, a shadowy form among the rafters. The next feeling of consciousness was that of lying flat on his back and a strong, cold wind wafting across his feet; he put up his hand to lift his head a little and press his left temple, and then— The bell had only tolled for a quarter of an hour. As soon as it stopped the same men who had taken Jan up came again and found him dead, lying in a cramped position on his side, and one leg still stretched out beneath the now silent bell.[51]

Footnote 51:

If any one cares to know what became of the picture, he may be interested to hear that it hangs now over the altar of a private oratory in the same city where it was painted. The Greek merchant took it to Constantinople, where it remained in his family till the siege, twenty-eight years later. It was then given by him for safe keeping to his Venetian friend and transferred to Venice, whence the Greek himself, having become a resident of that place, took it back to Bruges and offered it to the canon, on condition of no further mention being made of the circumstances connected with it. The offer was gratefully accepted, and it remained till the priest’s death in his private collection, the Greek having declared that, what with having paid no price for it and its being a Scriptural subject, he preferred that it should in some way belong to the church rather than to the world. At the canon’s death it was sold to a dealer, who sold it again for a high price to an Italian collector, whose descendants, in “hard times,” parted with it to a rich Englishman. It happened, strangely enough, that it returned to the native city of its unlucky author by an intermarriage between the family of the English connoisseur and that of a passionate lover of art in Bruges, and this time it was transferred as a _gift_. It has been freely shown to any and every one who asked to see it, and the story attached to it made it one of the “sights” of the old city.

WILD ROSES BY THE SEA.

Untrimmed, uncared for, filling all the ways That stretch between the shadow of the pine And sea-washed rock where in the soft sunshine The sea breaks white through all the long June days,

The fair wild roses, flushed like Eastern skies When sinks the sun to rest in radiance calm, Their pink bloom lift amid the sweet-bay’s balm And shine a welcome true to loving eyes.

Sweet June’s rich gladness in the rosy flush, As if rejoicing with our human souls, While solemn melody from wave-beat rolls, Whose endless anthem knows not any hush:

And ever answering from the pines sweep down The wailing chords the wandering wind doth wake— Sad undertones that through June’s singing break, But cannot dim her roses’ radiant crown,

Beyond whose jewelled zone spreads on and on The long, low level of the endless sea, Blue with the shadow of infinity From cloudless skies, in sparkling light, dropped down;

With here and there a sail, in shade and light, Wind-seeking, bearing careless o’er the crest Of summer waves the whiteness of its breast— A moment’s dazzling vision on our sight:

Earth, air, and sea, with mirth unsullied filled, With happy sunshine from June’s roses flushed. We hold our rose-leaves all to-day uncrushed, Our cup of spring-time joyousness unspilled.

But spring-time passes, rosy petals all Drop down and mingle with earth’s earlier dead, Though faithful sweet-bay still breathes balm o’erhead, And ocean’s anthem e’er doth rise and fall.

Almost unfelt the summer hours die, Green leaves grow russet on the salty shore, The crimson vines droop rocky crevice o’er, And wild ducks’ marshalled columns southward fly.

Low asters gleam with delicate light amid The massive sunshine of the golden-rod; A stray Houstonia shines above the sod And lifts to gold-spun skies its pale blue lid.

The autumn’s glory lavishly is spread, But summer dieth, loving sung to sleep By western wind and murmur of the deep, The softened sunshine on her gently shed.

Where are our roses?—that rare gift of June That filled to perfectness our human life, That hushed with silent touch all earthly strife, That voiceless sang to keep our hearts in tune.

Lo! crowning each rich, sun-browned stem Where once its rose the summer’s sunrise flushed, Where shone our coronal of joy, now crushed, Stands, round and firm, a deeper-tinted gem.

Rich summer faileth, and true-hearted June, For whom birds sang, and perfect blessedness Filled every grass-blade with a sense of bliss, Tells o’er her beads for one to die so soon.

Her rosary strung around the rose-crowned shore, Our pure June gladness, gathered into prayers, The sweet-bay’s incense ever upward bears, While we, 'mid loss, seem richer than before!

DIVORCE, AND DIVORCE LAWS.

Of the many evils now arrayed against society, none is greater than that threatened by the frequency and facility with which divorces are obtained. This bane of our day, if not plucked up by the roots, will inevitably bring on the country disasters tenfold greater than the bitterest political strifes. Already its incursions into our midst have cast a blight on our morals, have infected all classes of society, have rudely shaken our best institutions, and, if not checked, will prove a greater scourge than in our apathy we dream of. Yet it continues to grow among us day by day; it rears its head higher and higher each moment; it strikes deeper root on all sides; its hideous mien is ever becoming more familiar to us; some even smile over its attendant disclosures of depravity as pleasant tidbits of scandal with which the morning papers agreeably enliven the breakfast-table, while few reflect over the awful magnitude of the danger with which it is fraught. So dulled, indeed, has become the public conscience in this respect, so slow its apprehension of the mighty evil pressing on us, that scarcely has a warning voice been lifted against this social hydra, which goes on tightening its coils more closely around us every moment. It is not alone our crowded cities that are poisoned by its breath, but it has invaded the stillness of hillside and hamlet, and no part of the land is a stranger to its presence.

In olden times a special act of Parliament was required in England to legalize a remarriage during the life-time of husbands and wives, but so tedious and expensive was the proceeding that few cared to avail themselves of the privilege; whereas of late days and in our land so simple and easy has become the severance of the marriage-knot that the mechanic as well as the millionaire figures before courts and referees, and multitudes now throng this new high-road to social ruin.

Chief among the evils resulting from the laxity of our divorce laws is their active warfare against society. The family, as known among us, is a creation of the church wrought out through the indissolubility and sacredness of marriage. It is the nursery of society, the hope of the state, and the cradle of its destinies. While it remains pure and intact, so long will our sound social institutions flourish, so long will a healthy public sentiment live among us, ready to rebuke the shortcomings of the powerful and to lighten the burdens of the poor, to frown upon official corruption and to encourage disinterested public

## action. Indeed, this is a point we need scarcely insist upon. All

moralists and sociologists allow that the family is the parent of society, as the seed is of the crop and the acorn of the oak. They agree that with its extinction we are at once driven on the breakers of socialism, communism, and free-love—in a word, that society ceases to exist. Now, divorce is the entering-wedge which the law supplies for the ruin of the family; it is as the priming to a loaded gun. Once give the world to understand that marriage is but a simple compact by which two persons of opposite sexes agree to live together conditionally for a time, and the permanency of the family is destroyed; the sacredness of conjugal love is degraded before the law into mere sexual desire; that institution which Christ blessed and declared to symbolize his own union with the church becomes at the best a system of stirpiculture, and nuptial altars are converted into shambles of licentiousness. Let the cause be what it may bestowing on either party to the marriage contract the right to annul it, and the cohesion of family ties is fatally weakened. This fact our court records ominously demonstrate every day. Applications for divorce, based on the special enactments of each State, are constantly filed, in which release from marriage is sought in accordance with the provisions of the law. In Indiana, for instance, mere incompatibility of temper is made the ground of petition; and in only very few cases do we find adultery or grossly cruel treatment alleged as a reason. The easier conditions of the State law are naturally enough invoked, whatever may be the true inner grounds of disagreement. The law of the State offers a means of escape from an onerous condition, and, either through the perverse temper of the litigants or the legal skill of counsel, the circumstances of the case are readily adapted to the requirements of the law. Thus the law in reality supplies to those who are weary of wedlock the means of escaping from it, while apparently striving to hedge in its interests. This fact will for ever and essentially stultify divorce laws. No matter how ingeniously framed they may be, how buttressed with conditions and exactions of proof, such are the peculiar relations of married life that, given on the side of the law the possibility, and on the side of the husband or wife the desire of escaping from a yoke that has become galling, and mere legal restrictions melt as wax before the sun.

As has just been said, the court records constantly prove this. Let us examine the facts in New York State, where adultery is the only recognized ground on which absolute divorce can be procured. A husband desires to free himself from married thraldom. He consults a convenient friend or an accommodating lawyer. (Happily, there are not many such, but we all know that one can work an infinity of mischief.) A conspiracy is entered into against the wife; detectives are set on her track; her incomings and outgoings are narrowly watched; her innocent visits are painted over with the color of criminality; her letters are intercepted; she is lured into the paths of temptation; and such proof, devised with devilish cunning, is soon obtained as brands that woman with the most infamous of crimes. The picture is not of the imagination; the revelations of the law attest its terrible reality every day, and so defiant of public opinion have some discreditable practitioners become that they take no pains to cover up the tracks of their infamy. Indeed, it was with something like surprise that a short time ago a lawyer in New York City listened to the scathing words which debarred him from future practice in our courts, because of his participation in a conspiracy to prove an innocent woman an adulteress.

Circumstantial evidence is all that the law requires in these cases. As a rule, indeed, none other can be furnished. Now, this evidence, proposing to establish what is after all but the semblance of crime, since the facts necessarily elude ocular proof, is such that by asking for it the law seems to invite those who are desirous of so doing to weave around innocence itself a web of circumstances calculated to immesh it in the appearance of guilt. Thus the law defeats its own intent and places a premium on sin. It aggravates the evil it endeavors to estop. Like the smitten eagle, it is forced to—

“View its own feathers on the fatal dart Which winged the shaft that quivers in its heart. Keen are its pangs, but keener far to feel _It nursed the pinion that impelled the steel_.”

Two hundred divorces _a vinculo_, obtained in the State of New York in the course of a single year, give point to these remarks. And in most of these cases, it must be remembered, the defendants denied the charge and were convicted only by such evidence as, though necessarily deemed sufficient by the court or referee, is essentially and of its nature such that it might have been manufactured. But if these attempts on the part of husbands to take advantage of the laxity of our divorce laws by blasting the character of their wives excite our honest indignation and disgust, infinitely more heinous must appear the conduct of some wives in their efforts to procure evidence against their husbands. Our readers must here pardon a few details which the cause of truth compels us to set down, but which we will couch in as few and modest words as possible. What we are about to state proves the truth of the holy proverb that when woman falls “her feet go down into death, and her steps go in as far as hell” (Prov. v. 5). There is a fashionable physiology which denies the physical possibility of absolute continence without serious impairment of health. The easy votaries of sensuality do not hesitate to uphold this odious doctrine in so-called scientific treatises, and to proclaim with Dr. Draper that “public celibacy is private wickedness.” We call this fashionable physiology; for the mass of intelligent non-Catholics make open avowal of it. Indeed, the doctrine is essentially non-Catholic, and has been acted upon by all rebels against the church from Luther to Loyson. Swedenborg condemns celibacy as a crime against nature. From being a purely religious doctrine, however, it has recently come to be regarded as a scientific tenet. Pseudo-science now shelters it under its ægis, and it is as much the vogue to believe in it as it is to accept the other views of so-called advanced modern scientists. It is this very notion which supplies to many a recalcitrant wife the weapon with which she has succeeded in breaking down the law and bringing irretrievable ruin on her family. If, as the writer has taken pains to assure himself, the inner history of our most notorious and disgraceful divorce cases could be read in the light of broad day, the facts would appears as follows:

A faithless wife, impressed with the doctrine just stated, takes such steps as will, in her belief, compel her husband to compromise himself. He then is watched, snares are set about his feet, he is encompassed by enemies, and, alas! sharing as he does the views entertained by his wife, he soon furnishes such evidences of wrong-doing as justify a recourse to legal proceedings. We have stated the case briefly, but at sufficient length to indicate the lowness of the depths to which human nature, deprived of grace, can sink, and how ingeniously the law has constructed a pitfall for itself. One author says that “such stratagems are of frequent occurrence,” and the mournful testimony of our tribunals is overwhelming in proof of the appalling frequency with which this repulsive drama is enacted. But to wade through the putrescent mass of evidence were to make the cheek grow crimson and burn, so that a scant allusion to it is all that decency can permit. What we especially desire to impress upon our readers is the fact that the imagination is here powerless to compete with the reality, and that human ingenuity has exhausted itself in the contrivance of the most abominable devices in its successful efforts to overreach a stupid law. But it is not alone in thus inviting infraction of its provisions that the law of New York State is weak and faulty; it is, in addition, guilty of contradicting itself in a matter of vital importance. Marriage is either a contract for life or can be limited by previous mutual consent. Now, the law denounces such limitation as immoral and strictly forbids it. But does it therefore recognize marriage as in reality a contract for life? We emphatically answer in the negative, and for the following reason: It is of the nature of a contract that all its essential terms and conditions be such as to come within the jurisdiction of the authority appointed for the purpose of directing its fulfilment. But if the authority be so crippled as not to be able to take cognizance of conditions admitted to be essential to the proper fulfilment of the contract, the latter must be regarded as null and void, or binding only _in foro interno_. All outside authority, all outside jurisdiction over it, is at an end. This is precisely what happens in civil marriage. Ostensibly the law recognizes it as a contract for life; indeed, openly proclaims it to be so; even provides a penalty for its violation as such; and yet, by admitting its dissolubility on certain conditions, leaves it in reality as much the subject-matter of temporary stipulation as a lease or a business copartnership, and, in addition, baits it with the temptation to commit an enormous crime. What is there to prevent two persons from entering into a civil marriage with the understanding that they should live together for a certain time, be as other married persons before the law, sharing its protection and enjoying its privileges, and then separate by complying with the conditions on which the law allows a separation? The case is entirely possible—has, indeed, occurred time and again—so that we are forced to admit that among us the law virtually treats marriage as a temporary partnership, however much it may insist upon its being regarded as a life-long contract, and is thus guilty of the inconsistency of declaring a certain thing to be what it in reality treats as quite another.

Nor can it be contended, as against this argument, that the law will not grant a divorce where connivance is attempted; for the case, typical of thousands, supposes that neither party desires to reveal such connivance. Nor is it of any avail to affirm that the party proved to be guilty is debarred the right of contracting a new marriage. Technically the law so reads, but practically it is powerless to enforce its provision. In such a case, indeed, it may be said that love laughs law to scorn. Its hope to punish a transgressor of the sort is as futile as the

“Desire of the moth for the star.”

It is proper to assume that the purpose of the law is to punish the criminal partner and to restore to the injured one privileges which ought not to be forfeited because of another’s guilt. These two objects represent the policy and expediency of the law; and in view of its entire failure to work them out wisely and effectually, we will show that the law is neither politic nor expedient. We will grant, indeed, that the law is competent, in all cases coming under its notice, both to punish the wrong-doer and partially to redress the wrong; but what is the use, if, instead of effectually repressing the wrong, it tends rather to encourage its commission? And such is indeed the anomalous condition of the law, both as it reads and as it works. The easier and more numerous the terms on which the marriage contract can be dissolved, the greater, of course, will be the number of divorces sought; but whether it be for one reason or many, once given a gateway from marriage bonds, and none who are desirous of escape will find much trouble in passing through the portals which the law has flung open. The facts, as attested by the courts of Connecticut and Indiana, prove the truth of the first part of this proposition; for nowhere are cases looking to the absolute severance of the marriage tie more frequently argued, and in no other States are so many divorces granted. The reason obviously is because the conditions for obtaining such concessions are there easiest of all. Where the conditions for procuring divorce are more onerous fewer applications are made; and the facts, as occurring in New York State, verify this sum in proportion and thus prove the second part of our proposition.

In the State of New York adultery is the sole condition of divorce, and just in proportion as such a crime is less frequent than mere family jars and broils, so are divorces less frequently sought. The proposition is therefore true that the permission to dissolve marriage begets a demand to that effect in proportion to the ease with which it may be obtained. The corollary of this proposition is that, the more easily divorce may be obtained, the less regard is had to the obstacles which may stand in the way of its coming at our beck. Should marriage be declared to be absolutely indissoluble, and come to be viewed as such by the masses, few would dream of assuming its responsibilities in the hope that, should time render it irksome, they could slip the noose and again soar “in maiden meditation fancy free.” On the other hand, they would be disposed rather to approach the matter with deliberation, to take to heart the conditions of the contract, and seriously to study the surroundings of a state which is to endure till death. It is for this reason that the church advises her children to ponder long and deeply the consequences of the step they are about to take when proposing to cross this moral Rubicon. If Cæsar felt that, the traditionary river once crossed, fate had marked him for her own, or Cortez that, his ships ablaze, all hope of return was gone, more still does the church insist that sacramental marriage is a step that cannot be retraced. Divorce laws ignore these considerations, and make light thereby of that social institution on which all others depend for their perpetuity. They forget that—

“Marriage is a matter of more worth Than to be dealt in by attorneyship.”

With siren voice they lure the unwary and unreflecting to a fate fraught with untold possibilities of unhappiness. The result is that persons take less account of the solemn nature of the contract. It suits their humor at the moment to get married, and little they reck of the future. _Carpe diem._ The rosy present bounds the view, and there is no thought of to-morrow. Time enough for the disillusioned groom to wail:

_Miseri quibus intentata nites_—

when “marriage vows have proved as false as dicers’ oaths,” and bitter hate succeeded the short-lived joys of the honeymoon. And why should it be otherwise? Is not the potent panacea of matrimonial ills ever within ken and reach? What need is there to cloud the golden prospect with thoughts of possible future wrangles and rancor, and in advance study to avert or mitigate them, since, should they come along, a benignant law is at hand to end them? We are convinced on the best of grounds that the frequency of divorce suits has its root in the neglect of duly considering the conditions essential to the happiness of married life. Were Dante’s words written over marriage portals:

_Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’intrate,_

a deal of curious prying, at least, would precede the decisive steps and few would rashly fly to a “bourn whence no traveller returns.” But when the law points to an easy escape from the consequences of a heedless step, what necessity can there be for heeding? Plenty of prior deliberation and a close scrutiny of its obligations would not have failed to render marriage tolerable, at least, for many who now fret and fume 'neath its galling yoke because they had flown to it in a wanton hour as to a flower to gather sweets from. _Festina lente_—or, as Sir Thomas Browne quaintly translates it, “Celerity should be contempered with cunctation”—would be a valuable maxim to hold up to the giddy gaze of our modern youth who woo and wed with more sentimental sighs than sober sense; better, by all means, than the cynical “Don’t” of Douglas Jerrold. The knowledge that what God hath joined together no human authority must put asunder, alone can stop those unhallowed unions which curse society by the filthy disclosures they occasion, and blast the happiness, both temporal and eternal, of so many.

At the time when this question was widely discussed in England, and so many eminent authorities opposed the project of law which now rules in the British realms, and which is in the main identical with our own State law, Lord Stowell held the following language, which goes at once to the kernel of the matter and shows a keen appreciation of the worst results of easy divorce. He says: “The general happiness of the married life is secured by its indissolubility. When people understand that they must live together, except for a very few reasons known to the law, they learn to soften, by mutual accommodation, that yoke which they know they cannot shake off; they become good husbands and good wives; for necessity is a powerful master in teaching the duties it imposes.” The church in surrounding marriage with that solemnity which it possesses in the eyes of Catholics, and thus giving greater prominence to its indissoluble character, has thereby supplied to her children the means of softening a union so binding, and from the crucible of suffering offers to both husband and wife a purer gold. In the schedule of conditions essential to the procurement of the best results from marriage she holds to our gaze a larger and deeper culture than current philosophy dreams of—a culture that appeals to the intellect through moral sense, unlike that modern culture which is addressed to the intellect alone. It has almost passed into an axiom in political economy that self must sink out of sight where the interests of many are concerned; and so the church teaches that men and women, having reached that period when the duties of married life ought to be assumed, should thenceforth devote to the service of society those labors they had hitherto bestowed on the prosecution of their individual aims. The culture proceeds from this. Tolerance of each other’s shortcomings on the part of husband and wife is strongly inculcated. A gentle forbearance of mutual peculiarities is enjoined, whereby the noble disposition to forgive the countless trifles of manner, thought, and

## action which might offend a morbid or fastidious idiosyncrasy is

fostered. Thus the Catholic wife or husband, in view of the indissoluble nature of marriage, is taught to round off angularities, to tolerate oddities, to adapt individual views and feelings to special requirements, and to hold all subject to that higher and holier law which tells us that self should not be consulted where duty is concerned.

How many bickerings and misunderstandings, how many of the heart-burnings, how much of all the unhappiness that now mars and disfigures married life, might be avoided if these large and liberal views more generally prevailed! Petty jealousies, the offspring of our baser nature; furtive suspicions, exaggeration of faults, imputation of wrong motives, misinterpretation of harmless actions—in a word, the hundred-and-one incentives to disagreement which beset each day’s path—could find no room in a household harboring this pure and enlightened conception of marriage. We know that the will is as much the subject of discipline as the intellect, and we likewise know that as it is tried, as temptations beset it and are repelled, as suffering is endured without repining, as petty torments, numerous in proportion to their smallness, are patiently borne, the whole character comes forth from the ordeal smoother, sweeter, more spiritual, and stronger, with a life that is not likely to die. Marriage, rightly conceived, is a training-school where many salutary lessons are taught. Its tendency is to strengthen the will, to soften the heart, to remove asperities of character, to evoke the tender and gentle in our nature, and to beget a happiness all its own. Wrongly understood and blindly sought, it is full of perils, not, indeed, imaginary, but real with that terrible reality which court calendars daily reveal in sickening colors.

Thus the standard by which the Catholic Church measures marriage makes it yield a higher culture, more generous, large, and abiding, than can flow from the gross conception which represents it as a contract to be rescinded at will. The Catholic view promotes among the married that freedom of action which loves to borrow the consciousness of doing right from the conviction that the right is freely courted and the wrong freely spurned, and thus paves the way for a nobler plane of conduct. That irritability which inheres so deeply in our nature is what unfits most of us for companionship. It seeks to fasten on others the blame which is our own, or holds them responsible for grievances which are the necessary outcome of human life. If not controlled, it either causes entire estrangement and forfeiture of affection, or leads those towards whom it is manifested to deceptiveness and the employment of crooked ways to reach legitimate ends. A narrow and illiberal life is the result. Darkness and trickery prevail where all should be light and freedom. Evil accumulates on evil, till both parties seek through divorce to free themselves from a yoke that has become intolerable. The shrew will nag and the tyrant husband domineer because a narrow selfishness, bred of this unrestrained irritability, has usurped the place of a large-hearted and gentle forbearance. The knowledge of these possibilities is the most effective armor against their actual occurrence; for it demonstrates in advance the necessity of patience and a tolerant spirit; it hints at a delicate regard for the feelings of others; it leads to a vivid introspection of self, and inclines to a mezzotint view of actions not our own; it discriminates between true love, which is self-sacrificing, gentle, and forgiving, and the counterfeit presentment of love, which is lurid passion, fire without light. And this knowledge is best guaranteed by the conviction that marriage is indissoluble. Urging this view of marriage and the study of these things, the church implicitly holds that a liberal toleration of individual action is essential to the happiness of married life, and that the ignorance which accompanies intolerance must be dispelled ere the ideal picture of married bliss can meet the gaze. Thus Christian freedom goes by the golden mean, on one side of which is domestic tyranny and on the other the rampant license of immorality. Unlike the generality of guides, however the church possesses the means of enforcing her enlightened views, of imparting wise counsel, and offering helpful advice in concrete cases through the Sacrament of Penance. Those who have derived their notion of the confessional from the scurrilous writings of Michelet, the senseless diatribes of Gavazzi, or the eminently vulgar flings of some sensational preachers will be a little startled by this proposition. But let those whose knowledge of the tribunal of penance has been fashioned in the school of bigotry and ignorance consult any intelligent Catholic, husband or wife, and they will find that the web of falsehood in which they have been caught is such that they should blush at their own simplicity for having become entangled in it and held “faster than gnats in cobwebs.” They will find that all those virtues which, even to the commonest understanding, shine clearly forth as the basis of contentment in married life, are here inculcated; that here on the heat and flame of distemper cool patience is sprinkled; that chafes are healed and rankling barbs plucked out; and that magnanimity, self-sacrifice, and love brighten afresh at the latticed crate of the confessional.

But notwithstanding that the church has exhausted prudence and employed every means which common sense could suggest in compassing the integrity of marriage, she seeks not in these the _ultima ratio_ of her action. To her marriage is a sacrament, bestowing grace on those who approach it worthily, and sealing married life with a supernatural impress. This sacramental notion of marriage it is which elevates, purifies, and sanctifies the relation, enables the church to mitigate the evils with which human perversity leavens it, and gives her control where the most restless plotters for the regeneration of society have acknowledged their utter powerlessness to act.

During the controversy which marked the adoption of the Divorce Bill in England its opponents, when twitted with their inconsistency in rejecting the Catholic notion of marriage as a sacrament and still insisting upon its inherent indissolubility, fell, through their reply, into an error which, in proportion to its prevalence, has led to a wide-spread misconception of the grounds on which the Catholic Church claims marriage to be indissoluble. A prominent writer at the time said: “The opinion of the Roman Church itself does not found the indissolubility of marriage on its character as a sacrament, but only conceives the obligation to be enhanced by that circumstance”; and in confirmation of the assertion he quotes the words of the Council of Trent, which are to this effect: _Matrimonium, ut naturæ officium consideratur et maxime ut sacramentum, dissolvi non potest._ Now, if the words _ut maxime_ be allowed to bear their proper meaning, they certainly prove that the Tridentine fathers intended that the indissolubility of marriage should, before all and above all, rest upon and grow out of the sacramental character of the contract. _Ut maxime_, if meaning anything, means _as far as it is possible, pre-eminently_; and so the church regards marriage as naturally indissoluble, but especially so when viewed as a sacrament. The fact proves that the opponents of the bill had little else to fall back on than the falsely-advanced statement that the Catholic Church, the most strenuous advocate of indissolubility, sought the reason of her opinion in the nature of the contract rather than in the character of the sacrament.

But, apart from the declaration of the Council of Trent, the whole history of the church exhibits beyond peradventure her higher estimate of marriage as a sacrament rather than as a contract. She holds it to be, in a mystical sense, the symbol of our Lord’s union with the church, and surely no higher character could attach to it. But this symbolic meaning of marriage rests altogether on its sacramental phase, so that the church views it as a sacrament supernaturally, as a contract naturally, her higher regard for it being in the former sense. The English indissolubilists, therefore, could in no manner object to the proposed Divorce Bill; for, denying marriage to be a sacrament, they surrendered the strongest reason for proclaiming it to be indissoluble. If, as even Gibbon admits, the church has lifted woman from the lowest degradation into which she could be plunged, in which she was the mere slave of man and the toy of his passions, to her present position of respect and independence by investing matrimony with the holiness of a sacrament; and if the church has by the same means purified home-life and cemented its affections, is there not danger that, by dragging down marriage from its high estate, woman may again come to be regarded “not as a _person_,” as Gibbon says, “but as a _thing_, so that, if the original title were deficient, she might be claimed, like other valuables, by the use and possession of an entire year”? Such was the law in pagan times, and such it may be again if we list too readily to those modern renovators of society who call marriage tyranny and a “system of legalized prostitution.” Not in vain did St. Simon, Fourier, Le Roux, Fanny Wright, and their co-workers inveigh against Christian marriage. We are now reaping the fruits of their unholy crusade against it. Their labors are to-day blossoming in Oneida County as well as in Utah, in the general rush all round to snap uncongenial ties, and in the woful spread of an evil too base to be mentioned. These form the goal to which such pestilent agitations tend; and if some well-meaning advocates of innovation have not kept step with the leaders, it is not because their principles restrained them, but rather because they have not quite broken away from the influence of early teachings. Marriage, once stripped of its supernatural character, and reduced to the level of a contract, becomes as much the subject-matter of speculation as political systems. Reformers object to this feature of it or to that, and suggest endless modifications. Plato contended that there should be no such thing as marriage proper, and that all children should be surrendered to the state. To-day, in the light which the Gospel has shed on the question, civilized states tolerate a condition akin to that which the Athenian philosopher advocated. And just as Plato, by the sheer force of his commanding intellect, imposed his views on many both in his own time and subsequently, so, it is to be regretted, the skill and eloquence of some modern opponents of marriage are such that they have succeeded in winning hundreds to their standard.

It is a law of our nature that great intellectual force is never unproductive; that it triumphs over many obstacles; and, no matter what may be the cause on the side of which its influence is cast, it is always attended with at least partial success in the achievement of its aims. Now, we have witnessed the most strenuous efforts of powerful minds enlisted in the attempt to abolish marriage. We have had eloquent pleas for socialism, phalansterianism, etc., and it could not but be that these labors were destined to bear issue of some sort. That issue we are contemplating at the present moment; for these assaults on marriage have lowered the general conception of its obligations, its sanctity, and its importance to society. They have lured to a mere mockery hundreds who, when scarce the marriage-kiss has impressed their lips, besiege our courts with petitions for divorce. The influence of pernicious doctrines is deeper and wider than their authors imagine. It does not consist alone in the fact that they draw disciples and beget neophytes; but they weaken faith in what they assail, and thus engender the most pitiful lot of man—scepticism. This is precisely what we now complain of. Our neighbors round about us emphatically eschew the doctrines of the _illuminati_, of Heine and of Prudhomme, yet they more or less admit that there is some reason in what has been so well said, so forcibly and so eloquently urged. The consequence is that their faith in the true order of things is shaken; they are dissatisfied; they declare the doctrine of indissolubility to be rigoristic; and, provocation given, qualms are brushed aside and they hesitate not to fly to the ready remedy of the law. We may thus set down to the erratic speculations of a few self-appointed social reconstructionists many of the matrimonial miseries and scandals we now deplore. And the leaven is working not alone in the United States, but in every country where the same low estimate of marriage prevails, and where the law is the ready tool of those who desire escape from shackles of their own forging.

In England, where law machinery is more cumbersome than among us and its processes more tedious, not quite so many divorces are obtained, but still the number is on the increase. The English law is much the same as that which rules in New York State, and it is interesting to inquire what reason there can be for the greater percentage of divorces in New York than in England. We hinted that the administration of English law is slower, but that fact is not sufficient to account for a difference so marked. All the influences already enumerated as tending to favor the multiplicity of divorces are as actively at work over there as among ourselves, and hence we must strive to find the explanation of the difference in the different character of the social systems of the two countries. In England society is stratified with such extreme nicety that seldom, if ever, a waif is borne from one stratum to another. Lines are sharply drawn between classes, and the fact is well recognized; for the lowly do not seek to soar, nor do the higher ever entirely lose their social grade. Hence marriages are contracted only between those whose tastes by birth and education agree, whose general views are more apt to harmonize, and whose sympathies mainly run in the same channels. They come to the altar (we employ the word in its current sense) with a better understanding of what each expects from the other, with fewer doubts to frighten them and stronger hopes to sustain them, and hence subsequent collisions and estrangements are less frequent. In our country society has not quite passed out of its formative stage, the elements have not settled into their allotted planes. It still is like an estuary in which the conflict of opposing tides brings to the surface what had just lain at the bottom, and drives to the bottom the bead that had glistened for a moment on the brimming top; in a word, social stratification is not yet complete among us. The result is a tendency to the intermingling of incongruous forces. In the social ferment which is going on some rise suddenly from a lower depth and crystallize in their new plane by marriage, some fall and remain below on the same condition. Here wealth is a potent escort to lead its possessors higher up than they could hope to reach without the aid of this glittering talisman. A little veneer and a resolute lack of shamefacedness often enable those whom suddenly-acquired riches have lifted above their former level to hold their new station till marriage has assured it to them and given them a title to their position. But rapidly as wealth lifts in the social scale, more rapidly still does poverty drag down, and we have not yet fully developed, though happily we are fast coming to it, that public sentiment which refuses to behold loss of caste in loss of wealth. Till then a lower social level is the certain bourn of those who have fallen from opulence, just as a niche higher up in the social temple awaits the _nouveau riche_.

We are not sticklers for the social classification of aristocratic countries, but simply for that which is founded on cultivated taste, refinement, and general intelligence; and we contend that where the social condition is such as to permit the barriers between vulgarity and refinement to be broken down, no matter though the former may vie with Crœsus or the latter appear in the tattered garb of Lazarus, matrimonial misalliances will be the result. December and May are no more fitly mated than platinum and lead—_i.e._, sixteen and fifty make no more suitable alliance than refinement and its opposite.

“For in companions That do converse and waste the time together, Whose lives do bear an equal yoke of love, There must be needs a like proportion Of lineaments, of manners and of spirit.”

—_Merchant of Venice._

Till, therefore, this social ferment has settled and all the elements have reached their allotted planes, there to remain, misalliances will continue to occur, and misalliances, we know, are a fruitful source of separation. There may be more satisfactory and truthful explanations of the fact we are endeavoring to account for, but of this we are convinced: that, for whatever cause, antagonistic social conditions operate more frequently against happiness in married life in this country than in Europe.

Space will not allow us to pursue the discussion of this question much farther, so we will devote the few remaining lines to the consideration of the leading objection which is constantly urged against absolute indissolubility, and which may consequently be taken as a strong argument in favor of divorce. Divorce, it is contended, favors morality; for, whether law intervenes or not, passion will assert its supremacy, and it is better to let those depart in peace and with the sanction of the law who cannot live together than have them burst their bonds illegally and contract new relations in despite of the law. By so permitting, the advocates of divorce hope to stem the torrent of evil which they say deluges some European continental nations where the proportion of illegitimate births is wofully excessive. The same thing, they maintain, is especially true of Spain, Italy, and, in a word, of all Catholic countries. Wherever divorce is not sanctioned by law dissoluteness, they affirm, is far greater than where divorces are granted. So the statistics seem to prove; and, in a spasm of virtue, believers in mere statistical figures denounce indissolubility as a stepping-stone to lust. We will grant the reliability of statistical reports for the nonce, and prove by them that, so far from immorality abounding in those countries where divorces are prohibited, a greater amount of immorality really exists in divorce countries, with the added immorality of a law which cloaks it. We know that passion, blind and impetuous, is the reigning force which orders the actions of those who contemplate emancipation from marriage bonds. Certainly they do not act under the inspiration of grace. When, therefore, they break loose from their unsuiting partners, it matters little to them whether the law approves or disapproves of their action, provided they can act with impunity. This impunity is guaranteed in most cases in countries where divorce is permitted, and new marriages, having all the seemingness of virtue, are contracted with the sanction of the law. In Catholic countries this is not permitted; new post-marital relations are branded as adulterous and their issue illegitimate. Is it any wonder, then, that illegitimacy is more prevalent in those countries where divorce is unknown than where caprice or crime can sever old bonds and weld new ones, all with the countenance of the law?

The only difference is that adultery and its consequences are called by their proper names in the former case, whereas in the latter an anti-Scriptural law retrieves them from stigma. And as there is in the human heart a disposition to do more frequently and more extensively what the law allows than what it prohibits, we may be sure that there are many more pseudo-marriages contracted in countries where divorce is permitted than there are adulteries where it is prohibited. Were, then, the mask of the law removed, we should find in the former more infamy and crime than even in those Catholic countries where the record of morality is lowest. There is one Catholic country in which divorce is a thing known only in name, and yet where even the illegitimacy which affects not to seek shelter behind the law is very much less than in the adjoining country, where divorces are frequently obtained. In Ireland the courts are most rarely troubled with such applications, and yet illicit relations on the part of married persons are fewer than in any country of Europe. Does not this fact evidently disprove the claim that absolute indissolubility is unfavorable to morality? While the Catholic Church holds to view on the one hand the indissolubility of marriage, and on the other the precept of conjugal chastity, and while even in one country she has established a higher rate of morality under those rigid conditions, it is evident her wisdom in this trying matter has been attested by the facts.

But the attempt to bolster up divorce morality by an appeal to statistics is radically wrong. It is based on the supposition that the end justifies the means; that it is better, for the sake of avoiding the scandals incident to adulterous cohabitation, to legalize it, and thus exhibit to the eyes of society a whitened sepulchre rather than hold to view the rottenness of “an enseamed bed.” It is the duty of moralists and teachers of religion rather to stem the torrent of vice and pluck the brand from the burning than attempt to cloak over and extenuate by legal devices what is essentially and for ever wrong. There are times, indeed, when separation is the only hope for two unfortunates whom an unlucky fate had thrown in each other’s way; but separation does not imply remarriage, and theirs it is, while reaping the fruits of an enforced singleness, to reflect that they are answerable for the consequences of their own deliberate action, while their case may serve as an example to others. Let the beautiful conception of Christian marriage more abound; let men and women learn to view marriage as something holy, in which the husband is the protector, the wife the comforter, and we may meet with more marriages in which, while the husband faithfully performs his allotted _rôle_, the wife embodies the beautiful picture of her drawn by Washington Irving: “As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and has been lifted by it in sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered boughs, so it is beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependant and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.”

FROM THE HECUBA OF EURIPIDES. _A free translation._ BY AUBREY DE VERE.

[_The Chorus laments the Judgment of Paris._]

STROPHE.

My doom was sealed, my lot decided, Not now, not now, but long ago, When first the all-beauteous Dardan boy, By that pernicious goddess guided, Laid Ida’s stateliest pinewood low, And built his ships, and sailed from Troy, To seek her gift—the richest, rarest— That wife most fatal; yet the fairest.

ANTISTROPHE.

A netted deer our country lies: One sinned; and all partook his ruin! O fatal, fatal was the hour, Fatal the contest and the prize How ill adjudged for my undoing, When in green Ida’s mountain bower That awful Three—my bane—contended: Even then our golden reign was ended.

EPODE.

And haply some Achaian bride Even now, by far Eurotas’ wave, Widowed like me, like me is mourning! Perhaps some mother by her side Laments for those she could not save, The early lost, and unreturning; Raising her withered hand to tear Her last thin locks of whitening hair.

SIX SUNNY MONTHS. BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.

## CHAPTER XIII.

“OUR LADY OF SNOW.”

“To-morrow comes the flower of the festivals,” the Signora said on the morning of the 4th of August. “It is our beautiful basilica’s birthday, and the loveliest of birthdays, too—just a sweet little poem.”

“Let us give ourselves up to it entirely,” Isabel proposed, “and see if we cannot imagine ourselves back in the middle of the fourth century. I really do not like to look at all these things as an outsider.”

“We must, then, shut the world out for two days,” the Signora replied. “I would like it, if you are agreed. I have found, indeed, that it is impossible to enter into the spirit of these beautiful beliefs of the old time while one is having much social intercourse with people about, even goodish people. It reminds me of seed scattered on good but shallow ground, which the fowls come and pick up. You think, you meditate, you pray, you begin to find yourself impressed; glimmers of light steal in, and your soul is on the point of being enriched; when in comes some friend, who means no harm, who has, perhaps, a faith like a dry branch with one green leaf at the end, and immediately all is discord. If you utter what is in your mind, it is like pearls before swine; if you listen in silence, and with sufficient attention to enable you to answer intelligently, it is more than likely that the religious impression you have received will be much weakened, if not entirely effaced. One understands, in such a case, the profound wisdom of the philosophy of silence, which even the pagans knew, and recollects the admonition of our Lord: “Let your speech be yea, yea; no, no.”

“Still, I should think,” Bianca observed dreamily, “that one might be so settled in that way of feeling and thinking as to influence others, instead of being influenced by them.”

“Very true, you dear little visionary!” replied the Signora, pinching the pretty ear so near her, from which hung a pink coral fuchsia. “If one were a great saint, and never touched earthly things except with conspicuous recollection; or a great egotist, constantly impressing on everybody that one is a very exceptional being and cannot possibly be approached in the ordinary manner; or some one, like a clergyman or a nun, who by their very profession impress those who approach them with the consciousness of different and loftier interests. But we common mortals are overrun by the many. You have seen the breakwater of a bridge, have you not, built of stone, and thrusting a sharp point up the stream to part the waters, that they may not rush against the broad side of the piers and sweep them away? Well, for one person to keep a firm stand against the influence of many, it is necessary to put forward, and keep forward, a very hard angle of the character. However, I will not preach any more about it, my dear friends. I will simply say that till the day after to-morrow we are in retreat. We will go up now to the church, and refresh our minds in relation to the legend, and look at some of the treasures there, if you like. Then we can read the whole over here at our leisure. I have a kind friend there—my patron with St. Nicholas—who has a superb illustrated description of the church, which he has offered me any time I may wish for it. I will ask for it to-day. By this means we shall be ready to assist intelligently to-morrow at the _festa_ of Our Lady of Snow. And, by the way, what a charmingly fresh thought for the season is that of snow! I call for the yeas and nays.”

An unanimous yea was the reply, and they prepared themselves immediately to go to the church.

They had, of course, seen already all its more evident beauties; but such a temple can be studied for years without exhausting its attractions, and there were several of its more celebrated gems which they had quite passed over. After having heard Mass, then, they went first into the Sistine Chapel to see the Tamar. This beautiful figure is painted in one of the pendentives of the cupola—a space shaped like an inverted pear. She sits with her twin boys standing on the seat at either side of her, their lovely heads filling the rounded-out space. The most exquisite charm of the figure is the transparent veil which floats about the head and shoulders, and through which her face, with its large, drooping eyelids, is perfectly visible.

From there they visited the grand _loggia_ to look once more at the mosaic story of the miraculous snow. This grand mosaic, made in the fourteenth century by the order of two Colonna cardinals, was once on the open façade of the church; but Benedict XIV., in the eighteenth century, building the new façade, enclosed them in the grand _loggia_ from which the popes gave benediction, and of which they form the lower side. In the centre of the upper half of the picture the Saviour sits enthroned, the right hand giving benediction, the left holding a book open at the words, “I am the light of the world.” At either hand above an angel swings a censer, at either side below an angel adores. Four figures—the Blessed Virgin and saints—stand at right and left, the symbols of the four evangelists over their heads. The lower half, separated by the large, round window that lights the eastern end of the church, has, on the left, two pictures—one the sleeping Pope Liberius, the other the sleeping Giovanni—over both of whom hovers the same vision of the Madonna directing them to build her a church where the snow shall fall the next day. On the right side is Giovanni telling his dream to the pope in one picture, and beside it the pope, in grand procession, coming to the hill-top where, from above, the Saviour and Virgin send down the snow. So quaint, so full of faith, so exquisite in meaning, this visible story is one of the most eloquent sermons ever preached.

Opposite the mosaic picture, and seen through the graceful arches of the portico, was that living picture of St. John Lateran looking down the long street, the blue mountains melting far away, the nearer palm-tree, and the piazza with its beautiful column and statue.

“I have a little special treat for you this morning,” the Signora said as they went down into the church again. “It has no special connection with the Madonna delle Neve, but it will not disturb your visions of her. Here, however,” pointing to an altar near the sacristy door, “is the story again, and here is buried that Giovanni Patrizio who was found buried under, or in front of, the grand altar.”

It was the chapel of Santa Maria delle Neve, with a painting over the altar where the Virgin appears to Giovanni and his wife, and points them to a snow-capped hill.

Then they went into the sacristy, where one of the canons joined them, and had some precious vestments brought out for them to see; among them a cope of stuff such as one does not find any more, thick, rich, and dim, and threaded with gold, with the short fringe of mingled crimson and gold so thick as to round up almost like a cord—the cope given and worn by St. Pius V. Almost more precious, if one could choose, was the chasuble given and worn by St. Charles Borromeo—long, and with a slight, graceful point in the back. It had been proposed, the sacristan told them, to have this made a model for chasubles now on account of its graceful form, but no change had yet been made.

“This is worn on the _festa_ of San Carlo, though it is crimson,” he added, “because it was his. Sometimes strangers exclaim, when they see it, that San Carlo was not a martyr.”

They touched reverently the sacred relics, and kissed the fastenings that those saintly hands had touched; then, with a more human admiration, examined a marvellous flounce of lace given the church three hundred years ago by the Prince Colonna of that time—a web of such fineness that the spiders might have woven the thread, and of such beauty of design that only an artist could have imagined it.

Before leaving the church they paused in front of the closed _cancella_ of the Borghese Chapel to look at the bas-relief over the altar, wherein Our Lady of Snow again repeats her story. All was still in the church. Choir and High Mass were over, and only here and there lingered some _custode_, or assistant, putting the finishing touches to the preparations for the _festa_ which would begin with first Vespers that afternoon. The pavements shone newly polished, the candlesticks were like gold, the gilt bronze angels that hold the great painted candles stood on the marble rail of the confession, the draperies were all up. In the chapel itself the benches of the choir were prepared, the altar glittering with its most precious ornaments, the two great hanging lamps at either side swinging faintly, as if impatient for the music to begin. All was peaceful; and a tender shade and coolness in the air veiled the glittering richness of the place.

“I cannot tell you how mysterious that picture seems to me,” Bianca whispered, pointing to the square veiled case bordered with jewels, and supported by gilt angels in the middle space over the altar. “The two veils that are to be removed in order to see it, and then the depth at which it is set, and the mere dark outline that is all one can see inside the golden border—it all impresses me with a sense of mystery and awfulness. I wonder what the face really looks like, and if any one has seen it.”

“Why, you have seen my engraving of it, my dear,” the Signora said; “and I presume that is a faithful copy, taken when the features were more distinguishable. That has a noble, serious look which impresses me. And no wonder you look with awe at this. If it were not painted by St. Luke even, it is embalmed by memories not less sacred. Twelve hundred years ago St. Gregory the Great carried this very picture in procession through the city, in a time of terrible pestilence, and set it on the altar of St. Peter’s. It was on the open façade of this church till Paul V. built this chapel to contain it. Ampère says that angels have been heard chanting litanies about it. It is held by all here in the most tender veneration. I have never heard any one describe it, and do not know who has seen it near. I have heard somewhere that only the chapter of the basilica and the Borghese family have the privilege of going up to it. _Madonna mia_, what a privilege it would be!” she sighed, looking up at the closed jasper gates.

They stayed a little longer, then started to go home; but as they were going out a boy came to tell the Signora that Monsignore M—— begged to speak with her. The others went on, but she turned back, well content; for a call from Monsignore M—— always meant something pleasant. This prelate was no less distinguished for position than for his virtues; and, finding the Signora a stranger and somewhat lonely when she first came to Rome, he had done her many kindnesses—was, in fact, her Santa Claus.

“Do you guess what little devotion I want you to make on the eve of our _festa_?” he asked, meeting her with the confident smile of one who knows he is going to confer a great pleasure.

“I know it is something delightful, _Monsignore mio_,” she replied, “but I cannot say just what.”

“Well, I want you to visit the antique Madonna,” he said.

She looked at him, uncomprehending.

He pointed to the veiled shrine in the Borghese Chapel, near which they stood. “Don Francesco will be here in a moment with a candle,” he said. “I prepared all, because I knew you would want to go. I could not invite a party, you know; but you belong to the church and have a special devotion to our Madonna.”

The Signora could not reply. Such a swift fulfilment of her wish moved her too deeply for words. She kissed the hand of her kind friend, and looked across the church to the tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament with the almost spoken thought: “I am going to see your Mother.” To visit that sacred shrine was to her as near to seeing the Mother of God face to face as one could come on earth, without a miracle.

Presently appeared the custodian, bearing a lighted candle and a bunch of keys; he opened a small door beside the chapel. They ascended a narrow, winding stair, without any light except the one they carried, and passed a long, arched corridor where the walls almost touched their elbows at either side, and the vault just cleared their heads above. This corridor was between the side wall of the chapel and the wall of the adjoining sacristy. Another door opened, and they entered a cross corridor leading to one of the balconies of the chapel—one of those beautiful gilded balconies the Signora had so many times wished to get into. She stepped into this now, and looked down through the chapel, out into the church, and across to the Sistine Chapel, the columns, pictures, and gilded arches of the basilica set like a picture in the great arched entrance of the Borghese.

Going on then, Don Francesco opened a strong, locked door, that showed another door immediately within, closing the same wall. These led into another of those narrow white corridors running between the walls of the chapel behind the altar. Turning then into a third short corridor leading toward the chapel, they faced still another door, over which were painted the arms and tiara of Pope Paul V., who built the chapel.

This door unlocked, they found themselves in a little chamber directly behind the grand altar, with the miraculous picture, set in a box cased in metal, right before them. It stands a little back from the screens that cover it in the chapel, and there is space enough at either side for a person to slip in in front and see the picture face to face. Two iron hooks that barred the passage were taken down, and the Signora went in and found herself in front of this most venerable image.

The picture is painted on panel, and, though dim, is still distinct on so near a view, the rich, soft colors coming out as one gazes—a long, oval face full of serious majesty, with large eyes, and a mantle dropping over the forehead. But this mantle is now almost hid; for the head of the Mother, and of the Babe that looks up into her face, and the outline of their shoulders, are closely filled in with gold and gems. But for this nothing but a dark square would be distinguishable from the chapel. The outline is so clearly made, however, as to give a perfect idea, when looked at from below, of a crowned woman with a crowned child in her arms.

If, in the presence of the picture, one can think of jewels, these are worth looking at. They are the gems of a cardinal and of a pope—stones of immense value set in pure gold. Besides rubies and amethysts, in the centre of the Virgin’s crown is a large emerald surrounded by diamonds, and from the jewelled chain at her neck hangs a cross made entirely of large sapphires.

The Signora took the candle in her hand and held it before those faces, and the clergymen with her knelt, one at either side of her.

After a little while they rose, the Signora kissed the floor before the picture, and the case that held it, and they turned away. On leaving she observed that this little chamber behind the altar was quite covered with frescoes. Then came the low corridors again, and the narrow stairs; one more peep from the gilded balcony, and at length she stepped out into the church again, bewildered and enchanted.

“I will tell them nothing about it,” was her conclusion as she went home. “They might feel hurt at being left out. It shall be a little secret of my own.”

They went to first Vespers and to the High Mass next morning, but the finest part was the Vespers of the day, to which they went early, and were so fortunate as to have chairs in the chapel near the altar. The

## chapter came in in procession from the basilica, singing as they came,

and the place was soon crowded.

Nothing was wanting to make the scene perfect; the magnificent chapel, the beautiful dress of the canons, who all wore purple silk soutanes, with rich lace on those picturesque little _cotte_ of theirs, and the music—each was in harmony with all the rest. Then, as the music went up, down through the cupola, glowing with the colors of Cavaliere d’Arpino, and faintly veiling the frescoes of Guido Reni, came the soft and loitering snow of blossoms, flowery flake by flake. They were lost one instant against the white band of Carrara marble—cornice, capitals, figures, and flowers—under the arches, then green of verd-antique, and red of jasper, or the colored mantle of one of Guido’s saints threw them into relief again. Little by little the mosaic of the pavement grew dim under that exquisite snow-fall, which seemed, as it came down, to toss on the music in mid-air.

The light up in the cupola grew red with sunset, and the chapel below began to show softest shades and pale gold lights from the candles, and the pageant slowly dissolved like a bouquet that parts into flowers, each flower showing more beautiful separated than when massed together.

Going out into the basilica, where it seemed almost evening, so strongly contrasted were the lights and shades, the Signora silently pointed out to her friends the long, red-gold bar of sunshine that came in at a window of the tribune and lay the whole length of the nave, looking so solid one felt like stepping over or stooping to go under it, as if it were an obstacle. It was her very idea of the bars of the tabernacle which the Jews bore with them.

“If only the church should be lifted and borne to Paradise now, when it is all bathed in flowers and full of incense and music!”

They lingered yet, unwilling to go. Monsignore M—— came out of the sacristy and brought them all some of the blessed blossom-snow. People were gathering it up from the floor of the chapel, and, it having fallen also in the tribune, little boys were slyly vaulting over the railings, snatching it up unseen by the _custodi_, and scampering out again. The lights went out, the _cancelle_ were closed, and finally our friends were forced to go home.

They stood a moment outside the church door before descending the steps, the two girls expressing their delight with feminine enthusiasm. Mr. Vane had but one word: “There is a certain Protestant hymn that used to make me feel, when I was a boy, very loath to go to heaven,” he said. “But, remembering it now by the light of this _festa_, I think heaven couldn’t be better described than as a place——

“'Where congregations ne’er break up, And Sabbaths have no end.’”

A few days later they made their little visit to Genzano, stopping one day in Albano on the way. It was the feast of the Holy Saviour, in which again an antique and venerated picture had a prominent part. They reached the town just in time to see the procession go from the Duomo bearing the picture up to the little church of Santissimo Salvatore on the hill.

“What are those military bands playing for?” Mr. Vane asked, as they sat in the loggia of their apartment, after having rested a half-hour.

“They are playing for the Lord,” said the Signora.

He stared a little, but, finding her perfectly serious, said after a moment: “Well, I don’t know why they shouldn’t; only I am not used, you know, to hearing fifes and drums on any but military and civil occasions.”

“This is a military occasion,” the Signora replied gravely. “It celebrates Him who is the God of battles and the Lord of hosts. It is a civil occasion, too, in honor of the King of kings, the Lawgiver of the universe, the Prince of peace.”

“You are right!” he said emphatically; “and I need not ask now why they are firing cannon.”

They went out just at sunset and took their places on the steps of the little church to which the procession was to come, catching glimpses of it in the distance as it appeared in some turn of the ascending way.

The slope of the street just in front of them had been swept, and two men were sprinkling it in a very primitive fashion. One trundled along a cart with a little barrel of water on it, and the other dipped in a small wooden bucket and scattered the water from side to side. He did it very dexterously, however, showing practice. Nearer the steps the street was paved with a mosaic of flowers, and all the houses by which the procession was to pass were decorated in some way, with flowers, pictures, and lamps to light later, some already lighted and showing faintly through the gloaming. All the windows and little balconies and elevated door-steps near the church were filled with women and children, every face turned toward the winding street up which a cross was glittering and a sound of music coming. A banner came in sight after the cross, and then a crucifix with its canopy, and then banner after banner, and crucifix after crucifix, showing in air over the wall that wound with the street. At one turn were visible the tops of the tallest heads; then, a little farther on, the whole heads of men, and the flowing locks of the boys of the choirs; and, lastly, they came into full sight near by, the inferior persons marching in lines at each side of the street, leaving hollow spaces where there was no banner or crucifix to be carried, the clergy walking in the centre. As the picture of the Holy Redeemer came along, borne on the shoulders of four men, all the crowd about sank on their knees. The picture was carried up the steps and placed on a table set there to receive it, and there were prayers and hymns before dropping the curtain over it and taking it into the church.

The sun went down and one large star burned in the west. It was easy to imagine an angel hand and wings above, and golden chains dropping down to a lamp of which that star was the flame. All the lamps, many-colored as the rainbow, were lighted in the windows, throwing their light, as the twilight deepened, in a strong splash, here and there, on a leaning face intent and praying, on a mantle of vines, on a bit of carving, a rough stone balcony, or a stair climbing up into the dark. One little arched window, with a vine over it, held a single beautiful face of a young woman, and a single lamp that shone on her black hair and eyes and perfect features, motionless there in prayer, till she looked like a cameo cut in pink carnelian.

The prayers ended, and some one drew the curtain before the lovely face of the picture. As he did so a chorus of exclamations burst from the kneeling crowd, and several women burst into tears.

“What do they say?” Mr. Vane asked in surprise. “What is the matter?”

“They say, '_Grazie, Santissimo Salvatore!_'—Thanks, most holy Saviour,” she replied.

He smiled faintly and repeated after them, “_Grazie, Santissimo Salvatore!_” and it seemed that his eyes glistened in the candle-light.

“I am glad it touches you,” the Signora said as they went to their lodgings. “Some, even Catholics, think it superstitious; but it is no more so than it is a superstition for us to kiss and weep over the pictures of our friends.”

The next morning they went up to early Mass in the pretty Capuchin church, at the head of its long avenue of overarching trees, loitering slowly home again when the Mass was over.

“Now,” said the Signora suddenly, spying a man with a large basket—“now I will show you what figs are. You have not known before.”

She beckoned the man and asked how many he would sell for a _soldo_. He replied, “Twelve.”

“You may give me eight dozen,” she said. “Each of you dear people are to have two dozen and to carry them yourselves. Out with your handkerchiefs! That is the fashion. Don’t be scrupulous.”

“They don’t look as if I should wish to eat two dozen,” Bianca remarked doubtfully. “They look to me like little bits of green apples.”

“Please to defer your judgment,” remarked her friend; “and what you do not wish to eat I will take.”

When they had reached home and were seated at the breakfast-table, the Signora took one of the little figs, with some ceremony and much anticipated triumph, and, lacking a fruit-knife, peeled its green skin off with the handle of a tea-spoon. All their eyes were watching the process; and when it was ended, and she pushed out the little teaspoonful of delicious fruit for Mr. Vane to have the first, the others were convinced by only seeing. It was a rich, deep red, of the consistency of solid old preserved strawberries, but with the fig flavor.

After breakfast was over they went out to visit the gardens of the Cesarini palace, for which they had a permit. These are laid out and kept by a Swiss gardener, and are a wilderness of flowers and trees and fountains on the level and down the hill-side. After wandering about the upper part for a while they descended a slowly-winding path, bordered by hydrangeas in full flower, that stood shoulder-high and dropped their great balls of amethyst bloom toward the earth, and came out into a little terrace where the trees and shrubs left an open front. A long bench at the back, and a richly-carved antique capital of a column near the wild-vine parapet, gave them seats, and before them was the whole verdant amphitheatre, with Lake Nemi at the bottom, and the town of Nemi half up the opposite bank, like a little white flower painted half way up the inside of a green cup. And down from the flower, like its white stem, dropped a white stream, cascade after cascade, to the lake, its motion petrified in the distance.

Tall white cloud-shapes marched round the hill-tops and looked over—shining shapes that seemed to hold Olympian deities within their folds, “impenetrable to every ray but that of fancy.” The amphitheatre sloped steeply in a green cone rich with orchards and vineyards, and pressed in a waving line around the water. Opposite the little terrace in which they sat, as in a box at the opera, the shore made a green heart in the water, and from behind one curve of it a boat, tiny in the distance as a black swan, slipped out and moved across the view. The lake lay like an emerald half-fused, its shaded greens touched in places with a soft purple bloom or a silvery lustre, and catching now and then a melting image of some cloud-cap higher than the rest. There was a sound of mellow thunder from some direction—Jupiter Tonans driving through those driving clouds.

They sat there silently drinking in the beauty of the scene, speaking only a word or two now and then, waiting till it should be noon and they should hear the Angelus from Nemi. When it came, a dream of a sound, touching with the outermost wave of its song the party of strangers across the lake, they stood up and said the prayers together. Then, bidding adieu to Nemi and its lake and the beautiful garden, they went slowly away.

That afternoon they went back to Albano, and the next evening returned to Rome. They had only one other excursion to make—that to Monte Cassino. Certain affairs were calling Mr. Vane to America, either for a longer or shorter stay, to go with only his daughters, or to have a nearer companion yet, and the end of their visit was approaching. It would soon be September, and in October they must start. Besides, it was found that, subject to her father’s approval, Bianca had promised to marry early in the spring, and some preparations must be made for the wedding.

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

TO POPE PIUS IX. A JUBILEE OFFERING, JUNE 3, 1877.