CHAPTER XXXII.

THE EXILE'S RETURN.

Perhaps you have been away in distant parts of the earth, each day

crowded with new experiences and slowly obscuring the clear pictures of

England with which you left: perhaps you have only been hidden away in

London, amid its ceaseless noise, its strange faces, its monotonous

recurrence of duties. Let us say, in any case, that you are returning

home for a space to the quiet of Northern Cornwall.

You look out of the high window of a Plymouth hotel early in the

morning. There is a promise of a beautiful autumn day--a ring of pink

mist lies around the horizon; overhead the sky is clear and blue; the

white sickle of the moon still lingers visible. The new warmth of the

day begins to melt the hoarfrost in the meadows, and you know that out

beyond the town the sun is shining brilliantly on the wet grass, with

the brown cattle gleaming red in the light.

You leave the great world behind, with all its bustle, crowds and

express engines, when you get into the quiet little train that takes you

leisurely up to Launceston, through woods, by the sides of rivers, over

great valleys. There is a sense of repose about this railway journey.

The train stops at any number of small stations--apparently to let the

guard have a chat with the station-master--and then jogs on in a quiet,

contented fashion. And on such an autumn day as this, that is a

beautiful, still, rich-colored and English-looking country through which

it passes. Here is a deep valley, all glittering with the dew and the

sunlight. Down in the hollow a farmyard is half hidden behind the

yellowing elms; a boy is driving a flock of white geese along the

twisting road; the hedges are red with the withering briers. Up here,

along the hillsides, the woods of scrub-oak are glowing with every

imaginable hue of gold, crimson and bronze, except where a few dark firs

appear, or where a tuft of broom, pure and bright in its green, stands

out among the faded brackens. The gorse is profusely in bloom: it always

is in Cornwall. Still farther over there are sheep visible on the

uplands; beyond these, again, the bleak brown moors rise into peaks of

hills; overhead the silent blue, and all around the sweet, fresh country

air.

With a sharp whistle the small train darts into an opening in the hills:

here we are in the twilight of a great wood. The tall trees are becoming

bare; the ground is red with the fallen leaves; through the branches the

blue-winged jay flies, screaming harshly; you can smell the damp and

resinous odors of the ferns. Out again we get into the sunlight! and lo!

a rushing, brawling, narrow stream, its clear flood swaying this way and

that by the big stones; a wall of rock overhead crowned by glowing

furze; a herd of red cattle sent scampering through the bright-green

grass. Now we get slowly into a small white station, and catch a glimpse

of a tiny town over in the valley: again we go on by wood and valley, by

rocks and streams and farms. It is a pleasant drive on such a morning.

In one of the carriages in this train Master Harry Trelyon and his

grandmother were seated. How he had ever persuaded her to go with him to

Cornwall by train was mysterious enough, for the old lady thoroughly

hated all such modern devices. It was her custom to go traveling all

over the country with a big, old-fashioned phaeton and a pair of horses;

and her chief amusement during these long excursions was driving up to

any big house she took a fancy to, in order to see if there was a chance

of its being let to her. The faithful old servant who attended her, and

who was about as old as the coachman, had a great respect for his

mistress, but sometimes he swore--inaudibly--when she ordered him to

make the usual inquiry at the front-door of some noble lord's country

residence, which he would as soon have thought of letting as of

forfeiting his seat in the House of Peers or his hopes of heaven. But

the carriage and horses were coming down, all the same, to Eglosilyan,

to take her back again.

"Harry," she was saying at this moment, "the longer I look at you, the

more positive I am that you are ill. I don't like your color: you are

thin and careworn and anxious. What is the matter with you?"

"Going to school again at twenty-one is hard work, grandmother," he

said. "Don't you try it. But I don't think I'm particularly ill: few

folks can keep a complexion like yours, grandmother."

"Yes," said the old lady, rather pleased, "many's the time they said

that about me, that there wasn't much to complain of in my looks; and

that's what a girl thinks of then, and sweethearts and balls, and all

the other men looking savage when she's dancing with any one of them.

Well, well, Harry; and what is all this about you and the young lady

your mother has made such a pet of? Oh yes, I have my suspicions; and

she's engaged to another man, isn't she? Your grandfather would have

fought him, I'll be bound; but we live in a peaceable way now. Well,

well, no matter; but hasn't that got something to do with your glum

looks, Harry?"

"I tell you, grandmother, I have been hard at work in London. You can't

look very brilliant after a few months in London."

"And what keeps you in London at this time of the year?" said this

plain-spoken old lady. "Your fancy about getting into the army?

Nonsense, man! don't tell me such a tale as that. There's a woman in the

case: a Trelyon never puts himself so much about from any other cause.

To stop in town at this time of the year! Why, your grandfather, and

your father too, would have laughed to hear of it. I haven't had a brace

of birds or a pheasant sent me since last autumn--not one. Come, sir, be

frank with me. I'm an old woman, but I can hold my tongue."

"There's nothing to tell, grandmother," he said. "You just about hit it

in that guess of yours: I suppose Juliott told you. Well, the girl is

engaged to another man: what more is to be said?"

"The man's in Jamaica?"

"Yes."

"Why are you going down to-day?"

"Only for a brief visit: I've been a long time away."

The old lady sat silent for some time. She had heard of the whole affair

before, but she wished to have the rumor confirmed. And at first she was

sorely troubled that her grandson should contemplate marrying the

daughter of an innkeeper, however intelligent, amiable and well-educated

the young lady might be; but she knew the Trelyons pretty well, and knew

that if he had made up his mind to it, argument and remonstrance would

be useless. Moreover, she had a great affection for this young man, and

was strongly disposed to sympathize with any wish of his. She grew in

time to have a great interest in Miss Wenna Rosewarne: at this moment

the chief object of her visit was to make her acquaintance. She grew to

pity young Trelyon in his disappointment, and was inclined to believe

that the person in Jamaica was something of a public enemy. The fact

was, her mere sympathy for her grandson would have converted her to a

sympathy with the wildest project he could have formed.

"Dear! dear!" she said, "what awkward things engagements are when they

stand in your way! Shall I tell you the truth? I was just about as good

as engaged to John Cholmondeley when I gave myself up to your

grandfather. But there! when a girl's heart pulls her one way, and her

promise pulls her another way, she needs to be a very firm-minded young

woman if she means to hold fast. John Cholmondeley was as good-hearted a

young fellow as ever lived--yes, I will say that for him--and I was

mightily sorry for him; but--but you see, that's how things come about.

Dear! dear! that evening at Bath--I remember it as well as if it was

yesterday; and it was only two months after I had run away with your

grandfather. Yes, there was a ball that night; and we had kept very

quiet, you know, after coming back; but this time your grandfather had

set his heart on taking me out before everybody, and you know he had to

have his way. As sure as I live, Harry, the first man I saw was John

Cholmondeley--just as white as a ghost: they said he had been drinking

hard and gambling pretty nearly the whole of these two months. He

wouldn't come near me: he wouldn't take the least notice of me. The

whole night he pretended to be vastly gay and merry: he danced with

everybody, but his eyes never came near me. Well--you know what a girl

is--that vexed me a little bit; for there never was a man such a slave

to a woman as he was to me. Dear! dear! the way my father used to laugh

at him, until he got wild with anger! Well, I went up to him at last,

when he was by himself, and I said to him, just in a careless way, you

know, 'John, aren't you going to dance with me to-night?' Well, do you

know, his face got quite white again; and he said--I remember the very

words, all as cold as ice--'Madam,' says he, 'I am glad to find that

your hurried trip to Scotland has impaired neither your good looks nor

your self-command.' Wasn't it cruel of him?--but then, poor fellow! he

had been badly used, I admit that. Poor young fellow! he never did

marry; and I don't believe he ever forgot me to his dying day. Many a

time I'd like to have told him all about it, and how there was no use in

my marrying him if I liked another man better; but though we met

sometimes, and especially when he came down about the Reform Bill

time--and I do believe I made a red-hot radical of him--he was always

very proud, and I hadn't the heart to go back on the old story. But I'll

tell you what your grandfather did for him: he got him returned at the

very next election, and he on the other side, too; and after a bit a man

begins to think more about getting a seat in Parliament than about

courting an empty-headed girl. I have met this Mr. Roscorla, haven't I?"

"Of course you have."

"A good-looking man rather, with a fresh complexion and gray hair?"

"I don't know what you mean by good looks," said Trelyon shortly. "I

shouldn't think people would call him an Adonis. But there's no

accounting for tastes."

"Perhaps I may have been mistaken," the old lady said, "but there was a

gentleman at Plymouth Station who seemed to be something like what I can

recall of Mr. Roscorla: you didn't see him, I suppose?"

"At Plymouth Station, grandmother?" the young man said, becoming rather

uneasy.

"Yes. He got into the train just as we came up. A neatly-dressed man,

gray hair and a healthy-looking face. I must have seen him somewhere

about here before."

"Roscorla is in Jamaica," said Trelyon positively.

Just at this moment the train slowed into Launceston Station, and the

people began to get out on the platform.

"That is the man I mean," said the old lady.

Trelyon turned and stared. There, sure enough, was Mr. Roscorla, looking

not one whit different from the precise, elderly, fresh-colored

gentleman who had left Cornwall some seven months before.

"Good Lord, Harry!" said the old lady nervously, looking at her

grandson's face, "don't have a fight here."

The next second Mr. Roscorla wheeled round, anxious about some luggage,

and now it was his turn to stare in astonishment and anger--anger,

because he had been told that Harry Trelyon never came near Cornwall,

and his first sudden suspicion was that he had been deceived. All this

had happened in a minute. Trelyon was the first to regain his

self-command. He walked deliberately forward, held out his hand, and

said, "Hillo, Roscorla! back in England again? I didn't know you were

coming."

"No," said Mr. Roscorla, with his face grown just a trifle grayer--"no,

I suppose not."

In point of fact, he had not informed any one of his coming. He had

prepared a little surprise. The chief motive of his return was to get

Wenna to cancel for ever that unlucky letter of release he had sent her,

which he had done more or less successfully in subsequent

correspondence; but he had also hoped to introduce a little romanticism

into his meeting with her. He would enter Eglosilyan on foot. He would

wander down to the rocks at the mouth of the harbor on the chance of

finding Wenna there. Might he not hear her humming to herself, as she

sat and sewed, some snatch of "Your Polly has never been false, she

declares"? or was that the very last ballad in the world she would now

think of singing? Then the delight of regarding again the placid, bright

face and earnest eyes, of securing once more a perfect understanding

between them, and their glad return to the inn!

All this had been spoiled by the appearance of this young man: he loved

him none the more for that.

"I suppose you haven't got a trap waiting for you?" said Trelyon with

cold politeness. "I can drive you over if you like."

He could do no less than make the offer: the other had no alternative

but to accept. Old Mrs. Trelyon heard this compact made with

considerable dread.

Indeed, it was a dismal drive over to Eglosilyan, bright as the forenoon

was. The old lady did her best to be courteous to Mr. Roscorla and

cheerful with her grandson, but she was oppressed by the belief that it

was only her presence that had so far restrained the two men from giving

vent to the rage and jealousy that filled their hearts.

The conversation kept up was singular.

"Are you going to remain in England long, Roscorla?" said the younger of

the two men, making an unnecessary cut at one of the two horses he was

driving.

"Don't know yet. Perhaps I may."

"Because," said Trelyon with angry impertinence, "I suppose if you do,

you'll have to look round for a housekeeper."

The insinuation was felt; and Roscorla's eyes looked anything but

pleasant as he answered, "You forget I've got Mrs. Cornish to look after

my house."

"Oh, Mrs. Cornish is not much of a companion for you."

"Men seldom want to make companions of their housekeepers," was the

retort, uttered rather hotly.

"But sometimes they wish to have the two offices combined, for economy's

sake."

At this juncture Mrs. Trelyon struck in, somewhat wildly, with a remark

about an old ruined house which seemed to have had at one time a private

still inside: the danger was staved off for the moment. "Harry," she

said, "mind what you are about: the horses seem very fresh."

"Yes, they like a good run: I suspect they've had precious little to do

since I left Cornwall."

Did she fear that the young man was determined to throw them into a

ditch or down a precipice, with the wild desire of killing his rival at

any cost? If she had known the whole state of affairs between them--the

story of the emerald ring, for example--she would have understood at

least the difficulty experienced by these two men in remaining decently

civil toward each other.

So they passed over the high and wide moors until far ahead they caught

a glimpse of the blue plain of the sea. Mr. Roscorla relapsed into

silence: he was becoming a trifle nervous. He was probably so occupied

with anticipations of his meeting with Wenna that he failed to notice

the objects around him; and one of these, now become visible, was a very

handsome young lady, who was coming smartly along a wooded lane,

carrying a basket of bright-colored flowers.

"Why, here's Mabyn Rosewarne! I must wait for her."

Mabyn had seen at a distance Mrs. Trelyon's gray horses: she guessed

that the young master had come back, and that he had brought some

strangers with him. She did not like to be stared at by strangers. She

came along the path with her eyes fixed on the ground: she thought it

impertinent of Harry Trelyon to wait to speak to her.

"Oh, Mabyn," he cried, "you must let me drive you home. And let me

introduce you to my grandmother. There is some one else whom you know."

The young lady bowed to Mrs. Trelyon; then she stared and changed color

somewhat when she saw Mr. Roscorla; then she was helped up into a seat.

"How do you do, Mr. Trelyon?" she said. "I am very glad to see you have

come back.--How do you do, Mr. Roscorla?"

She shook hands with them both, but not quite in the same fashion.

"And you have sent no message that you were coming?" she said, looking

her companion straight in the face.

"No--no, I did not," he said, angry and embarrassed by the open enmity

of the girl. "I thought I should surprise you all."

"You have surprised me, any way," said Mabyn, "for how can you be so

thoughtless? Wenna has been very ill--I tell you she has been very ill

indeed, though she has said little about it--and the least thing upsets

her. How can you think of frightening her so? Do you know what you are

doing? I wish you would go away back to Launceston or London, and write

her a note there, if you are coming, instead of trying to frighten her."

This was the language, it appeared to Mr. Roscorla, of a virago; only,

viragoes do not ordinarily have tears in their eyes, as was the case

with Mabyn when she finished her indignant appeal.

"Mr. Trelyon, do you think it is fair to go and frighten Wenna so?" she

demanded.

"It is none of my business," Trelyon answered with an air as if he had

said to his rival, "Yes, go and kill the girl. You are a nice sort of

gentleman, to come down from London to kill the girl!"

"This is absurd," said Mr. Roscorla contemptuously, for he was stung

into reprisal by the persecution of these two: "a girl isn't so easily

frightened out of her wits. Why, she must have known that my coming home

was at any time probable."

"I have no doubt she feared that it was," said Mabyn, partly to herself:

for once she was afraid of speaking out. Presently, however, a brighter

light came over the girl's face. "Why, I quite forgot," she said,

addressing Harry Trelyon--"I quite forgot that Wenna was just going up

to Trelyon Hall when I left. Of course she will be up there. You will be

able to tell her that Mr. Roscorla has arrived, won't you?"

The malice of this suggestion was so apparent that the young gentleman

in front could not help grinning at it: fortunately, his face could not

be seen by his rival. What _he_ thought of the whole arrangement

can only be imagined. And so, as it happened, Mr. Roscorla and his

friend Mabyn were dropped at the inn, while Harry Trelyon drove his

grandmother up and on to the Hall.

"Well, Harry," the old lady said, "I am glad to be able to breathe at

last: I thought you two were going to kill each other."

"There is no fear of that," the young man said: "that is not the way in

which this affair has to be settled. It is entirely a matter for her

decision; and look how everything is in his favor. I am not even allowed

to say a word to her; and even if I could, he is a deal cleverer than me

in argument. He would argue my head off in half an hour."

"But you don't turn a girl's heart round by argument, Harry. When a girl

has to choose between a young lover and an elderly one, it isn't always

good sense that directs her choice. Is Miss Wenna Rosewarne at all like

her sister?"

"She's not such a tomboy," he said, "but she is quite as straightforward

and proud, and quick to tell you what is the right thing to do. There's

no sort of shamming tolerated by these two girls. But then Wenna is

gentler and quieter, and more soft and lovable, than Mabyn--in my fancy,

you know; and she is more humorous and clever, so that she never gets

into those school-girl rages. But it is really a shame to compare them

like that; and, indeed, if any one said the least thing against one of

these girls, the other would precious soon make him regret the day he

was born. You don't catch me doing that with either of them. I've had a

warning already when I hinted that Mabyn might probably manage to keep

her husband in good order. And so she would, I believe, if the husband

were not of the right sort; but when she is really fond of anybody, she

becomes their slave out and out. There is nothing she wouldn't do for

her sister; and her sister thinks there's nobody in the world like

Mabyn. So you see--"

He stopped in the middle of this sentence.

"Grandmother," he said, almost in a whisper, "here she is coming along

the road."

"Miss Rosewarne?"

"Yes: shall I introduce you?"

"If you like."

Wenna was coming down the steep road between the high hedges with a

small girl on each side of her, whom she was leading by the hand. She

was gayly talking to them: you could hear the children laughing at what

she said. Old Mrs. Trelyon came to the conclusion that this merry young

lady, with the light and free step, the careless talk and fresh color in

her face, was certainly not dying of any love-affair.

"Take the reins, grandmother, for a minute."

He had leapt down into the road, and was standing before her almost ere

she had time to recognize him. For a moment a quick gleam of gladness

shone on her face: then, almost instinctively, she seemed to shrink from

him, and she was reserved, distant, and formal.

He introduced her to the old lady, who said something nice to her about

her sister. The young man was looking wistfully at her, troubled at

heart that she treated him so coldly.

"I have got to break some news to you," he said: "perhaps you will

consider it good news."

She looked up quickly.

"Nothing has happened to anybody--only some one has arrived. Mr.

Roscorla is at the inn."

She did not flinch. He was vexed with her that she showed no sign of

fear or dislike. On the contrary, she quickly said that she must then go

down to the inn; and she bade them both good-bye in a placid and

ordinary way, while he drove off with dark thoughts crowding into his

imagination of what might happen down at the inn during the next few

days. He was angry with her, he scarcely knew why.

Meanwhile Wenna, apparently quite calm, went on down the road, but there

was no more laughing in her voice, no more light in her face.

"Miss Wenna," said the smaller of the two children, who could not

understand this change, and who looked up with big, wondering eyes, "why

does oo tremble so?"

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

SONNET.

The curious eye may watch her lovely face,

Whereon such rare and roseate tinctures glow,

And cry, How fair the rose and lily show

Mid all the glories of a maiden grace!

If this sweet show, this bloom and tender glance,

Would so attract a stranger's unskilled eyes,

Until he sees the light of Paradise

Dawn in the garden of that countenance--

I, to whom love hath given finer powers,

See there the emblems of a flowering soul

That hath its root in other world than ours,

And which doth ever seek its native goal;

Meanwhile decks life with love and grace and flowers,

And in one beauteous garland binds the whole.

F.A. HILLARD.

NICE.

Twenty-Two centuries ago--eighteen hundred years before Columbus sailed

in quest of the New World--a Phocean colony from Marseilles founded this

celebrated city, calling it Nichê (Nice or Victory), in honor of a

signal triumph obtained by their arms over their enemies, the Ligurians,

or inhabitants of the northern coast of Italy. For ages it flourished,

being almost as famous with the ancients as a health-resort as it is

to-day; but its evil hour came when the Goths, Lombards and Franks in

A.D. 405, pouring through the defiles and gorges of the Maritime Alps,

laid Nice and almost all the other cities of Italy, even beyond Rome, in

ashes. A hundred years later it was rebuilt, but its beautiful forum,

its classical temples, its mosaic-paved villas and marble theatres had

disappeared utterly, and the new city was but a shadow of the old. In

the tenth century the Saracens conquered Nice, and remained in quiet

possession for seventy years, and during their stay introduced much of

the tropical vegetation which we still admire. They were finally driven

away by the insurgent natives in A.D. 975, but they left the impress of

their occupation in many Arabic words which still mark the local

_patois_; and as a number of the fugitives were captured and reduced to

slavery, intermarrying in the course of time with the native population,

the Moorish type is still very noticeable amongst the peasantry. Freed

from the Saracenic yoke, the Niçois lived in peace for nearly two

centuries, being only disturbed from time to time by the unwelcome

visitations of pirates. Later on, toward the middle of the thirteenth

century, like most other Southern and Italian cities, Nice fell a victim

to the constant quarrels of the powerful families allied respectively to

the Ghibelline and Guelphic factions. Thus, the incessant broils between

the Lascaris of Tenda, the Grimaldis of Monaco and the Dorias of

Dolceacqua desolated the surrounding country, and often reduced the city

to a state of siege. The Niçois were compelled to keep up a perpetual

guerilla, which, however inspiriting, was by no means conducive to their

material prosperity. In 1364 an invasion of locusts from Africa led to a

famine, and ultimately a plague which destroyed two-thirds of the

population. The people, attributing their misfortunes to the

intercession of the Jews with the powers below, rose up and massacred

them: only five Israelites out of over two thousand are said to have

escaped their blind fury. When order was at last re-established, and the

Niçois began to settle down again, they perceived their impoverished and

subordinate position to be so alarming that their only chance of safety

was immediately to place themselves under the protection of the dukes of

Savoy, who for a century and a half defended them from the attacks of

their numerous enemies in a most valiant manner. But in 1521, Francis I.

of France wrenched the city and province from the beneficent rule of the

Savoyards and proclaimed himself count of Nice. In 1524 war broke out

between Francis and the emperor Charles V., and the contending armies

alternately devastated and pillaged Nice and its environs. The pest

reappeared, and with it a drought and famine of so fearful a character

that many thousand persons perished, and others in their despair slew

themselves. Pope Paul III. undertook the difficult task of reconciling

the belligerents, and even went so far as to travel to Nice for the

purpose. A marble cross which gives its name to a suburb of the town

("La Croix de Marbre") still marks the spot where the conference took

place in which Francis and Charles swore a peace in the presence of His

Holiness which they took the first opportunity to violate. In 1540 the

war recommenced, and a number of dissolute young men of good family

formed themselves into organized companies of bandits and overran

the country, to the terror of the wretched peasantry and the utter ruin

of many hundreds of honest families. But in 1543 a second Joan of Arc

was raised up by Providence to deliver the Niçois in the person of the

still popular heroine, Catterina Segurana. Francis I. had recently

scandalized Christendom by allying himself with the famous Mohammedan

corsair, Barbarossa of Algiers with a view of reconquering Nice, which

he considered the key of Italy. Accordingly, one fine morning three

hundred vessels belonging to the Algerine pirate entered the neighboring

port of Villefranche, and presently the whole country was filled with a

horde of turbaned freebooters. Cimiez, Montboron, Mont Gros and a

hundred other villages and hamlets were soon alive with French marauders

and Turkish pirates, who presently proceeded to bombard the city itself.

The siege was short, but terrible, and the inhabitants were at the last

gasp when the energetic Catterina Segurana, a washer-woman by trade, and

surnamed _Mao faccia_ ("Ugly face"), on account of the homeliness of her

countenance, seized a hatchet, and, after a vigorous address to her

fellow-citizens, placed herself at their head and led them against the

enemy. The same result attended her efforts as did those of her

immediate prototype, the glorious Maid of Orleans. She so animated the

people, so roused their patriotism, that before the day was over the

French and infidels were conquered, and the bold and generous Catterina.

stood surrounded by her enthusiastic fellow-citizens, waving the

conquered Algerine flag, in token of victory, from the summit of the

castle hill, on the spot where formerly stood her statue.[001]

From the time of the brave Catterina to our own, Nice has sustained at

least a dozen sieges of more or less severity. That of 1706 was perhaps

one of the most shocking on record. The city, by the treaty of Turin of

1696, had once more passed under the protectorate of the dukes of Savoy,

but the French, who have always had a longing eye for the "Department of

the Maritime Alps," as they even then called it, broke the treaty they

had themselves framed, and sent the duc de la Feuillade over the

frontier with twenty thousand men to conquer the country. Nice was then

governed by the marquis de Caraglio, who, although entreated by the

enemy to allow the women and children to leave the city's gates,

positively refused to do so. The consequence was that during the siege,

which lasted six months, more than a third of the inhabitants perished

from starvation. Men are said to have killed their wives for food, and

women their children. Sixty thousand shells fell in various parts of the

town, and the castle, cathedral and many churches were entirely

destroyed.[002]

In 1792, under the First Republic, Nice was again occupied by the

French, and declared a _chef-lieu de département_. By the treaty of 1814

the place was handed over to the Piedmontese, and stayed contentedly

beneath the rule of the Sardinian kings until 1860, when, by the treaty

of March 24, Napoleon III. annexed the county of Nice and the duchy of

Savoy to his imperial possessions, in exchange for the services his army

had rendered Italy at Magenta and Solferino. How long Nice will continue

French is a question somewhat difficult to answer just now. There exists

in the city and province a very strong Italian party, and during the war

of 1870, Nice was declared in a state of siege, owing to the constant

and very serious demonstrations of a certain part of the population. One

of the leading inhabitants, a noted banker, even went so far as

to travel to Florence with the intention of proving to the Italian

government that whilst the French troops were concentrated in the north

those of Victor Emmanuel would find no difficulty in crossing the

frontier and uniting Nice to Italy. To the honor of the Italian

government, this treacherous suggestion was rejected, but in those days

the feeling between France and Italy was more cordial than it has since

been. The Italian party is so active in the city and the department that

the government has difficulty in keeping note of its proceedings.

Thousands of pamphlets are secretly circulated amongst the lower orders,

in which the advantages of the city's return to Italy are vividly

contrasted with the disadvantages it suffers from by remaining French.

The clergy, however, who are both numerous and influential, are French

to a man, and dread the hour which will see them governed by the "jailer

of Pius IX.," and consequently prove a very great assistance to the

authorities in counteracting the intrigues of the Italians. But should

ever, in future years, a war break out between either France and Italy,

or between France and Italy's new ally, Prussia, the _question de Nice_

will be once more on the _tapis_, and victory alone will preserve this

magnificent possession to its present owners.

Nice may well boast herself a rival in point of splendor of natural

position of the most famous cities of the South--of Lisbon, Genoa,

Naples and Constantinople--and she eclipses them in point of climate.

Built at the eastern extremity of a fine gulf--that of Les Anges--and

backed by an amphitheatre of hills and lofty mountains, she is sheltered

from cold winds in winter, and in summer the Alpine breezes temper an

atmosphere which would else be unendurably sultry, owing to the

prevalence of the sirocco, a hot wind which passes directly hither over

the Mediterranean from the burning shores of Africa. One can scarcely

imagine a more glorious panorama than that of this city and its environs

as seen from the sea or from any neighboring elevation. Let us suppose

it a fine morning late in spring, and that we stand upon the deck of a

yacht about a mile and a half distant from the shore. Nice, we see,

surrounds a steep and rugged rock which rises almost perpendicularly

from the Mediterranean to the height of about six hundred feet, and is

crested by the ruins of the ancient castle, and covered with terraced

gardens forming a delicious promenade. Groves of cypresses and sycamores

hang on the declivities of this rock, which in places is rough with

cactuses and aloes and with the Indian fig, whose bright orange flowers,

when the sun's rays fall on them, have a magic splendor of color. A

group of palm trees at the extremest elevation, standing out on a high

crag, add not a little to the picturesque appearance of this singular

urban hill. On one side of this rock the rapid torrent Paillon,

traversed by several handsome bridges, some of them adorned with

statues, separates the "old" from the "new" town. On the other is the

port, filled with steamers and innumerable fishing-craft. Beyond the

port stretches the Boulevard de l'Impératrice, inaugurated a few years

since by the late empress of Russia, with its fine villas, notably the

splendid Venetian Palace, an exact reproduction of the celebrated

Moncenigo Palace at Venice, belonging to Viscount Vigier, whose wife was

once a popular idol of the musical world of Paris and London--Sophie

Cruvelli--and the extraordinary Moresque-looking castle of Mr. Smith,

which is well called the _Folie d'un Anglais_--the "craze of an

Englishman." The latter stands on the end of a promontory, and with its

lofty towers and domes closes in the view. It is perhaps the most

curious residence in the world, being built on a barren rock, and its

apartments literally hewn out of the marble of which it is composed. On

the top of the hill is a long building, with two curious twin towers and

a dome, built of red brick faced with white marble. Here is situated the

chief entrance. You descend from the spacious entry-hall a long well

staircase cut in the rock and lighted from above, until you reach a

superb octagonal chamber of white marble ornamented with

statues and Oriental divans covered with Persian silk. This is the great

saloon, and leading out of it are other fine chambers, all of them lined

with polished marble and furnished with Eastern magnificence.

Externally, there is no trace of these chambers visible. They are, as I

have said, excavated, like Egyptian tombs, in the heart of the mountain.

The proprietor, an eccentric English bachelor, never inhabits this

fantastic mansion, but lives in a second-rate hotel, spending thousands

annually in adding embellishments to his astonishing castle, where,

notwithstanding its magnificent suites of apartments, no human being has

ever slept a night or eaten a meal.

"Smith's Craze," as I have said, closes in the view to our right. To the

left, beyond the torrent Paillon, is situated modern Nice, with its

quays, leviathan hotels, and an almost interminable line of villas

marking the celebrated Promenade des Anglais. The background of the

scene is filled up by a semicircle of well-wooded hills, verdant with

vines, fig, orange, olive and pomegranate trees, and sparkling with

white country-seats, convents, and campanili. Towering over these hills

appears another range, of rocky and bold outlines, and then another, of

lofty mountains whose peaks lose themselves in clouds, and by their

fantastic figures form as delightful an horizon as the eye can behold.

In the centre rises the conical peak of Monte Cao, an extinct volcano,

exactly resembling Vesuvius in conformation, and only wanting a curl of

smoke issuing from its crater to make the illusion perfect. Alongside of

Monte Cao is another extinct volcano, on which are seen the ruins of the

ancient and deserted village of Châteauneuf, while between the two

summits (thirty-five hundred feet high) are distinctly visible the peaks

of some of the ever-snowy Alps. The foreground of the picture is formed

by the deep indigo waters of the Mediterranean, diversified by a hundred

sunny sails, and overhead hangs the cloudless Italian sky.

Let us now put back to port and walk through the city, visiting first

Old Nice, then the modern Pompeii, as Alphonse Karr pleasantly calls

the new town. Old Nice resembles Genoa on a small scale, and has very

narrow streets of lofty (and in some cases really fine) houses, no end

of churches, gloomy-looking convents, and one or two palaces. In the

narrow streets surrounding the cathedral--a large and showy building,

formerly a parish church--is a market supplied with native

fruits--oranges, lemons, grapes, figs, and many varieties of melons and

nuts. The streets, which are in places so narrow that you can almost

stretch your arms across them, are full of bright-looking shops, with

all their varied goods displayed at the open, unglazed windows. Here and

there one comes across remains of ancient times of considerable

interest. Thus, in the Rue Droite is an old house, with a series of

quaint little arches and a curious Gothic gateway, which was formerly

part of the palace inhabited by Joanna II. of Naples. Near the church of

St. Jacques is another old residence, with an odd decoration on its

front in the shape of colossal figures of Adam and Eve, executed in

alto-rilievo, which have their feet on either side of the doorway and

their heads above the fifth story. The tree of knowledge, over-laden

with its dangerous fruit, flourishes between the windows of what was

once the saloon, and is now a manufactory of maccaroni. In the Rue du

Centre is the quondam palace of the Lascaris family, an old Italian

mansion, with marble balconies, wide, majestic staircases adorned with

Corinthian columns, and vast apartments frescoed by Carlone, a reputable

Genoese painter of mythological subjects. Carlone's gods and goddesses

look down no longer on the members of the House of Lascaris, who once

ruled over Tenda, and were the lineal descendants of the imperial

Byzantine house of Del Comneno, but on those of an amiable Niçois

family, who most willingly show the old palace to any stranger who may

choose to knock at their door.

Some years ago a Turinese lawyer, looking over his father's private

papers, discovered that he was the legitimate heir to the Lascaris

titles and estates, which had been left unreclaimed for many

centuries. This gentleman, on proving his claim, assumed the grandiose

title of Prince Lascaris del Comneno, grand duke of Macedonia. His glory

was short-lived. His wife went to Rome and obtained a full recognition

of her rights from the Holy Father and admission into the first circles

of Roman society, but was subsequently expelled from the city for

plotting against the papal government; but she returned with the

Piedmontese occupation in 1870, only, however, to get into a still worse

pickle by exposing herself to the charge of defrauding Flaminio Spada's

bank of a large sum of money. During the trial she _mizzled_, and has

not, I believe, been heard of since. This lady is the famous "Princess

Mopsa" about whose adventures the Roman papers have entertained their

readers considerably during the last year or so.

The churches are usually in the Italian style, having heavy façades,

plain brick sides and queer but rather picturesque bell-towers.

Internally, they are gaudy and tasteless, the altars ornamented on high

days and holidays with innumerable wax candles, festoons of red, white

and blue drapery, and huge pyramids of paper roses with gold foliage.

Ecclesiastical affairs are presided over by Monsignor Pietro Sola, a

charming old bishop, who is the essence of kindliness and charity. He

was formerly one of the spiritual directors of Queen Adelaide of

Austria, the late wife of Victor Emmanuel. The number of priests, monks

and nuns is very considerable. There is a very large Franciscan

monastery up at Cimiez on the hill, and a rambling old Capuchin convent

at St. Bartolomé. The Nice Capuchins are a splendid body of men, and a

goodly sight to see marching in a procession with their

chocolate-colored hooded robes and long, flowing beards. Their present

prior is a marquis Raggi of Genoa, a man of high family and rank, who

some years since abandoned a world he had known only too well, gave all

his fortune to the poor, and turned monk.

There is a street in the old part of Nice which is perfectly unique. It

is nearly a mile and a half long, runs parallel with the sea, and

consists of a double row of low, one-storied houses having a paved

terrace on their roofs, to which you ascend by several handsome

staircases. The terrace forms a very popular promenade of an evening,

and from it are enjoyed lovely views of the bay and mountains. Between

these two rows of houses is the fish-market, where are frequently seen

displayed monsters like Victor Hugo's famous _pieuve_ sprawling out

their dozen glutinous legs fringed with eyes and deadly weapons in

almost supernatural hideousness, to the admiration of a group of English

or American tourists. Hard by the fish-market is the Corso, a shady

promenade round which the gala carriages drive in Carnival time, while

the masked inmates pelt and get pelted in turn with comfits made of

painted clay. The Corso is also the scene of numerous religious

processions, some of which are quaint and picturesque. There are a

number of ancient confraternities established amongst the trades-people

of Nice, who wear costumes of, red, white, black and blue serge,

according to the guild they belong to. This sack-like garment covers

them from head to foot, face and all, there being only two eyeholes slit

in the mask to permit the wearer to see out. These brotherhoods attend

the sick, bury the dead and take care of the widows and orphans, and in

Holy Week make the narrow streets of the old city delightful to the

artistic eye by the bright mass of their vivid-colored raiment, the

flickering of their tapers, and the gigantic crucifixes of gold and

silver they carry in procession from church to church. Every morning

there is a market held on the Corso of fruits, vegetables and flowers.

Such magnificent baskets of camellias, japonicas and roses, such

nosegays of violets and orange-blossoms, can be seen, I fancy, nowhere

but at Nice. Here also the peasant-women sometimes bring immense pots of

Peruvian aloes for sale, whose snowy blossoms are scented like those of

the magnolia, and rise in gigantic pyramids of magnificent cup-shaped

flowers. They are plants to salute respectfully as you pass by

them, such is their size and dignity. In Holy Week women are to be seen

all over the old town selling plaited palm branches of a pale

straw-color, some of which are bedecked with little bows of ribbon or

stars of tinsel, used in the ceremonies of Palm Sunday. The

peasant-girls who come to market at Nice are rather handsome, but as

dark as Nubians, with almond-shaped eyes and long, coarse black hair,

which they wear plaited into tails bound round the head with broad

velvet ribbons, like a coronet. On the top of this headgear they sport a

wide-brimmed straw hat of peculiar shape, ornamented with little black

crosses made of narrow velvet. In Princess Marie Lichtenstein's _Holland

House_ there is a portrait of Lady Augusta Holland wearing one of these

Nice hats.

But it is time for us to cross the bridges and pay our respects to Nice

the "new." When I first visited Nice in 1856 at least two-thirds of this

part of the city were not in existence. There were no splendid

railway-stations then; only one or two, instead of twenty, monster

hotels; the Promenade des Anglais only extended about a mile along the

shore, instead of four; and there were but one quay and two bridges. Now

superb quays line the river on either side, and there are six bridges,

and Heaven only knows how many churches for the accommodation of all the

denominations imaginable and unimaginable, from Père Lavigne's very

beautiful and very orthodox church, in which Monsignor Capel has

preached in Lent, down to Léon Pilate's, where collections are made for

the evangelical missions presided over by Mrs. Gould and W.C. Van Metre.

There is a Greek church of exceeding beauty, the altar-screen of which

was sent from Moscow as a present from the czar; and an Episcopal

church, surrounded by a beautiful cemetery, where sleeps the philosophic

Bussy d'Anglas, with many others whose names are well known. The real

Niçois almost all dwell in Old Nice, leaving the new city to the foreign

colony. Indeed, the natives are rarely if ever seen, except in the

street. They keep to their old quiet way of living, and, beyond letting

their houses and selling their goods, appear to be utterly unconscious

even of the existence of the strangers on the other side of Paillon.

Many of the Nice families are titled and wealthy, but with the exception

of that of the count de Cessoles, it is very rare to meet the Niçois in

society. Mademoiselle Mathilde de Cessoles is the reigning belle, and

deserves the honor. She is a superb-looking woman, with a head and

countenance worthy of a regal diadem. Her features resemble those of the

House of Bourbon, her complexion is admirable, and she has a certain

good-natured, indolent, sultana way of moving which is perfectly

charming. Cupid alone knows how many have sighed for her hand since her

long reign as a queen of society began, but none have as yet been

favored with a kinder glance than that of friendship. Scottish dukes,

Roman princes and American officers have wooed, but never won: la belle

Mathilde still walks the orange groves of her villa, "in virgin

meditation, fancy free."

"But it waxes late--'tis near three o'clock:" let us hasten past the

casinos, cafes, reading-rooms, Turkish baths and American drinking-bars

which flourish on the quays, and make our way to the Promenade des

Anglais, by this time alive with fashionables. The "Promenade," as I

have said, is nearly four miles long, and faces the sea. It is very

broad, and has on one side a row of villas and hotels--on the other a

walk shaded by oleanders and palm trees, through the openings of which

are obtained magnificent views of the Mediterranean. Some of these

villas are remarkably beautiful, especially that of the Princes Stirby,

the former sovereigns of Wallachia, which is surrounded with exquisite

gardens abounding with noble camellia trees, some of which produce as

many as fifteen hundred flowers. The Villa de Dempierre is very pretty,

and is the property of the countess of that name, who is a most

noteworthy person. Madame de Dempierre belongs to one of the most

ancient and wealthy families of France. She was once a great

beauty, and is still a brilliant wit and charming artist. Some years ago

she visited the empress of Russia, then residing at Nice, where she

died. Her Imperial Majesty, who was noted for her habit of making

personal remarks, said bluntly, "Madame la comtesse, how beautiful you

must have been!" "Majesty," answered the _spirituelle_ Madame de

Dempierre, "you were complaining of the nearness of your sight: since

you can distinguish my beauty through the vista of so many years, I

think you enjoy long-sightedness in a remarkable degree." The empress

wrinkled her nose, and presently observed: "I think, countess, I

remember to have seen your husband, General de Dempierre, in Russia."

"Doubtless Your Majesty did so: he was the first Frenchman that entered

the Kremlin." The czarina was silent: the fall of Moscow was not a

pleasant subject of conversation to the wife of Nicholas. The Villa de

Diesbach comes next, the winter residence of the historical family of

that name, into which married a few years since a tall, gazelle-eyed

American belle, Miss Meta McCall. Then follows the pretty Villa

Bouxhoevden, the property of a Corlandese count of a very noble house,

whose wife hails from New Jersey. The countess is much the fashion, and

her hospitable house is a rendezvous of the elite of the foreign and

American colony. She is a tall, graceful woman, with a pale and

interesting countenance, shadowed with clusters of light-brown curls,

which reminds one of Vandyke's portraits of Queen Henrietta Maria--a

likeness somewhat increased by costumes admirably suited to her

style--long flowing robes of rich silk trimmed with ermine and costly

lace. Then there is Mrs. Williams's garden, with Indian creepers and

gaudy Eastern plants, sent to her by her gallant son, the Crimean hero,

from the slopes of the Himalayas. Here on a Sunday gathers a pleasant

circle to drink five-o'clock tea and listen to the bright remarks of

Madame de la Caume, the daughter of the hostess, who knows more about

French politics than many a deputy at Versailles. But whilst we have

been looking in at villa-gardens the Promenade has filled up rapidly. A

continuous stream of carriages occupies the centre of the road, a throng

of gay folks animate with their showiest toilets the oleander walk and

the Jardin Publique, where a tolerable band plays for two or three hours

thrice a week. The marble stairs of the Casino are crowded with

loungers, and the windows and balconies of every villa are filled with

well-dressed men and women. Nowhere, perhaps, excepting in Rotten Row or

the Bois de Boulogne, can so many celebrated and beautiful women and

handsome or famous men be seen parading up and down together as on the

Promenade des Anglais of a fine afternoon in the season. Here gathers

the _crême de la crême_ of two worlds, the Old and the New, Europe and

America. In the winter of 1870 the town was crowded to excess. Never

before were there so many notabilities assembled at Nice--never was

there so much gossip, so much _cancan_ and small talk. It was amusing to

sit in the shade of a palm tree on the promenade and review the

_personæ_ of this Vanity Fair. Frederick Charles of Prussia and his

princess in a landau, with two Nubians on the box; the crown-princess

Victoria of England and her sister of Hesse-Darmstadt, on a trip from

Cannes, where they were then visiting; Her Grace of Newcastle; De

Villemessant of the _Figaro_, in an invalid's chair, the most

accomplished of _causeurs_; Count Montalivet, the former minister of

Louis Philippe, and by him, for a few days at the full of the season, a

little old gentleman with a squeaky voice, M. Adolphe Thiers. Next comes

a group of ladies, the three daughters of the Hispano-Mexican duchess De

Fernan-Nuñez; all three looking exactly alike, tall and dark; all three

of a height; all three invariably dressed in black, with lofty Tyrolese

hats and cocks' feathers; all three unmarried; all three marriageable,

and worth Croesus only knows how many millions; all three invariably

alone--a fact which made old Madame Colaredo scream out of her window

one day, "_Tiens! voilà les trois cent (sans) gardes_!" Then follow

Lord Rokeby, the most affable of lordships; Lord Portarlington;

General Sir William Williams of Kars; Princess Kantacuzène, the last

descendant of the imperial Byzantine house of that name; the ideally

lovely Miss Amy Shaw of Boston; the three pretty Miss Warrens of New

York; Madame Gavini de Campile, the wife of the prefect, a fine-looking

dame gloriously arrayed in showy robes, whom half the society adored and

the rest cordially hated; the duke de Mouchy, who married Anna Murat;

the duke de Périgord-Talleyrand, who married an American; the duke de la

Conquista, who derives his title from the conquest of Peru; the lovely

countess Del Borgo; and the famous Italian beauty, Madame Bellotti, a

Milanese lady, whose maiden name was Visconti, of that semi-royal house.

Theresa Bellotti's beauty is of a grand style seen nowhere out of Italy.

Picture her to yourself as I once saw her at a masquerade at the

préfecture. Round her superb figure swept an ample robe of crimson

velvet looped up with bands of gold. Her bare arms, models worthy of the

chisel of Canova, gleamed from the rich sables which lined the hanging

sleeves of her dress. Her hair, dark as night, was gathered up in the

high fashion Sir Joshua Reynolds loved to depict. A half-moon of

enormous diamonds fastened a plume over her left temple, and her neck

and fingers flashed back the colors of the rainbow from a thousand gems.

As to her face, it was radiant. Rich color flushed her cheeks, her eyes

sparkled with animation when she spoke; but at times, when her features

resumed a calm after conversation, she resembled the portraits of some

of the famous Italian women of the Renaissance--her own ancestress, for

instance, Bianca Visconti, duchess of Milan, or Veronica Cibò, or

Lucrezia Petroni, whose daughter was the ill-fated Beatrice Cenci. And

now come by the fascinating Mrs. Lloyd, whom all the world knows and

likes; grand-looking Mrs. Senator Grymes of Louisiana, a witty,

brilliant old lady, whose salon is one of the most elegant in Nice;

Baron Haussmann, and with him his colossal daughter, Madame de Perneti,

the handsomest of giantesses, who was once asked to join in private

theatricals, but when the stage was built up in her friend's

drawing-room, being about five feet from the level of the rest of the

chamber, it was discovered that _la belle Caryatide_, as her friends

call her, could not act on it, for the simple reason that she was a full

head taller than the scenery; clever Madame de Skariatine, the daughter

of the famous Count Schouvalof (the "Shoveloff" of our times), who,

after being Russian ambassador half over Europe, turned Barnabite monk

at Rome; Lady Dalling and Bulwer, the great duke of Wellington's niece,

and now the widow of one of England's most illustrious statesmen;

hospitable Marquise de St. Agnan, and her pretty daughter, Mademoiselle

Henriette; and Princess Souvarow, _ci-devant_ widow Apraxine, _ci-devant_

widow Kisselof, the most fascinating of Russian princesses, and one of

the greatest of female gamblers, who one night broke the bank at Monte

Carlo for two hundred and fifty thousand francs, and lost them the next.

On the opposite side of the way, screening herself from observation,

demurely clad in sober-colored attire, Madame Volnis passes along from

some mission of charity. This lady was once one of the most popular

actresses on the French stage, and with Mademoiselle Mars and Rose Chéri

was the idol of Paris--Léontine Fay. She was, if possible, a still

greater favorite in St. Petersburg, where, on her retirement from the

stage, she became French reader to the late czarina. Since the death of

the empress she has always resided at Nice, where she is distinguished

for her exalted piety and extreme charity. Even when on the stage this

lady devoted her leisure to charitable works. She was always remarked

for her modesty of manner: her dress was simplicity itself. At the

theatre she wore costumes rich and elegant, suited to the parts she

enacted, but in society she invariably appeared in plain white muslin or

dark silk. It would be impossible to exaggerate her goodness. Her whole

life has been passed amongst the poor, in the minute fulfillment

of her duties, and on her knees in church. After acting one part of

the evening, she would hasten, on the fall of the curtain, to pass the

rest of it watching by the bedside of some poor wretch stricken low

perhaps by some infectious disease. During the war of 1870, Madame

Volnis's conduct was angelical. If there was some awful operation to be

performed upon any of the wounded soldiers sent to Nice from the field

of battle, it was she who was present, who held the sufferer's hand, and

who consoled and cheered with the tenderness of a Sister of Charity--of

a mother.

As the austere figure of Léontine Fay passes away, hidden in a cloud of

sunny dust raised by the wheels of a hundred carriages, another form

comes upon the stage, radiant amongst the most brilliant, the observed

of all observers--Madame Rattazzi, _née_ Princess Bonaparte Wyse. What a

wonderful toilette is hers! One fine afternoon she appeared upon the

Promenade clad in a purple velvet robe, edged and flounced with

canary-colored satin, looped up voluminously _en panier_, and adorned

with big bows of yellow ribbon. Her hat was a broad-brimmed Leghorn

straw trimmed with large bunches of pansies. No one but Madame Rattazzi

could have worn such an attire in the public streets without the risk of

being hooted, but such are the grace and beauty of this celebrated woman

that her costume seemed in perfect keeping. She was in Nice one winter

for at least five months, and every day saw her out in a fresh dress.

When she travels she has more boxes than Madame Ristori. She dwelt on

the Promenade, over the dowager of Colaredo, who had a special spite

against her; in consequence of which she invariably illuminated her

windows, when she had company, with the Italian colors, red, white and

green, to the supreme disgust of the old Ultramontane countess. Her

apartment was elegantly furnished, and adorned with beautiful vases of

mignonette and plants of moss-roses. When she received of an evening the

chambers were agreeably lighted up with many pale and subdued lamps. Her

tables were always covered with new books, magazines and several copies

of her own poems and novels, including an exceedingly clever story,

_Louise Keller_, which she had just finished. On the walls hung pictures

in oil and water-colors of her own execution; on the piano were

scattered, together with much classical music, some hymns, polkas and

ballads of her composition. One night she acted in a comedy of her own

writing, and her rendering of the part of the heroine, a witty and

intriguing widow, was inimitable. Many severe critics have declared that

Madame Rattazzi is, as an actress, a worthy rival of Fargeuil or

Madeleine Brohan. Her manners are very fascinating--a little bit too

natural to be quite French, and a little too ceremonious to be quite

Italian. She would have proved an invaluable acquisition at the downfall

of the tower of Babel, for she is mistress of I dare not say how many

languages. As a rule, women hate her, and men do just the contrary. This

is not to be wondered at, for she is very beautiful even now. Her face

has the chiseled cameo features of her uncle, Napoleon I.; her eyes are

deep violet, fringed with long sweeping lashes; her mouth is perfectly

exquisite, and on either side of it two pretty dimples appear whenever

she smiles. So many enemies has she amongst her own sex that to avenge

herself for the affronts they constantly offer her she published a

magazine in Florence called the _Matinées Italiennes_, for the purpose

of showing up her female antagonists. Here is a sample: "At Nice a grand

ball; Madame la Viscomtesse de B---- _en grande toilette_, looking for

all the world like a big Nuremberg doll, with her black hair dyed an

impossible straw-color, and appearing at least five years younger than

she did when I first saw her make her _début_ in society five-and-twenty

years ago; and she was then a gushing maiden of twenty-one." By and by

comes the hour of vengeance. Madame Rattazzi gives a ball, and not a

woman will go to it. In 1870 she gave one at the Grand Hotel, to which

half the town was invited. There arrived at the festal scene

about five hundred men and just thirty-two women. It was funny enough.

The thirty-two women besported themselves with thirty-two partners in

the centre of the hall to the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut,

psaltery, and all kinds of musical instruments, whilst the rest of the

men stood round the hall five deep, like a deep dark fringe on a Turkish

carpet. Madame Rattazzi, however, achieved a great triumph against all

odds. By dint of grace, charm of manners and tact she put all her guests

in the best humor. The "thirty-two" had a fine time of it, and danced to

their hearts' content. The five hundred men were introduced and grouped

and wined and punched until every man there swore that earth did not

hold a fairer or more genial hostess. Madame Rattazzi was "supported,"

as the phrase goes, on this memorable occasion by Madame la Princesse,

her mother, a rather formidable-looking dowager, a daughter of Lucian

Bonaparte, and widow of Sir Thomas Wyse, once British consul at Athens.

Her Imperial Highness Princess Letitia must have been a wonderful beauty

in her youth--a stately grand being who one could easily imagine might

have resembled the Roman Agrippina or empress Livia. Once the barrier of

her stately manners overcome, she proved to be a talkative, affable

woman of the world, with a huge experience thereof. I can see her now,

dressed in a scarlet satin robe and glittering with jewels. She wore a

headdress of diamonds with two long ostrich feathers in it, one of

which, a white one, got out of its place and stood bolt upright, as if

it was frightened, until some charitable hand laid it down. This was, I

fancy, the last ball Princess Letitia ever graced, for she died a very

little while afterward. Poor Rattazzi was there too. He was not a

striking-looking man, but agreeable and excessively polite. He rarely

talked politics--I rather suspect from the fear of compromising

himself--but his conversation was was pleasant and varied. After his

death Madame Rattazzi removed to Monaco, where she busied herself with

editing his letters and memoirs--a task which, it appears, the Italian

government would be delighted that she should spare herself, as his

papers are said to be very full of compromising matter relative to the

Mentana expedition. A large sum of money was offered her to relinquish

her hold on these documents, but she answered by a letter published in

the Italian papers that they were left to her as a sacred trust, and

that she felt herself in duty bound to make their contents public, in

order to justify her husband's memory. As a curious proof of her

political sagacity--unless it is to be considered a mere coincidence--I

may mention that in January, 1870, she came to a masked ball at the

Casino dressed as Mars, in a short skirt of red satin, a cuirass of

gold, on her head a helmet, in one hand a spear, and in the other a

shield, and on it was written "Roma." Did Madame Rattazzi foresee that

by September of the same year there would be a war, and that as one of

its results Rome would so soon become the capital of that Italy which

her husband had helped to build up?[003]

From this somewhat rambling sketch the reader will readily understand

that Nice is one of the great centres of society in Europe, and indeed

in late years it is rather, as a place of gay reunion that it is

frequented than as a resort for invalids. Since the foundation of

quieter colonies at Mentone and San Remo, Nice has somewhat lost its

reputation as a sanitarium, for it is rather difficult, especially for

young people, to resist the temptation of its innumerable balls and

round of gayeties; and these are not considered conducive to the

preservation of health even amongst the healthiest. The medical men,

therefore, recommend places along the neighboring coast which enjoy

the same or even greater advantages of climate. That of Nice, after

all that has been written about it, still seems to me one of the finest

in the world. The air is exquisitely pure and clear, and has proved

beneficial in many hundreds of cases of incipient consumption. But the

fatal error is often made of sending hither patients in whom the disease

has made considerable progress. In such cases the irritating air hastens

death. I have known people brought here in the second and last stages of

consumption, who have been carried off in a fortnight after their

arrival, and who might have lingered on for years elsewhere. The patient

who finds himself benefited should remain at Nice for at least three or

four years, only varying the air in summer by a visit to some of the

many pleasant places in the neighboring mountains, where the atmosphere

is pure, cool and wholesome. Perhaps, it is owing in part to the

brightness of the sunshine and the beauty of the scenery that soon after

his arrival the health of the invalid often revives as if by

enchantment. Alphonse Karr, a resident of many years, who knows every

nook and corner of the place, and who has cultivated a garden in its

environs as celebrated throughout the world as his own sparkling pen,

says well: "Who is there so downhearted as to resist the glorious heat

of the sun, the beauty of that deepest of blue seas, the loveliness of

the varied trees, the tropical vegetation, the scent of the

orange-flowers, the music of the brooks, the sight of the ever-changing

hues of the mountains of _Nizza la bella_?"

R. DAVEY.

THE RASKOL, AND SECTS IN RUSSIA.

FROM THE FRENCH OF ANATOLE LEROY-BEAULIEU.

I.--ORIGIN OF THE RASKOL.

For more than two centuries Russian orthodoxy has been undermined by

obscure sects, unknown to foreigners, and little known to Russians

themselves. Beneath the imposing pile of the official Church have been

hollowed out vast underground burrows and a labyrinth of gloomy crypts,

which form a retreat for the popular beliefs and superstitions. We

propose to descend into these catacombs of ignorance and fanaticism. We

shall attempt to map them out, to explore their remotest nooks, and to

lay hold in this, their hiding-place, of the character and aspirations

of the people. Nothing could yield better means of acquaintance with the

genius of the nation and the groundwork of Russian society. The

_Raskol_, with its thousand sects, is perhaps the most original

feature of Russia, and what most sharply distinguishes it from Western

Europe.

Like rivers colored by the soil through which they flow, religions often

change their characteristics according to the nations who practice them.

The Raskol is Byzantine Christianity issuing from the Russian lower

classes. In the thick and muddy waters of Muscovite sectarianism we can

distinguish foreign admixtures, sometimes Protestant, sometimes Jewish,

or even Mohammedan, more frequently Gnostic or pagan. The Raskol,

nevertheless, remains wholly different, in principle and in tendency,

from all the religions and religious movements of the world: it is

original and national from the foundation up. So thoroughly Russian is

it that outside of its native country it has never made a proselyte, and

even within the empire has hardly any adherents excepting among the

people of "Greater Russia," the most thoroughly national of all. So

spontaneous has been its growth that in all its phases it is its own

best interpreter, and if confined to an isolated continent, its

development would have been the same. The Raskol is the most national of

all the religious movements to which Christianity has given birth, and

at the same time the most exclusively popular. It took its rise, not in

the schools, nor in the monasteries, but in the mujik's hovel and in the

shop; and it has never spread beyond its birthplace. Hence, the student

of politics and the philosopher take a keener interest in ignorant

heresies than is to be found in their doctrines alone. These sects of

lately-liberated peasants claim an attention by no means due to their

meagre theology, from their being the symptom of a mental condition and

a social state for even a distant approach to which all Western Europe

would be scoured in vain.

The Raskol (schism) is neither a sect nor a group of sects. It is,

rather, an aggregate of doctrines and heresies, which are often

divergent or even contradictory, with no other tie than a common

starting-point and a common hostility to the official orthodox Church.

In this respect the Raskol is more nearly analogous to Protestantism

than to anything else. It is inferior to Protestantism in the numbers

and education of its adherents, but it almost equals it as regards the

variety and originality of its developments. Further the likeness cannot

be fairly said to go. In the midst of their unfilial revolt, German

Protestantism and the Russian Raskol preserve alike the signs of their

origin, the stamp (so to speak) of the Church whence they have issued,

as well as of the widely-differing states of society which gave them

birth. In Western Europe love of speculation and a critical spirit gave

rise to the larger part of modern sects, while in Russia they are the

offspring of reverence and unenlightened obstinacy. In the West, the

predominance of feeling over the value attached to the externals of

religion has been the cause of religious divisions, whereas the same

result has been produced in Russia by an extraordinary reverence for

external forms for ritual and ceremonial. The two movements thus seem to

be in absolutely opposite directions, but they have nevertheless

terminated at the same point. In other words, the Raskol, when once

freed from the authority which maintained the unity of the faith, was as

powerless as Protestantism to establish any authority within itself. It

has in consequence become a prey to the same license of opinion, to the

same individualism, and, finally, to the same anarchy.

Few religious revolutions have involved results so, complex as the

Raskol, yet few have been simpler in their inception. The countless

sects which for two centuries have had their being among the Russian

people took their rise, in general, from the revision of the liturgy.

One stock produced them nearly all: only a few sects (though these, by

the way, are by no means the least curious) date from an earlier time or

have another origin than this liturgic reform. The Middle Ages in

Russia, as elsewhere, were marked by the rise of heresies. Of these the

oldest may have arisen before the Mongol conquest, from contact with

Greeks or Slaves, particularly with the Bulgarian Bogomiles, the

ancestors or Oriental brethren of the Albigenses. Other heresies sprang

up later in the North, in the Novgorod region, from intercourse with

Jewish or other Western traders. Of most of these the name alone

remains: such are the _Martinovtsy_, the _Strigolniki_, the

Judaizers, and so on. All these sects were dying away when the Raskol

broke out; and it absorbed all the vague, embryonic beliefs floating in

the popular mind. Some of these antique heresies--the Strigolniki, for

instance--after having disappeared from history, seem to have come to

light again in the shape of certain sects of our own days; and one might

fancy that they had been for centuries running on in an underground

channel.

In the dim disputes of mediæval times, however, one may make out with

some clearness the fundamental principle of the Raskol: it is a

scrupulous veneration for the letter--formalism, in a word. "In such a

year," says a Novgorod chronicler of the fifteenth century, "certain

philosophers began to chant, '_O_ Lord, have mercy upon us!' while

others said, '_Lord_, have mercy upon us!'"[004] In this remark the

whole Raskol stands revealed. Controversies like these begat the schism

which has rent the Russian Church asunder. Religious invocations have

for this people the nature of magical formulæ, the slightest change in

which destroys their efficacy. The Russian clings to the heathen

feeling, though he hides it under a Christian veil. He believes in the

power of particular words and gestures. He still seems to regard his

priest as a kind of _chaman_, religious ceremonies as enchantments,

and religion in general as witchcraft. A fondness for rites

(_obriad_) is indeed one of the characteristics of the inhabitant

of Greater Russia. The way in which Russia was converted to Christianity

has much to do with this. The mass of the people became Christians at

the bidding of others, and with no sufficient preparatory instruction,

without even having passed through all the stages of that polytheistic

evolution from which other nations of Europe had emerged before their

adoption of Christianity. The religion of the gospel was, in its highest

statement, too far advanced for the mental and social condition of the

people; and so it was corrupted, or rather reduced to external forms.

Russia adopted merely the outside of Christianity; and there, even more

strictly than in the West, it is true that the peasant was still a

heathen. Other nations have adopted the outside of a religion, and have

afterward absorbed its spirit: from its geographical and historical

remoteness such an absorption was hard for Russia to achieve. It was

separated from the centres of the Christian world by distance and by

Mongol rule: its religion, like everything else, was debased by poverty

and ignorance. Theology, properly speaking, utterly vanished, and its

place was taken by ceremonial, which thus became the whole of religion.

Amidst the general degradation a knowledge of the words and rites of

public worship was all that could be exacted of a clergy which did not

always know how to read.

The changes which had taken place in the traditional texts and ritual

have little solid ground for the popular devotion entertained for them.

The liturgy was corrupted by the superstitious veneration paid it by the

ignorant. False readings had crept into the books which contained the

various local "uses," to borrow a term from the Anglican terminology.

Liturgical unity had imperceptibly disappeared amidst various readings

and discordant ceremonies. In course of transcription absurdities had

slipped into the missals, along with grotesque additions and arbitrary

intercalations, while the new readings were received with the respect

due to antiquity, and these sometimes unintelligible passages acquired a

sanctity in direct proportion to their obscurity. The devout mind found

in them mysteries and occult meanings. On such perverted texts were

erected theories and systems which pious fraud from time to time

expanded into treatises attributed to the Fathers of the Church. So wild

was the confusion, and so palpable the alterations, that early in the

sixteenth century Vassili IV., a Russian prince, summoned a Greek monk

for the purpose of revising the liturgical books. But the blind

veneration of the clergy and people rendered this attempt abortive. The

reviser, Maximus, was condemned by a council, and confined on a charge

of heresy in a distant monastery. The crisis was superinduced by the

introduction of the press. Here, as elsewhere, the new discovery brought

with it a taste for the study and revision of texts, and ultimately

violent theological contests. The missals which issued from the Russian

presses of the sixteenth century at first only aggravated the evils for

which they should have afforded a remedy. The errors of the manuscripts

from which they were printed received from these missals the authority

and circulation of type. The copyists had introduced countless

variations, but these acquired a fresh unity and unanimity from the very

fact of their publication in such a form.

The Slavonic liturgy of Russia seemed in a state of hopeless corruption

when, toward the middle of the seventeenth century, the patriarch Nikon

determined upon a measure of reform. In addition to a degree of

cultivation unusual in his age and country, and an enterprising and

determined character, he possessed what was specially required for such

a step: he had learning, firmness and power, for through his influence

over Alexis, the czar, he ruled the State almost as thoroughly as he

ruled the Church. In Russia, as it was before Peter the Great, a task so

completely dependent on learning was indeed a bold undertaking. By order

of the patriarch ancient Greek and Slavonic manuscripts were gathered

from all quarters, and monks were summoned from Byzantium and from the

learned community of Athos to collate the Slavic versions with their

Greek originals. The interpolations due to the ignorance or whims of

copyists were remorselessly stricken out, and into the ritual, thus

purified, was introduced the pomp customary at the court of Byzantium.

The new missals were printed and adopted by a council (through the

patriarch's influence), and finally imposed, with all the authority of

the state government, on every Russian province. "A sore trembling laid

hold upon me," says a copyist of the sixteenth century, "and I was

affrighted when the reverend Maximus the Greek bade me blot out certain

lines from one of our Church books." Not less was the scandal under

Peter the Great. The man who laid hands on the sacred books was

everywhere held guilty of sacrilege. Whether from a knowledge of the

propriety of the measure, or from the spirit of ecclesiastical fidelity,

the higher clergy upheld the patriarch, but their inferiors and the

common people made a determined fight. And even now, after the lapse of

more than two centuries, a large body adhere immovably to the ancient

books and the ancient ritual, which are made sacred to them by the

approbation of national councils and the blessing of generations of

patriarchs. Such was the inception of the schism, the Raskol, which

still divides the Russian Church. Tracing the matter back to its source,

the contest is seen to turn upon the knotty question of the transmission

and the translation of the sacred texts, which has more than once

divided the churches of the West. In Russia no one was competent to form

a proper judgment of the essence of the dispute, and it was thus

rendered only more lasting and bitter. Monks, deacons, plain sextons,

denounced the innovations as novelties borrowed from Rome or from the

Protestants, and as being tantamount to the bringing in of a new

religion. When the Church brought to bear upon these recusants the pains

and penalties everywhere employed against heretics, the only result was

to give the schism martyrs, and with martyrs a fresh impetus. Ten years

after the promulgation of the revised liturgy its rash author fell a

victim to the jealousy of the boyards and to his own arrogance, and was

solemnly deposed by a council. To the Raskol his deposition appeared in

the light of a justification of their own course. The condemnation of

the reformer seemed necessarily to involve the condemnation of the

reform. Great, then, was the popular bewilderment when the council

turned from deposing the author of the liturgic revision to hurl its

anathemas against those who opposed that revision. The share taken in

this excommunication by the Oriental patriarchs rather lessened than

added to its weight, since the dissenters denied to Greek and Syrian

bishops, who knew not a letter of the Slavonic alphabet, the right of

passing judgment on Slavonic books.

The theological world is no stranger to subtleties, but never perhaps

did causes so trifling breed such interminable quarrels. The sign and

the form of the cross, the heading of processions westward or eastward,

the reading of a particular article of the Creed, the spelling of the

name of Jesus, the inscription to be placed over the crucifix, the

single or double repetition of the Hallelujah, the number of eucharistic

wafers to be consecrated,--such are the leading points in the

controversy which ever since has rent the Russian Church. The orthodox

make the sign of the cross with three fingers, while the dissenters

follow the Armenian practice of only two. The former permit the cross

with four arms, like our own: the latter cannot away with any but that

with eight arms, with a crosspiece for the Saviour's head and another

for his feet. Since the reform the Church chants the Hallelujah thrice,

the Raskolniks only twice. The dissenters defend their persistence by

symbolical interpretations, and delight to make a profession of faith

out of the simplest rite. For instance, they insist that after their

fashion of making the sign of the cross the three closed fingers render

homage to the Trinity, while the two others testify to the double nature

of Christ, so that, without uttering a word, the sign of the cross is an

act of adherence to the three fundamental dogmas of Christianity--the

Trinity, the incarnation and the atonement. In like manner they

interpret the double Hallelujah following the three Glorias, and cast it

in the teeth of their opponents that they ignore in their ritual one or

another of the great Christian doctrines. Such interpretations, based on

corrupted texts or feigned visions, show the grotesque blending of

coarseness and subtlety which makes up the Raskol.

If we may judge from the origin of the schism, its essence lies in the

worship of the letter, the servile respect for forms. To the

anti-reforming Russian, ceremonies form the whole of Christianity, and

liturgy is one with orthodoxy. The same confusion between faith and the

outward forms of worship is revealed by the chosen name in which the

dissenters delight. Not content with the title of _Starovbriadtsy_

(old ritualists), they adopt that of _Starovery_ (maintainers of

the old faith), which amounts to styling themselves _true_

believers, the genuine orthodox, since in religious matters, unlike

those of human science, authority is on the side of antiquity, and even

innovations must come forward invoking the past. Here, as often happens,

there is little ground for the Starovery's boast, for if they preserve

the ancient Russian books, their opponents have gone back to the old

Byzantine liturgy; and the party which most loudly vaunts its claim to

antiquity does so with least reason.

The principle of the Raskol, which sometimes runs out into the wildest

dreams of mysticism, is essentially realistic. Under this materialistic

_cultus_, however, there lurks a sort of idealism, of coarse

spiritualism. Religious vagaries, with all their absurdities, always

have a lofty, sometimes even a sublime, side. It would be wrong to fancy

that there is nothing but ignorant superstition in the Starovere's

scrupulous attachment to his ancestral worship. The vulgar heresy is, in

fact, only an overdone ritualism, whose logic lands it in absurdity. The

Old Believer's reverence for the letter comes from his belief that

letter and spirit are indissolubly united, and that the forms of

religion are as needful as its essence. Religion is to him, both as

regards forms and dogmas, a whole, all whose parts hang together; and no

human hand can touch this masterpiece of Providence without blemishing

it. There is an occult sense in every word and in every rite. He cannot

believe that any ceremony or formula of the Church is void of meaning or

of efficacy. Divine service has nothing in it merely accessory,

indifferent or unmeaning. Holy things are holy throughout: in the

worship of the Lord everything is deep and full of mystery; and it is

blasphemy to change anything or to withhold from it its proper

veneration. The Starovere, of course, cannot formulate his doctrine, but

if he could, religion would appear, according to his view, a sort of

completed and adequate representation of the supernatural world. His

simple logic exacts from all public worship an absolute perfection which

it is impossible to realize. Looked at in this light, the Old Believer

who marched to the stake for the sign of the cross, and sacrificed his

tongue rather than chant another Hallelujah, grows highly respectable.

From this standing-point the Russian schism is essentially religious:

its mistake, so to speak, is the excess of religion. Symbolism is the

principle of its formalism, or rather the Raskol is symbolism run into a

heresy. This gives it originality and value in sectarian history. To

these extravagant ritualists ceremonies are not simply the garb of

religion: they are its flesh and blood, in whose absence dogma is but a

lifeless skeleton. Thus, the Raskol is the direct opposite of ordinary

Protestantism, which by its very nature sets small store by outward

ceremonies, regarding them as needless ornament or a dangerous

superfluity. Ritual to the Starovere is as much an integral part of

traditional Christianity as doctrine: it, is equally the legacy of

Christ and the apostles; and the sole mission of the Church and the

clergy is to preserve both intact. This leaning to symbolism saves his

scrupulous fidelity to outward forms from degenerating into a slavish

superstition. On the other hand, the allegorizing tendency which clings

fast to the letter sometimes takes odd liberties with the spirit of

ceremonies and texts. It is the peculiarity of the symbolizing temper

scrupulously to respect the form while arbitrarily dealing with the

spirit. Thus, the ritual and the sacred books become a kind of heavenly

charade, whose answer must be found by the imagination. And so, in their

hunt after the hidden sense of narratives and words, some of the

Raskolniks have allegorized the histories of the Old and New Testaments,

and changed the gospel records into parables. Some have gone so far as

to see in the greatest of the gospel miracles nothing but types.[005]

Such a system of exegesis easily leads to a kind of mystic rationalism:

the forms of religion tend to gain more consistency than the essence,

and public worship to be placed above doctrine. Some of the extreme

sects of the Raskol have actually reached this point. A perfect carnival

of wild interpretation prevailed among this ignorant rabble, and crazy

doctrines and grotesque tenets were not slow in following in its train.

The Old Believer loves his peculiar rites, not only for the meaning he

puts into them, but also for the sake of the authority on which he holds

them: the moral and social _rationale_ of the schism is a deep

respect for traditional customs and for the habits handed down from his

forefathers. But even in his slavish devotion to ancestral ritual and

prayers the Starovere simply exaggerates a feeling which, if not

properly religious, commonly links itself with religion and adds to its

influence. All men and all nations set great store by the maintenance of

their hereditary faith, and even the common rhetorical abuse of such

phrases demonstrates its power. When thus intertwined with the

associations of family and country, religion assumes the guise of an

inheritance solemnly committed to our trust by the departed. This

feeling is singularly powerful in Russia from linking itself with a

superstitious veneration for antiquity. You can often get no other

reason from many of these sectaries for the faith that is in them. Quite

recently a judge tried to bring to reason a group of peasants who were

under prosecution for celebrating clandestine religious rites, but he

could extract no other answer than this: "Our fathers practiced these

customs. Take us anywhere you please, but leave us free to worship as

our fathers did." A like reply is said to have been made by the Old

Believers of Moscow to the late czarovitch on occasion of a visit to

their burying-ground at Rogojski.

The liturgic reform of the seventeenth century was a revolution in the

simplest elements of worship: it called upon the son to unlearn the sign

of the cross that his mother had taught him. Such a change would have

been hazardous anywhere, but it caused a peculiarly serious disturbance

in Russia, where all prayer is connected with a kind of ceremonial of

repeated bowings and crossings, which more closely resemble the

devotional customs of the Mohammedans than those of other Christian

countries. The people violently rejected the new sign of the cross and

the entire reformed liturgy. It mattered little that the new ritual was

more ancient than their own. The ignorant Russian knows no antiquity

older than his fathers and grandfathers, and his attachment to the outer

forms of orthodoxy was only intensified by remembering the recent

attempts of popes and Jesuits to gain a foothold in the country. If he

suffered the least change in his cherished customs, he might risk being

Romanized, and, like the United Greeks of Poland, one day wake up and

find himself part and parcel of the spiritual dominion of the papacy.

With such dim fears the Old Believer opposed to the orthodox hierarchy a

blind fidelity to orthodoxy. Their dread of seeing the Church corrupted

inspired people and clergy with suspicion of all foreigners, even of

their brethren in the faith whom the czars or the patriarchs had invited

from Byzantium and from Kief. The Russian alone, of all the orthodox

nations, had maintained his independence against infidel and pope, and

he held himself the people of God, chosen to preserve the true faith.

Everything European was indiscriminately rejected by this long-isolated

nation. Their detestation of the West, its churches and its

civilization, leads some of the Old Believers to anathematize even the

language of theology and learning. Not longer ago than the close of the

last century one of their writers waxed hot against the orthodox priests

of Lesser Russia, many of whom, he said, "study the thrice-accursed

Latin tongue." He reviled them for their readiness to commit the mortal

sin of calling God _Deus_, and God the Father _Pater_, as

though the Deity could have no other than the Slavic name of _Bog_,

or the change of appellation involved a change of God. A like spirit is

evident in the resistance offered by the Staroveres to the correct

spelling of the name of Jesus, whom they persist in calling Issous,

rejecting as diabolical the more accurate form Iissous. Such

peculiarities show a nation shut up in its own vastness and isolated by

its position and its history. It is a kind of Christianized China,

knowing, and desiring to know, nothing beyond itself.

The revolt against the innovating patriarch was, in reality, a revolt

against foreign, particularly against Western, influences. Instead of

the accusation that he leaned to Romanism or Lutheranism, it would have

been a better representation of the real grievance to charge him and the

czar with borrowing from the West, not its theology, but its spirit and

civilization, and even this, perhaps, unwittingly. The outbreak of the

Raskol synchronizes with the introduction of foreign influence; and the

coincidence is not accidental. The schism was but the reaction against

the reforms which the Romanoffs carried out in so European a spirit. The

patriarch's enterprise has been sometimes attributed to his vanity or

his thirst for literary fame, but it was really the first indication of

the approaching revolution, and of a growing sympathy with the West,

where (as in England, for instance) at about the same period

analogous[006] reforms gave birth to similar disturbances. If the former

hermit of the White Sea invited criticism and learning to review the

ritual of his Church, it was only in obedience to the same

_Zeitgeist_ which under Peter the Great's elder brother, who

succeeded Alexis, was to found at Moscow a kind of ecclesiastical

university modeled on that of Kief. The Church, not less than the State,

felt the Western breeze that was rising on the Russian steppes. And, as

the Western spirit first attempted to introduce itself in the sphere of

religion, so religion confronted it with its most formidable barrier.

From the historian's point of view, the Raskol is that same popular

resistance to the introduction of Western novelties which under Peter

the Great passed from its original aspect of an ecclesiastical and

religious revolt into the further stage of a social and civil

insurrection.

II.--OPPOSITION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION.

In spite of himself, Peter the Great both inherited and aggravated

the schism. At the present day it is hard to picture the impression

produced upon his subjects by Peter I. He not merely astonished and

bewildered them: he scandalized them. An open, systematic and

sometimes brutal attack was made upon the customs, traditions and

prejudices of the people. The reformer did not confine himself to

the civil institutions: he laid violent hands upon the Church, and

forced his way into the family, regulating, as the whim seized him,

both public affairs and the private life of the citizen. The

old-fashioned Russian was a stranger in Peter's new empire. His eyes

were shocked by the spectacle of an unaccustomed garb, and novel

administrative titles fell strangely on his ear. Names and things,

the almanac and the laws, the alphabet and the fashions of

dress,--everything was transformed. The very elements of

civilization were hardly recognizable. The year began on the first

of January, instead of the first of September. Men were no longer to

date from the creation, but must adopt the Latin era. The old

Slavonic characters, hallowed by immemorial ecclesiastical use, were

partly cast aside, and what were retained took a new shape. The

masculine attire was altered and the chin was shorn of its beard,

while the veil no longer might protect the modesty of the women. The

impression made by such a succession of shocks upon a nation so

bigotedly attached to its ancestral ways was comparable only to an

earthquake rocking Old Russia to its foundations.

Many of these innovations, as being borrowed from the Romanists or

the Lutherans of the West, had a religious significance for the

people. The change introduced by Peter the Great in the ancient

calendar, in the Slavonic alphabet and in the national costume

seemed but a carrying out of those which Nikon had initiated. So

natural was the parallel that the Old Believers held the one to be

but the continuation of the other; and the notion took shape in a

seditious legend, according to which Peter was the adulterous

offspring of the patriarch. The popular aversion felt for the

reforms of the latter was augmented by that aroused by the emperor's

innovations: the social revolt took the disguise of religion, since

it had been provoked by a Church measure, and still more because

Russia had not yet emerged from that stage of civilization in which

every great popular movement assumes a religious aspect. A national

prestige was thus communicated to the Raskol, which in its turn lent

to the popular resistance the energy of religion. By giving the

social revolt the semblance of a struggle for the rights of

conscience the schism imparted to it a vigor and persistency which

the lapse of two centuries has not succeeded in crushing.

But the Raskol rebelled not only against innovations and the

introduction of foreign elements, but still more obstinately against

the principle of the reforms and the modern method of state

administration. The Russian, like the Mohammedan East of to-day and

all other primitive societies, was most keenly sensitive to the

burdens and vexations made necessary by this imitation of the

European governmental system. From this point of view the Raskol was

the opposition of a half-patriarchal society to the regular,

scientific, omnipresent, impersonal system of European

administration. It kicks instinctively against centralization and

bureaucracy--against the state's encroachments upon private life,

the family and the community. It struggles to tear itself loose from

the pitiless machinery of government, hemming every life within its

iron pale. The Cossack took refuge in the wild freedom of nomadic

life, and the Old Believer was equally averse to giving in to the

complicated mechanism of government. He would have nothing to do

with the census, with passports or stamped paper. He strove to elude

the new systems of taxation and conscription, and to this day some

of the Raskolniks are in a state of systematic revolt against the

simplest of governmental methods. Religious grounds, of course, are

found for this insubordination, and they have theological arguments

to urge against the census, as well as against the registration of

births and deaths. In the opinion of a strict Old Believer the right

of numbering the people belongs to God alone, as is shown by the

biblical record of David's punishment. Sometimes the official

designations strengthen the scruples of these simple folk, with

their tendency to attach a great importance to phrases and names;

and hence, partly at least, the popular antipathy to the poll-tax

under its Russian form, "soul-tax." The revolt against such phrases

is the fashion in which this nation of serfs, whose body was chained

to the soil, asserted its possession of a soul.[007]