A Secret Revealed.
I thought to pass away before, and yet alive I am;
And in the fields all round I hear the bleating of the lamb.
How sadly, I remember, rose the morning of the year!
To die before the snow-drop came, and now the violet's here.
Oh! sweet is the new violet that comes beneath the skies
And sweeter is the young lamb's voice to me that cannot rise;
And sweet is all the land about, and all the flowers that blow;
And sweeter far is death than life to me that long to go.
--Tennyson.
It was a bright, cheerful morning in June. The sinking, feeble
Madeleine had requested her domestics to carry her to the conservatory,
that she might gaze again on the flowers that were soon to blossom
on her grave. Death had lingered in his approach. The gay, the
ambitious, and healthy he had taken all too soon; but for Madeleine,
WHO LONGED TO GO, he tarried. Her little violets had already given
their first fragrant kiss to breezes that passed with no mournful
cadence through the cypresses of the lonely cemetery. Crumbling in
her hand a faded rose, she breathed the thought so beautifully versified
in after-times by the immortal bard of Erin:
So soon may I follow
When friendships decay,
And from love's shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie withered
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
The sentiment was prophetic: other flowers of affection will be withered
by the vicissitudes of destiny; fond ones will flee, leaving the world
a wilderness for her last hours!
It often happens in the course of life that we are driven by some
inexplicable fatality to suffer those very afflictions we dread the
most. We are told of persons who trembled for a lifetime at the horrid
anticipation of being one day mad; it was the shadow of the judgement
that was creeping on them, which cast them finally amongst the victims
of the lunatic asylum. The suicide is the prophet of his own doom;
the presentiment of death by drowning has but too often ended in a
watery grave. Perhaps where the fibres of the heart are weakest, the
strain brought on them by excited fancy snaps them in the misfortune
that is dreaded; or perhaps some unseen spirit, charged with the decree
of our individual sorrow, casts the dark shadow of his wing over our
thoughts, and communicates the gloomy foreboding of a presentiment.
They dying mother had one of these heart-tearing presentiments, so
frequent and so mysterious in the history of human suffering.
She was guilty of a species of maternal idolatry; centered in her child
Louis Marie as rays gathered up into a focus, were all her hopes, her
aspirations, her ideas of the future. If she could be assured she
would live to see her son leading the armies of the empire, ruling
in the cabinets of state or worshipped in the circles of the great
and learned, Heaven itself could not build up a greater joy in the
limited horizon of her hopes; but an awful conviction crept over her
that some misfortune would tear from her the object of her love like
the fruit torn from the stem, like the young branch from the oak. In
dreams she saw him struggling in the torrent which bore him away, or
dragged to the hills at the feet of a wild horse. More than once she
saw him on board a Government vessel, sailing with the hapless children
of guilt to the convict settlements of southern seas--not as a felon,
but an angel of light amongst the condemned.'
Whilst Madeleine was sitting in the conservatory, musing over the gloomy
anticipations her dreams had cast over her thoughts, Louis Marie came
towards her. A beam of joy lit up her hectic cheek; she impressed
a kiss on the forehead of her darling son, and playfully reproved him
for the dreams that gave her so much trouble.
"Mother," we fancy we hear Louis reply, "you would not surely give
much credence to the imaginary evils of a dream. You know nothing can
happen to us except by the arrangement of God; not even a hair can fall
to the ground without his permission. I remember in college I was
very much delighted with a thesis one of the fathers gave us on the
Providence of God; it was so strange and so consoling to think that
great Being who created so many millions of worlds, and keeps them
flying around him with immense velocity, could occupy himself with us
human beings, who are no more than insects moving on this world, which
is but a speck in the immensity of the universe. But I know how it
is--our souls are immortal, and hence we must soar higher than the
countless worlds, were they ten times as great. Our blessed Lord, by
coming amongst us and dying to save those souls, showed us that he
thought more of us than of the bird of the air or the lily of the
field, clothed in such charming magnificence. Is it unreasonable that,
since he has given to each star a course, to each lily and each bird
a time and a clime, he should also determine for us the course we
should follow for his greater glory? And what, mother, if some unseen,
invisible destiny should really call me away; if it were for the glory
of God and the salvation of souls, would you not rejoice?"
Madeleine paused for a moment before venturing a reply. She trembled;
a struggle between affection and duty passed within. Pleased with the
rich flow of virtuous sentiment that made her still more proud of her
child, she had caught the end of a golden thread and wished to unravel
it further, but feared it would be snapped by some unpleasant discovery.
Full of excitement, and her eyes filled with a penetrating, enquiring
gaze upon Louis, she answered:
"Louis, I should be false to the lessons I have endeavored to teach
you in these last fleeting hours of my ill-spent life, were I not to
rejoice in any destiny that would wrap up your future career in the
glory of God; but I fear the enthusiasm of your young heart will
misguide you. I know, from the serious tone of your voice and look
in asking that question, you have been feeling your way to make some
crushing disclosure. I saw you crying in the garden this afternoon,
and for some time past I have noticed a cloud of anxiety hanging over
you. I had determined the first moment we were alone to know the cause
of this trouble; and I now conjure you, by the affection and duty which
you owe me as your mother, to let me share in your anxieties and in
your councils."
Louis had really come to broach the terrible secret to his mother, but
he had not yet courage; he struggled manfully to suppress internal
motions that might at any moment, like sullen rivers, overflow and
betray their existence in a flood of tears. Fearing to venture suddenly
on the subject that was fullest in his heart, he partly evaded his
mother's energetic appeal, and made such a reply as would elicit from
her quick perception the declaration that trembled on his lips.
"If war were declared with our frontier foes, and our beloved King
commanded the youth of the country to gird on the sword for our national
defence, you, mother, would help me to buckle on mine?"
"Yes, Louis, I would give you proudly to the cause of France," continued
Madeleine, feigning a patriotism she scarcely felt. "But, thanks be
to God, I am not called on now to claim an honor that is at best a
sacrifice and a calamity."
"But, mother, the war is declared, and I am to be a soldier in a sacred
cause."
"How!" cried Madeleine excitedly. "Are the followers of the Black
Prince again attacking us? The Turks seeking revenge for the defeat
of Lepanto? or Christian Spain still intoxicated with its own dream
of ambition? Whence come the sound of arms, Louis, to fire thy young
ambition? If I judge rightly, thy disposition leads thee more to
the cloister than to the battle-field."
"'Tis so," replied Louis, who had adroitly brought the conversation
to the subject that occupied his thoughts, and to the announcement
that would ring with such thrill on his mother's ears. "And I am
going to join a religious community immediately, to become a soldier
in the great war of right against wrong--of this world against the
next. To this war the trumpet-calls of grace have summoned me, and
I come to ask the mother who would give me to the cause of my country
to do the same for Almighty God."
A step was heard outside. Louis glided into the garden, and Madeleine
was again found by her husband buried in tears.