“As is the race of leaves so is that of men.” And a great man budded

unnoticed in a tailor's house at Rotterdam this year, and a large man

dropped to earth with great eclat.

Philip, Duke of Burgundy, Earl of Holland, etc., etc., lay sick at

Bruges. Now paupers got sick and got well as Nature pleased; but woe

betided the rich in an age when, for one Mr. Malady killed three fell by

Dr. Remedy.

The Duke's complaint, nameless then, is now diphtheria. It is, and was,

a very weakening malady, and the Duke was old; so altogether Dr. Remedy

bled him.

The Duke turned very cold: wonderful!

Then Dr. Remedy had recourse to the arcana of science.

“Ho! This is grave. Flay me an ape incontinent, and clap him to the

Duke's breast!”

Officers of state ran septemvious, seeking an ape, to counteract the

bloodthirsty tomfoolery of the human species.

Perdition! The duke was out of apes. There were buffaloes, lizards,

Turks, leopards; any unreasonable beast but the right one.

“Why, there used to be an ape about,” said one. “If I stand here I saw

him.”

So there used; but the mastiff had mangled the sprightly creature for

stealing his supper; and so fulfilled the human precept, “Soyez de votre

siecle!”

In this emergency the seneschal cast his despairing eyes around; and not

in vain. A hopeful light shot into them.

“Here is this,” said he, sotto voce. “Surely this will serve: 'tis

altogether apelike, doublet and hose apart.”

“Nay,” said the chancellor peevishly, “the Princess Marie would hang us.

She doteth on this.”

Now this was our friend Giles, strutting, all unconscious, in cloth of

gold.

Then Dr. Remedy grew impatient, and bade flay a dog.

“A dog is next best to an ape; only it must be a dog all of one colour.”

So they flayed a liver-coloured dog, and clapped it, yet palpitating, to

their sovereign's breast and he died.

Philip the Good, thus scientifically disposed of, left thirty-one

children: of whom one, somehow or another, was legitimate; and reigned

in his stead.

The good duke provided for nineteen out of the other thirty; the rest

shifted for themselves.

According to the Flemish chronicle the deceased prince was descended

from the kings of Troy through Thierry of Aquitaine, and Chilperic,

Pharamond, etc., the old kings of Franconia.

But this in reality was no distinction. Not a prince of his day have

I been able to discover who did not come down from Troy. “Priam” was

mediaeval for “Adam.”

The good duke's, body was carried into Burgundy, and laid in a noble

mausoleum of black marble at Dijon.

Holland rang with his death; and little dreamed that anything as

famous was born in her territory that year. That judgment has been long

reversed. Men gaze at the tailor's house, here the great birth of the

fifteenth century took place. In what house the good duke died “no one

knows and no one cares,” as the song says.

And why?

Dukes Philip the Good come and go, and leave mankind not a halfpenny

wiser, nor better, nor other than they found it.

But when, once in three hundred years, such a child is born to the world

as Margaret's son, lo! a human torch lighted by fire from heaven; and

“FIAT LUX” thunder's from pole to pole.

CHAPTER LXXII

The Cloister

The Dominicans, or preaching friars, once the most powerful order in

Europe, were now on the wane; their rivals and bitter enemies, the

Franciscans, were overpowering them throughout Europe; even in England,

a rich and religious country, where under the name of the Black Friars,

they had once been paramount.

Therefore the sagacious men, who watched and directed the interests of

the order, were never so anxious to incorporate able and zealous sons

and send them forth to win back the world.

The zeal and accomplishments of Clement, especially his rare mastery of

language (for he spoke Latin, Italian, French, high and low Dutch),

soon transpired, and he was destined to travel and preach in England,

corresponding with the Roman centre.

But Jerome, who had the superior's ear, obstructed this design.

“Clement,” said he, “has the milk of the world still in his veins, its

feelings, its weaknesses let not his new-born zeal and his humility

tempt us to forego our ancient wisdom. Try him first, and temper him,

lest one day we find ourselves leaning on a reed for a staff.

“It is well advised,” said the prior. “Take him in hand thyself.”

Then Jerome, following the ancient wisdom, took Clement and tried him.

One day he brought him to a field where the young men amused themselves

at the games of the day; he knew this to be a haunt of Clement's late

friends.

And sure enough ere long Pietro Vanucci and Andrea passed by them, and

cast a careless glance on the two friars. They did not recognize their

dead friend in a shaven monk.

Clement gave a very little start, and then lowered his eyes and said a

paternoster.

“Would ye not speak with them, brother?” said Jerome, trying him.

“No brother: yet was it good for me to see them. They remind me of the

sins I can never repent enough.”

“It is well,” said Jerome, and he made a cold report in Clement's

favour.

Then Jerome took Clement to many death-beds. And then into noisome

dungeons; places where the darkness was appalling, and the stench

loathsome, pestilential; and men looking like wild beasts lay coiled

in rags and filth and despair. It tried his body hard; but the soul

collected all its powers to comfort such poor wretches there as were

not past comfort. And Clement shone in that trial. Jerome reported that

Clement's spirit was willing, but his flesh was weak.

“Good!” said Anselm; “his flesh is weak, but his spirit is willing.”

But there was a greater trial in store.

I will describe it as it was seen by others.

One morning a principal street in Rome was crowded, and even the avenues

blocked up with heads. It was an execution. No common crime had been

done, and on no vulgar victim.

The governor of Rome had been found in his bed at daybreak, slaughtered.

His hand, raised probably in self-defence, lay by his side severed at

the wrist; his throat was cut, and his temples bruised with some blunt

instrument. The murder had been traced to his servant, and was to be

expiated in kind this very morning.

Italian executions were not cruel in general. But this murder was

thought to call for exact and bloody retribution.

The criminal was brought to the house of the murdered man and fastened

for half an hour to its wall. After this foretaste of legal vengeance

his left hand was struck off, like his victim's. A new-killed fowl was

cut open and fastened round the bleeding stump; with what view I really

don't know; but by the look of it, some mare's nest of the poor dear

doctors; and the murderer, thus mutilated and bandaged, was hurried to

the scaffold; and there a young friar was most earnest and affectionate

in praying with him, and for him, and holding the crucifix close to his

eyes.

Presently the executioner pulled the friar roughly on one side, and in

a moment felled the culprit with a heavy mallet, and falling on him, cut

his throat from ear to ear.

There was a cry of horror from the crowd.

The young friar swooned away.

A gigantic monk strode forward, and carried him off like a child.

Brother Clement went back to the convent sadly discouraged. He confessed

to the prior, with tears of regret.

“Courage, son Clement,” said the prior. “A Dominican is not made in

a day. Thou shalt have another trial. And I forbid thee to go to it

fasting.” Clement bowed his head in token of obedience. He had not long

to wait. A robber was brought to the scaffold; a monster of villainy

and cruelty, who had killed men in pure wantonness, after robbing them.

Clement passed his last night in prison with him, accompanied him to

the scaffold, and then prayed with him and for him so earnestly that the

hardened ruffian shed tears and embraced him Clement embraced him

too, though his flesh quivered with repugnance; and held the crucifix

earnestly before his eyes. The man was garotted, and Clement lost sight

of the crowd, and prayed loud and earnestly while that dark spirit was

passing from earth. He was no sooner dead than the hangman raised his

hatchet and quartered the body on the spot. And, oh, mysterious heart

of man! the people who had seen the living body robbed of life with

indifference, almost with satisfaction, uttered a piteous cry at each

stroke of the axe upon his corpse that could feel nought. Clement too

shuddered then, but stood firm, like one of those rocks that vibrate but

cannot be thrown down. But suddenly Jerome's voice sounded in his ear.

“Brother Clement, get thee on that cart and preach to the people. Nay,

quickly! strike with all thy force on all this iron, while yet 'tis hot,

and souls are to be saved.”

Clement's colour came and went; and he breathed hard. But he obeyed, and

with ill-assured step mounted the cart, and preached his first sermon

to the first crowd he had ever faced. Oh, that sea of heads! His throat

seemed parched, his heart thumped, his voice trembled.

By-and-by the greatness of the occasion, the sight of the eager upturned

faces, and his own heart full of zeal, fired the pale monk. He told them

this robber's history, warm from his own lips in the prison, and showed

his hearers by that example the gradations of folly and crime, and

warned them solemnly not to put foot on the first round of that fatal

ladder. And as alternately he thundered against the shedders of blood,

and moved the crowd to charity and pity, his tremors left him, and he

felt all strung up like a lute, and gifted with an unsuspected force; he

was master of that listening crowd, could feel their very pulse,

could play sacred melodies on them as on his psaltery. Sobs and groans

attested his power over the mob already excited by the tragedy before

them. Jerome stared like one who goes to light a stick; and fires a

rocket. After a while Clement caught his look of astonishment, and

seeing no approbation in it, broke suddenly off, and joined him.

“It was my first endeavour,” said he apologetically. “Your behest came

on me like a thunderbolt. Was I?--Did I?--Oh, correct me, and aid me

with your experience, Brother Jerome.”

“Humph!” said Jerome doubtfully. He added, rather sullenly after long

reflection, “Give the glory to God, Brother Clement; my opinion is thou

art an orator born.”

He reported the same at headquarters, half reluctantly. For he was an

honest friar though a disagreeable one.

One Julio Antonelli was accused of sacrilege; three witnesses swore they

saw him come out of the church whence the candle-sticks were stolen, and

at the very time. Other witnesses proved an alibi for him as positively.

Neither testimony could be shaken. In this doubt Antonelli was permitted

the trial by water, hot or cold. By the hot trial he must put his bare

arm into boiling water, fourteen inches deep, and take out a pebble; by

the cold trial his body must be let down into eight feet of water.

The clergy, who thought him innocent, recommended the hot water trial,

which, to those whom they favoured, was not so terrible as it sounded.

But the poor wretch had not the nerve, and chose the cold ordeal. And

this gave Jerome another opportunity of steeling Clement. Antonelli took

the sacrament, and then was stripped naked on the banks of the Tiber,

and tied hand and foot, to prevent those struggles by which a man,

throwing his arms out of the water, sinks his body.

He was then let down gently into the stream, and floated a moment, with

just his hair above water. A simultaneous roar from the crowd on

each bank proclaimed him guilty. But the next moment the ropes,

which happened to be new, got wet, and he settled down. Another roar

proclaimed his innocence. They left him at the bottom of the river

the appointed time, rather more than half a minute, then drew him up,

gurgling and gasping, and screaming for mercy; and after the appointed

prayers, dismissed him, cleared of the charge.

During the experiment Clement prayed earnestly on the bank.

When it was over he thanked God in a loud but slightly quavering voice.

By-and-by he asked Jerome whether the man ought not to be compensated.

“For what?”

“For the pain, the dread, the suffocation. Poor soul, he liveth, but

hath tasted all the bitterness of death. Yet he had done no ill.”

“He is rewarded enough in that he is cleared of his fault.”

“But being innocent of that fault, yet hath he drunk Death's cup, though

not to the dregs; and his accusers, less innocent than he, do suffer

nought.”

Jerome replied somewhat sternly--

“It is not in this world men are really punished, Brother Clement.

Unhappy they who sin yet suffer not. And happy they who suffer such ills

as earth hath power to inflict; 'tis counted to them above, ay, and a

hundred-fold.”

Clement bowed his head submissively.

“May thy good words not fall to the ground, but take root in my heart,

Brother Jerome.”

But the severest trial Clement underwent at Jerome's hands was

unpremeditated. It came about thus. Jerome, in an indulgent moment, went

with him to Fra Colonna, and there “The Dream of Polifilo” lay on the

table just copied fairly. The poor author, in the pride of his heart,

pointed out a master-stroke in it.

“For ages,” said he, “fools have been lavishing poetic praise and

amorous compliment on mortal women, mere creatures of earth, smacking

palpably of their origin; Sirens at the windows, where our Roman women

in particular have by lifelong study learned the wily art to show their

one good feature, though but an ear or an eyelash, at a jalosy, and

hide all the rest; Magpies at the door, Capre n' i giardini, Angeli in

Strada, Sante in chiesa, Diavoli in casa. Then come I and ransack the

minstrels' lines for amorous turns, not forgetting those which Petrarch

wasted on that French jilt Laura, the sliest of them all; and I lay you

the whole bundle of spice at the feet of the only females worthy amorous

incense; to wit, the Nine Muses.”

“By which goodly stratagem,” said Jerome, who had been turning the pages

all this time, “you, a friar of St. Dominic, have produced an obscene

book.” And he dashed Polifilo on the table.

“Obscene? thou discourteous monk!” And the author ran round the table,

snatched Polifilo away, locked him up, and trembling with mortification,

said, “My Gerard, pshaw! Brother What's-his-name had not found Polifilo

obscene. Puris omnia pura.”

“Such as read your Polifilo--Heaven grant they may be few--will find him

what I find him.”

Poor Colonna gulped down this bitter pill as he might; and had he

not been in his own lodgings, and a high-born gentleman as well as a

scholar, there might have been a vulgar quarrel.

As it was, he made a great effort, and turned the conversation to

a beautiful chrysolite the Cardinal Colonna had lent him; and while

Clement handled it, enlarged on its moral virtues: for he went the whole

length of his age as a worshipper of jewels.

But Jerome did not, and expostulated with him for believing that one

dead stone could confer valour on its wearer, another chastity, another

safety from poison, another temperance.

“The experience of ages proves they do,” said Colonna. “As to the last

virtue you have named, there sits a living proof. This Gerard--I beg

pardon, Brother Thingemy--comes from the north, where men drink like

fishes; yet was he ever most abstemious. And why? Carried an amethyst,

the clearest and fullest coloured e'er I saw on any but noble finger.

Where, in Heaven's name, is thine amethyst? Show it this unbeliever!”

“And 'twas that amethyst made the boy temperate?” asked Jerome

ironically.

“Certainly. Why, what is the derivation and meaning of amethyst? {a}

negative, and {methua} to tipple. Go to, names are but the signs of

things. A stone is not called {amethustos} for two thousand years out of

mere sport, and abuse of language.”

He then went through the prime jewels, illustrating their moral

properties, especially of the ruby, the sapphire, the emerald, and the

opal, by anecdotes out of grave historians.

“These be old wives' fables,” said Jerome contemptuously. “Was ever such

credulity as thine?”

Now credulity is a reproach sceptics have often the ill-luck to incur;

but it mortifies them none the less for that.

The believer in stones writhed under it, and dropped the subject. Then

Jerome, mistaking his silence, exhorted him to go a step farther, and

give up from this day his vain pagan lore, and study the lives of the

saints. “Blot out these heathen superstitions from thy mind, brother, as

Christianity hath blotted them from the earth.”

And in this strain he proceeded, repeating, incautiously, some current

but loose theological statements. Then the smarting Polifilo revenged

himself. He flew out, and hurled a mountain of crude, miscellaneous

lore upon Jerome, of which, partly for want of time, partly for lack of

learning, I can reproduce but a few fragments.

“The heathen blotted out? Why, they hold four-fifths of the world. And

what have we Christians invented without their aid? painting? sculpture?

these are heathen arts, and we but pigmies at them. What modern mind

can conceive and grave so god-like forms as did the chief Athenian

sculptors, and the Libyan Licas, and Dinocrates of Macedon, and Scopas,

Timotheus, Leochares, and Briaxis; Chares, Lysippus, and the immortal

three of Rhodes, that wrought Laocoon from a single block? What prince

hath the genius to turn mountains into statues, as was done at Bagistan,

and projected at Athos? What town the soul to plant a colossus of brass

in the sea, for the tallest ships to sail in and out between his legs?

Is it architecture we have invented? Why, here too we are but children.

Can we match for pure design the Parthenon, with its clusters of double

and single Doric columns? (I do adore the Doric when the scale is

large), and for grandeur and finish, the theatres of Greece and Rome,

or the prodigious temples of Egypt, up to whose portals men walked

awe-struck through avenues a mile long of sphinxes, each as big as a

Venetian palace. And all these prodigies of porphyry cut and polished

like crystal, not rough hewn as in our puny structures. Even now their

polished columns and pilasters lie o'erthrown and broken, o'ergrown with

acanthus and myrtle, but sparkling still, and flouting the slovenly art

of modern workmen. Is it sewers, aqueducts, viaducts?

“Why, we have lost the art of making a road--lost it with the world's

greatest models under our very eye. Is it sepulchres of the dead? Why,

no Christian nation has ever erected a tomb, the sight of which does not

set a scholar laughing. Do but think of the Mausoleum, and the Pyramids,

and the monstrous sepulchres of the Indus and Ganges, which outside are

mountains, and within are mines of precious stones. Ah, you have not

seen the East, Jerome, or you could not decry the heathen.”

Jerome observed that these were mere material things. True greatness was

in the soul.

“Well then,” replied Colonna, “in the world of mind, what have we

discovered? Is it geometry? Is it logic? Nay, we are all pupils of

Euclid and Aristotle. Is it written characters, an invention almost

divine? We no more invented it than Cadmus did. Is it poetry? Homer hath

never been approached by us, nor hath Virgil, nor Horace. Is it tragedy

or comedy? Why, poets, actors, theatres, all fell to dust at our

touch. Have we succeeded in reviving them? Would you compare our little

miserable mysteries and moralities, all frigid personification, and dog

Latin, with the glories of a Greek play (on the decoration of which

a hundred thousand crowns had been spent) performed inside a marble

miracle, the audience a seated city, and the poet a Sophocles?

“What then have we invented? Is it monotheism? Why, the learned and

philosophical among the Greeks and Romans held it; even their more

enlightened poets were monotheists in their sleeves.

{Zeus estin ouranos, Zeus te gy Zeus toi panta}

saith the Greek, and Lucan echoes him:

'Jupiter est quod cunque vides quo cunque moveris.'

“Their vulgar were polytheists; and what are ours? We have not invented

'invocation of the saints.' Our sancti answers to their Daemones and

Divi, and the heathen used to pray their Divi or deified mortal to

intercede with the higher divinity; but the ruder minds among them,

incapable of nice distinctions, worshipped those lesser gods they should

have but invoked. And so do the mob of Christians in our day, following

the heathen vulgar or by unbroken tradition. For in holy writ is no

polytheism of any sort or kind.

“We have not invented so much as a form or variety of polytheism. The

pagan vulgar worshipped all sorts of deified mortals, and each had his

favourite, to whom he prayed ten times for once to the Omnipotent. Our

vulgar worship canonized mortals, and each has his favourite, to whom he

prays ten times for once to God. Call you that invention? Invention is

confined to the East. Among the ancient vulgar only the mariners were

monotheists; they worshipped Venus; called her 'Stella maris,' and

'Regina caelorum.' Among our vulgar only the mariners are monotheists;

they worship the Virgin Mary, and call her the 'Star of the Sea,' and

the 'Queen of Heaven.' Call you theirs a new religion? An old doubtlet

with a new button. Our vulgar make images, and adore them, which is

absurd; for adoration is the homage due from a creature to its creator;

now here man is the creator; so the statues ought to worship him, and

would, if they had brains enough to justify a rat in worshipping them.

But even this abuse, though childish enough to be modern, is ancient.

The pagan vulgar in these parts made their images, then knelt before

them, adorned them with flowers, offered incense to them, lighted tapers

before them, carried them in procession, and made pilgrimages to them

just to the smallest tittle as we their imitators do.”

Jerome here broke in impatiently, and reminded him that the images the

most revered in Christendom were made by no mortal hand, but had dropped

from heaven.

“Ay,” cried Colonna, “such are the tutelary images of most great Italian

towns. I have examined nineteen of them, and made drafts of them. If

they came from the sky, our worst sculptors are our angels. But my mind

is easy on that score. Ungainly statue or villainous daub fell never yet

from heaven to smuggle the bread out of capable workmen's mouths. All

this is Pagan, and arose thus. The Trojans had Oriental imaginations,

and feigned that their Palladium, a wooden statue three cubits long,

fell down from heaven. The Greeks took this fib home among the spoils

of Troy, and soon it rained statues on all the Grecian cities, and their

Latin apes. And one of these Palladia gave St. Paul trouble at Ephesus;

'twas a statue of Diana that fell down from Jupiter: credat qui credere

possit.”

“What, would you cast your profane doubts on that picture of our blessed

Lady, which scarce a century agone hung lustrous in the air over this

very city, and was taken down by the Pope and bestowed in St. Peter's

Church?”

“I have no profane doubts on the matter, Jerome. This is the story of

Numa's shield, revived by theologians with an itch for fiction, but no

talent that way; not being orientals. The 'ancile' or sacred shield

of Numa hung lustrous in the air over this very city, till that pious

prince took it down and hung it in the temple of Jupiter. Be just,

swallow both stories or neither. The 'Bocca della Verita' passes for a

statue of the Virgin, and convicted a woman of perjury the other day;

it is in reality an image of the goddess Rhea, and the modern figment is

one of its ancient traditions; swallow both or neither.

'Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Mavi.'

“But indeed we owe all our Palladiuncula, and all our speaking, nodding,

winking, sweating, bleeding statues, to these poor abused heathens; the

Athenian statues all sweated before the battle of Chaeronea, so did the

Roman statues during Tully's consulship, viz., the statue of Victory at

Capua, of Mars at Rome, and of Apollo outside the gates. The Palladium

itself was brought to Italy by Aeneas, and after keeping quiet three

centuries, made an observation in Vesta's Temple: a trivial one, I fear,

since it hath not survived; Juno's statue at Veii assented with a nod to

go to Rome. Antony's statue on Mount Alban bled from every vein in its

marble before the fight of Actium. Others cured diseases: as that of

Pelichus, derided by Lucian; for the wiser among the heathen believed in

sweating marble, weeping wood, and bleeding brass--as I do. Of all our

marks and dents made in stone by soft substances, this saint's knee, and

that saint's finger, and t'other's head, the original is heathen. Thus

the footprints of Hercules were shown on a rock in Scythia. Castor and

Pollux fighting on white horses for Rome against the Latians, left the

prints of their hoofs on a rock at Regillum. A temple was built to them

on the spot, and the marks were to be seen in Tully's day. You may see,

near Venice, a great stone cut nearly in half by St. George's sword.

This he ne'er had done but for the old Roman who cut the whetstone in

two with his razor.

'Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Mavi.'

“Kissing of images, and the Pope's toe, is Eastern Paganism. The

Egyptians had it of the Assyrians, the Greeks of the Egyptians, the

Romans of the Greeks, and we of the Romans, whose Pontifex Maximus had

his toe kissed under the Empire. The Druids kissed the High Priest's toe

a thousand years B.C. The Mussulmans, who, like you, profess to abhor

Heathenism, kiss the stone of the Caaba: a Pagan practice.

“The Priests of Baal kissed their idols so.

“Tully tells us of a fair image of Hercules at Agrigentum, whose chin

was worn by kissing. The lower parts of the statue we call Peter are

Jupiter. The toe is sore worn, but not all by Christian mouths. The

heathen vulgar laid their lips there first, for many a year, and ours

have but followed them, as monkeys their masters. And that is why, down

with the poor heathen!

Pereant qui ante nos nostra fecerint.

“Our infant baptism is Persian, with the font and the signing of the

child's brow. Our throwing three handfuls of earth on the coffin, and

saying dust to dust, is Egyptian.

“Our incense is Oriental, Roman, Pagan; and the early Fathers of the

Church regarded it with superstitious horror, and died for refusing to

handle it. Our Holy water is Pagan, and all its uses. See, here is a

Pagan aspersorium. Could you tell it from one of ours? It stood in the

same part of their temples, and was used in ordinary worship as ours,

and in extraordinary purifications. They called it Aqua lustralis. Their

vulgar, like ours, thought drops of it falling on the body would wash

out sin; and their men of sense, like ours, smiled or sighed at such

credulity. What saith Ovid of this folly, which hath outlived him?

'Ah nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina coedis

Fluminea tolli posse putetis aqua.'

Thou seest the heathen were not all fools. No more are we. Not all.”

Fra Colonna uttered all this with such volubility, that his hearers

could not edge in a word of remonstrance; and not being interrupted

in praising his favourites, he recovered his good humour, without any

diminution of his volubility.

“We celebrate the miraculous Conception of the Virgin on the 2nd of

February. The old Romans celebrated the Miraculous Conception of Juno on

the 2nd of February. Our feast of All Saints is on the 2nd November. The

Festum Dei Mortis was on the 2nd November. Our Candlemas is also an old

Roman feast; neither the date nor the ceremony altered one tittle.

The patrician ladies carried candles about the city that night as our

signoras do now. At the gate of San Croce our courtesans keep a feast

on the 20th August. Ask them why! The little noodles cannot tell you. On

that very spot stood the Temple of Venus. Her building is gone; but her

rite remains. Did we discover Purgatory? On the contrary, all we really

know about it is from two treatises of Plato, the Gorgias and the

Phaedo, and the sixth book of Virgil's Aeneid.

“I take it from a holier source: St. Gregory,” said Jerome sternly.

“Like enough,” replied Colonna drily. “But St. Gregory was not so nice;

he took it from Virgil. Some souls, saith Gregory, are purged by fire,

others by water, others by air.

“Says Virgil--

'Aliae panduntur inanes,

Suspensae ad ventous, aliis sub gurgite vasto

Infectum eluitur scelus, aut exuritur igni.'

But peradventure, you think Pope Gregory I lived before Virgil, and

Virgil versified him.

“But the doctrine is Eastern, and as much older than Plato as Plato

than Gregory. Our prayers for the dead came from Asia with Aeneas. Ovid

tells, that when he prayed for the soul of Anchises, the custom was

strange in Italy.

'Hunc morem Aeneas, pietatis idoneus auctor

Attulit in terras, juste Latine, tuas.'

The 'Biblicae' Sortes,' which I have seen consulted on the altar, are

a parody on the 'Sortes Virgilianae.' Our numerous altars in one church

are heathen: the Jews, who are monotheists, have but one altar in a

church. But the Pagans had many, being polytheists. In the temple of

Pathian Venus were a hundred of them. 'Centum que Sabaeo thure calent

arae.' Our altar's and our hundred lights around St. Peter's tomb are

Pagan. 'Centum aras posuit vigilemque sacraverat ignem.' We invent

nothing, not even numerically. Our very Devil is the god Pan, horns and

hoofs and all; but blackened. For we cannot draw; we can but daub the

figures of Antiquity with a little sorry paint or soot. Our Moses hath

stolen the horns of Ammon; our Wolfgang the hook of Saturn; and Janus

bore the keys of heaven before St. Peter. All our really old Italian

bronzes of the Virgin and Child are Venuses and Cupids. So is the wooden

statue, that stands hard by this house, of Pope Joan and the child

she is said to have brought forth there in the middle of a procession.

Idiots! are new-born children thirteen years old? And that boy is not a

day younger. Cupid! Cupid! Cupid! And since you accuse me of credulity,

know that to my mind that Papess is full as mythological, born of froth,

and every way unreal, as the goddess who passes for her in the next

street, or as the saints you call St. Baccho and St. Quirina: or St.

Oracte, which is a dunce-like corruption of Mount Soracte, or St.

Amphibolus, an English saint, which is a dunce-like corruption of the

cloak worn by their St. Alban, Or as the Spanish saint, St. Viar: which

words on his tombstone, written thus, 'S. Viar,' prove him no saint,

but a good old nameless heathen, and 'praefectus Viarum,' or overseer

of roads (would he were back to earth, and paganizing of our Christian

roads!), or as our St. Veronica of Benasco, which Veronica is a

dunce-like corruption of the 'Vera icon,' which this saint brought

into the church. I wish it may not be as unreal as the donor, Or as the

eleven thousand virgins of Cologne, who were but a couple.”

Clement interrupted him to inquire what he meant. “I have spoken with

those have seen their bones.”

“What, of eleven thousand virgins all collected in one place and at one

time? Do but bethink thee, Clement. Not one of the great Eastern cities

of antiquity could collect eleven thousand Pagan virgins at one time,

far less a puny Western city. Eleven thousand Christian virgins in a

little, wee, Paynim city!

'Quod cunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi.'

The simple sooth is this. The martyrs were two: the Breton princess

herself, falsely called British, and her maid, Onesimilla, which is

a Greek name, Onesima, diminished. This some fool did mis-pronounce

undecim mille, eleven thousand: loose tongue found credulous ears, and

so one fool made many; eleven thousand of them, an' you will. And you

charge me with credulity, Jerome? and bid me read the Lives of the

Saints. Well, I have read them, and many a dear old Pagan acquaintance

I found there. The best fictions in the book are Oriental, and are known

to have been current in Persia and Arabia eight hundred years and more

before the dates the Church assigns to them as facts. As for the true

Western figments, they lack the Oriental plausibility. Think you I am

credulous enough to believe that St. Ida joined a decapitated head to

its body? that Cuthbert's carcass directed his bearers where to go, and

where to stop; that a city was eaten up of rats to punish one Hatto

for comparing the poor to mice; that angels have a little horn in

their foreheads, and that this was seen and recorded at the time by

St. Veronica of Benasco, who never existed, and hath left us this

information and a miraculous handkercher? For my part, I think the

holiest woman the world ere saw must have an existence ere she can have

a handkercher or an eye to take unicorns for angels. Think you I believe

that a brace of lions turned sextons and helped Anthony bury Paul of

Thebes? that Patrick, a Scotch saint, stuck a goat's beard on all the

descendants of one that offended him? that certain thieves, having

stolen the convent ram, and denying it, St. Pol de Leon bade the ram

bear witness, and straight the mutton bleated in the thief's belly?

Would you have me give up the skilful figments of antiquity for such old

wives' fables as these? The ancients lied about animals, too; but then

they lied logically; we unreasonably. Do but compare Ephis and his

lion, or, better still, Androcles and his lion, with Anthony and his two

lions. Both the Pagan lions do what lions never did' but at the least

they act in character. A lion with a bone in his throat, or a thorn

in his foot, could not do better than be civil to a man. But Anthony's

lions are asses in a lion's skin. What leonine motive could they have in

turning sextons? A lion's business is to make corpses, not inter them.”

He added, with a sigh, “Our lies are as inferior to the lies of the

ancients as our statues, and for the same reason; we do not study nature

as they did. We are imitatores, servum pecus. Believe you 'the lives of

the saints;' that Paul the Theban was the first hermit, and Anthony the

first Caenobite? Why, Pythagoras was an Eremite, and under ground for

seven years; and his daughter was an abbess. Monks and hermits were in

the East long before Moses, and neither old Greece nor Rome was ever

without them. As for St. Francis and his snowballs, he did but mimic

Diogenes, who, naked, embraced statues on which snow had fallen. The

folly without the poetry. Ape of an ape--for Diogenes was but a mimic

therein of the Brahmins and Indian gymnosophists. Natheless, the

children of this Francis bid fair to pelt us out of the Church with

their snowballs. Tell me now, Clement, what habit is lovelier than

the vestments of our priests? Well, we owe them all to Numa Pompilius,

except the girdle and the stole, which are judaical. As for the amice

and the albe, they retain the very names they bore in Numa's day. The

'pelt' worn by the canons comes from primeval Paganism. 'Tis a relic

of those rude times when the sacrificing priest wore the skins of the

beasts with the fur outward. Strip off thy black gown, Jerome, thy

girdle and cowl, for they come to us all three from the Pagan ladies.

Let thy hair grow like Absolom's, Jerome! for the tonsure is as Pagan as

the Muses.”

“Take care what thou sayest,” said Jerome sternly. “We know the very

year in which the Church did first ordain it.”

“But not invent it, Jerome. The Brahmins wore it a few thousands years

ere that. From them it came through the Assyrians to the priests of Isis

in Egypt, and afterwards of Serapis at Athens. The late Pope (the saints

be good to him) once told me the tonsure was forbidden by God to the

Levites in the Pentateuch. If so, this was because of the Egyptian

priests wearing it. I trust to his holiness. I am no biblical scholar.

The Latin of thy namesake Jerome is a barrier I cannot overleap. 'Dixit

ad me Dominus Dens. Dixi ad Dominum Deum.' No, thank you, holy Jerome;

I can stand a good deal, but I cannot stand thy Latin. Nay; give me the

New Testament! 'Tis not the Greek of Xenophon; but 'tis Greek. And there

be heathen sayings in it too. For St. Paul was not so spiteful against

them as thou. When the heathen said a good thing that suited his matter,

by Jupiter he just took it, and mixed it to all eternity with the

inspired text.”

“Come forth, Clement, come forth!” said Jerome, rising; “and thou,

profane monk, know that but for the powerful house that upholds thee,

thy accursed heresy should go no farther, for I would have thee burned

at the stake.” And he strode out white with indignation.

Colonna's reception of this threat did credit to him as an enthusiast.

He ran and hallooed joyfully after Jerome. “And that is Pagan. Burning

of men's bodies for the opinions of their souls is a purely Pagan

custom--as Pagan as incense, holy water, a hundred altars in one church,

the tonsure, the cardinal's, or flamen's hat, the word Pope, the--”

Here Jerome slammed the door.

But ere they could get clear of the house a jalosy was flung open, and

the Paynim monk came out head and shoulders, and overhung the street

shouting,

“Affecti suppliciis Chrisitiani, genus hominum

Novas superstitionis ac maleficae,'”

And having delivered this parting blow, he felt a great triumphant joy,

and strode exultant to and fro; and not attending with his usual care

to the fair way (for his room could only be threaded by little paths

wriggling among the antiquities), tripped over the beak of an Egyptian

stork, and rolled upon a regiment of Armenian gods, which he found tough

in argument though small in stature.

“You will go no more to that heretical monk,” said Jerome to Clement.

Clement sighed. “Shall we leave him and not try to correct him? Make

allowance for heat of discourse! he was nettled, His words are worse

than his acts. Oh 'tis a pure and charitable soul.”

“So are all arch-heretics. Satan does not tempt them like other men.

Rather he makes them more moral, to give their teaching weight. Fra

Colonna cannot be corrected; his family is all-powerful in Rome, Pray we

the saints he blasphemes to enlighten him, 'Twill not be the first time

they have returned good for evil, Meantime thou art forbidden to consort

with him, From this day go alone through the city! Confess and absolve

sinners! exorcise demons! comfort the sick! terrify the impenitent!

preach wherever men are gathered and occasion serves! and hold no

converse with the Fra Colonna!”

Clement bowed his head.

Then the prior, at Jerome's request, had the young friar watched. And

one day the spy returned with the news that Brother Clement had passed

by the Fra Colonna's lodging, and had stopped a little while in the

street, and then gone on, but with his hand to his eyes and slowly.

This report Jerome took to the prior. The prior asked his opinion,

and also Anselm's, who was then taking leave of him on his return to

Juliers.

Jerome. “Humph! He obeyed, but with regret, ay, with childish repining.”

Anselm, “He shed a natural tear at turning his back on a friend and a

benefactor, But he obeyed.”

Now Anselm was one of your gentle irresistibles, He had at times a mild

ascendant even over Jerome.

“Worthy Brother Anselm,” said Jerome, “Clement is weak to the very

bone, He will disappoint thee, He will do nothing, great, either for the

Church or for our holy order. Yet he is an orator, and hath drunken of

the spirit of St. Dominic. Fly him, then, with a string.”

That same day it was announced to Clement that he was to go to England

immediately with Brother Jerome.

Clement folded his hands on his breast, and bowed his head in calm

submission.

CHAPTER LXXIII

THE HEARTH

A Catherine is not an unmixed good in a strange house. The governing

power is strong in her. She has scarce crossed the threshold ere the

utensils seem to brighten; the hearth to sweep itself; the windows to

let in more light; and the soul of an enormous cricket to animate

the dwelling-place. But this cricket is a Busy Body. And that is a

tremendous character. It has no discrimination. It sets everything to

rights, and everybody. Now many things are the better for being set to

rights. But everything is not. Everything is the one thing that won't

stand being set to rights; except in that calm and cool retreat, the

grave.

Catherine altered the position of every chair and table in Margaret's

house; and perhaps for the better.

But she must go farther, and upset the live furniture.

When Margaret's time was close at hand, Catherine treacherously invited

the aid of Denys and Martin; and on the poor, simple-minded fellows

asking her earnestly what service they could be, she told them they

might make themselves comparatively useful by going for a little walk.

So far so good. But she intimated further that should the promenade

extend into the middle of next week all the better. This was not

ingratiating. The subsequent conduct of the strong under the yoke of the

weak might have propitiated a she-bear with three cubs, one sickly.

They generally slipped out of the house at daybreak; and stole in like

thieves at night; and if by any chance they were at home, they went

about like cats on a wall tipped with broken glass, and wearing

awe-struck visages, and a general air of subjugation and depression.

But all would not do. Their very presence was ill-timed; and jarred upon

Catherine's nerves.

Did instinct whisper, a pair of depopulators had no business in a house

with multipliers twain?

The breastplate is no armour against a female tongue; and Catherine ran

infinite pins and needles of speech into them. In a word, when Margaret

came down stairs, she found the kitchen swept of heroes.

Martin, old and stiff, had retreated no farther than the street, and

with the honours of war: for he had carried off his baggage, a stool;

and sat on it in the air.

Margaret saw he was out in the sun; but was not aware he was a fixture

in that luminary. She asked for Denys. “Good, kind Denys; he will be

right pleased to see me about again.”

Catherine, wiping a bowl with now superfluous vigour, told her Denys was

gone to his friends in Burgundy. “And high time, Hasn't been anigh them

this three years, by all accounts.”

“What, gone without bidding me farewell?” said Margaret, uplifting two

tender eyes like full-blown violets.

Catherine reddened. For this new view of the matter set her conscience

pricking her.

But she gave a little toss and said, “Oh, you were asleep at the time:

and I would not have you wakened.”

“Poor Denys,” said Margaret, and the dew gathered visibly on the open

violets.

Catherine saw out of the corner of her eye, and without taking a bit of

open notice, slipped off and lavished hospitality and tenderness on the

surviving depopulator.

It was sudden: and Martin old and stiff in more ways than one--

“No, thank you, dame. I have got used to out o' doors. And I love not

changing and changing. I meddle wi' nobody here; and nobody meddles wi'

me.”

“Oh, you nasty, cross old wretch!” screamed Catherine, passing in a

moment from treacle to sharpest vinegar. And she flounced back into the

house.

On calm reflection she had a little cry. Then she half reconciled

herself to her conduct by vowing to be so kind, Margaret should never

miss her plagues of soldiers. But feeling still a little uneasy, she

dispersed all regrets by a process at once simple and sovereign.

She took and washed the child.

From head to foot she washed him in tepid water; and heroes, and their

wrongs, became as dust in an ocean--of soap and water.

While this celestial ceremony proceeded, Margaret could not keep quiet.

She hovered round the fortunate performer. She must have an apparent

hand in it, if not a real. She put her finger into the water--to pave

the way for her boy, I suppose; for she could not have deceived herself

so far as to think Catherine would allow her to settle the temperature.

During the ablution she kneeled down opposite the little Gerard, and

prattled to him with amazing fluency; taking care, however, not to

articulate like grown-up people; for, how could a cherub understand

their ridiculous pronunciation?

“I wish you could wash out THAT,” said she, fixing her eyes on the

little boy's hand.

“What?”

“What, have you not noticed? on his little finger.”

Granny looked, and there was a little brown mole,

“Eh, but this is wonderful!” she cried. “Nature, my lass, y'are strong;

and meddlesome to boot. Hast noticed such a mark on some one else? Tell

the truth, girl!”

“What, on him? Nay, mother, not I.”

“Well then he has; and on the very spot. And you never noticed that

much. But, dear heart, I forgot; you han't known him from child to man

as I have, I have had him hundreds o' times on my knees, the same

as this, and washed him from top to toe in luke-warm water.” And she

swelled with conscious superiority; and Margaret looked meekly up to her

as a woman beyond competition.

Catherine looked down from her dizzy height and moralized. She differed

from other busy-bodies in this, that she now and then reflected: not

deeply; or of course I should take care not to print it.

“It is strange,” said she, “how things come round and about, Life is but

a whirligig. Leastways, we poor women, our lives are all cut upon one

pattern. Wasn't I for washing out my Gerard's mole in his young days?

'Oh, fie! here's a foul blot,' quo' I; and scrubbed away at it I did

till I made the poor wight cry; so then I thought 'twas time to give

over. And now says you to me, 'Mother,' says you, 'do try and wash you

out o' my Gerard's finger,' says you. Think on't!”

“Wash it out?” cried Margaret; “I wouldn't for all the world, Why, it is

the sweetest bit in his little darling body. I'll kiss it morn and night

till he that owned it first comes back to us three, Oh, bless you,

my jewel of gold and silver, for being marked like your own daddy, to

comfort me.”

And she kissed little Gerard's little mole; but she could not stop

there; she presently had him sprawling on her lap, and kissed his

back all over again and again, and seemed to worry him as wolf a lamb;

Catherine looking on and smiling. She had seen a good many of these

savage onslaughts in her day.

And this little sketch indicates the tenor of Margaret's life for

several months, One or two small things occurred to her during that time

which must be told; but I reserve them, since one string will serve for

many glass beads. But while her boy's father was passing through those

fearful tempests of the soul, ending in the dead monastic calm, her life

might fairly be summed in one great blissful word--Maternity.

You, who know what lies in that word, enlarge my little sketch, and see

the young mother nursing and washing, and dressing and undressing, and

crowing and gambolling with her first-born; then swifter than lightning

dart your eye into Italy, and see the cold cloister; and the monks

passing like ghosts, eyes down, hands meekly crossed over bosoms dead to

earthly feelings.

One of these cowled ghosts is he, whose return, full of love, and youth,

and joy, that radiant young mother awaits.

In the valley of Grindelwald the traveller has on one side the

perpendicular Alps, all rock, ice, and everlasting snow, towering above

the clouds, and piercing to the sky; on his other hand little every-day

slopes, but green as emeralds, and studded with cows and pretty cots,

and life; whereas those lofty neighbours stand leafless, lifeless,

inhuman, sublime. Elsewhere sweet commonplaces of nature are apt to pass

unnoticed; but, fronting the grim Alps, they soothe, and even gently

strike, the mind by contrast with their tremendous opposites. Such, in

their way, are the two halves of this story, rightly looked at; on

the Italian side rugged adventure, strong passion, blasphemy, vice,

penitence, pure ice, holy snow, soaring direct at heaven. On the Dutch

side, all on a humble scale and womanish, but ever green. And as a

pathway parts the ice towers of Grindelwald, aspiring to the sky, from

its little sunny braes, so here is but a page between

“the Cloister and the Hearth.”

CHAPTER LXXIV

THE CLOISTER

THE new pope favoured the Dominican order. The convent received a

message from the Vatican, requiring a capable friar to teach at the

University of Basle. Now Clement was the very monk for this: well versed

in languages, and in his worldly days had attended the lectures of

Guarini the younger. His visit to England was therefore postponed though

not resigned; and meantime he was sent to Basle; but not being wanted

there for three months, he was to preach on the road.

He passed out of the northern gate with his eyes lowered, and the whole

man wrapped in pious contemplation.

Oh, if we could paint a mind and its story, what a walking fresco was

this barefooted friar!

Hopeful, happy love, bereavement, despair, impiety, vice, suicide,

remorse, religious despondency, penitence, death to the world,

resignation.

And all in twelve short months.

And now the traveller was on foot again. But all was changed: no

perilous adventures now. The very thieves and robbers bowed to the

ground before him, and instead of robbing him, forced stolen money on

him, and begged his prayers.

This journey therefore furnished few picturesque incidents. I have,

however, some readers to think of, who care little for melodrama, and

expect a quiet peep at what passes inside a man, To such students things

undramatic are often vocal, denoting the progress of a mind.

The first Sunday of Clement's journey was marked by this. He prayed for

the soul of Margaret. He had never done so before. Not that her eternal

welfare was not dearer to him than anything on earth. It was his

humility. The terrible impieties that burst from him on the news of her

death horrified my well-disposed readers; but not as on reflection they

horrified him who had uttered them. For a long time during his novitiate

he was oppressed with religious despair. He thought he must have

committed that sin against the Holy Spirit which dooms the soul for

ever, By degrees that dark cloud cleared away, Anselmo juvante; but

deep self-abasement remained. He felt his own salvation insecure, and

moreover thought it would be mocking Heaven, should he, the deeply

stained, pray for a soul so innocent, comparatively, as Margaret's. So

he used to coax good Anselm and another kindly monk to pray for her.

They did not refuse, nor do it by halves. In general the good old monks

(and there were good, bad, and indifferent in every convent) had a pure

and tender affection for their younger brethren, which, in truth, was

not of this world.

Clement then, having preached on Sunday morning in a small Italian town,

and being mightily carried onward, was greatly encouraged; and that day

a balmy sense of God's forgiveness and love descended on him. And he

prayed for the welfare of Margaret's soul. And from that hour this

became his daily habit, and the one purified tie, that by memory

connected his heart with earth.

For his family were to him as if they had never been.

The Church would not share with earth. Nor could even the Church cure

the great love without annihilating the smaller ones.

During most of this journey Clement rarely felt any spring of life

within him, but when he was in the pulpit. The other exceptions were,

when he happened to relieve some fellow-creature.

A young man was tarantula bitten, or perhaps, like many more, fancied

it. Fancy or reality, he had been for two days without sleep, and in

most extraordinary convulsions, leaping, twisting, and beating the

walls. The village musicians had only excited him worse with their

music. Exhaustion and death followed the disease, when it gained such a

head. Clement passed by and learned what was the matter. He sent for a

psaltery, and tried the patient with soothing melodies; but if the other

tunes maddened him, Clement's seemed to crush him. He groaned and moaned

under them, and grovelled on the floor. At last the friar observed that

at intervals his lips kept going. He applied his ear, and found the

patient was whispering a tune; and a very singular one, that had no

existence. He learned this tune and played it. The patient's face

brightened amazingly. He marched about the room on the light fantastic

toe enjoying it; and when Clement's fingers ached nearly off with

playing it, he had the satisfaction of seeing the young man sink

complacently to sleep to this lullaby, the strange creation of his own

mind; for it seems he was no musician, and never composed a tune before

or after. This sleep saved his life. And Clement, after teaching the

tune to another, in case it should be wanted again, went forward with

his heart a little warmer. On another occasion he found a mob haling

a decently dressed man along, who struggled and vociferated, but in

a strange language. This person had walked into their town erect and

sprightly, waving a mulberry branch over his head. Thereupon the natives

first gazed stupidly, not believing their eyes, then pounced on him and

dragged him before the podesta, Clement went with them; but on the way

drew quietly near the prisoner and spoke to him in Italian; no answer.

In French' German; Dutch; no assets. Then the man tried Clement

in tolerable Latin, but with a sharpish accent. He said he was an

Englishman, and oppressed with the heat of Italy, had taken a bough off

the nearest tree, to save his head. “In my country anybody is welcome to

what grows on the highway. Confound the fools; I am ready to pay for it.

But here is all Italy up in arms about a twig and a handful of leaves.”

The pig-headed podesta would have sent the dogged islander to prison;

but Clement mediated, and with some difficulty made the prisoner

comprehend that silkworms, and by consequence mulberry leaves, were

sacred, being under the wing of the Sovereign, and his source of income;

and urged on the podesta that ignorance of his mulberry laws was natural

in a distant country, where the very tree perhaps was unknown, The

opinionative islander turned the still vibrating scale by pulling' out

a long purse and repeating his original theory, that the whole question

was mercantile. “Quid damni?” said he, “Dic; et cito solvam.” The

podesta snuffed the gold: fined him a ducat for the duke; about the

value of the whole tree; and pouched the coin.

The Englishman shook off his ire the moment he was liberated, and

laughed heartily at the whole thing; but was very grateful to Clement.

“You are too good for this hole of a country, father,” said he, “Come

to England! That is the only place in the world, I was an uneasy fool to

leave it, and wander among mulberries and their idiots. I am a Kentish

squire, and educated at Cambridge University. My name it is Rolfe, my

place Betshanger, The man and the house are both at your service. Come

over and stay till domesday. We sit down forty to dinner every day at

Betshanger. One more or one less at the board will not be seen. You

shall end your days with me and my heirs if you will, Come now! What an

Englishman says he means.” And he gave him a great hearty grip of the

hand to confirm it,

“I will visit thee some day, my son,” said Clement; “but not to weary

thy hospitality.”

The Englishman then begged Clement to shrive him. “I know not what

will become of my soul,” said he, “I live like a heathen since I left

England.”

Clement consented gladly, and soon the islander was on his knees to him

by the roadside, confessing the last month's sins.

Finding him so pious a son of the Church, Clement let him know he was

really coming to England. He then asked him whether it was true that

country was overrun with Lollards and Wickliffites.

The other coloured up a little. “There be black sheep in every land,”

said he. Then after some reflection he said gravely, “Holy father, hear

the truth about these heretics. None are better disposed towards Holy

Church than we English. But we are ourselves, and by ourselves. We love

our own ways, and above all, our own tongue. The Norman could conquer

our bill-hooks, but not our tongues; and hard they tried it for many a

long year by law and proclamation. Our good foreign priests utter God

to plain English folk in Latin, or in some French or Italian lingo, like

the bleating of a sheep. Then come the fox Wickliff and his crew, and

read him out of his own book in plain English, that all men's hearts

warm to. Who can withstand this? God forgive me, I believe the English

would turn deaf ears to St, Peter himself, spoke he not to them in the

tongue their mothers sowed in their ears and their hearts along with

mothers' kisses.” He added hastily, “I say not this for myself; I am

Cambridge bred; and good words come not amiss to me in Latin; but for

the people in general. Clavis ad corda Anglorum est lingua materna.”

“My son,” said Clement, “blessed be the hour I met thee; for thy words

are sober and wise. But alas! how shall I learn your English tongue? No

book have I.”

“I would give you my book of hours, father. 'Tis in English and Latin,

cheek by jowl. But then, what would become of my poor soul, wanting my

'hours' in a strange land? Stay, you are a holy man, and I am an honest

one; let us make a bargain; you to pray for me every day for two months,

and I to give you my book of hours. Here it is. What say you to that?”

And his eyes sparkled, and he was all on fire with mercantility.

Clement smiled gently at this trait; and quietly detached a MS. from his

girdle, and showed him that it was in Latin and Italian.

“See, my son,” said he, “Heaven hath foreseen our several needs, and

given us the means to satisfy them: let us change books; and, my dear

son, I will give thee my poor prayers and welcome, not sell them thee. I

love not religious bargains.”

The islander was delighted. “So shall I learn the Italian tongue without

risk to my eternal weal, Near is my purse, but nearer is my soul.”

He forced money on Clement. In vain the friar told him it was contrary

to his vow to carry more of that than was barely necessary.

“Lay it out for the good of the Church and of my soul,” said the

islander. “I ask you not to keep it, but take it you must and shall.”

And he grasped Clement's hand warmly again; and Clement kissed him on

the brow, and blessed him, and they went each his way.

About a mile from where they parted, Clement found two tired wayfarers

lying in the deep shade of a great chestnut-tree, one of a thick

grove the road skirted. Near the men was a little cart, and in it

a printing-press, rude and clumsy as a vine-press, A jaded mule was

harnessed to the cart.

And so Clement stood face to face with his old enemy.

And as he eyed it, and the honest, blue-eyed faces of the wearied

craftsmen, he looked back as on a dream at the bitterness he had once

felt towards this machine. He looked kindly down on them, and said

softly--

“Sweynheim!”

The men started to their feet.

“Pannartz!”

They scuttled into the wood, and were seen no more.

Clement was amazed, and stood puzzling himself.

Presently a face peeped from behind a tree.

Clement addressed it, “What fear ye?”

A quavering voice replied--

“Say, rather, by what magic you, a stranger, can call us by our names! I

never clapt eyes on you till now.”

“O, superstition! I know ye, as all good workmen are known--by your

works. Come hither and I will tell ye.”

They advanced gingerly from different sides; each regulating his advance

by the other's.

“My children,” said Clement, “I saw a Lactantius in Rome, printed by

Sweynheim and Pannartz, disciples of Fust.”

“D'ye hear that, Pannartz? our work has gotten to Rome already.”

“By your blue eyes and flaxen hair I wist ye were Germans; and the

printing-press spoke for itself. Who then should ye be but Fust's

disciples, Pannartz and Sweynheim?”

The honest Germans were now astonished that they had suspected magic in

so simple a matter.

“The good father hath his wits about him, that is all,” said Pannartz.

“Ay,” said Sweynheim, “and with those wits would he could tell us how to

get this tired beast to the next town.”

“Yea,” said Sweynheim, “and where to find money to pay for his meat and

ours when we get there.”

“I will try,” said Clement. “Free the mule of the cart, and of all

harness but the bare halter.”

This was done, and the animal immediately lay down and rolled on his

back in the dust like a kitten. Whilst he was thus employed, Clement

assured them he would rise up a new mule.

“His Creator hath taught him this art to refresh himself, which the

nobler horse knoweth not. Now, with regard to money, know that a worthy

Englishman hath entrusted me with a certain sum to bestow in charity.

To whom can I better give a stranger's money than to strangers? Take it,

then, and be kind to some Englishman or other stranger in his need; and

may all nations learn to love one another one day.”

The tears stood in the honest workmen's eyes. They took the money with

heartfelt thanks.

“It is your nation we are bound to thank and bless, good father, if we

but knew it.”

“My nation is the Church.”

Clement was then for bidding them farewell, but the honest fellows

implored him to wait a little; they had no silver nor gold, but they had

something they could give their benefactor, They took the press out of

the cart, and while Clement fed the mule, they hustled about, now on the

white hot road, now in the deep cool shade, now half in and half out,

and presently printed a quarto sheet of eight pages, which was already

set up. They had not type enough to print two sheets at a time. When,

after the slower preliminaries, the printed sheet was pulled all in a

moment, Clement was amazed in turn.

“What, are all these words really fast upon the paper?” said he. “Is it

verily certain they will not go as swiftly as they came? And you took

me for a magician! 'Tis 'Augustine de civitate Dei.' My sons, you carry

here the very wings of knowledge. Oh, never abuse this great craft!

Print no ill books! They would fly abroad countless as locusts, and lay

waste men's souls.”

The workmen said they would sooner put their hands under the screw than

so abuse their goodly craft.

And so they parted.

There is nothing but meeting and parting in this world.

At a town in Tuscany the holy friar had a sudden and strange recontre

with the past. He fell in with one of those motley assemblages of

patricians and plebeians, piety and profligacy, “a company of pilgrims;”

a subject too well painted by others for me to go and daub.

They were in an immense barn belonging to the inn, Clement, dusty and

wearied, and no lover of idle gossip, sat in a corner studying the

Englishman's hours, and making them out as much by his own Dutch as by

the Latin version.

Presently a servant brought a bucket half full of water, and put it down

at his feet. A female servant followed with two towels. And then a woman

came forward, and crossing herself, kneeled down without a word at the

bucket-side, removed her sleeves entirely, and motioned to him to put

his feet into the water. It was some lady of rank doing penance. She

wore a mask scarce an inch broad, but effectual. Moreover, she handled

the friar's feet more delicately than those do who are born to such

offices.

These penances were not uncommon; and Clement, though he had little

faith in this form of contrition, received the services of the incognita

as a matter of course. But presently she sighed deeply, and with her

heartfelt sigh and her head bent low over her menial office, she seemed

so bowed with penitence, that he pitied her, and said calmly but gently,

“Can I aught for your soul's weal, my daughter?”

She shook her head with a faint sob. “Nought, holy father, nought; only

to hear the sin of her who is most unworthy to touch thy holy feet. 'Tis

part of my penance to tell sinless men how vile I am.”

“Speak, my daughter.”

“Father,” said the lady, bending lower and lower, “these hands of mine

look white, but they are stained with blood--the blood of the man I

loved. Alas! you withdraw your foot. Ah me! What shall I do? All holy

things shrink from me.”

“Culpa mea! culpa mea!” said Clement eagerly. “My daughter, it was an

unworthy movement of earthly weakness, for which I shall do penance.

Judge not the Church by her feebler servants, Not her foot, but her

bosom, is offered to thee, repenting truly. Take courage, then, and

purge thy conscience of its load.”

On this the lady, in a trembling whisper, and hurriedly, and cringing a

little, as if she feared the Church would strike her bodily for what she

had done, made this confession.

“He was a stranger, and base-born, but beautiful as Spring, and wise

beyond his years. I loved him, I had not the prudence to conceal my

love. Nobles courted me. I ne'er thought one of humble birth could

reject me. I showed him my heart oh, shame of my sex! He drew back; yet

he admired me; but innocently, He loved another; and he was constant. I

resorted to a woman's wiles, They availed not. I borrowed the wickedness

of men, and threatened his life, and to tell his true lover he died

false to her, Ah! you shrink your foot trembles. Am I not a monster?

Then he wept and prayed to me for mercy; then my good angel helped me; I

bade him leave Rome. Gerard, Gerard, why did you not obey me? I thought

he was gone. But two months after this I met him, Never shall I forget

it. I was descending the Tiber in my galley, when he came up it with a

gay company, and at his side a woman beautiful as an angel, but bold and

bad. That woman claimed me aloud for her rival. Traitor and hypocrite,

he had exposed me to her, and to all the loose tongues in Rome. In

terror and revenge I hired-a bravo. When he was gone on his bloody

errand, I wavered too late. The dagger I had hired struck, He never came

back to his lodgings. He was dead. Alas! perhaps he was not so much to

blame: none have ever cast his name in my teeth. His poor body is not

found: or I should kiss its wounds; and slay myself upon it. All around

his very name seems silent as the grave, to which this murderous hand

hath sent him.” (Clement's eye was drawn by her movement. He recognized

her shapely arm, and soft white hand.) “And oh! he was so young to die.

A poor thoughtless boy, that had fallen a victim to that bad woman's

arts, and she had made him tell her everything. Monster of cruelty, what

penance can avail me? Oh, holy father, what shall I do?”

Clement's lips moved in prayer, but he was silent. He could not see his

duty clear.

Then she took his feet and began to dry them. She rested his foot

upon her soft arm, and pressed it with the towel so gently she seemed

incapable of hurting a fly. Yet her lips had just told another story,

and a true one.

While Clement was still praying for wisdom, a tear fell upon his foot.

It decided him. “My daughter,” said he, “I myself have been a great

sinner.”

“You, father?”

“I; quite as great a sinner as thou; though not in the same way. The

devil has gins and snares, as well as traps. But penitence softened my

impious heart, and then gratitude remoulded it. Therefore, seeing you

penitent, I hope you can be grateful to Him, who has been more merciful

to you than you have to your fellow-creature. Daughter, the Church sends

you comfort.”

“Comfort to me? ah! never! unless it can raise my victim from the dead.”

“Take this crucifix in thy hand, fix thine eyes on it, and listen to

me,” was all the reply.

“Yes, father; but let me thoroughly dry your feet first; 'tis ill

sitting in wet feet; and you are the holiest man of all whose feet I

have washed. I know it by your voice.”

“Woman, I am not. As for my feet, they can wait their turn. Obey thou

me.

“Yes, father,” said the lady humbly. But with a woman's evasive

pertinacity she wreathed one towel swiftly round the foot she was

drying, and placed his other foot on the dry napkin; then obeyed his

command.

And as she bowed over the crucifix, the low, solemn tones of the friar

fell upon her ear, and his words soon made her whole body quiver with

various emotion, in quick succession.

“My daughter, he you murdered--in intent--was one Gerard, a Hollander.

He loved a creature, as men should love none but their Redeemer and His

Church. Heaven chastised him. A letter came to Rome. She was dead.”

“Poor Gerard! Poor Margaret!” moaned the penitent.

Clement's voice faltered at this a moment. But soon, by a strong effort,

he recovered all his calmness.

“His feeble nature yielded, body and soul, to the blow, He was stricken

down with fever. He revived only to rebel against Heaven. He said,

'There is no God.'”

“Poor, poor Gerard!”

“Poor Gerard? thou feeble, foolish woman! Nay, wicked, impious Gerard.

He plunged into vice, and soiled his eternal jewel: those you met

him with were his daily companions; but know, rash creature, that the

seeming woman you took to be his leman was but a boy, dressed in woman's

habits to flout the others, a fair boy called Andrea. What that Andrea

said to thee I know not; but be sure neither he, nor any layman, knows

thy folly, This Gerard, rebel against Heaven, was no traitor to thee,

unworthy.”

The lady moaned like one in bodily agony, and the crucifix began to

tremble in her trembling hands.

“Courage!” said Clement. “Comfort is at hand.”

“From crime he fell into despair, and bent on destroying his soul, he

stood one night by Tiber, resolved on suicide. He saw one watching him.

It was a bravo.”

“Holy saints!”

“He begged the bravo to despatch him; he offered him all his money, to

slay him body and soul. The bravo would not. Then this desperate sinner,

not softened even by that refusal, flung himself into Tiber.”

“Ah!”

“And the assassin saved his life. Thou hadst chosen for the task

Lodovico, husband of Teresa, whom this Gerard had saved at sea, her and

her infant child.”

“He lives! he lives! he lives! I am faint.”

The friar took the crucifix from her hands, fearing it might fall, A

shower of tears relieved her. The friar gave her time; then continued

calmly, “Ay, he lives; thanks to thee and thy wickedness, guided to his

eternal good by an almighty and all-merciful hand. Thou art his greatest

earthly benefactor.”

“Where is he? where? where?”

“What is that to thee?”

“Only to see him alive. To beg him on my knees forgive me. I swear to

you I will never presume again to--How could I? He knows all. Oh, shame!

Father, does he know?”

“All.”

“Then never will I meet his eye; I should sink into the earth. But I

would repair my crime. I would watch his life unseen. He shall rise in

the world, whence I so nearly thrust him, poor soul; the Caesare, my

family, are all-powerful in Rome; and I am near their head.”

“My daughter,” said Clement coldly, “he you call Gerard needs nothing

man can do for him. Saved by a miracle from double death, he has left

the world, and taken refuge from sin and folly in the bosom of the

Church.”

“A priest?”

“A priest, and a friar.”

“A friar? Then you are not his confessor? Yet you know all. That gentle

voice!”

She raised her head slowly, and peered at him through her mask.

The next moment she uttered a faint shriek, and lay with her brow upon

his bare feet.

CHAPTER LXXV

Clement sighed. He began to doubt whether he had taken the wisest course

with a creature so passionate.

But young as he was, he had already learned many lessons of

ecclesiastical wisdom. For one thing he had been taught to pause, ie.,

in certain difficulties, neither to do nor to say anything, until the

matter should clear itself a little.

He therefore held his peace and prayed for wisdom.

All he did was gently to withdraw his foot.

But his penitent flung her arms round it with a piteous cry, and held it

convulsively, and wept over it.

And now the agony of shame, as well as penitence, she was in, showed

itself by the bright red that crept over her very throat, as she lay

quivering at his feet.

“My daughter,” said Clement gently, “take courage. Torment thyself no

more about this Gerard, who is not. As for me, I am Brother Clement,

whom Heaven hath sent to thee this day to comfort thee, and help thee

save thy soul. Thou last made me thy confessor, I claim, then, thine

obedience.”

“Oh, yes,” sobbed the penitent.

“Leave this pilgrimage, and instant return to Rome. Penitence abroad is

little worth. There where we live lie the temptations we must defeat, or

perish; not fly in search of others more showy, but less lethal. Easy to

wash the feet of strangers, masked ourselves, Hard to be merely meek and

charitable with those about us.”

“I'll never, never lay finger on her again.”

“Nay, I speak not of servants only, but of dependents, kinsmen, friends.

This be thy penance; the last thing at night, and the first thing after

matins, call to mind thy sin, and God His goodness; and so be humble and

gentle to the faults of those around thee. The world it courts the rich;

but seek thou the poor: not beggars; these for the most are neither

honest nor truly poor. But rather find out those who blush to seek thee,

yet need thee sore. Giving to them shalt lend to Heaven. Marry a good

son of the Church.”

“Me? I will never marry.”

“Thou wilt marry within the year. I do entreat and command thee to marry

one that feareth God. For thou art very clay. Mated ill thou shalt be

naught. But wedding a worthy husband thou mayest, Dei gratia, live a

pious princess; ay, and die a saint.”

“I?”

“Thou.”

He then desired her to rise and go about the good work he had set her.

She rose to her knees, and removing her mask, cast an eloquent look upon

him, then lowered her eyes meekly.

“I will obey you as I would an angel. How happy I am, yet unhappy; for

oh, my heart tells me I shall never look on you again. I will not go

till I have dried your feet.”

“It needs not. I have excused thee this bootless penance.”

“'Tis no penance to me. Ah! you do not forgive me, if you will not let

me dry your poor feet.”

“So be it then,” said Clement resignedly; and thought to himself,

“Levius quid foemina.”

But these weak creatures, that gravitate towards the small, as heavenly

bodies towards the great, have yet their own flashes of angelic

intelligence.

When the princess had dried the friar's feet, she looked at him with

tears in her beautiful eyes, and murmured with singular tenderness and

goodness--

“I will have masses said for her soul. May I?” she added timidly.

This brought a faint blush into the monk's cheek, and moistened his cold

blue eye. It came so suddenly from one he was just rating so low.

“It is a gracious thought,” he said. “Do as thou wilt: often such acts

fall back on the doer like blessed dew. I am thy confessor, not hers;

thine is the soul I must now do my all to save, or woe be to my own. My

daughter, my dear daughter, I see good and ill angels fighting for thy

soul this day, ay, this moment; oh, fight thou on thine own side. Dost

thou remember all I bade thee?”

“Remember!” said the princess. “Sweet saint, each syllable of thine is

graved in my heart.”

“But one word more, then. Pray much to Christ, and little to his

saints.”

“I will.”

“And that is the best word I have light to say to thee. So part we on

it. Thou to the place becomes thee best, thy father's house, I to my

holy mother's work.”

“Adieu,” faltered the princess. “Adieu, thou that I have loved too well,

hated too ill, known and revered too late; forgiving angel, adieu--for

ever.”

The monk caught her words, though but faltered in a sigh.

“For ever?” he cried aloud, with sudden ardour. “Christians live 'for

ever,' and love 'for ever,' but they never part 'for ever. They part, as

part the earth and sun, to meet more brightly in a little while. You and

I part here for life. And what is our life? One line in the great story

of the Church, whose son and daughter we are; one handful in the sand of

time, one drop in the ocean of 'For ever.' Adieu--for the little moment

called 'a life!' We part in trouble, we shall meet in peace: we part

creatures of clay, we shall meet immortal spirits: we part in a world of

sin and sorrow, we shall meet where all is purity and love divine; where

no ill passions are, but Christ is, and His saints around Him clad in

white. There, in the turning of an hour-glass, in the breaking of a

bubble, in the passing of a cloud, she, and thou, and I, shall meet

again; and sit at the feet of angels and archangels, apostles and

saints, and beam like them with joy unspeakable, in the light of the

shadow of God upon His throne, FOR EVER--AND EVER--AND EVER.”

And so they parted. The monk erect, his eyes turned heavenwards and

glowing with the sacred fire of zeal; the princess slowly retiring and

turning more than once to cast a lingering glance of awe and tender

regret on that inspired figure.

She went home subdued, and purified. Clement, in due course, reached

Basle, and entered on his duties, teaching in the University, and

preaching in the town and neighbourhood. He led a life that can be

comprised in two words; deep study, and mortification. My reader has

already a peep into his soul. At Basle he advanced in holy zeal and

knowledge.

The brethren of his order began to see in him a descendant of the saints

and martyrs.

CHAPTER LXXVI

THE HEARTH

When little Gerard was nearly three months old, a messenger came hot

from Tergou for Catherine.

“Now just you go back,” said she, “and tell them I can't come, and I

won't: they have got Kate,” So he departed, and Catherine continued her

sentence; “there, child, I must go: they are all at sixes and sevens:

this is the third time of asking; and to-morrow my man would come

himself and take me home by the ear, with a flea in't.” She then

recapitulated her experiences of infants, and instructed Margaret what

to do in each coming emergency, and pressed money upon her, Margaret

declined it with thanks, Catherine insisted, and turned angry. Margaret

made excuses all so reasonable that Catherine rejected them with calm

contempt; to her mind they lacked femininity,

“Come, out with your heart,” said she “and you and me parting; and

mayhap shall never see one another's face again.”

“Oh! mother, say not so.”

“Alack, girl, I have seen it so often; 'twill come into my mind now at

each parting, When I was your age, I never had such a thought, Nay, we

were all to live for ever then: so out wi' it.”

“Well, then, mother--I would rather not have told you--your Cornelis

must say to me, 'So you are come to share with us, eh, mistress?' those

were his words, I told him I would be very sorry.

“Beshrew his ill tongue! What signifies it? He will never know,

“Most likely he would sooner or later, But whether or no, I will take

no grudged bounty from any family; unless I saw my child starving,

and--Heaven only knows what I might do, Nay, mother, give me but thy

love--I do prize that above silver, and they grudge me not that, by all

I can find--for not a stiver of money will I take out of your house.”

“You are a foolish lass, Why, were it me, I'd take it just to spite

him.”

“No, you would not, You and I are apples off one tree”

Catherine yielded with a good grace; and when the actual parting came,

embraces and tears burst forth on both sides.

When she was gone the child cried a good deal; and all attempts to

pacify him failing, Margaret suspected a pin, and searching between his

clothes and his skin, found a gold angel incommoding his backbone.

“There, now, Gerard,” said she to the babe; “I thought granny gave in

rather sudden.”

She took the coin and wrapped it in a piece of linen, and laid it at the

bottom of her box, bidding the infant observe she could be at times as

resolute as granny herself.

Catherine told Eli of Margaret's foolish pride, and how she had baffled

it. Eli said Margaret was right, and she was wrong.

Catherine tossed her head. Eli pondered.

Margaret was not without domestic anxieties. She had still two men to

feed, and could not work so hard as she had done. She had enough to do

to keep the house, and the child, and cook for them all. But she had a

little money laid by, and she used to tell her child his father would be

home to help them before it was spent. And with these bright hopes, and

that treasury of bliss, her boy, she spent some happy months.

Time wore on; and no Gerard came; and stranger still, no news of him.

Then her mind was disquieted, and contrary to her nature, which was

practical, she was often lost in sad reverie; and sighed in silence. And

while her heart was troubled, her money was melting. And so it was,

that one day she found the cupboard empty, and looked in her dependents'

faces; and at the sight of them, her bosom was all pity; and she

appealed to the baby whether she could let grandfather and poor old

Martin want a meal; and went and took out Catherine's angel. As she

unfolded the linen a tear of gentle mortification fell on it. She sent

Martin out to change it. While he was gone a Frenchman came with one of

the dealers in illuminated work, who had offered her so poor a price.

He told her he was employed by his sovereign to collect masterpieces for

her book of hours. Then she showed him the two best things she had; and

he was charmed with one of them, viz., the flowers and raspberries and

creeping things, which Margaret Van Eyck had shaded. He offered her an

unheard-of price. “Nay, flout not my need, good stranger,” said she;

“three mouths there be in this house, and none to fill them but me.”

Curious arithmetic! Left out No. 1.

“I'd out thee not, fair mistress. My princess charged me strictly, 'Seek

the best craftsmen'; but I will no hard bargains; make them content with

me, and me with them.'”

The next minute Margaret was on her knees kissing little Gerard in

the cradle, and showering four gold pieces on him again and again, and

relating the whole occurrence to him in very broken Dutch,

“And oh, what a good princess: wasn't she? We will pray for her, won't

we, my lambkin; when we are old enough?”

Martin came in furious. “They will not change it. I trow they think I

stole it.”

“I am beholden to thee,” said Margaret hastily, and almost snatched

it from Martin, and wrapped it up again, and restored it to its

hiding-place.

Ere these unexpected funds were spent, she got to her ironing and

starching again. In the midst of which Martin sickened; and died after

an illness of nine days.

Nearly all her money went to bury him decently.

He was gone; and there was an empty chair by her fireside, For he had

preferred the hearth to the sun as soon as the Busy Body was gone.

Margaret would not allow anybody to sit in this chair now. Yet whenever

she let her eye dwell too long on it vacant, it was sure to cost her a

tear.

And now there was nobody to carry her linen home, To do it herself she

must leave little Gerard in charge of a neighbour, But she dared not

trust such a treasure to mortal; and besides she could not bear him out

of her sight for hours and hours. So she set inquiries on foot for a boy

to carry her basket on Saturday and Monday.

A plump, fresh-coloured youth, called Luke Peterson, who looked fifteen,

but was eighteen, came in, and blushing, and twiddling his bonnet, asked

her if a man would not serve her turn as well as a boy.

Before he spoke she was saying to herself, “This boy will just do.”

But she took the cue, and said, “Nay; but a man will maybe seek more

than I can well pay.

“Not I,” said Luke warmly. “Why, Mistress Margaret, I am your neighbour,

and I do very well at the coopering. I can carry your basket for you

before or after my day's work, and welcome, You have no need to pay me

anything. 'Tisn't as if we were strangers, ye know.”

“Why, Master Luke, I know your face, for that matter; but I cannot call

to mind that ever a word passed between us.”

“Oh yes, you did, Mistress Margaret. What, have you forgotten? One day

you were trying to carry your baby and eke your pitcher full o' water;

and quo' I, 'Give me the baby to carry.' 'Nay, says you, 'I'll give you

the pitcher, and keep the bairn myself;' and I carried the pitcher home,

and you took it from me at this door, and you said to me, 'I am muckle

obliged to you, young man,' with such a sweet voice; not like the folk

in this street speak to a body.”

“I do mind now, Master Luke; and methinks it was the least I could say.”

“Well, Mistress Margaret, if you will say as much every time I carry

your basket, I care not how often I bear it, nor how far.”

“Nay, nay,” said Margaret, colouring faintly. “I would not put upon

good nature, You are young, Master Luke, and kindly. Say I give you

your supper on Saturday night, when you bring the linen home, and your

dawn-mete o' Monday; would that make us anyways even?”

“As you please; only say not I sought a couple o' diets! for such a

trifle as yon.”

With chubby-faced Luke's timely assistance, and the health and strength

which Heaven gave this poor young woman, to balance her many ills, the

house went pretty smoothly awhile. But the heart became more and more

troubled by Gerard's long, and now most mysterious silence.

And then that mental torturer, Suspense, began to tear her heavy heart

with his hot pincers, till she cried often and vehemently, “Oh, that I

could know the worst.”

Whilst she was in this state, one day she heard a heavy step mount

the stair. She started and trembled, “That is no step that I know. Ill

tidings?”

The door opened, and an unexpected visitor, Eli, came in, looking grave

and kind.

Margaret eyed him in silence, and with increasing agitation,

“Girl.” said he, “the skipper is come back.”

“One word,” gasped Margaret; “is he alive?”

“Surely I hope so. No one has seen him dead.”

“Then they must have seen him alive.”

“No, girl; neither dead nor alive hath he been seen this many months in

Rome. My daughter Kate thinks he is gone to some other city. She bade me

tell you her thought.”

“Ay, like enough,” said Margaret gloomily; “like enough. My poor babe!”

The old man in a faintish voice asked her for a morsel to eat: he had

come fasting.

The poor thing pitied him with the surface of her agitated mind, and

cooked a meal for him, trembling, and scarce knowing what she was about.

Ere he went he laid his hand upon her head, and said, “Be he alive, or

be he dead, I look on thee as my daughter. Can I do nought for thee this

day? bethink thee now?”

“Ay, old man. Pray for him; and for me!”

Eli sighed, and went sadly and heavily down the stairs.

She listened half stupidly to his retiring footsteps till they ceased.

Then she sank moaning down by the cradle, and drew little Gerard tight

to her bosom. “Oh, my poor fatherless boy; my fatherless boy!”

CHAPTER LXXVII

Not long after this, as the little family at Tergou sat at dinner, Luke

Peterson burst in on them, covered with dust. “Good people, Mistress

Catherine is wanted instantly at Rotterdam.”

“My name is Catherine, young man. Kate, it will be Margaret.”

“Ay, dame, she said to me, 'Good Luke, hie thee to Tergou, and ask for

Eli the hosier, and pray his wife Catherine to come to me, for God His

love.' I didn't wait for daylight.”

“Holy saints! He has come home, Kate. Nay, she would sure have said so.

What on earth can it be?” And she heaped conjecture on conjecture.

“Mayhap the young man can tell us,” hazarded Kate timidly.

“That I can,” said Luke, “Why, her babe is a-dying, And she was so

wrapped up in it!”

Catherine started up: “What is his trouble?”

“Nay, I know not. But it has been peaking and pining worse and worse

this while.”

A furtive glance of satisfaction passed between Cornelis and Sybrandt.

Luckily for them Catherine did not see it. Her face was turned towards

her husband. “Now, Eli,” cried she furiously, “if you say a word against

it, you and I shall quarrel, after all these years.'

“Who gainsays thee, foolish woman? Quarrel with your own shadow, while I

go borrow Peter's mule for ye.”

“Bless thee, my good man! Bless thee! Didst never yet fail me at a

pinch, Now eat your dinners who can, while I go and make ready.”

She took Luke back with her in the cart, and on the way questioned and

cross-questioned him severely and seductively by turns, till she had

turned his mind inside out, what there was of it.

Margaret met her at the door, pale and agitated, and threw her arms

round her neck, and looked imploringly in her face.

“Come, he is alive, thank God,” said Catherine, after scanning her

eagerly.

She looked at the failing child, and then at the poor hollow-eyed

mother, alternately, “Lucky you sent for me,” said she, “The child is

poisoned.”

“Poisoned! by whom?”

“By you. You have been fretting.”

“Nay, indeed, mother. How can I help fretting?”

“Don't tell me, Margaret. A nursing mother has no business to fret. She

must turn her mind away from her grief to the comfort that lies in her

lap. Know you not that the child pines if the mother vexes herself? This

comes of your reading and writing. Those idle crafts befit a man;

but they keep all useful knowledge out of a woman. The child must be

weaned.”

“Oh, you cruel woman,” cried Margaret vehemently; “I am sorry I sent for

you. Would you rob me of the only bit of comfort I have in the world?

A-nursing my Gerard, I forget I am the most unhappy creature beneath the

sun.”

“That you do not,” was the retort, “or he would not be the way he is.”

“Mother!” said Margaret imploringly.

“'Tis hard,” replied Catherine, relenting. “But bethink thee; would it

not be harder to look down and see his lovely wee face a-looking up at

you out of a little coffin?”

“Oh, Jesu!”

“And how could you face your other troubles with your heart aye full,

and your lap empty?”

“Oh, mother, I consent to anything. Only save my boy.”

“That is a good lass, Trust to me! I do stand by, and see clearer than

thou.”

Unfortunately there was another consent to be gained--the babe's; and he

was more refractory than his mother.

“There,” said Margaret, trying to affect regret at his misbehaviour; “he

loves me too well.”

But Catherine was a match for them both. As she came along she had

observed a healthy young woman, sitting outside her own door, with an

infant, hard by. She went and told her the case; and would she nurse the

pining child for the nonce, till she had matters ready to wean him?

The young woman consented with a smile, and popped her child into the

cradle, and came into Margaret's house. She dropped a curtsey, and

Catherine put the child into her hands. She examined, and pitied it, and

purred over it, and proceeded to nurse it, just as if it had been her

own.

Margaret, who had been paralyzed at her assurance, cast a rueful look at

Catherine, and burst out crying.

The visitor looked up. “What is to do? Wife, ye told me not the mother

was unwilling.”

“She is not: she is only a fool. Never heed her; and you, Margaret, I am

ashamed of you.”

“You are a cruel, hard-hearted woman,” sobbed Margaret.

“Them as take in hand to guide the weak need be hardish. And you will

excuse me; but you are not my flesh and blood; and your boy is.”

After giving this blunt speech time to sink, she added, “Come now, she

is robbing her own to save yours, and you can think of nothing better

than bursting out a-blubbering in the woman's face. Out fie, for shame!”

“Nay, wife,” said the nurse. “Thank Heaven, I have enough for my own

and for hers to boot. And prithee wyte not on her! Maybe the troubles o'

life ha' soured her own milk.”

“And her heart into the bargain,” said the remorseless Catherine.

Margaret looked her full in the face; and down went her eyes.

“I know I ought to be very grateful to you,” sobbed Margaret to the

nurse: then turned her head and leaned away over the chair, not to

witness the intolerable sight of another nursing her Gerard, and Gerard

drawing no distinction between this new mother and her the banished one.

The nurse replied, “You are very welcome, my poor woman. And so are you,

Mistress Catherine, which are my townswoman, and know it not.”

“What, are ye from Tergou? all the better, But I cannot call your face

to mind.”

“Oh, you know not me: my husband and me, we are very humble folk by you.

But true Eli and his wife are known of all the town; and respected,

So, I am at your call, dame; and at yours, wife; and yours, my pretty

poppet; night or day.”

“There's a woman of the right old sort,” said Catherine, as the door

closed upon her.

“I HATE her. I HATE her. I HATE her,” said Margaret, with wonderful

fervour.

Catherine only laughed at this outburst.

“That is right,” said she; “better say it, as set sly and think it. It

is very natural after all, Come, here is your bundle o' comfort. Take

and hate that, if ye can;” and she put the child in her lap.

“No, no,” said Margaret, turning her head half way from him; she could

not for her life turn the other half. “He is not my child now; he is

hers. I know not why she left him here, for my part. It was very good of

her not to take him to her house, cradle and all; oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh

oh! oh!”

“Ah! well, one comfort, he is not dead. This gives me light: some other

woman has got him away from me; like father, like son; oh! oh! oh! oh!

oh!”

Catherine was sorry for her, and let her cry in peace. And after that,

when she wanted Joan's aid, she used to take Gerard out, to give him

a little fresh air. Margaret never objected; nor expressed the least

incredulity; but on their return was always in tears.

This connivance was short-lived. She was now altogether as eager to

wean little Gerard. It was done; and he recovered health and vigour; and

another trouble fell upon him directly teething, But here Catherine's

experience was invaluable; and now, in the midst of her grief and

anxiety about the father, Margaret had moments of bliss, watching the

son's tiny teeth come through. “Teeth, mother? I call them not teeth,

but pearls of pearls.” And each pearl that peeped and sparkled on his

red gums, was to her the greatest feat Nature had ever achieved.

Her companion partook the illusion. And had we told them standing corn

was equally admirable, Margaret would have changed to a reproachful

gazelle, and Catherine turned us out of doors; so each pearl's arrival

was announced with a shriek of triumph by whichever of them was the

fortunate discoverer.

Catherine gossiped with Joan, and learned that she was the wife of

Jorian Ketel of Tergou, who had been servant to Ghysbrecht Van Swieten,

but fallen out of favour, and come back to Rotterdam, his native place.

His friends had got him the place of sexton to the parish, and what with

that and carpentering, he did pretty well.

Catherine told Joan in return whose child it was she had nursed, and all

about Margaret and Gerard, and the deep anxiety his silence had plunged

them in. “Ay,” said Joan, “the world is full of trouble.” One day she

said to Catherine, “It's my belief my man knows more about your Gerard

than anybody in these parts; but he has got to be closer than ever of

late. Drop in some day just afore sunset, and set him talking. And for

our Lady's sake say not I set you on. The only hiding he ever gave me

was for babbling his business; and I do not want another. Gramercy! I

married a man for the comfort of the thing, not to be hided.”

Catherine dropped in. Jorian was ready enough to tell her how he had

befriended her son and perhaps saved his life. But this was no news to

Catherine; and the moment she began to cross-question him as to whether

he could guess why her lost boy neither came nor wrote, he cast a grim

look at his wife, who received it with a calm air of stolid candour and

innocent unconsciousness; and his answers became short and sullen.

“What should he know more than another?” and so on. He added, after a

pause, “Think you the burgomaster takes such as me into his secrets?”

“Oh, then the burgomaster knows something?” said Catherine sharply.

“Likely. Who else should?”

“I'll ask him.”

“I would.”

“And tell him you say he knows.”

“That is right, dame. Go make him mine enemy. That is what a poor fellow

always gets if he says a word to you women.”

And Jorian from that moment shrunk in and became impenetrable as a

hedgehog, and almost as prickly.

His conduct caused both the poor women agonies of mind, alarm, and

irritated curiosity. Ghysbrecht was for some cause Gerard's mortal

enemy; had stopped his marriage, imprisoned him, hunted him. And here

was his late servant, who when off his guard had hinted that this enemy

had the clue to Gerard's silence. After sifting Jorian's every word and

look, all remained dark and mysterious. Then Catherine told Margaret to

go herself to him. “You are young, you are fair. You will maybe get more

out of him than I could.”

The conjecture was a reasonable one.

Margaret went with her child in her arms and tapped timidly at Jorian's

door just before sunset. “Come in,” said a sturdy voice. She entered,

and there sat Jorian by the fireside. At sight of her he rose, snorted,

and burst out of the house. “Is that for me, wife?” inquired Margaret,

turning very red.

“You must excuse him,” replied Joan, rather coldly; “he lays it to your

door that he is a poor man instead of a rich one. It is something about

a piece of parchment, There was one amissing, and he got nought from the

burgomaster all along of that one.”

“Alas! Gerard took it.”

“Likely, But my man says you should not have let him: you were pledged

to him to keep them all safe. And sooth to Say, I blame not my Jorian

for being wroth, 'Tis hard for a poor man to be so near fortune and lose

it by those he has befriended. However, I tell him another story. Says

I, 'Folk that are out o' trouble like you and me didn't ought to be too

hard on folk that are in trouble; and she has plenty. Going already?

What is all your hurry, mistress?”

“Oh, it is not for me to drive the goodman out of his own house.”

“Well, let me kiss the bairn afore ye go. He is not in fault anyway,

poor innocent.”

Upon this cruel rebuff Margaret came to a resolution, which she did not

confide even to Catherine.

After six weeks' stay that good woman returned home.

On the child's birthday, which occurred soon after, Margaret did no

work; but put on her Sunday clothes, and took her boy in her arms and

went to the church and prayed there long and fervently for Gerard's safe

return.

That same day and hour Father Clement celebrated a mass and prayed for

Margaret's departed soul in the minster church at Basle.

CHAPTER LXXVIII

Some blackguard or other, I think it was Sybrandt, said, “A lie is not

like a blow with a curtal axe.”

True: for we can predict in some degree the consequences of a stroke

with any material weapon. But a lie has no bounds at all. The nature of

the thing is to ramify beyond human calculation.

Often in the everyday world a lie has cost a life, or laid waste two or

three.

And so, in this story, what tremendous consequences of that one

heartless falsehood!

Yet the tellers reaped little from it.

The brothers, who invented it merely to have one claimant the less for

their father's property, saw little Gerard take their brother's place

in their mother's heart. Nay, more, one day Eli openly proclaimed that,

Gerard being lost, and probably dead, he had provided by will for little

Gerard, and also for Margaret, his poor son's widow.

At this the look that passed between the black sheep was a caution to

traitors. Cornelis had it on his lips to say. Gerard was most likely

alive, But he saw his mother looking at him, and checked himself in

time.

Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, the other partner in that lie, was now a failing

man. He saw the period fast approaching when all his wealth would drop

from his body, and his misdeeds cling to his soul.

Too intelligent to deceive himself entirely, he had never been free

from gusts of remorse. In taking Gerard's letter to Margaret he had

compounded. “I cannot give up land and money,” said his giant Avarice.

“I will cause her no unnecessary pain,” said his dwarf Conscience.

So, after first tampering with the seal, and finding there was not a

syllable about the deed, he took it to her with his own hand; and made a

merit of it to himself: a set-off; and on a scale not uncommon where the

self-accuser is the judge.

The birth of Margaret's child surprised and shocked him, and put his

treacherous act in a new light. Should his letter take effect he should

cause the dishonour of her who was the daughter of one friend, the

granddaughter of another, and whose land he was keeping from her too.

These thoughts preying on him at that period of life when the strength

of body decays, and the memory of old friends revives, filled him with

gloomy horrors. Yet he was afraid to confess. For the cure was an honest

man, and would have made him disgorge. And with him Avarice was an

ingrained habit, Penitence only a sentiment.

Matters were thus when, one day, returning from the town hall to his own

house, he found a woman waiting for him in the vestibule, with a child

in her arms. She was veiled, and so, concluding she had something to

be ashamed of, he addressed her magisterially, On this she let down her

veil and looked him full in the face.

It was Margaret Brandt.

Her sudden appearance and manner startled him, and he could not conceal

his confusion.

“Where is my Gerard?” cried she, her bosom heaving. “Is he alive?”

“For aught I know,” stammered Ghysbrecht. “I hope so, for your sake.

Prithee come into this room. The servants!”

“Not a step,” said Margaret, and she took him by the shoulder, and held

him with all the energy of an excited woman. “You know the secret of

that which is breaking my heart. Why does not my Gerard come, nor send

a line this many months? Answer me, or all the town is like to hear me,

let alone thy servants, My misery is too great to be sported with.”

In vain he persisted he knew nothing about Gerard. She told him those

who had sent her to him told her another tale.

“You do know why he neither comes nor sends,” said she firmly.

At this Ghysbrecht turned paler and paler; but he summoned all his

dignity, and said, “Would you believe those two knaves against a man of

worship?”

“What two knaves?” said she keenly.

He stammered, “Said ye not--? There I am a poor old broken man, whose

memory is shaken. And you come here, and confuse me so, I know not what

I say.”

“Ay, sir, your memory is shaken, or sure you would not be my enemy. My

father saved you from the plague, when none other would come anigh you;

and was ever your friend. My grandfather Floris helped you in your early

poverty, and loved you, man and boy. Three generations of us you have

seen; and here is the fourth of us; this is your old friend Peter's

grandchild, and your old friend Floris his great-grandchild. Look down

on his innocent face, and think of theirs!”

“Woman, you torture me,” sighed Ghysbrecht, and sank upon a bench. But

she saw her advantage, and kneeled before him, and put the boy on his

knees. “This fatherless babe is poor Margaret Brandt's, that never did

you ill, and comes of a race that loved you. Nay, look at his face.

'Twill melt thee more than any word of mine, Saints of heaven, what can

a poor desolate girl and her babe have done to wipe out all memory of

thine own young days, when thou wert guiltless as he is, that now looks

up in thy face and implores thee to give him back his father?”

And with her arms under the child she held him up higher and higher,

smiling under the old man's eyes.

He cast a wild look of anguish on the child, and another on the kneeling

mother, and started up shrieking, “Avaunt, ye pair of adders.”

The stung soul gave the old limbs a momentary vigour, and he walked

rapidly, wringing his hands and clutching at his white hair. “Forget

those days? I forget all else. Oh, woman, woman, sleeping or waking I

see but the faces of the dead, I hear but the voices of the dead, and I

shall soon be among the dead, There, there, what is done is done. I am

in hell. I am in hell.”

And unnatural force ended in prostration.

He staggered, and but for Margaret would have fallen, With her one

disengaged arm she supported him as well as she could and cried for

help.

A couple of servants came running, and carried him away in a state

bordering on syncope, The last Margaret saw of him was his old furrowed

face, white and helpless as his hair that hung down over the servant's

elbow.

“Heaven forgive me,” she said. “I doubt I have killed the poor old man.”

Then this attempt to penetrate the torturing mystery left it as dark,

or darker than before. For when she came to ponder every word, her

suspicion was confirmed that Ghysbrecht did know something about Gerard.

“And who were the two knaves he thought had done a good deed, and told

me? Oh, my Gerard, my poor deserted babe, you and I are wading in deep

waters.”

The visit to Tergou took more money than she could well afford; and a

customer ran away in her debt. She was once more compelled to unfold

Catherine's angel. But strange to say, as she came down stairs with it

in her hand she found some loose silver on the table, with a written

line--

For Gerard his wife.

She fell with a cry of surprise on the writing; and soon it rose into a

cry of joy.

“He is alive. He sends me this by some friendly hand.”

She kissed the writing again and again, and put it in her bosom.

Time rolled on, and no news of Gerard.

And about every two months a small sum in silver found its way into the

house. Sometimes it lay on the table. Once it was flung in through the

bedroom window in a purse. Once it was at the bottom of Luke's basket.

He had stopped at the public-house to talk to a friend. The giver or his

agent was never detected. Catherine disowned it. Margaret Van Eyck swore

she had no hand in it. So did Eli. And Margaret, whenever it came, used

to say to little Gerard, “Oh, my poor deserted child, you and I are

wading in deep waters.”

She applied at least half this modest, but useful supply, to dressing

the little Gerard beyond his station in life. “If it does come from

Gerard, he shall see his boy neat.” All the mothers in the street began

to sneer, especially such as had brats out at elbows.

The months rolled on, and dead sickness of heart succeeded to these

keener torments. She returned to her first thought: “Gerard must be

dead. She should never see her boy's father again, nor her marriage

lines.” This last grief, which had been somewhat allayed by Eli and

Catherine recognizing her betrothal, now revived in full force; others

would not look so favourably on her story. And often she moaned over her

boy's illegitimacy.

“Is it not enough for us to be bereaved? Must we be dishonoured too? Oh,

that we had ne'er been born.”