Never did Calderon, the great Spanish poet, in those famous dramas of

his which always turn on the imperious exigencies, the merciless

refinements, the torturing delicacies of honor, imagine a situation

more striking, a trial more acute, a narrower pass, or a yoke more

crushing. The trial was submitted to, the pass was traversed, the yoke

was borne to the end. All we cannot say, and what we do say is nothing

by the side of the suffering we have seen, felt, known, and shared.

Perhaps a day will come when these tortures of the soul will be

comprehended and rewarded with the admiration which is their due. But

who knows? To hope that, it is necessary to believe in the justice of

history, and who knows if there will be again any history worthy of

the name? We may well doubt it, when we mark what is passing around us

in an age which for a long time boasts of having regenerated history,

and when we see liberals make the panegyric of the 10th of August,

Christians applaud the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and writers

in high credit with their several parties undertake to rehabilitate

the reign of terror, the Inquisition, and the Roman empire.

Nothing was wanting, we have said, to the evil fortune of our friend.

After years of exile in Belgium, his only son fell ill in France. And

while were debated with the desolate father the conditions of his

return, the son, the only hope of his family, died. When at length he

was permitted to return, it was too late; he received not the last

sigh of his child. He was inconsolable. "They restore me my country,"

he said; "but who will restore me my child?" It was no longer his

country, such as he had known it, that was restored to him--the

country, above all, by which he had been so well known, so proudly

boasted, and so admired. The real exile is not in being torn from our

native country, but in remaining in it and finding no longer that

which made it specially dear to us. La Moricière perceived it only too

soon. But he comprehended the difference alike of time and men, and

conformed with an intelligent and manly resignation, which held in

nothing from his adhesion, and which took nothing from the energy of

his convictions or the dignity of his attitude. For the rest, he had

brought back with him from the land of his exile neither the illusions

of the _emigré_, blind animosities, nor mean or noisy bitterness. And

yet he was not at the end of his cross.

There remained to him a last human good, a last plank saved from

shipwreck!--his old popularity among {297} his contemporaries, and the

companions in that shipwreck, near his old political friends, in the

bosom of the party which he had not only served and defended, but,

above all, had honored and protected with his glory. That popularity

he risked totally in the most abandoned, the most contested, and the

most vilipended cause in the world. He risked all, and he lost! A

priest whom he had known as a soldier in Africa, under the flag of

France, before becoming his relation and his friend, offered him, in

the name of Pius IX., an opportunity of braving new perils, with the

certainty of being vanquished in the desperate struggle. He ran

thither. Forthwith a long and loud howl of insult and derision rose

from the bosom of the whole so-called European democracy. He was

dragged to the _gemoniae_--both he and the young warriors that

followed in his footsteps. A hideous clamor arose from the lowest

depths of human baseness, from the Thames to the Arno, and pursued

with invectives, railleries, and calumnies the devoted band and their

heroic chief. The vapid calumniators of disinterested virtue spoke all

at once, and spoke alone; France and Europe justified them. New Italy

blushed in her turn to find herself approached by men bold enough to

dare to fight and die under the colors of a pontiff and a father. She

asked and obtained freedom to crush them. But she essayed to kill them

with falsehood before attacking them with the sword, and by falsehoods

such as the world had not heard since the imperial trap set at Bayonne

in 1808. A Cialdini dares call, in an order of the day to his army, La

Moricière and his companions "_mercenaries_ thirsting for gold and

pillage," and King Victor Emmanuel announces to the Emperor of the

French that he "is marching his troops into the Marches and Umbria to

re-establish order there in relation to the temporal authority of the

Pope, and, if it should be necessary, to give battle to the revolution

on the Neapolitan territory." [Footnote 46] Eight days after the

troops of the king pounced, ten to one, on the little army of La

Moricière. The obscure burgh of Castelfidardo is immortalized by that

butchery. Pimodan perished there by a death worthy of his chief, who

sought refuge in Ancona, and capitulate when his last gun was

dismounted. This French general--and what a general!--gave up his

sword to the Piedmontese! His young companions, prisoners like

himself, passed over Italy in the midst of insults and outrages. La

Moricière, himself released as soon as the work of spoliation was

consummated, returned to France, where he met the scoffs and jeers of

those who insulted his departure.

[Footnote 46: _Circular of M. Thouvenel_, Minister of Foreign

Affairs, 18th October, 1860. The "National Opinion," a worthy

"Moniteur" of Piedmont, adds in its number for Sept. 14, 1860:

"Victor Emmanuel proposes precisely to protect the Holy Father and

his temporal authority against the enthusiasm of the volunteers."]

From that moment all was accomplished or marching toward the end

foreseen and determined. The darkest forebodings, the saddest

predictions, are verified. Christian France is resigned, and Europe

has habituated herself to what five years ago appeared to be the _nec

plus ultra_ of impossible iniquity. People have even come to regard

confining the spoliation within its present limits as a benefit which,

if assured, would make a _Te Deum_ break forth from the whole Catholic

world, asleep or deceived.

La Moricière had seen and suffered all this, and it was only the last

phase of a disgrace which lasted fifteen years without relaxation and

without revenge. As his life, rent asunder, drew toward its end, by an

insolent freak of fortune, by a contrast and a coincidence the strange

mystery of which will astonish the future, Abd-el-Kader arrives in

France to be received there as a sovereign!

The conqueror and the conquered, it is said, met in the street: La

Moricière on foot, confounded with the {298} multitude; Abd-el-Kader

with all the pomp of his official train, and the grand cordon of the

Legion of Honor on his breast. They exchanged a single look. After

which, the prisoner of 1847 is found sufficiently avenged on the

prisoner of the 2d of December; pursuing his course with loud din,

caressed, feasted, toasted by courtiers, functionaries, and

freemasons, presented to the universitarian youth as the type of

modern civilization and the religion of large souls, Abd-el-Kader

quitted triumphantly the soil of France, to return with his wives, who

accompanied him, to his palace in the East; La Moricière entered his

house to die there, and he did die there, all alone, forgotten by the

multitude, unknown by the rising generation, and buried in the silence

of the flatterers and satellites of fortune. The death of this great

servant of France is announced by the official journal among the

"Miscellaneous Facts," after an article on conducting water into

Paris! At the decline of day his coffin, in being directed toward a

village cemetery, traverses obscurely the streets of that Babylon

which he had saved, really saved, from barbarism--those very streets

lately ploughed by the pompous _cortège_ of a marshal of France, named

grand master of freemasonry by an imperial decree.

Whilst the Cialdinis, the Fantis, and so many authors and fomentors of

the _guet-apens_ of Castelfidardo, so many other violators of the law

of nations and of their sworn faith, survive and triumph, rolling in

opulence and prosperity. La Moricière, for having been faithful to

law, to honor, and to religion, is extinguished and disappears,

vanquished, ignored, forgotten.

I have said that I suspect the judgments of history, because history

is almost always the servant or the priestess of Success; but its

recitals are always instructive, and I consent that it be questioned

to ascertain if it furnish many instances of a destiny more tragic.

III.

But after having touched the bottom of the abyss, the soul rises to

contemplate and adore the grandeur and glory of adversity. La

Moricière, we know and confess it, triumphant and satisfied, marshal

of France, conqueror at Alma or Magenta, hailed by the curiosity of

the eager multitude, fat and heavy by prosperity, had not risen above

the throng of successful generals, had attained no other glory than

military glory, with which France in all times has been smitten, and

in all times been saturated. His image, placed in its rank in the

galleries of Versailles, in the midst of so many others, would have

awakened in the souls of the visitors only a transient and commonplace

emotion; but La Moricière, betrayed by fortune, disgraced, proscribed,

insulted; La Moricière, conqueror of anarchy and victim of the

dictatorship; La Moricière, condemned by his sense of honor to the

punishment of an obscure idleness; La Moricière, beaten at

Castelfidardo and a captive at Ancona; La Moricière, submitting to the

wrongs of fate with a modesty and a gravity wholly Christian, then

dying all alone, but standing with the crucifix in his hand--is a

personage of another stamp, and rises at once from the ranks of the

herd to the loftiest height of human admiration. This is a glory

apart, which re-youths the soul, which stimulates and purifies it, and

which it would not exchange for any other. This is a spectacle such as

history too rarely offers, such as we Frenchmen, we Catholics, too

docile worshippers of force and fortune, have special need of. Yes,

this glory is enviable, and in reality the most enviable of all

glories. In vain nature rebels, reason and faith unite to proclaim

it. We are all moved by the recollection of Catinat, old, retired, and

resigned in his retreat, and recalling there, as says Saint-Simon, "by

his simplicity, his frugality, his contempt of the world, his peace of

mind, and the uniformity of {299} his conduct, the memory of those

great men who, after triumphs the best merited, returned tranquilly to

their plough, always loving their country, and little affected by the

ingratitude of Rome, which they had so well served." But Catinat,

really unfortunate; Catinat, a prisoner, exiled, disgraced; Catinat,

removed at the flower of his age from the command of armies, had been

much greater still, and, as our La Moricière have recalled St. Louis

in chains. The ancients said that the good man struggling with

adversity is the most worthy, if not alone worthy, of the favor of

God. Christianity adds, that it is a sight the most necessary and

salutary to the heart of man.

La Moricière was chosen among us to give this high lesson in all its

majesty and in all its beauty. He has shown that double character of

docility under trial, and of empire over misfortune, which makes great

men and great saints. It was because there was in him the stuff of a

great Christian.

Trials and exile rapidly developed in his soul the germs of faith

which early domestic education had planted, and which pure and noble

examples near him led him to admire and cherish. By his marriage with

the granddaughter of the Marchioness of Montagu, he entered a family

in which calamities the most atrocious and the most unexpected, borne

with superhuman energy, had left in the soul only a sublime serenity,

and compassion greater still for the executioners than for the

martyrs. Inflamed by the recitals of a mother-in-law who continued to

the last his most devoted and enthusiastic friend, he had the first

thought of a publication destined to count among the treasures of our

history, and of which he himself dictated the first draft. [Footnote

47] In learning to appreciate the action of Christian virtue on the

most touching victims of the Reign of Terror as on the obscure duties

of domestic life, he was conducted further and higher still. A study,

an active study, ardent and profound, of the doctrines and results of

religion, became henceforth his principal occupation, and he continued

it with unwearied perseverance to his last moments. Once a Christian

in practice as well as in belief, he would be so openly, and no more

recoil before human respect and the disdains of infidelity than before

the Arabs or the barricades. He was seen at the foot of the Christian

pulpit, following the words of the preacher with deep attention, and

the lively gesticulation habitual to him, marking on his nobly

chiselled features an expressive assent and sometimes an impatient

contradiction, as if he felt that he must in his turn mount the

tribune and reply. One day, at Brussels, a former colleague and

friend, who had known him quite different from what he was now, found

him bending over his maps, tracing the progress of our army in the

Crimea. To hold them unrolled he took the books which he now

generally, and which were the Catechism, his mass-book, the Imitation

of Jesus Christ, and a volume of Père Gratry. At sight of these four

witnesses of a preoccupation so novel, the visitor could not dissemble

his surprise. "Yes, indeed," said the general, "I use these, I occupy

myself with that. I do not wish, like you, to remain with my feet

dangling in the air, between heaven and earth, between light and

darkness. I wish to know whither I go, and by what I am to hold. I

make no mystery of it."

[Footnote 47: _"Anne Dominique de Noailles, Marquise de Montagu."_

Rouen, 1859. It May be well to remind the American reader that the

Marquise de Montagu, grandmother of General La Moricière's wife,

was a sister of Madame Lafayette, who so heroically shared the

prison of Olmntz with her husband, and whoso faith and purity gave a

superhuman strength and energy to her noble character.--THE

TRANSLATOR. ]

This public courage against the enemies of the faith availed him from

God the unhoped for and incomparable gift of magnanimous patience,

which he needed to enable him to accept and bear his trials, and to

offer to God all the goods of his glorious life, which he had

sacrificed. The progress of {300} that great soul, becoming every day

more obvious, was manifested especially by his resignation in presence

of the heavy cross which was inflicted on him.

"We welcome the cross at a distance," says Fénelon, "but shrink from

it when close by." It was not so with La Moricière. He had seldom

welcomed the cross when afar, but when it came home to him, he

embraced it, raised it up, and bore it even to the tomb, with a

supernatural generosity, serenity, and simplicity. The _crucifying

experience_ which, according to Fénelon, is always needed to detach us

from ourselves and the world, found in him no revolt, no fainting, no

feebleness. He entered this new career and walked in it to the end

with the vehement and obstinate resolution of a man of war determined

to become a man of God.

A great genius has said it concerns the honor of the human species

that souls born to suffer should know how to suffer well. La

Moricière was not born to suffer; he was born to combat, to command,

to conquer, and to dazzle; nevertheless, when life became to him only

one long suffering, he learned how to suffer well, to suffer as a

Christian, as a soldier of Christ, as the conqueror of evil--to suffer

not during fifteen days or fifteen months, but through fifteen years,

till death came to relieve him from his post.

All of us who have known and visited him in this second and sorrowful

phase of his existence, owe to him great and valuable lessons, which

his memory and the stern example of his death must render for ever

sacred to us. Doubtless, the acts of the saints, the examples of the

heroes of the Christian life, their trials and their triumphs,

transmitted by historians or commentators to their spiritual

posterity, are much; but they are nothing, or next to nothing, in the

real presence, if I may so speak, of a man marked with the seal of

election, of a confessor, not merely of the faith, but of virtue,

patience, resignation, and Christian abnegation. What history, what

preaching, could avail so much as a clasp of that valiant hand, an

accent of that vibrating voice, a look of that lion's eye, coming to

the support of a truth recognized, asserted, and practised by a soul

of that temper?

No; the flame of that beautiful eye, so limpid and so proud, will

never be forgotten by any who have once seen it, whether touched with

the surprise of generous indignation or softened by sympathy and the

desire to persuade; and that flame, always living in our memory, will

continue to illumine for us the mysteries of life and suffering.

Besides, no exterior metamorphosis accompanied the deep and salutary

change in his interior. Such as he was seen on the field of battle, or

in the assemblies of which he was a member, in the most brilliant and

the most agitated portion of his career, such he was in the solitude

and obscurity of his new life. He was as vehement and as dazzling as

ever, with all his fire and all his charm, with his exuberance of

life, youth, originality, enthusiasm, which seemed always anxious to

overflow on all and on everything around him. Only sourness, wrath,

irritation even the most legitimate, seemed swallowed up in one master

passion, the passion for good--seeking and accepting the will of God,

in the love of souls.

Nothing in him was worn-out or enfeebled, but all was pacified,

reduced to order, animated with a higher and purer inspiration. The

touching forgetfulness of his human glory, humanly buried, rendered

him only the more dear and the more sacred to his friends. These

friends were still numerous; and friends, relations, old comrades, old

colleagues, we were all proud of him, all under his charm as soon as

he reappeared, for too brief moments, amongst us. Nothing, indeed,

could be more natural, for I cannot too often repeat that he preserved

in his private relations all his old fascination, and all his old

{301} attractiveness. Essentially French, with all the good and

generous instincts of our country; essentially modern, also, in the

turn of his mind, his ideas, and his convictions, having nothing

stern, morose, or superannuated in his religion, and willing to place

at the service of the old law, and the old faith, all the resources of

modern civilization, which none better knew or more justly

appreciated; in fine, he remained a liberal in spite of so many

disappointments, so many defections, and so many mad crimes committed

in the name of liberty--a liberal certainly more moderate and more

practical than in the days of his youth, but liberal _altogether a

soldier_, as affirms to us one of those valiant knights who fought

with him at Castelfidardo. He thought with the new generation, and

held liberty a thing so beautiful and so good that he was willing to

accept it frankly and cordially whatever the hand that offered it.

As the price of his suffering, God granted him the conversion of his

soul. As the price of his conversion, it was given him to fix for a

last time the eyes of Europe and of posterity on himself, by a

struggle as unequal as generous, in the service of a cause as

legitimate as abandoned. All has been said both before and since his

death on the epic grandeur and the Christian heroism of the sacrifice

he made for the Papacy, so basely betrayed. It was, as repeated over

and over again, not the sacrifice of his life, which he had a hundred

times exposed with joy on the field of battle, but the sacrifice of

his name, his reputation, his military glory, the victories he had

won. _Se et ante actos triumphos devovit,_ according to the truly

Roman device of the medal offered him by the magistracy of Rome. "He

marched," says General Trochu, "with weakness against force, a signal

and rare honor which remains attached to his name in the judgment of

all honest men of all creeds and of all countries."

Let us endeavor to define clearly what it was, aside from the justice

of the sovereign and the sanctity of the right he went to defend, that

marks his devotion with a character of exceptional grandeur and

purity, which places him--dare I say it?--almost above Lescure and

Larochejaquelein. He was not young, obscure, and inexperienced, as

were those heroes so pure; he was not attracted by novelty, the

irresistible charm of the unknown, the chances of the struggle, or the

fortune of battle; he was vanquished in advance, and he knew it; he

marched in cool blood to an inevitable defeat, and a defeat not simply

material. To yield to that sublime seduction of a duty which can end

only in a catastrophe, he was obliged to break with most of his

political friends. He knew perfectly to what he exposed himself; he

knew thoroughly the cosmopolitan power and implacable fury of the

party which he was sure to stir up against him. He knew that

_clerical_ unpopularity is that which is the hardest to efface, and

the last that is pardoned. He knew it, and as formerly before the

breach of Constantine, he threw himself, head lowered, against it. He

had the noble courage to be unpopular, and so became unpopular even to

heroism. Taking the man such as we have known him, with his character,

his age, and his antecedents, I fear not to affirm that in no epoch

has Christian chivalry ever conceived anything more difficult, more

meritorious, more worthy of eternal memory.

Thus in what must be his check, God granted him here below a glory as

rare as refined and imperishable. He counts in the first ranks of

those who are the seconds for God in the great duel between good and

evil--men predestined to be sponsors for the good, for honor and

justice. [Footnote 48]

[Footnote 48: Mgr. Dupanloup _"Oraison funébre du morts de

Castelfidardo."_]

A handful of young men, miserably scanty in numbers, alone responded

to an appeal of so magnificent, so seductive an example; and of all

the symptoms {302} of the decadence or transformation of European

society, there is none more alarming, more humiliating, than that very

paucity of their numbers. _Their small number honors them, but accuses

us_, said, with too much truth, a brave man, who died at the very

moment he was going to join them. But this small number sufficed for

what La Moricière sought, and for all that he regarded as possible. It

sufficed to represent the honor of Catholic France in the midst of the

cowardly abandonment of Europe. Above all, it sufficed to strip the

lying mask from Piedmontese usurpation, and to spot with blood the

hypocritical hands about to be placed on the shoulder and the white

tunic of the Vicar of Jesus Christ.

This done, nothing remained for La Moricière but to die as he has

died. Death came suddenly, but it did not take him unprepared. It

found him on foot, vigilant, decided, invincible, as when, in the

times of his youth, he looked it every day in its face. It found him

armed with a force and a faith it found not in him then. In seeing it

approach he "unhooked his crucifix as he formerly unhooked his sword."

The word is from a bishop and it will remain: "She was sweet toward

death, as she had been sweet toward life," said Bossuet of his

Henrietta of England. He would have said of our hero, that he was

strong against death, as he had been strong against life. He would

have greeted with his immortal accents that death of the soldier which

was also, and above all, the death of a saint. What more admirable or

more complete! That last night after a day divided between private and

public prayer, and the study of the history of the Church in which he

will have a page--a page how resplendent! [Footnote 49] That word

only to call a priest--that only cry to procure the grace of

absolution--those rapid moments passed while standing in solitude, the

crucifix in his hand--and, in fine, the supreme moment which finds

him in full adoration on his knees before his God!--can there be

conceived a life more generously, more Christianly finished, a death

more happy in its suddenness? Behold him saved from tasting, drop by

drop, the bitterness of separation from his family--his noble wife,

always so worthy of him, and whom God had given for his companion and

his light, and his daughters, whom he adored with the tenderness and

passionate anxiety of an old soldier. Behold him transported at once

from his obscure and wearisome idleness into eternal activity, into a

splendor and a glory which no one can henceforth take from him! What a

triumphant exit from his exile here below! What a triumphant entry

into the heavenly country, the army of the elect, of the confessors of

the faith, the chevaliers of Christ! _Te martyrum candidatus laudat

exercitus._

[Footnote 49: It is well known that on Sunday, the eve of his death,

he assisted for the last time at the Benediction of the Blessed

Sacrament, in the village church of Plouzel. He remained there

kneeling through the whole office. On his return he read

"_l'Histoire de l'Eglise_," by the Abbé Darras. It was his last

reading. The volume was open, near his bed, when he rose to call a

domestic to go for the parish priest, who barely arrived in time to

receive his last sigh.]

How he now loves and esteems those fifteen years of human disgrace,

during which divine grace invaded his soul, and led him through thorns

and the cross, scoffs, jeers, disasters, bitterness, anguish, to the

Christian coronation of his career!

"I will go," said the Bishop of Orleans, in speaking of the graves of

the young soldiers of La Moricière, immolated under his eyes in his

last battle,--"I will go there, to cast a look toward heaven and

demand the triumph of justice and eternal honor on the earth; I will

go there to relieve my heart from its sadness and to strengthen my

soul in its faintings. I will learn from them to keep burning within

me zeal for the Church and zeal for souls,--to devote myself to the

struggle of truth and justice, even to the last whisper of my voice

and my last sigh."

And we will go, and the great and dear bishop will come with us;--we

{303} will go and ask, and learn all that we lack, near that grave

opened on the barren heath in Bretagne, at the foot of an unrecognized

cross, where lie the remains of the immortal chief of those

victims--of him who, as Duguesclin, Duguesclin his countryman, had

well deserved to sleep among the kings at Saint-Denis. So long as

there shall be a Christian France, that distant and solitary tomb will

appear to the soul clothed with a solemn grandeur and a touching

majesty. Far from the intoxications of the battle-field, far from the

theatre of his struggles and his successes, under that mound of earth

which will cover to the day of judgment that brave heart and that

victorious arm,--there, there with love it will go to invoke that

great soul, betrayed by fortune and magnified by sacrifice. It is

there that it will admire without reserve the warrior, the statesman,

who preserved unstained his honor--the honor of the soldier, of the

citizen, and of the Christian. It is there that it will be needful to

go to learn the emptiness of human hopes, and at the same time that

there is even in this world true greatness and real virtue. That grave

will tell us how necessary it is to despise iniquitous victories, and

to serve in the army of justice against the army of fortune; to

protest against enervating indolence, against servile compliances,

against the idolatry of Success; to place above the poor tinsel of a

false greatness fidelity to convictions deserted, to the torn flag of

liberty denied, to friends persecuted, to the proscribed, and to the

vanquished. That tomb will teach us, in the confusion and instability

of the present, to preserve before all things integrity of character,

which makes all the power and all the value of the man here below. But

from that tomb will come forth at the same time a harder and a more

necessary lesson still. It will teach us how to be gentle and strong

in adversity; to find calm and joy in suffering; to bear it without

depression and without sourness; to consent, where need is, to be only

a useless servant, and to gain thus eternal life. Yes, all this will

be revealed by the grave of him who will not be forgotten, because he

united in his life things too often separated; because he was not only

a great captain, a great servant of his country, a faithful soldier of

liberty, an honest man, a great citizen, but also a great Christian,

an humble and brave Christian, who loved his soul, and has saved it.

CH. DE MONTALEMBERT.

------

{304}

From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.

CHAPTER XVII.

When I had been a short time in my Lady Lumley's chamber, my Lord

Arundel sent for his granddaughter, who was wont, she told me, at that

hour to write letters for him; and I stayed alone with her ladyship,

who, as soon as Lady Surrey left us, thus broke forth in her praise:

"Hath any one, think you. Mistress Sherwood, ever pictured or imagined

a creature more noble, more toward in disposition, more virtuous in

all her actions, of greater courage in adversity or patience under

ill-usage than this one, which God hath sent to this house to cheer

two lonely hearts, whilst her own is well-nigh broken?"

"Oh, my Lady Lumley!" I exclaimed, "I fear some new misfortune hath

befallen this dear lady, who is indeed so rare a piece of goodness

that none can exceed in describing her deserts. Hitherto she hath

condescended to impart her sorrows to her poor friend; but to-day she

shut up her griefs in her own bosom, albeit I could read unspoken

suffering in every lineament of her sweet countenance."

"God forgive me," her ladyship replied, "if in speaking of her wrongs

I should entertain over-resentful feelings toward her ungracious

husband, whom once I did love as a mother, and very loth hath my heart

been to condemn him; but now, if it were not that I myself received

him in my arms what time he was born, whose life was the cause of my

sweet young sister's death, I should doubt he could be her son."

"What fresh injury," I timidly asked, "hath driven Lady Surrey from

her house?"

"_Her_ house no longer," quoth Lady Lumley. "She hath no house, no

home, no husband worthy of the name, and only an old man nigh unto the

grave, alas! and a poor feeble woman such as I am to raise a voice in

her behalf, who is spurned by one who should have loved and cherished

her, as twice before God's altar he vowed to do. Oh," cried the poor

lady, weeping, "she hath borne all things else with a sweet fortitude

which angels looking down on her must needs have wondered at. She

would ever be excusing this faithless husband with many pretty wiles

and loving subterfuges, making, sweet sophist, the worst appear the

better reason. 'Men must needs be pardoned,' she would say, when my

good father waxed wroth at his ill-usage of her, 'for such outward

neglect as many practice in these days toward their wives, for that it

was the fashion at the court to appear unhusbandly; but if women would

be patient, she would warrant them their love should be requited at

last.' And when news came that Phil had sold an estate for to

purchase--God save the mark!--a circlet of black pearls for the queen;

and Lord Arundel swore he should leave him none of his lands but what

by act of parliament he was compelled to do, she smiled winsomely, and

said: 'Yea, my lord, I pray you, let my dear Phil be a poor man as his

father wished him to be, and then, if it please God, we may live in a

cottage and be happy.' And so turned away his anger by soft words, for

he {305} laughed and answered: 'Heaven help thee. Nan! but I fear that

cottage must needs be Arundel Castle, for my hands are so tied therein

that thy knavish husband cannot fail to inherit it. And beshrew me if

I would either rob thee of it, mine own good Nan, or its old walls of

thy sweet presence when I shall be dead.' And so she always pleaded

for him, and never lost heart until . . . Oh, Mistress Sherwood, I

shall never forget the day when her uncle, Francis Dacre--wisely or

unwisely I know not, but surely meaning well--gave her to read in this

house, where she was spending a day, a letter which had fallen into

his hands, I wot not how, in the which Philip--God forgive

him!--expressed some kind of doubt if he was truly married to her or

not. Some wily wretch had, I ween, whispered to him, in an evil hour,

this accursed thought. When she saw this misdoubt written in his hand

she straightway fell down in a swoon, which recovering from, the first

thing she did was to ask for her cloak and hat, and would have walked

alone to her house if I had not stayed her almost by force, until Lord

Arundel's coach could be got ready for her. In less than two hours she

returned with so wan and death-like a countenance that it frighted me

to see her, and for some time she would not speak of what had passed

between her lord and herself; only she asked for to stay always in

this house, if it should please her grandfather, and not to part from

us any more. At the which speech I could but kiss her, and with many

tears protest that this should be the joyfullest news in the world to

Lord Arundel and to me, and what he would most desire, if it were not

for her grief, which, like an ill wind, yet did blow us this good.

'Yea,' she answered, with the deepest sigh which can be thought of, 'a

cold, withering blast which driveth me from the shelter which should

be mine! I have heard it said that when Cardinal Wolsey lay a-dying he

cried, "It were well with me now if I had served my God with the like

zeal with which I have served my king," or some words of that sort.

Oh, my Lady Lumley!' the poor child exclaimed, 'if I had not loved

Philip more than God and his Church, methinks I should not thus be

cast off!' 'Cast off,' I cried; 'and has my graceless nephew, then,

been so wicked?' 'Oh, he is changed,' she answered--'he is changed.

In his eyes, in his voice, I found not Philip's looks, nor Philip's

tones. Nought but harshness and impatience to dismiss me. The queen,

he said, was coming to rest at his house on her way to the city, and

he lacked leisure to listen to my complaints. Then I felt grief and

anger rise in my breast with such vehemency that I charged him, maybe

too suddenly, with the doubt he had expressed in his letter to my Lord

Oxford. His face flushed deeply; but drawing up haughtily, as one

aggrieved, he said the manner of our marrying had been so unusual that

there were some, and those persons well qualified to judge, who

misdoubted if there did not exist a flaw in its validity. That he

should himself be loth to think so, but that to seek at that moment to

prove the contrary, when his fortunes hung on a thread, would be to

ruin him.'

"There she paused, and clasped her hands together as if scarce able to

proceed; but soon raising her head, she related in a passionate manner

how her heart had then swelled well-nigh to bursting, pride and

tenderness restraining the utterance of such resentful thoughts as

rose in her when she remembered his father's last letter, wherein he

said his chief prop and stay in his fallen estate should be the wife

he had bestowed on him; of her own lands sold for the supply of his

prodigal courtiership; of her long patience and pleading for him to

others; and this his present treatment of her, which no wife could

brook, even if of mean birth and virtue, much loss one his equal in

condition, as well dowered as any in the land, {306} and as faithful

and tender to him as he did prove untoward to her. But none of these

reproaches passed her lips; for it was an impossible thing to her, she

said, to urge her own deserts, or so much as mention the fortune she

had brought him. Only twice she repeated, 'Ruin your fortunes, my

lord! ruin your fortunes! God help me, I had thought rather to mend

them!' And then, when he tried to answer her in some sort of evading

fashion, as if unsaying, and yet not wholly denying his former speech,

she broke forth (and in the relation of this scene the passion of her

grief renewed itself) in vehement adjurations, which seemed somewhat

to move him, not to be so unjust to her or to himself as to leave that

in uncertainty which so nearly touched both their honors; and if the

thought of a mutual love once existing between them, and a firm bond

of marriage relied on with unshaken security, and his father's dying

blessing on it, and the humble duty she had shown him from the time

she had borne his name, sufficed not to resolve him thereunto, yet for

the sake of justice to one fatherless and brotherless as herself, she

charged him without delay to make that clear which, left uncertain,

concerned her more nearly than fortune or state, and without which no,

not one day, would she abide in his house. Then the sweet soul said

she hoped, from his not ungracious silence and the working of his

features, which visibly revealed an inward struggle, that his next

words should have been of comfort to her; but when she had drawn nigh

to him, and, taking his hand, called him by his name with so much of

reproachful endearment as could be expressed in the utterance of it, a

gentleman broke into the room crying out: 'My lord, my lord, the

trumpets do sound! The queen's coach is in sight.' Upon which, she

said that, with a muttered oath, he started up and almost thrust her

from him, saying, 'For God's sake, be gone!' And by a back-door,' she

added, 'I went out of mine own house into the street, where I had left

my Lord Arundel's coach, and crept into it, very faint and giddy, the

while the queen's coach did enter the court with gay banners waving,

and striking-up of music, and the people crying out, "God bless the

queen!" I cry God mercy for it,' she said, 'but I could not say amen.'

Now she is resolved," my Lady Lumley continued, "never to set her foot

again in any of her husband's houses, except he doth himself entreat

her to it, and makes that matter clear touching his belief in the

validity of their marriage; and methinks she is right therein. My Lord

Arundel hath written to remonstrate with his grandson touching his

ill-usage of his lady, and hath also addressed her majesty thereupon.

But all the comment she did make on his letter, I have been told, was

this: 'That she had heard my Lord Arundel was in his dotage; and

verily she did now hold it to be so, for that she had never received a

more foolish letter; and she did pity the old white horse, which was

now only fit to be turned out to grass;' and other biting jests,

which, when a sovereign doth utter them, carry with them a rare

poignancy."

Then my Lady Lumley wiped her eyes, and bade me to be of good cheer,

and not to grieve overmuch for Lady Surrey's troubles (but all the

while her own tears continued to flow), for that she had so noble and

religious a disposition, with germs of so much virtue in it, that she

thought her to be one of those souls whom Almighty God draws to

himself by means of such trials as would sink common natures; and that

she had already marked how, in much prayer, ever-increasing good

works, and reading of books which treat of wholesome doctrine and

instruction, she presently recalled the teachings of her childhood,

and took occasion, when any Catholics came to the house, to converse

with them touching religion. Then, with many kind expressions, she

dismissed me; and on the stairs, as I went out, I met {307} Lady

Surrey, who noticed mine eyes to be red with weeping, and, embracing

me, said:

"I ween Lady Lumley hath been no hider of my griefs, good Constance,

and, i' faith, I am obliged to her if she hath told thee that which I

would fain not speak of, even to thee, dear wench. There are sorrows

best borne in silence; and since the last days we talked together mine

have grown to be of that sort. And so farewell for to-day, and may God

comfort thee in thy nobler troubles, and send his angels to thine

aid."

When I returned to Holborn, Mistress Ward met me with the news that

she had been to the prison, and heard that Mr. Watson was to be

strenuously examined on an approaching day--and it is well known what

that doth signify--touching the names of the persons which had

harbored him since his coming to England. And albeit he was now

purposed steadily to endure extreme torments sooner than to deny his

faith or injure others, she did so much apprehend the weakness of

nature should betray him, that her resolve was taken to attempt the

next day, or rather on the following night, to further his escape. But

how, she asked, could my father be dealt with in time touching that

matter? I told her I was to see him on the morrow, by means of an

order from Sir Francis Walsingham, and should then lay before him the

issues offered unto his election. She said she was very much contented

to hear it; and added, she must now secure boatmen to assist in the

escape who should be reliable Catholic men; and if in this she did

succeed, she feared not to fail in her design.

At the hour I had fixed upon with Hubert, on the next day, he came to

carry me to the prison at Bridewell. Mistress Ward prevailed on Mr.

Congleton to go thither with us, for she was loth to be seen there in

company with known persons, and added privily in mine ear, "The more

so at a time when it may happen I should get into trouble touching the

matter I have in hand." When we reached the place, Hubert presented to

the gaoler Sir Francis's letter, which was also signed by the

governor, and I was forthwith conducted to my father's cell. When I

entered it, and advanced toward that dear prisoner, I dared not in the

man's presence to show either the joy or grief I felt at that meeting,

but stood by his side like one deprived of the power of speech, and

only struggling to restrain my tears. I feared we should not have been

left alone, and then this interview should have proved of little use

or comfort; but after setting for me a chair, which he had sent

for--for there was only one small bench in the cell--this officer

withdrew, and locked the door on me and that dear parent, whose face

was very white and wan, but who spoke in as cheerful and kind a manner

as can be thought of, albeit taxing me with wilfulness for that I had

not complied with his behest that none should come to visit him. I

would not have the chair which had been sent for me--for I did hold

it to be an unbecoming thing for a daughter to sit down in her

father's presence (and he a priest), who had only a poor bench to rest

his limbs on--but placed myself on the ground at his feet; which at

first he misliked, but afterward said it should be as I pleased. Then,

after some affectionate speeches, wherein his great goodness toward me

was shown, and my answers to them, which disburthened my heart of some

of the weight which oppressed it, as did likewise the shedding of a

few tears on his hand, which was clasped in mine, I spoke, in case

time should press, of Sir Francis's offer, and the condition thereunto

attached, which I did with a trembling voice, and yet such indifferent

tones as I could affect, as if showing no leaning to one way of

thinking or the other, touching his acceptance of these terms. In the

brief time which did elapse between my speaking and his reply,

methinks I had an equal fear lest he should {308} assent or dissent

therein--filial love mightfully prompting me to desire his acceptance

of this means of deliverance, yet coupled with an apprehension that in

that case he should stand one degree less high in the favor of God and

the eyes of men. But I was angered with myself that I should have mine

own thoughts therein, or in any way form a judgment forestalling his,

which peradventure would see no evil in this concession; and

forecasting also the consequences which should ensue if he refused, I

resolved to move him thereunto by some such words as these: "My dearly

beloved father, if it be possible, I pray you yield this small matter

to those that seek to save your life. Let the minister come to satisfy

Sir Francis, and all shall be well, yea, without your speaking one

word, or by so much as one look assenting to his arguments."

I dared not to meet his eyes, which he fixed on me, but kept kissing

his hand whilst he said: "Daughter Constance, labor not to move me in

this matter; for far above all other things I may have to suffer,

nothing would touch me so near, or be so grievous to me, as to see

you, my well-beloved child, try to persuade me unto that which in

respect of my soul I will never consent to. For, I pray you, first as

regards religion, can I suffer any to think, albeit I should give no

cause for it but silence, that my faith is in any wise shaken, which

peradventure would prove a stumbling-block to others? or, touching

truth and honesty, shall I accept life and freedom on some such

supposition as that I am like to change my religion, when I should as

soon think to cast myself into hell of mine own free will as to deny

one point of Catholic belief? No, no, mine own good child; 'tis a

narrow path which doth lead to heaven, and maybe it shall prove

exceeding narrow for me ere I reach its end, and not over easy to the

feet or pleasant to the eye; but God defend I should by so much as one

hair's-breadth overpass a narrowness which tendeth to so good a

conclusion; and verily, to be short, my good child, tender my thanks

to Sir Francis Walsingham--who I doubt not meaneth excellently well by

me--and to young Master Rookwood, who hath dealt with him therein;

but tell them I am very well pleased with my present abode as long as

it shall please God to keep me in this world; and when he willeth me

to leave it, believe me, daughter Constance, the quickest road to

heaven shall be the most pleasing to me."

His manner was so resolved that I urged him no further, and only

heaved a deep sigh. Then he said, kindly: "Come, mine own good child,

give me so much comfort as to let me hear that thou art of the same

way of thinking in this matter as thy unworthy but very resolved

father."

"My dear father," I replied, "methinks I never loved you so well, or

honored you one half so much as now, when you have cast off all human

consolation, yea, and a certain hope of deliverance, rather than give

occasion to the enemies of our faith to boast they had prevailed on

you, in ever so small a matter, to falter in the open profession

thereof; and I pray God, if ever I should be in a like plight, I may

not prove myself to be otherwise than your true child in spirit as in

nature. As to what shall now follow your refusal, it lieth in God's

hands, and I know he can deliver you, if he doth will it, from this

great peril you are in."

"There's my brave wench," quoth he then, laying his scarred hand on my

head; "thy mother had a prophetic spirit, I ween, when she said of

thee when yet a puling girl, 'As her days, so shall her strength be.'

Verily God is very good, who hath granted us these moments of peaceful

converse in a place where we had once little thought for to meet."

As I looked upon him, sitting on a poor bench in that comfortless

cell, his noble fair visage oldened by hardships and toils rather than

years, his eyes so full of peace, yea of contentment, that {309} joy

seemed to beam in them, I thought of the words of Holy Writ, which do

foretell which shall be said hereafter of the just by such as have

afflicted them and taken away their labors: "There are they whom we

had some time in derision and for a parable of reproach. We fools

esteemed their life madness and their end without honor. Behold, how

they are numbered with the children of God, and their lot amongst the

saints."

At that time a knock against the wall was heard, and my father set his

ear against it, counting the number of such knocks; for it was Mr.

Watson, he said, beginning to converse with him in their wonted

fashion. "I will tell him I am engaged," quoth he, in his turn tapping

in the same manner. "But peradventure he hath somewhat to

communicate," I said.

"No," he answered, "for in that case he would have knocked three times

at first, for on this signal we have agreed." Smiling, he added, "We

do confess to each other in this way. 'Tis somewhat tedious, I do

admit; but thanks be to God we lack not leisure here for such duties."

Then I briefly told him of Mistress Ward's intent to procure Mr.

Watson's escape.

"Ay," he said, "I am privy to it, and I do pray God it may succeed. It

should be to me the greatest joy in the world to hear that good man

was set free, or made free by any good means."

"Then," I added, "will you not join in the attempt, if so be she can

convey to you a cord? and the same boat should carry you both off."

"Nay," he replied; "for more reasons than one I am resolved against

that in mine own case which in Mr. Watson's I do commend. This

enterprise must needs bring that good woman, Mrs. Ward, into some sort

of danger, which she doth well to run for his sake, and which he doth

not wrong to consent unto, she being of a willing mind to encounter

it. For if the extremity of torture should extort the admissions they

do seek from him, many should then grievously suffer, and mostly his

own soul. But I have that trust in God, who hath given me in all my

late perils what nature had verily not furnished me with, an undaunted

spirit to meet sufferings with somewhat more than fortitude, with a

very great joy such as his grace can only bestow, that he will

continue to do so, whatever straits I do find myself in; and being so

minded, I am resolved not again by mine own doing to put mine own and

others' lives in jeopardy; but to take what he shall send in the

ordinary course of things, throwing all my care on him, without whose

knowledge and will not so much as one hair of our heads doth fall to

the ground. But I am glad to be privy to the matter in hand for Mr.

Watson, so as to pray for him this day and night, and also for that

noble soul who doth show herself so true a Christian in her care for

his weal and salvation."

Then, changing to other themes, he inquired of me at some length

touching the passages of my life since he had parted with me, and my

dispositions touching the state of life I was about to embrace,

concerning which he gave me the most profitable instructions which can

be thought of, and rules of virtue, which, albeit imperfectly

observed, have proved of so great and wholesome guidance to my

inexperienced years that I do stand more indebted to him for this fine

advice, there given me, than for all other benefits besides. He then

spoke of Edmund Genings, who, by a special dispensation of the Pope,

had lately been ordained priest, being but twenty-three years of age,

and said the preparation he had made for receiving this holy order was

very great, and the impression the greatness of the charge made upon

his mind so strong, that it produced a wonderful effect in his very

body, affecting for a time his health. He was infirmarian at Rheims,

and labored among the sick students, a very model of piety and {310}

humility; but _vivamus in spe_ was still, as heretofore, his motto,

and that hope in which he lived was to be sent upon the English

mission. These, my father said, were the last tidings he had heard of

him. His mother he did believe was dead, and his younger brother had

left La Rochelle and was in Paris, leading a more gay life than was

desirable. "And now I pray you, mine own dear honored father," I said,

"favor me, I beseech you, with a recital of your own haps since you

landed in England, and I ceased to receive letters from you." He

condescended to my request, in the words which do follow:

"Well, my good child, I arrived in this country one year and five

months back, having by earnest suit and no small difficulty obtained

from my superiors to be sent on the English mission; for by reason of

the weakness of my health, and some use I was of in the college, owing

to my acquaintanceship with the French and the English languages, Dr.

Allen was loth to permit my departure. I crossed the seas in a small

merchant-vessel, and landed at Lynn. The port-officers searched me to

the skin, and found nothing on me; but one Sledd, an informer, which

had met me in an inn at Honfleur, where I had lodged for some days

before sailing for England, had taken my marks very precisely; and

arriving in London some time before I landed in Norfolk, having been

stayed by contrary winds in my longer passage, he there presented my

name and marks; upon which the queen's council sent to the searchers

of the ports. These found the said marks very apparent in me; but for

the avoiding of charges, the mayor of the place, one Mr. Alcock, and

Rawlins the searcher, requested a gentleman which had landed at the

same time with me, and who called himself Haward, to carry me as a

prisoner to the lord-lieutenant of the county. He agreed very easily

thereunto; but as soon as we were out of the town, 'I cannot,' says

this gentleman, 'in conscience, nor will not, being myself a Catholic,

deliver you, a Catholic priest, prisoner to the lord-lieutenant. But

we will go straight to Norwich, and when we come there, shift for

yourself, as I will do for myself.'

"Coming to Norwich, I went immediately to one of the gaols, and

conferred with a Catholic, a friend of mine, which by chance I found

out to be there imprisoned for recusancy. I recounted to him the order

of my apprehension and escape; and he told me that in conscience I

could not make that escape, and persuaded me I ought to yield myself

prisoner; whereupon I went to my friend Haward, whom, through the

aforesaid Catholic prisoner, I found to be no other than Dr. Ely, a

professor of canon and civil law at Douay. I requested him to deliver

to me the mayor's letter to the lord-lieutenant. 'Why, what will you

do with it?' said he. 'I will go,' I said, 'and carry it to him, and

yield myself a prisoner; for I am not satisfied I can make this escape

in conscience, having had a contrary opinion thereon.' And I told him

what that prisoner I had just seen had urged. 'Why,' said Haward,

'this counsel which hath been given you proceedeth, I confess, from a

zealous mind; but I doubt whether it carrieth with it the weight of

knowledge. You shall not have the letter, nor you may not in

conscience yield yourself to the persecutors, having so good means

offered to escape their cruelty.' But as I still persisted in my

demand, 'Well,' said Mr. Haward, 'seeing you will not be turned by me

from this opinion, let us go first and consult with such a man,' and

he named one newly come over, who was concealed at the house of a

Catholic not very far off. This was a man of singular wit aid

learning, and of such rare virtues that I honored and reverenced him

greatly, which Mr. Haward perceiving, he said, with a smile, 'If he be

of your opinion, you shall have the letter, and go in God's name!'

When we came {311} to him, he utterly disliked of my intention, and

dissuaded me from what he said was a fond cogitation. So being

assuaged, I went quietly about my business, and travelled for the

space of more than a year from one Catholic house to another in

Norfolk and Suffolk, ministering the sacraments to recusants, and

reconciling many to the Church, which, from fear or lack of

instruction or spiritual counsel, or only indifferency, had conformed

to the times. Methinks, daughter Constance, for one such year a man

should be willing to lay down a thousand lives, albeit, or rather

because, as St. Paul saith, he be 'in journeyings often, in perils

from his own nation, in perils from false brethren' (oh, how true and

applicable do these words prove to the Catholics of this land!), 'in

perils in the city, in perils of the wilderness, in perils of the

sea.' And if it pleases God now to send me labors of another sort, so

that I may be in prisons frequently, in stripes above measure, and,

finally, in death itself, his true servant,--oh, believe me, my good

child, the right fair house I once had, with its library and garden

and orchard, and everything so handsome about us, and the company of

thy sweet mother, and thy winsome childish looks of love, never gave

me so much heartfelt joy and comfort as the new similitude I

experience, and greater I hope to come, to my loved and only Master's

sufferings and death!"

At this time of his recital my tears flowed abundantly; but with an

imparted sweetness, which, like a reflected light, shone from his soul

on mine. But to stay my weeping he changed his tone, and said with

good cheer:

"Come now, my wench, I will presently make thee merry by the recital

of a strait in which I once found myself, and which maketh me to laugh

to think on it, albeit at the time, I warrant thee, it was like to

prove no laughable matter. It happened that year I speak of that I was

once secretly sent for by a courtlike gentleman of good wealth that

had lived in much bravery, and was then sick and lying in great pain.

He had fallen into a vehement agitation and deep study of the life to

come; and thereupon called for a priest--for in mind and opinion he

was Catholic--that he might learn from him to die well. According to

the custom of the Church, I did admonish him, among other things, that

if he had any way hurt or injured any man, or unjustly possessed other

men's goods, he should go about by-and-by to make restitution

according to his ability. He agreed to do so, and called to mind that

he had taken away something from a certain Calvinist, under pretence

of law indeed, but not under any good assurance for a Catholic

conscience to trust to. Therefore, he took order for restitution to be

made, and died. The widow, his wife, was very anxious to accomplish

her husband's will; but being afraid to commit the matter to any one,

her perplexed mind was entangled in briers of doubtfulness. She one

day declared her grief unto me, and beseeched me, for God's sake, to

help her with my counsel and travail. So, seeing her distress, I

proffered to put myself in any peril that might befall in the doing of

this thing; but, indeed, persuaded myself that no man would be so

perverse as of a benefit to desire revengement. Therefore committing

the matter to God, I mounted on horseback, and away I went on my

journey. When I came to the town where the man did dwell to whom the

money was to be delivered, I set up my horse in the next inn, that I

might be readier at hand to scape immediately after my business was

despatched. I then went to the creditor's house, and called the man

forth alone, taking him by the hand and leading him aside from the

company of others. Then I declared to him that I had money for him,

which I would deliver into his hands with this condition, that he

inquired no further either who sent or who brought it unto him, or

what {312} the cause and matter was, but only receive the money and

use it as his own. The old fellow promised fair, and with a good will

gave his word faithfully so to do, and with many thanks sent me away.

With all the speed I was able to make, I hastened to mine host's

house, for to catch hold of my horse and fly away. But forthwith the

deceitful old fellow betrayed me, and sent men after to apprehend me,

not supposing me this time to be a priest, but making the surmise

against me that forsooth I was not a man but a devil, which had

brought money of mine own making to bewitch him. All the people of the

town, when they heard the rumor, confirmed the argument, with this

proof among others, that I had a black horse, and gave orders for to

watch the animal diligently, whether he did eat hay as other horses,

or no. As for me, they put a horse-lock about my leg, shut me up close

in a strong chamber, and appointed a fellow to be with me continually,

night and day, which should watch if I did put off my boots at any

time, and if my feet were like horses' feet, or that I was

cloven-footed, or had feet slit and forked as beasts have; for this

they affirmed to be a special mark whereby to know the devil when he

lieth lurking under the shape and likeness of a man. Then the people

assembled about the house in great numbers, and proffered money

largely that they might see this monster with their own eyes; for by

this time they were persuaded that I was indeed an ill spirit, or the

very devil. 'For what man was ever heard of,' said they, 'which, if he

had the mind, understanding, and sense of a man, would, of his own

voluntary will, and without any respect or consideration at all, give

or proffer such a sum of money to a man utterly unknown?' God knowcth

what should have ensued if some hours later it had not chanced that

Sir Henry Stafford did ride into the town, and, seeing a great

concourse of people at the door of the inn, he stopped to inquire into

the cause; which when it was related to him, he said he was a

magistrate, and should himself examine, face to face, this limb of

Satan. So I was taken before him into the parlor; and being alone with

him, and knowing him to be well-disposed in religion, albeit

conforming to the times, I explained in a general manner what sort of

an errand had brought me to that place. Methinks he guessed me to be a

priest, although he said nothing thereon, but only licensed me to

depart and go away whither I would, himself letting me out of the

house through a back-door. I have heard since that he harangued the

people from the balcony, and told them, that whilst he was examining

me a strong smell of sulphur had come into the chamber, and a pack of

devils carried me off through the window into the air; and he doubted

not I had by that time returned to mine own lodging in hell. Which he

did, I knew, for to prevent their pursuing me and using such violence

as he might not have had means to hinder."

"It was not, then," I asked, "on this occasion you were apprehended

and taken to Wisbeach?"

"No," he answered; "nor indeed can I be said to have been apprehended

at all, for it happened in this wise that I became a prisoner. I was

one day in Norwich, whither I had gone to baptize a child, and, as

Providence would have it, met with Haward, by whose means I had been

set at liberty one year before. After ordinary salutations, he said to

me, 'Mr. Tunstall' (for by that name only he knew me), 'the host of

the inn where you were taken last year says I have undone him, by

suffering the prisoner I had promised to deliver to escape; for he

having been my surety with the mayor, he is threatened with eight

months' imprisonment, or the payment of a large fine. He hath come to

this town for to seek me, and hath seized upon me on this charge; so

that I be only at liberty for six hours, for I {313} promised that I

would bring you to him by four o'clock (a Catholic merchant yielding

him security thereof), or else that I should deliver him my body

again. 'I am content,' he said, 'so that I have one of you two.' So

either you, Mr. Tunstall, or I, must needs go to prison. You know my

state and condition, and may guess how I shall be treated, if once I

appear under my right name before them. You know, also, your own

state. Now, it is in your choice whether of us shall go; for one must

go; there is no remedy; and to force you I will not, for I had rather

sustain any punishment whatsoever.' 'Now God be blessed,' I cried,

'that he hath thrown me in your way at this time, for I should never

while I lived have been without scruple if you had gone to prison in

my stead. Nothing grieveth me in this but that I have not finished off

some business I had in this town touching a person in some distress of

mind.' 'Why,' said Haward, 'it is but ten o'clock yet; you may

despatch your business by four of the clock, and then you may go to

the sign of the Star and inquire for one Mr. Andrews, the

lord-lieutenant's deputy, and to him you may surrender yourself.' 'So

I will,' I said; and so we parted. At four of the clock I surrendered

myself, and was straightway despatched to Wisbeach Castle, where I

remained for three months. A message reached me there that a Catholic

which had led a very wicked life, and was lying on his death-bed, was

almost beside himself for that he could get no priest to come to him.

The person which delivered this advertisement left some ropes with me,

by which means I escaped out of the window into the moat with such

damage to my hands that I was like to lose the use of them, and

perhaps of my life, if these wounds had mortified before good Lady

l'Estrange dressed them. But I reached the poor sinner, which had

proved the occasion of my escaping, in time for to give him

absolution, and from Mr. Rugeley's house visited many Catholics in

that neighborhood. The rest is well known to thee, my good child. . . ."

As he was speaking these words the door of the cell opened, and the

gaoler advertised me I could tarry no longer; so, with many blessings,

my dear father dismissed me, and I went home with Mr. Congleton and

Hubert, who anxiously inquired what his answer had been to the

proposal I had carried to him.

"A most resolved denial of the conditions attached to it," I said,

"joined to many grateful acknowledgments to Sir Francis and to you

also for your efforts in his favor."

"'Tis madness!" he exclaimed.

"Yea," I answered, "such madness as the heathen governor did charge

St. Paul with."

And so no more passed between us whilst we rode back to Holborn. Mr.

Congleton put questions to me touching my father's health and his

looks,--if he seemed of good cheer, and spoke merrily as he used to

do; and then we all continued silent. When we arrived at Ely Place,

Hubert refused to come into the house, but detained me on the outward

steps, as if desirous to converse with me alone. Thinking I had spoken

to him in the coach in an abrupt manner which savored of ingratitude,

I said more gently, "I am very much beholden to you, Hubert, for your

well-meaning toward my father."

"I would fain continue to help you," he answered in an agitated voice.

"Constance," he exclaimed, after a pause, "your father is in a very

dangerous plight."

"I know it," said I, quickly; "but I know, too, he is resolved and

content to die rather than swerve an inch from his duty to God and his

Church."

"But," quoth he then, "do you wish to save him?"

I looked at him amazed. "Wish it! God knoweth that to see him in

safety I would have my hand cut off,--yea, and my head also."

{314}

"What, and rob him of his expectant crown--the martyr's palm, and all

the rest of it?" he said, with a perceptible sneer.

"Hubert!" I passionately exclaimed, "you are investigable to me; you

chill my soul with your half-uttered sentences and uncertain meanings!

Once, I remember, you could speak nobly,--yea, and feel so too, as

much as any one. Heaven shield you be not wholly changed!"

"Changed!" quoth he, in a low voice, "I am changed;" and then abruptly

altering his manner, and leaving me in doubt as to the change he did

intend to speak of, he pressed me to take no measures touching my

father's release till he had spoken with me again; for he said if his

real name became known, or others dealt in the matter, all hope on Sir

Francis's side should be at an end. He then asked me if I had heard of

Basil lately. I told him of the letter I had had from him at

Kenninghall some weeks back. He said a report had reached him that he

had landed at Dover and was coming to London; but he hoped it was not

true, for that Sir Henry Stafford was very urgent he should continue

abroad till the expiration of his wardship.

I said, "If he was returned, it must surely be for some sufficient

cause, but that I had heard nothing thereof, and had no reason to

expect it."

"But you would know it, I presume, if he was in London?" he urged. I

misliked his manner, which always put me in mind of one in the dark,

which feeleth his way as he advances, and goeth not straight to the

point.

"_Is_ Basil in England?" I inquired, fixing mine eyes on him, and with

a flutter at my heart from the thought that it should be possible.

"I heard he was," he answered in a careless tone; "but I think it not

to be true. If he should come whilst this matter is in hand, I do

conjure you, Constance, if you value your father's existence and

Basil's also, let him not into this secret."

"Wherefore not?" I quickly answered. "Why should one meet to be

trusted, and by me above all other persons in the world, be kept

ignorant of what so nearly doth touch me?"

"Because," he said, "there is a rashness in his nature which will

assuredly cause him to run headlong into danger if not forcibly

withheld from the occasions of it."

"I have seen no tokens of such rashness as you speak of in him," I

replied; "only of a boldness such as well becomes a Christian and a

gentleman."

"Constance Sherwood!" Hubert exclaimed, and seized hold of my hand

with a vehemency which caused me to start, "I do entreat you, yea, on

my bended knees, if needs be, I will beseech you to beware of that

indomitable and resolved spirit which sets at defiance restraint,

prudence, pity even; which leads you to brave your friends, spurn

wholesome counsel, rush headlong into perils which I forewarn you do

hang thickly about your path. If I can conjure them, I care not by

what means, I will do so; but for the sake of all you do hold dear,

curb your natural impetuosity, which may prove the undoing of those

you most desire to serve."

There was a plausibility in this speech, and in mine own knowledge of

myself some sort of a confirmation of what he did charge me with,

which inclined me somewhat to diffide of mine own judgment in this

matter, and not to turn a wholly deaf ear to his advertisement. He had

the most persuasive tongue in the world, and a rare art at

representing things under whatever aspect he chose. He dealt so

cunningly therein with me that day, and used so many ingenious

arguments, that I said I should be very careful how I disclosed

anything to Basil or any one else touching my father's imprisonment,

who Mr. Tunstall was, and my near concern in his fate; but would give

no promise thereupon: so he was forced to content himself with as much

as he could obtain, and {315} withdrew himself for that day, he said;

but promised to return on the morrow.

CHAPTER XVIII.

When at last I entered the house I sought Mistress Ward; for I desired

to hear what assistance she had procured for the escape of the

prisoners, and to inform her of my father's resolved purpose not

himself to attempt this flight, albeit commending her for moving Mr.

Watson to it and assisting him therein. Not finding her in the parlor,

nor in her bed-chamber, I opened the door of my aunt's room, who was

now very weak, and yet more so in mind than in body. She was lying

with her eyes shut, and Mistress Ward standing by her bedside. I

marked her intent gaze on the aged, placid face of the poor lady, and

one tear I saw roll down her cheek. Then she stooped to kiss her

forehead. A noise I made with the handle of the door caused her to

turn round, and hastening toward me, she took me by the hand and led

me to her chamber, where Muriel was folding some biscuits and cakes in

paper and stowing them in a basket. The thought came to me of the

first day I had arrived in London, and the comfort I had found in this

room, when all except her were strangers to me in that house. She sat

down betwixt Muriel and me, and smiling, said: "Now, mine own dear

children, for such my heart holds you both to be, and ever will whilst

I live, I am come here for to tell you that I purpose not to return to

this house to-night, nor can I foresee when, if ever, I shall be free

to do so."

"O, what dismal news!" I exclaimed, "and more sad than I did expect."

Muriel said nothing, but lifting her hand to her lips kissed it.

"You both know," she continued, "that in order to save one in cruel

risk and temptation of apostasy, and others perhaps, also, whom his

possible speaking should imperil, I be about to put myself in some

kind of danger, who of all persons in the world possess the best right

to do so, as having neither parents, or husband, or children, or any

on earth who depend on my care. Yea, it is true," she added, fixing

her eyes on Muriel's composed, but oh how sorrowful, countenance,

"none dependent on my care, albeit some very dear to me, and which

hang on me, and I on them, in the way of fond affection. God knoweth

my heart, and that it is very closely and tenderly entwined about each

one in this house. Good Mr. Congleton and your dear mother, who hath

clung to me so long, though I thank God not so much of late by reason

of the weakening of her mind, which hath ceased greatly to notice

changes about her, and you, Constance, my good child, since your

coming hither a little lass commended to my keeping. . . . ." There

she stopped; and I felt she could not name Muriel, or then so much as

look on her; for if ever two souls were bound together by an

unperishable bond of affection, begun on earth to last in heaven,

theirs were so united. I ween Muriel was already acquainted with her

purpose, for she asked no questions thereon; whereas I exclaimed, "I

do very well know, good Mistress Ward, what perils you do run in this

charitable enterprise; but wherefore, I pray you, this final manner of

parting? God's providence may shield you from harm in this passage,

and, indeed, human probability should lead us to hope for your safety

if becoming precautions be observed. Then why, I say, this certain

farewell?"

"Because," she answered, "whatever comes of this night's enterprise, I

return not to this house."

"And wherefore not?" I cried; "this is indeed a cruel resolve, a hard

misfortune."

"Heretofore," she answered, "I had noways offended against the laws of

the country, except in respect {316} of recusancy, wherein all here

are alike involved; but by mine act tonight I do expose myself to so

serious a charge (conscience obliging me to prefer the law of divine

charity to that of human authority), that I may at any time and

without the least hope of mercy be exposed to detection and

apprehension; and so am resolved not to draw down sorrow and obloquy

on the gray hairs of my closest friends and on your young years such

perils as I do willingly in mine own person incur, but would not have

others to be involved in. Therefore I will lodge, leastwise for a

time, with one who feareth not any more than I do persecution, who

hath no ties and little or nothing on earth to lose, and if she had

would willingly yield it a thousand times over for to save a soul for

whom Christ died. Nor will I have you privy, my dear children, to the

place of mine abode, that if questioned on it you may with truth aver

yourselves to be ignorant thereof. And now," she said, turning to me,

"is Mr. Sherwood willing for to try to escape by the same means as Mr.

Watson? for methinks I have found a way to convey to him a cord, and,

by means of the management he knoweth of instructions how to use it."

"Nay," I answered, "he will not himself avail himself of this means,

albeit he is much rejoiced you have it in hand for Mr. Watson's

deliverance from his tormentors; and he doth pray fervently for it to

succeed."

"Everything promiseth well," she replied. "I dealt this day with an

honest Catholic boatman, a servant of Mr. Hodgson, who is willing to

assist in it. Two men are needed for to row the boat with so much

speed as shall be necessary to carry it quickly beyond reach of

pursuers. He knoweth none of his own craft which should be reliable or

else disposed to risk the enterprise; but he says at a house of resort

for Catholics which he doth frequent, he chanced to fall in with a

young gentleman, lately landed from France, whom he doth make sure

will lend his aid in it. As dextrous a man," he saith, "to handle an

oar, and of as courageous a spirit, as can be found in England."

As soon as she had uttered these words, I thought of what Hubert had

said touching a report of Basil being in London and of his rashness in

plunging into dangers; a cold shiver ran through me. "Did he tell you

this gentleman's name?" I asked.

"No," she answered, "he would not mention it; but only that he was one

who could be trusted with the lives of ten thousand persons, and so

zealous a Catholic he would any day risk his life to do some good

service to a priest."

"And hath this boatman promised," I inquired, "to wait for Mr. Watson

and convey him away?"

"Yea, most strictly," she answered, "at twelve o'clock of the night he

and his companion shall approach a boat to the side of some

scaffolding which lieth under the wall of the prison; and when the

clock of the tower striketh, Mr. Watson shall open his window, the

bars of which he hath found it possible to remove, and by means of the

cord, which is of the length he measured should be necessary, he will

let himself down on the planks, whence he can step into the boat, and

be carried to a place of concealment in a close part of the city till

it shall be convenient for him to cross the sea to France."

"Must you go?" I said, seeing her rise, and feeling a dull hard

heaviness at my heart which did well-nigh impede my utterance. I was

not willing to let her know the fear I had conceived; "of what use

should it be," I inwardly argued, "to disturb her in the discharge of

her perilous task by a surmise which might prove groundless; and,

indeed, were it certainly true, could she, nay, would she, alter her

intent, or could I so much as ask her to do it?" Whilst, with Muriel's

assistance, she concluded the packing of her basket, wherein the

weighty cord was concealed in an ingenious {317} manner, I stood by

watching the doing of it, fearing to see her depart, yet unable to

think of any means by which to delay that which I could not, even if I

had willed it, prevent. When the last contents were placed in the

basket, and Muriel was pressing down the lid, I said: "Do you,

peradventure, know the name of the inn where you said that gentleman

doth tarry which the boatman spake of?"

"No," she replied; "nor so much as where the good boatman himself

lodgeth. I met with him at Mr. Hodgson's house, and there made this

agreement."

"But if," I said, "it should happen by any reason that Mr. Watson

changed his mind, how should you, then, inform him of it?"

"In that case," she answered, "he would hang a white kerchief outside

his window, by which they should be advertised to withdraw themselves.

And now," she added, "I have always been of the way of thinking that

farewells should be brief; and 'God speed you,' and 'God bless you,'

enough for those which do hope, if it shall please God, on earth, but

for a surety in heaven, to meet again."

So, kissing us both somewhat hurriedly, she took up her basket on her

arm, and said she should send a messenger on the morrow for her

clothes; at which Muriel, for the first time, shed some tears, which

was an instance of what I have often noticed, that grief, howsoever

heavy, doth not always overflow in the eyes unless some familiar words

or homely circumstance doth substantiate the verity of a sorrow known

indeed, but not wholly apparent till its common effects be seen. Then

we two sat awhile alone in that empty chamber--empty of her which for

so long years had tenanted it to our no small comfort and benefit.

When the light waned, Muriel lit a candle, and said she must go for to

attend on her mother, for that duty did now devolve chiefly on her;

and I could see in her sad but composed face the conquering peace

which doth exceed all human consolation.

For mine own part, I was so unhinged by doubtful suspense that I

lacked ability to employ my mind in reading or my fingers in

stitch-work; and so descended for relief into the garden, where I

wandered to and fro like an uneasy ghost, seeking rest but finding

none. The dried shaking leaves made a light noise in falling, which

caused me each time to think I heard a footstep behind me. And despite

the increasing darkness, after I had paced up and down for near unto

an hour, some one verily did come walking along the alley where I was,

seeking to overtake me. Turning round I perceived it to be mine own

dear aged friend, Mr. Roper. Oh, what great comfort I experienced in

the sight of this good man! How eager was my greeting of him! How full

my heart as I poured into his ear the narrative of the passages which

had befallen me since we had met! Of the most weighty he knew

somewhat; but nothing of the last haunting fear I had lest my dear

Basil should be in London, and this very night engaged in the perilous

attempt to carry off Mr. Watson. When I told him of it, he started and

exclaimed:

"God defend it!" but quickly corrected himself and cried, "God's

mercy, that my first feeling should have led me to think rather of

Basil's safety than of the fine spirit he showed in all instances

where a good action had to be done, or a service rendered to those in

affliction."

"Indeed, Mr. Roper," I said, as he led me back to the house and into

the solitary parlor (where my uncle now seldom came, but remained

sitting alone in his library, chiefly engaged in praying and reading),

"I do condemn mine own weakness in this, and pray God to give me

strength for what may come upon us; but I do promise you 'tis no easy

matter to carry always so high a heart that it shall not sink with

human fears and griefs in such passages as these."

{318}

"My dear," the good man answered, "God knoweth 'tis no easy matter to

attain to the courage you speak of. I have myself seen the sweetest,

the lovingest, and the most brave creature which ever did breathe give

marks of extraordinary sorrow when her father, that generous martyr of

Christ, was to die."

"I pray you tell me," I answered, "what her behavior was like in that

trial; for to converse on such themes doth allay somewhat the torment

of suspense, and I may learn lessons from her example, who, you say,

joined to natural weakness so courageous a spirit in like straits."

Upon which he, willing to divert and yet not violently change the

current of my thoughts, spake as followeth:

"On the day when Sir Thomas More came from Westminster to the

Tower-ward, my wife, desirous to see her father, whom she thought she

should never see in this world after, and also to have his final

blessing, gave attendance about the wharf where she knew he should

pass before he could enter into the Tower. As soon as she saw him,

after his blessing upon her knees reverently received, hastening

toward him without care or consideration of herself, passing in

amongst the throng and company of the guard, she ran to him and took

him about the neck and kissed him; who, well liking her most natural

and dear daughterly affection toward him, gave her his fatherly

blessing and godly words of comfort beside; from whom, after she was

departed, not satisfied with the former sight of him, and like one

that had forgotten herself, being all ravished with the entire love of

her father, suddenly turned back again, ran to him as before, took him

about the neck, and divers times kissed him lovingly, till at last,

with a full and heavy heart, she was fain to depart from him; the

beholding thereof was to many that were present so lamentable, and

mostly so to me, that for very sorrow we could not forbear to weep

with her. The wife of John Harris, Sir Thomas's secretary, was moved

to such a transport of grief, that she suddenly flew to his neck and

kissed him, as he had reclined his head on his daughter's shoulder;

and he who, in the midst of the greatest straits, had ever a merry

manner of speaking, cried, 'This is kind, albeit rather unpolitely

done.'"

"And the day he suffered," I asked, "what was this good daughter's

behavior?"

"She went," quoth he, "to the different churches, and distributed

abundant alms to the poor. When she had given all her money away, she

withdrew to pray in a certain church, where she on a sudden did

remember she had no linen in which to wrap up her father's body. She

had heard that the remains of the Bishop of Rochester had been thrown

into the ground, without priest, cross, lights, or shroud, for the

dread of the king had prevented his relations from attempting to bury

him. But Margaret resolved her father's body should not meet with such

unchristian treatment. Her maid advised her to buy some linen in the

next shop, albeit having given away all her money to the poor, there

was no likelihood she should get credit from strangers. She ventured,

howsoever, and having agreed about the price, she put her hand in her

pocket, which she knew was empty, to show she forgot the money, and

ask credit under that pretence. But to her surprise, she found in her

purse the exact price of the linen, neither more or less; and so

buried the martyr of Christ with honor, nor was there any one so

inhuman found as to hinder her."

"Mr. Roper," I said, when he had ended his recital, "methinks this

angelic lady's trial was most hard: but how much harder should it yet

have been if you, her husband, had been in a like peril at that time

as her father?"

{319}

A half kind of melancholy, half smiling look came into the good old

man's face as he answered:

"Her father was Sir Thomas More, and he so worthy of a daughter's

passionate love, and the affection betwixt them so entire and

absolute, compounded of filial love on her part, unmitigated

reverence, and unrestrained confidence, that there was left in her

heart no great space for wifely doating. But to be moderately

affectioned by such a woman, and to stand next in her esteem to her

incomparable father, was of greater honor and worth to her unworthy

husband, than should have been the undivided, yea idolatrous, love of

one not so perfect as herself."

After a pause, during which his thoughts, I ween, reverted to the

past, and mine investigated mine own soul, I said to Mr. Roper:

"Think you, sir, that love to be idolatrous which is indeed so

absolute that it should be no difficulty to die for him who doth

inspire it; which would prefer a prison in his company, howsoever dark

and loathsome (yea consider it a very paradise), to the beautifullest

palace in the world, which without him would seem nothing but a vile

dungeon; which should with a good-will suffer all the torments in the

world for to see the object of its affection enjoy good men's esteem

on earth, and a noble place in heaven; but which should be,

nevertheless, founded and so wholly built up on a high estimate of his

virtues; on the quality he holdeth of God's servant; on the likeness

of Christ stamped on his soul, and each day exemplified in his manner

of living, that albeit to lose his love or his company in this world

should be like the uprooting of all happiness and turning the

brightness of noonday to the darkness of the night, it should a

thousand times rather endure this mishap than that the least shade or

approach of a stain should alter the unsullied opinion till then held

of his perfections?"

Mr. Roper smiled, and said that was a too weighty question to answer

at once; for he should be loth to condemn or yet altogether to absolve

from some degree of overweeningness such an affection as I described,

which did seem indeed to savor somewhat of excess; but yet if noble in

its uses and held in subjection to the higher claims of the Creator,

whose perfections the creature doth at best only imperfectly mirror,

it might be commendable and a means of attaining ourselves to the like

virtues we doated on in another.

As he did utter these words a servant came into the parlor, and

whispered in mine ear:

"Master Basil Rookwood is outside the door, and craves--"

I suffered him not to finish his speech, but bounded into the hall,

where Basil was indeed standing with a traveller's cloak on him, and a

slouched hat over his face. After such a greeting as may be conceived

(alas, all greetings then did seem to combine strange admixtures of

joy and pain!), I led him into the parlor, where Mr. Roper in his turn

received him with fatherly words of kindness mixed with amazement at

his return.

"And whence," he exclaimed, "so sudden a coming, my good Basil?

Verily, you do appear to have descended from the skies!"

Basil looked at me and replied: "I heard in Paris, Mr. Roper, that a

gentleman in whom I do take a very lively interest, one Mr. Tunstall,

was in prison at London; and I bethought me I could be of some service

to him by coming over at this time."

"O Basil," I cried, "do you then know he is my father?"

"Yea," he joyfully answered, "and I am right glad you do know it also,

for then there is no occasion for any feigning, which, albeit I deny

it not to be sometimes useful and necessary, doth so ill agree with my

bluntness, that it keepeth me in constant fear of stumbling in my

speech. I was in a manner forced to come over secretly; because if Sir

Henry Stafford, who willeth me to remain abroad till I have {320} got

out of my wardship, should hear of my being in London, and gain scent

of the object of my coming, he should have dealt in all sorts of ways

to send me out of it. But, prithee, dearest love, is Mrs. Ward in this

house?"

"Alas!" I said, "she is gone hence. Her mind is set on a very

dangerous enterprise."

"I know it," he saith (at which word my heart began to sink); "but,

verily, I see not much danger to be in it; and methinks if we do

succeed in carrying off your good father and that other priest

to-night in the ingenious manner she hath devised, it will be the best

night's work done by good heads, good arms, and good oars which can be

thought of."

"Oh, then," I exclaimed, "it is even as I feared, and you, Basil, have

engaged in this rash enterprise. O woe the day you came to London, and

met with that boatman!"

"Constance," he said reproachfully, "should it be a woful day to thee

the one on which, even at some great risk, which I deny doth exist in

this instance, I should aid in thy father's rescue?"

"Oh, but, my dear Basil," I cried, "he doth altogether refuse to stir

in this matter. I have had speech with him to-day, and he will by no

means attempt to escape again from prison. He hath done it once for

the sake of a soul in jeopardy; but only to save his life, he is

resolved not to involve others in peril of theirs. And oh, how

confirmed he would be in his purpose if he knew who it was who doth

throw himself into so great a risk! I' faith, I cannot and will not

suffer it!" I exclaimed impetuously, for the sudden joy of his

presence, the sight of his beloved countenance, lighted up with an

inexpressible look of love and kindness, more beautiful than my poor

words can describe, worked in me a rebellion against the thought of

more suffering, further parting, greater fears than I had hitherto

sustained.

He said, "He could wish my father had been otherwise disposed, for to

have aided in his escape should have been to him the greatest joy he

could think of; but that having promised likewise to assist in Mr.

Watson's flight, he would never fail to do so, if he was to die for

it."

"'Tis very easy," I cried, "to speak of dying, Basil, nor do I doubt

that to one of your courage and faith the doing of it should have

nothing very terrible in it. But I pray you remember that that life,

which you make so little account of, is not now yours alone to dispose

of as you list. Mine, dear Basil, is wrapped up with it; for if I lose

you, I care not to live, or what becomes of me, any more."

Mr. Roper said he should think on it well before he made this venture;

for, as I had truly urged, I had a right over him now, and he should

not dispose of himself as one wholly free might do.

"Dear sir," quoth he in answer, "my sweet Constance and you also might

perhaps have prevailed with me some hours ago to forego this

intention, before I had given a promise to Mr. Hodgson's boatman, and

through him to Mistress Ward and Mr. Watson; I should then have been

free to refuse my assistance if I had listed; and albeit methinks in

so doing I should have played a pitiful part, none could justly have

condemned me. But I am assured neither her great heart nor your

honorable spirit would desire me so much as to place in doubt the

fulfilment of a promise wherein the safety of a man, and he one of

God's priests, is concerned. I pray thee, sweetheart, say thou wouldst

not have me do it."

Alas! this was the second time that day my poor heart had been called

upon to raise itself higher than nature can afford to reach. But the

present struggle was harder than the first. My father had long been to

me as a distant angel, severed from my daily life and any future hope

in this world. His was an expectant martyrdom, an exile from his true

home, a daily {321} dying on earth, tending but to one desired end.

Nature could be more easily reconciled in the one case than in the

other to thoughts of parting. Basil was my all, my second self, my

sole treasure,--the prop on which rested youth's hopes, earth's joys,

life's sole comfort; and chance (as it seemed, and men would have

called it), not a determined seeking, had thrust on him this danger,

and I must needs see him plunged into it, and not so much as say a

word to stay him or prevent it. . . . . I was striving to constrain my

lips to utter the words my rebelling heart disavowed, and he kneeling

before me, with his dear eyes fixed on mine, awaiting my consent, when

a loud noise of laughter in the hall caused us both to start up, and

then the door was thrown open, and Kate and Polly ran into the room so

gaily attired, the one in a yellow and the other in a crimson gown

bedecked with lace and jewels, that nothing finer could be seen.

"Lackaday!" Polly cried, when she perceived Basil; "who have we here?

I scarce can credit mine eyes! Why, Sir Lover, methought you were in

France. By what magic come you here? Mr. Roper, your humble servant.

'Tis like you did not expect so much good company to-night, Con, for

you have but one poor candle or two to light up this dingy room, and I

fear there will not be light enough for these gentlemen to see our

fine dresses, which we do wear for the first time at Mrs. Yates's

house this evening."

"I thought you were both in the country," I said, striving to disguise

how much their coming did discompose me.

"Methinks," answered Polly, laughing, "your wish was father to that

thought, Con, and that you desired to have the company of this fine

gentleman to yourself alone, and Mr. Roper's also, and no one else for

to disturb you. But, in good sooth, we were both at Mr. Benham's seat

in Berkshire when we heard of this good entertainment at so great a

friend's house, and so prevailed on our lords and governors for to

hire a coach and bring us to London for one night. We lie at Kate's

house, and she and I have supped on a cold capon and a veal pie we

brought with us, and Sir Ralph and Mr. Lacy do sup at a tavern in the

Strand, and shall fetch us here when it shall be convenient to them to

carry us to this grand ball, which I would not have missed, no, not

for all the world. So I pray you let us be merry till they do come,

and pass the time pleasantly."

"Ay," said Kate, in a lamentable voice, "you would force me to dress

and go abroad, when I would sooner be at home; for John's stomach is

disordered, and baby doth cut her teeth, and he pulled at my ribbons

and said I should not leave him; and beshrew me if I would have done

so, but for your overpersuading me. But you are always so absolute! I

wonder you love not more to stay at home, Polly."

Basil smiled with a better heart than I could do, and said he would

promise her John should sleep never the less well for her absence, and

she should find baby's tooth through on the morrow; and sitting down

by her side, talked to her of her children with a kindliness which

never did forsake him. Mr. Roper set himself to converse with Polly; I

ween for to shield me from the torrent of her words, which, as I sat

between them, seemed to buzz in mine ear without any meaning; and yet

I must needs have heard them, for to this day I remember what they

talked of;--that Polly said, "Have you seen the ingenious poesy which

the queen's saucy godson, the merry wit Harrington, left behind her

cushion on Wednesday, and now 'tis in every one's hands?"

"Not in mine," quoth Mr. Roper; "so, if your memory doth serve you,

Lady Ingoldsby, will you rehearse it?" which she did as follows; and

albeit I only did hear those lines {322} that once, they still remain

in my mind:

"For ever dear, for ever dreaded prince,

You read a verse of mine a little since,

And so pronounced each word and every letter,

Your gracious reading graced my verse the better;

Sith then your highness doth by gift exceeding

Make what you read the better for your reading,

Let my poor muse your pains thus far importune,

Like as you read my verse--so read my fortune!"

"Tis an artful and witty petition," Mr. Roper observed; "but I have

been told her majesty mislikes the poet's satirical writings, and

chiefly the metamorphosis of Ajax."

"She signified," Polly answered, "some outward displeasure at it, but

Robert Markham affirms she likes well the marrow of the book, and is

minded to take the author to her favor, but sweareth she believes he

will make epigrams on her and all her court. Howsoever, I do allow she

conceived much disquiet on being told he had aimed a shaft at

Leicester. By the way, but you, cousin Constance, should best know the

truth thereon" (this she said turning to me), "'tis said that Lord

Arundel is exceeding sick again, and like to die very soon. Indeed his

physicians are of opinion, so report speaketh, that he will not last

many days now, for as often as he hath rallied before."

"Yesterday," I said, "when I saw Lady Surrey, he was no worse than

usual."

"Oh, have you heard," Polly cried, running from one theme to another,

as was her wont, "that Leicester is about to marry Lettice Knollys, my

Lady Essex?"

"'Tis impossible," Basil exclaimed, who was now listening to her

speeches, for Kate had finished her discourse touching her Johnny's

disease in his stomach. The cause thereof, she said, both herself

thought, and all in Mr. Benham's house did judge to have been, the

taking in the morning a confection of barley sodden with water and

sugar, and made exceeding thick with bread. This breakfast lost him

both his dinner and supper, and surely the better half of his sleep;

but God be thanked, she hoped now the worst was past, and that the

dear urchin would shortly be as merry and well-disposed as afore he

left London. Basil said he hoped so too; and in a pause which ensued,

he heard Polly speak of Lord Leicester's intended marriage, which

seemed to move him to some sort of indignation, the cause of which I

only learnt many years later; for that when Lady Douglas Howard's

cause came before the Star-Chamber, in his present majesty's reign, he

told me he had been privy, through information received in France, of

her secret marriage with that lord.

"'Tis not impossible," Polly retorted, "by the same token that the new

favorite, young Robert Devereux, maketh no concealment of it, and

calleth my Lord Leicester his father elect. But I pray you, what is

impossible in these days? Oh, I think they are the most whimsical,

entertaining days which the world hath ever known; and the merriest,

if people have a will to make them so."

"Oh, Polly," I cried, unable to restrain myself, "I pray God you may

never find cause to change your mind thereon."

"Yea, amen to that prayer," quoth she; "I'll promise you, my grave

little coz, that I have no mind to be sad till I grow old--and there

be yet some years to come before that shall befall me. When Mistress

Helen Ingoldsby shall reach to the height of my shoulder, then,

methinks, I may begin to take heed unto my ways. What think you the

little wench said to me yesterday? 'What times is it we do conform to,

mother? dinner-times or bed-times?'" "She should have been answered,

'The devil's times,'" Basil muttered; and Kate told Polly she should

be ashamed to speak in her father's house of the conformity she

practised when others were suffering for their religion. {323} And,

methought, albeit I had scarcely endured the jesting which had

preceded it, I could less bear any talk of religion, least-ways of

that kind, just then. But, in sooth, the constraint I suffered almost

overpassed my strength. There appeared no hope of their going, and

they fell into an eager discourse concerning the bear-baiting they had

been to see in Berkshire, and a great sort of ban-dogs, which had been

tied in an outer court, let loose on thirteen bears that were baited

in the inner; and my dear Basil, who doth delight in all kinds of

sports, listened eagerly to the description they gave of this

diversion. Oh, how I counted the minutes! what a pressure weighted my

heart! how the sound of their voices pained mine ears! how long an

hour seemed! and yet too short for my desires, for I feared the time

must soon come when Basil should go, and lamented that these

unthinking women's tarrying should rob me of all possibility to talk

with him alone. Howsoever, when Mr. Roper rose to depart, I followed

him into the hall and waited near the door for Basil, who was bidding

farewell to Kate and Polly. I heard him beseech them to do him so much

favor as not to mention they had seen him; for that he had not

informed Sir Henry Stafford of his coming over from France, which if

he heard of it otherwise than from himself, it should peradventure

offend him. They laughed, and promised to be as silent as graves

thereon; and Polly said he had learnt French fashions she perceived,

and taken lessons in wooing from mounseer; but she hoped his stealthy

visit should in the end prove more conformable to his desires than

mounseer's had done. At last they let him go; and Mr. Roper, who had

waited for him, wrung his hand, and the manner of his doing it made my

eyes overflow. I turned my face away, but Basil caught both my hands

in his and said, "Be of good cheer, sweetheart. I have not words

wherewith to express how much I love thee, but God knoweth it is very

dearly."

"O Basil! mine own dear Basil," I murmured, laying my forehead on his

coat-sleeve, and could not then utter another word. Ere I lifted it

again, the hall-door opened, and who, I pray you, should I then see

(with more affright, I confess, than was reasonable) but Hubert? My

voice shook as he said to Basil, whose back was turned from the door,

"Here is your brother."

"Ah, Hubert!" he exclaimed; "I be glad to see thee!" and held out his

hand to him with a frank smile, which the other took, but in the doing

of it a deadly paleness spread over his face.

"I have no leisure to tarry so much as one minute," Basil said; "but

this sweet lady will tell thee what weighty reasons I have for

presently remaining concealed; and so farewell, my dear love, and

farewell, my good brother. Be, I pray you, my bedes-woman this night,

Constance; and you too, Hubert,--if you do yet say your prayers like a

good Christian, which I pray God you do,--mind you say an ave for me

before you sleep."

When the door closed on him I sunk down on a chair, and hid my face

with my hands.

"You have not told him anything?" Hubert whispered; and I, "God help

you, Hubert! he hath come to London for this very matter, and hath

already, I fear, albeit not in any way that shall advantage my father,

yet in seeking to assist him, run himself into danger of death, or

leastways banishment."

As I said this mine eyes raised themselves toward him; and I would

they had not, for I saw in his visage an expression I have tried these

many years to forget, but which sometimes even now comes back to me

painfully.

"I told you so," he answered. "He hath an invariable aptness to miss

his aim, and to hurt himself by the shafts he looseth. What plan hath

he now formed, and what shall come of it?"

{324}

But, somewhat recovered from my surprise, I bethought myself it

should not be prudent, albeit I grieved to think so, to let him know

what sort of enterprise it was Basil had in hand; so I did evade his

question, which indeed he did not show himself very careful to have

answered. He said he was yet dealing with Sir Francis Walsingham, and

had hopes of success touching my father's liberation, and so prayed me

not to yield to despondency; but it would take time to bring matters

to a successful issue, and patience was greatly needed, and likewise

prudence toward that end. He requested me very urgently to take no

other steps for the present in his behalf, which might ruin all. And

above all things not to suffer Basil to come forward in it, for that

he had made himself obnoxious to Sir Francis by speeches which he had

used, and which some one had reported to him, touching Lady Ridley's

compliance with his (Sir Francis's) request that she should have a

minister in her house for to read Protestant prayers to her household,

albeit herself, being bedridden, did not attend; and if he should now

stir in this matter, all hope would be at an end. So he left me, and I

returned to the parlor, and Kate and Polly declared my behavior to

them not to be over and above civil; but they supposed when folks were

in love, they had a warrant to treat their friends as they pleased.

Then finding me very dull and heavy, I ween, they bethought themselves

at the last of going to visit their mother in her bed, and paying

their respects to their father, whom they found asleep in his chair,

his prayer-book, with which he was engaged most of the day, lying open

by his side. Polly kissed his forehead, and then the picture of our

Blessed Lady in the first page of this much-used volume; which sudden

acts of hers comforted me not a little.

Muriel came out of her mother's chamber to greet them, but would not

suffer them to see her at this unexpected time, for that the least

change in her customable habits disordered her; and then whispered to

me that she had often asked for Mistress Ward, and complained of her

absence.

At the last Sir Ralph came, but not Mr. Lacy, who he said was tired

with his long ride, and had gone home to bed. Thereupon Kate began to

weep; for she said she would not go without him to this fine ball, for

it was an unbecoming thing for a woman to be seen abroad when her

husband was at home, and a thing she had not yet done, nor did intend

to do. But that it was a very hard thing she should have been at the

pains to dress herself so handsomely, and not so much as one person to

see her in this fine suit; and she wished she had not been so foolish

as to be persuaded to it, and that Polly was very much to blame

therein. At the which, "I' faith, I think so too," Polly exclaimed;

"and I wish you had stayed in the country, my dear."

Kate's pitiful visage and whineful complaint moved me, in my then

apprehensive humor, to an unmerry but not to be resisted fit of

laughter, which she did very much resent; but I must have laughed or

died, and yet it made me angry to hear her utter such lamentations who

had no true cause for displeasure.

When they were gone,--she, still shedding tears, in a chair Sir Ralph

sent for to convey her to Gray's Inn Lane, and he and Polly in their

coach to Mrs. Yates's,--the relief I had from their absence proved so

great that at first it did seem to ease my heart. I went slowly up to

mine own chamber, and stood there a while at the casement looking at

the quiet sky above and the unquiet city beneath it, and chiefly in

the distant direction where I knew the prison to be, picturing to

myself my father in his bare cell. Mistress Ward regaining her obscure

lodging, Mr. Watson's dangerous descent, and mostly the boat which

Basil was to row,--that boat freighted with so perilous a burthen.

These scenes seemed to rise before mine eyes as I remained motionless,

straining {325} their sight to pierce the darkness of the night and of

the fog which hung over the town. When the clock struck twelve, a

shiver ran through me, for I thought of the like striking at Lynn

Court, and what had followed. Upon which I betook myself to my

prayers, and thinking on Basil, said, "Speak for him, O Blessed Virgin

Mary! Entreat for him, O ye apostles! Make intercession for him, all

ye martyrs! Pray for him, all ye confessors and all ye company of

heaven, that my prayers for him may take effect before our Lord Jesus

Christ!" Then my head waxed heavy with sleep, and I sank on the

cushion of my kneeling-stool. I wot not for how many hours I slumbered

in this wise; but I know I had some terrible dreams.

When I awoke it was daylight. A load knocking at the door of the house

had aroused me. Before I had well bethought me where I was, Muriel's

white face appeared at my door. The pursuivants, she said, were come

to seek for Mistress Ward.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

------

From The Literary Workman.

FACTS AND FICTIONS ABOUT ROME.

BY THE VERY REV. DR. NORTHCOTE.

THE ROMAN PEOPLE.

It is a relief to turn from the dull, stupid, false witness of our own

countrymen to the more lively but not less malicious falsehoods of the

clever Frenchman, Monsieur About. He deserves a higher rank, too, in

the scale of truthfulness as well as of talent than either Mr. Fullom

or Dean Alford; but on this very account he is the more dangerous

enemy. He handles his pen well, and he has the fatal gift of

insinuating the poison he wishes to administer in the minutest

quantities, but with consummate skill. Often it is contained in a

single word or phrase, dropped apparently at random. Sometimes you can

hardly point out a single statement that is really false, yet a

certain tone and flavor pervades the whole which you feel to be

unjust, and which is all the more injurious because of its extreme

subtlety and the difficulty of providing an antidote. An air of

moderation is thus imparted to his book, which, if we may judge by its

rarity, it is not easy to maintain when writing upon this subject He

does not paint either the Pope or his people all black, but sees much

to commend both in the system and the results of the government.

Indeed, some of his descriptions are, in our judgment, as just as they

are graphic. Take, for example, the following description of the lower

orders of the Roman people, the genuine _plebs_:

"The noble strangers who do Rome in their carriages are but slightly

acquainted with the little world of which I am going to speak, or more

probably form a very false judgment about them. They remember to have

been worried to death by blustering _facchini_ (porters) and followed

by indefatigable beggars. They saw nothing but hands open to receive;

they heard nothing but harsh voices screaming forth a petition for

alms. Behind this curtain of mendacity are concealed nearly a hundred

thousand persons who are poor without being idle, and who labor hard

for a scanty supply of {326} daily bread. The gardeners and

vine-dressers who cultivate part of the environs of Rome; workmen,

artizans, servants, coachmen, studio models, peddlers, honest

vagabonds who wait for their supper on some miracle of Providence or

some lucky chance in the lottery, compose the majority of the

population. They manage to struggle through the winter, when visitors

sow manna over the land; in summer they starve. Many are too proud to

ask for an alms, not one of them is rich enough to refuse it, if

offered. Ignorant and curious; simple, yet subtle; sensitive to

excess, yet without much dignity; extremely prudent in the main, yet

capable of the most outrageous pieces of imprudence; going to extremes

both in devotedness and in hate; easy to move, difficult to convince;

more susceptible of feelings than of ideas; sober by habit, terrible

when intoxicated; sincere in practices of devotion the moat _outré_,

but as ready to quarrel with the saints as with men; persuaded that

they have but little to hope for in this life; comforted from time to

time by the prospect of a better, they live in a state of quiet,

grumbling resignation under a paternal government which gives them

bread when there is bread to give. The inequalities of rank, which are

more conspicuous in Rome than in Paris (?), do not move them to

hatred. They are satisfied with the mediocrity of their lot, and

congratulate themselves that there are rich men in the world, that so

the poor may have benefactors. No people are less capable of managing

themselves, so that they are easily led by the first who presents

himself. They have borne a part in all the Roman revolutions, and many

have acquitted themselves manfully in the fight without having the

least idea what it was about. They trusted so little to the republic

that, in the absence of all the authorities, when the Holy Father and

the Sacred College had taken refuge at Gaeta, thirty poor families

quartered themselves in Cardinal Antonelli's palace, without breaking

a single pane of glass. The restoration of the Pope, under the

protection of a foreign army, was no matter of astonishment to them;

they had expected it as a happy event which would restore public

tranquillity. They live at peace with our soldiers, when the latter do

nothing against the peace or honor of their households; and the

occupation of their city by a foreign army does not trouble them,

except when they are personally inconvenienced by it. They are not

afraid to plunge a dagger into the breast of a conqueror, but I will

answer for their never celebrating any Sicilian Vespers.

"They pride themselves on their descent in a direct line from the

Romans of great Rome; and these harmless pretensions seem to me to

have a very tolerable foundation. Like their ancestors, they eat

largely of bread, and are very greedy after sights; they treat their

wives simply as women, not leaving a single farthing at their

disposal, but spending it all on themselves; every one of them is the

client of some client of a patrician. They are well-built, strong, and

able to deal such a blow as would astonish a buffalo; but there is not

one of them who is not on the lookout for some means of living without

work. Excellent workmen when they haven't a farthing, impossible to be

got hold of as soon as they have a crown in their pockets; good,

honest, kindly, and simple-hearted folks, but thoroughly convinced of

their superiority to the rest of mankind. Economical to the last

degree, and living on dry peas, until they can find some splendid

occasion for spending all their savings in a day; they gather _sous_

by _sous_, two or three pounds in the course of the year, to hire the

balcony of some prince at the carnival, or to show themselves in a

carriage at the feast _del Divin 'Amore_, It is thus the Roman

populace forget both the future and the past in _Saturnalia_. The

hereditary want of forethought which possesses {327} them may be

explained by the irregularity of their resources, the periodical

return of _festas_ which exempt them from labor, and the impossibility

of raising themselves to any higher condition, save by the

intervention of a miracle. They are deficient in many virtues, and,

amongst others, in refinement, which formed no part of the inheritance

to which they have succeeded. That in which they certainly are _not_

deficient is dignity and self-respect. They never demean themselves to

low, coarse jokes, or vulgar debauchery. You will never see them

insult a gentleman in the streets, unprovoked, or speak an offensive

word to a woman. That class of degraded beings which we call the

_canaille_ is absolutely unknown here; the _ignoble_ is not a Roman

commodity."

Here is another testimony of a similar kind, from the same pen, to the

character of one particular class of the Roman people, the

Trastevirni, or people who dwell on the northern side of the Tiber. M.

About invites his readers to accompany him to one of the _osterie_ or

public houses of the quarter where blacksmiths, and shoemakers, and

weavers, and hackney-coachmen, etc, together with their wives and

daughters, resort on Sunday, to enjoy a better dinner and a more

generous flask of wine than they can afford themselves during the

week. The entrance is not inviting, and there are not many foreigners,

or English gentlemen either, who would like to venture, as a mere

matter of curiosity, and without any pressing necessity, into the

corresponding establishments of either France or England. M. About is

well aware of this, so he encourages his readers, bidding them fear

nothing; "you shall dine well," he says, "and nobody shall dine upon

you."

"You shall see men here strong as bulls and quite as irascible; men

who think as little of giving a blow as you or I of drinking a glass

of water, and who never strike without having a knife in their hands.

The police will be nowhere near to protect us; they are always out of

the way. Beside, if you were to offend one of these jolly fellows, he

would kill you, though you were in the very arms of the police.

Nevertheless you may come and go in the midst of them, spend lots of

money, pay in gold, make your purse jingle in the hearing of all, and

go home after midnight through the darkest streets, without any one

dreaming of making an attempt on your purse. More than this: we shall

be politely received, and they will put themselves out of the way to

make room for us. They will not stare at us, as though we were wild

beasts; they will even obligingly gratify our curiosity, if it is not

impertinent We need not fear that wine will excite them to pick a

quarrel with us; but woe betide us if we have the misfortune to

provoke them. They are not aggressive when they are in liquor, but

they are very sensitive. They forgive no offence, even an involuntary

one, if it has exposed them to the raillery of their companions. When

you see a woman with her husband, or a girl with her father, put a

bridle on your eyes. It is often dangerous even to cast a furtive

glance on a Trasteverina; and I have known more than one instance in

which the offender has paid the penalty with his life."

I dare say some of our readers are a little disappointed at the sketch

of the character of the Roman people which we have given on the

authority of M. About. They would rather have heard us say they were

all good and pious and edifying members of society and of the Church.

Indeed we have known some zealous souls who expected to find Rome a

sort of monastery on a large scale, where worldly passions and mortal

sins were never heard of, except among the hardened and rebellious

few; and even the imperfections of ordinary mortals were rarely met

with, and assumed some character of special enormity. Rome seems to

have the gift which, from the Catholic point of view, {328} we should

naturally expect it to have, viz., of stirring the affection of men's

hearts in their lowest depths more powerfully than in any other place

in the world. As our divine Master himself was "set for the ruin as

well as for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which

should be contradicted," so the capital of his Church upon earth--the

seat of his vicegerent--that city where his interests take precedence

of every earthly consideration, and the world is made to wait upon the

Church, not the Church upon the world, inspires the strongest possible

sentiment of love or of hatred into the minds of all; and where these

feelings are strong, it is hard to keep the exact balance of impartial

truthfulness. What we love intensely, we naturally like to picture to

ourselves as faultless and perfect; and even if we cannot do this--if

we are conscious of defects and faults, which cannot be denied, we

still wish to conceal them as long as possible from others. What

bitter hatred and prejudice can do in the way of blinding men's eyes

and closing men's ears, we have already seen in the melancholy

examples of Messrs. Alford and Co.; nor should we have far to seek if

we desired to present our readers with specimens of exaggerated praise

dictated by the partiality of affection. Most of us have probably met

with generous enthusiasts, who did not hesitate to prefer Rome to

England, under any conceivable aspect, secular as well as religious,

and who would think it as much a point of honor to defend the

character of the Roman soldiers for bravery, the Roman police for

activity, the Roman scavengers for efficiency, and the Roman people

for industry and honesty, as of the Roman clergy for integrity of

faith and purity of morals, and the Roman government for justice

tempered with clemency. Such persons are very amiable friends, but

somewhat embarrassing allies; and writers, very inferior to M. About,

have no difficulty in destroying their well-meant but ill-planned

system of defence. M. About himself is much too wise to fall into this

blunder of unmitigated extravagance, from his side of the question;

and we have been glad, therefore, to avail ourselves of his clever and

spirited sketches to lay before our readers what we really believe to

be a very tolerable estimate of the true state of the case. It is

certainly no article of the faith to believe the Romans to be

impeccable, or the Roman character in itself to be the ideal of human

perfection; and we hope our devotion to the Holy See will not be

called in question for the avowal. We have already quoted the

testimony of a Protestant traveller, who acknowledges the

strongly-marked character of religion which stamps the whole city of

Rome; but this, of course, is not incompatible with the existence of

much that is evil, against which this religious element is always

contending.