maintain my right to the position!” exclaimed the Old Catholic.
“Bah! the government! That is New Protestant nonsense! If you were a
Catholic, you would know that the government has no right to dispose
of ecclesiastical offices. Offices of the church are bestowed by the
church. Therefore, you must go! Where is your hat?”
“This is an outrage; it is nothing less than violence!”
“There, take your hat! I ask you whether you will leave voluntarily?”
“No; I will not go!”
“Well, then, we will accompany you until you are out of the village,”
said Keller; and he put his arm under that of Stechapfel, while Ewald
executed the same manœuvre on the other side. In vain did the intruder
resist. The strong men took him out of the house, across the yard, and
through the village. The people of Weselheim stood around and laughed
at the comical scene.
“Whom have you there?” asked a passer-by.
“We have here an Old Catholic New Protestant who has strayed away from
Bavaria. We are now showing him the way out of the village.”
“What are you doing?” cried out another, in surprise. “I hope you will
not lay hands on a priest?”
“Certainly not,” said Ewald; “we only expel the wolf who wished to
creep in clothed as a sheep.”
A short distance out of the village, the men halted.
“So, Herr Stechapfel, now you can proceed alone,” said Franz Keller.
“If you wish to be again taken out, then you must revisit us; it will
be a pleasure for us to escort you as we have just done. If you are
really a duly ordained priest, then I ask your pardon; but I have not
to ask pardon of you personally, for you bear too close a resemblance
to the traitor Judas. You can tell the gentlemen in the city that we in
Weselheim shall remain true to the cross: the trowel the Freemasons may
keep for themselves. Good-by!”
CHAPTER IV.
APPEAL FOR HELP.
FROM the tower of the palace floated a banner—a sign that the king had
taken up his residence there. In the royal park, a gentleman in the
prime of life was walking. His countenance bespoke a kind disposition,
and his dark eyes were full of spirit and intelligence. He sought out
the most lonely paths, and seemed lost in thought, while his gaze
rested upon the lovely flowers of the forest, the green moss, and the
gigantic oaks. Hurried steps are heard coming up the well-gravelled
road; joy beams from the face of the gentleman; he stretches out his
arms, presses the youthful count to his bosom, and imprints a kiss upon
his forehead.
“Have you come at last, my Adolph? How fresh and handsome you look!”
“No wonder, your majesty! I drink water, and eat potatoes with sour
milk,” replied the count merrily.
They walked on arm in arm. The count was distantly related to the king,
who was a great lover of art, and therefore took pride in the poetic
talents of his young relative.
“For how long has your majesty freed yourself from the affairs of
state?” asked Adolph.
“For two weeks—a short time. Even here I cannot rest; I have promised
an audience to many persons.”
“Why did you promise?”
“Because those who wish to see me belong to a powerful organization,”
replied the king. “The grandmaster of all the Freemasons of the country
will present an address to me—in two days, I believe.”
“The grandmaster?” exclaimed the count, taking his portfolio from under
his arm. “These leaves contain both good and bad. To keep either secret
from the king would be treason, and on my part a great violation of my
duty as his friend.”
“Have you written a drama?”
“Yes, your majesty; or rather, I have copied one; you also are one of
the actors, as well as the grandmaster. Can I begin to read?”
“Certainly; I am most anxious to hear what you have written.”
Von Scharfenstein, after a few words of introduction, described his
hiding-place in the forest, and the circle of unsuspecting Freemasons
assembled at his feet. He then commenced to read. The king listened
with undivided attention. Gradually a dark frown settled upon his brow.
“Many thanks for your valuable communication,” said he, when Von
Scharfenstein had finished reading. “So I am a narrow-minded man who
does not rule, but is ruled! Outrageous impertinence!”
“It is contemptible and vulgar; but what else do you expect from
Freemasons!” answered the count.
“And these very Freemasons are always professing to be the most
obedient servants of the crown,” said the indignant king. “They are
constantly clamoring about the dangerous designs of Rome upon other
governments, and they also pretend to decry the intrigues of the
ultramontanes!”
“In reality,” replied Von Scharfenstein, “it is these men of the
trowel and apron who undermine the authority of the crown; they make
the people hate their rulers, they violate and wound the holiest
feelings of subjects, and they do this clothed in the garment of
official authority. I will give you an example.” And the count related
the forcible expulsion of the Jesuit father, and the request of the
inhabitants of Weselheim.
The king walked a few steps in silence.
“Justice shall be given to the oppressed, and punishment to the
guilty,” said he, and then turned towards the palace.
Two days later, the councilmen left their village, dressed in their
best attire, and carrying with them the prayers of all the inhabitants.
The burgomaster led the procession, followed by the others, until they
entered the royal park. The nearer they approached the palace, the
slower were the footsteps of the men; for it is no trifling matter for
humble subjects to enter the presence of their king.
“George, do justice to our cause!” said Ewald to the burgomaster.
“I will do all that I can, but you must help me!” And the burgomaster
wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
They walked in respectful silence upon the clean gravel-path that
led to the palace. At some distance from them, they espied their
good friend Count von Scharfenstein coming up a by-road. He saw the
diffidence of the men, and saluted them kindly, in order to infuse new
courage into them.
“The parish of Weselheim is held in high estimation by the king, for
he only gives audience here to princes and to very intimate friends,”
said he. “Therefore, you must speak freely to him. The king likes a
plain and truthful statement of facts. At the same time, my friends,
the question is, Can the king help you, that is, for any time to come?
There is only one thing which will be of help.”
“What does your lordship mean?” inquired Keller.
“I mean that the Freemasons and liberals aim at the destruction of
religion. They have worked at this for many years, and not in vain.
They have succeeded in expelling in many places a large number of
priests from the schools, so that the children, if possible, may grow
up without religion. They have declared war against conscientious
bishops and priests. At present they have driven out the Jesuits,
because they are very active and zealous in the discharge of their
duty. After the Jesuits will follow the other religious orders, then
the seminaries will be closed, bishops and priests will be deprived
of their rights, and the church as they imagine, will be rendered
helpless. It is a most cruel tyranny, and a real stigma upon the German
name; but what can be done? The tyrants are all powerful.”
“Our gracious king can put a stop to their wickedness,” said the
burgomaster.
“You are mistaken,” replied Scharfenstein. “The king cannot do
everything. He has sworn to uphold the constitution, and he must keep
his oath. If, therefore, the representatives of the country, the
Chamber of Deputies, make laws hostile to religion, the king is often
obliged to confirm them. Consequently, only one thing can really help
you.”
“And what is it, if we are permitted to ask your lordship?”
“It is for you to exercise more prudence in the elections for the
Chamber and the Diet. Send pious, religious men as your representatives
to the Diet, and then your religion will not be insulted, and you will
have good laws. Why are the Freemasons now in the ascendency in the
Chamber, in the ministry, in the government, everywhere? And who are
to blame for it? The people, yes, the people have given the reins to
their bitterest enemies. If the Catholic people had elected proper
representatives, the Freemasons and liberals would never have become
so powerful. If, therefore, the enemies of religion use their power
for the destruction of the church and of religious belief, it is very
natural, and the careless indifference of the people is the cause of
their triumph.”
“Your lordship is right,” answered the burgomaster.
“It will be very different at the next election,” said the other men.
“I hope so,” remarked Von Scharfenstein. “Remember what I tell you.
Only one thing will be of lasting benefit to you, and that is to send
practical Catholics to the Diet; and this you can do if you choose.
Unscrupulous men who do not believe in God, in eternal reward or
punishment, do not hesitate to deprive the people of their religious
rights, to impose oppressive taxes upon them, and to make slaves of
free men!”
The villagers acquiesced in what was said.
“I wish that we had never believed the sweet-sounding words of the
liberals and their lying newspapers,” remarked Ewald. “We must really
confess that, as a people, we are too ignorant, and allow ourselves to
be too easily duped.”
“It is time for you to become prudent,” replied the count.
The deputation had now reached the palace.
“Do you see the man with the long official staff in his hand, standing
there in the hall? Tell him who you are, and he will take care of you.”
Saying this, Von Scharfenstein saluted them, and returned to the park.
CHAPTER V.
THE AUDIENCE.
IN the audience-chamber there stood three gentlemen in animated
conversation: the grandmaster and two other Freemasons, the director,
and university professor. They were handsomely dressed, and wore
several orders upon their breasts. They seemed to be very familiar with
their surroundings, for they moved about with perfect unconcern. The
grandmaster of the Freemasons especially appeared to be full of his own
importance, and he glanced haughtily at one of the king’s attendants
when he entered the apartment.
“Something has gone wrong to-day,” said he, looking at his watch. “It
is already a quarter of an hour after the appointed time. I have never
been treated so before.”
“I also remark something unusual,” exclaimed the director. “There,
behind the table, stands a chair of state. The king never seats himself
when giving audiences; why, therefore, has this rule been violated?
There is a bell upon the table—what does all this mean?”
“The king has his humors, no doubt,” replied the grandmaster
sarcastically, placing meanwhile an address upon the silver salver
which stood upon the table.
At once the folding-doors opened, and the king entered, looking grave
and dignified. He advanced towards the chair of state, and, placing
his hand upon it, he waited until those present had finished bowing.
No gracious smile lighted up his features, and he returned their
salutation with a scarcely perceptible nod of the head.
“Most gracious majesty!” commenced the grandmaster, “it cannot have
escaped your notice that a serious disturbance threatens the peace of
the whole German Empire, as well as the kingdom which is so happy as
to be governed by your wise and prudent rule. The infallibility of the
Pope, so dangerous to the state, and invented only to bring princes and
people under the sceptre of the Roman Pontiff, has provoked universal
indignation. Everywhere societies and meetings are protesting against
this usurpation of Rome. At Munich and Darmstadt, good and learned men
have taken part in the proceedings. In both cities, resolutions were
passed which your majesty will be graciously pleased to accept.”
The king silently took the address from the salver, and laid it upon
the table.
“Your majesty will permit me to remark,” continued the grandmaster,
“that, at the Protestant Diet of Darmstadt, the Jesuits were specially
designated as the most dangerous conspirators in the service of Rome,
and particularly hostile to the German Empire. Now, as the Society
of Jesus exists also in your majesty’s dominions, we have ventured,
actuated solely by the interest we take in the peace and political
welfare of the kingdom, to humbly petition that your majesty will
insist upon the immediate expulsion of the above-named society.”
“Are you a Catholic, Herr Counsellor of the High Court?” asked the king.
“Strictly Catholic, your majesty—strictly Catholic,” replied the
Freemason. “I hold firmly to the old doctrines of the Holy Catholic
Church, and shall resist with all my strength the innovation of the
last council.”
“According to what you say, your petition asking for the suppression
of the Jesuits does not come with such ill grace from you, for you,
as a Catholic, speak about Catholic affairs,” said the king. “But
why a Protestant diet should meddle itself with the ecclesiastical
discipline and religious belief of Catholics is beyond my conception.
The Catholics also have public meetings; but I never hear that they
concern themselves in the slightest degree about Protestant matters. I
am aware of the resolutions passed by the Protestant Diet of Darmstadt,
and regret them exceedingly, because they are only calculated to
grieve Catholics, to disturb the peace, and to seriously embarrass
governments. The Gustave Adolph Society is a proof how, in former
times, Protestants have united themselves with the foreign invader
and destroyer of our country against the Catholic Emperor of Germany.
Hostile treatment, or even an attempt to suppress the Catholic
Church on the part of the state, might in like manner force Catholic
Germans to unite themselves with a foreign power in opposition to the
Protestant Emperor of Germany. A faithful people are not in need of
forgiveness if they love their God and their religion more than they do
the tyranny of their fatherland.”
The Freemasons were astonished; they did not expect to hear the king
speak as he did.
“You make mention of the resolutions of the glass palace at Munich,
which were also directed against the Jesuits,” continued the king. “Do
you believe the grave accusations which they bring against the Society
of Jesus?”
“I have the fullest conviction of their truth,” replied the
grandmaster, bowing low.
The king now seated himself, and looked through the address. The men of
the trowel cast significant glances at each other.
“A ruler must be just; he should never belong to a party,” said the
king. “You demand the suppression of men who are highly respected
and venerated by thousands of my subjects. The Burgomaster and
principal men of Weselheim are here to petition for the restoration
of their pastor, a Jesuit father. If, after hearing these men, I am
convinced that the actions of the Jesuits correspond with the Munich
resolutions, then I will not be disinclined to grant your request for
the suppression of the society; but, if the contrary, then justice must
be done!”
He rang a bell. The folding-doors at the lower end of the _salon_
opened, and the burgomaster, together with the councilmen of Weselheim,
entered, all looking anxious as to the result of the interview. The
king rose from his chair, and his whole manner changed; with a friendly
gesture, he invited the embarrassed deputies to draw nearer.
“Ah! Herr Burgomaster, I am delighted to see you again!” said he to
the burgomaster, giving him his hand. “You have not become older in the
course of the year—always young and active. How are the trout? Shall I
see any more of them upon my table?”
“O most gracious king!” replied the delighted burgomaster, “the whole
parish will catch trout for your majesty.”
“I am glad to hear it!” rejoined the king. “And how is your little
golden-haired son with the rosy cheeks? Has he grown tall?”
“Two feet taller this year; your majesty would not know him!”
The councilmen were enchanted. The ice was broken.
“You desire your pastor, the Jesuit father, to return to you again?”
began the king, seating himself in the chair. “That is right; such a
request is honorable to you all. Parishioners should always esteem a
worthy pastor. But, my dear people,” he continued, “there are some
difficulties. It is asserted that the Jesuits are men dangerous to the
state; that their teachings are destructive to morals. It is further
said that the Jesuits conspire against the government; that they
are opposed to the enlightenment of the people; and I am therefore
petitioned by some of my subjects to authorize their expulsion. These
are the very words contained in the address I hold in my hand.”
The men looked at one another; they evidently did not comprehend the
meaning of the accusations made against the Jesuits.
“I ask pardon, your majesty; but we do not understand you,” said
the burgomaster. “We know, indeed, that there are many who hate the
Jesuits, and who wish to see them exterminated, none more so than the
Freemasons. But your majesty must not listen to such persons; for even
our Lord was accused by his enemies of inciting the people, of being
dangerous to the state; and they even went so far as to nail him to
the cross. If our Saviour would come again to-day in the flesh, the
Freemasons would not be satisfied until they had crucified him again.”
The king cast a quick look at the flushed countenances of the
Freemasons.
“I ask you, upon your conscience,” said he to the burgomaster, “if your
Jesuit father ever taught immoral doctrines?”
“O great heaven!” exclaimed the excited burgomaster. “Immoral
doctrines—our pastor? Why, your majesty, he is like a saint, and he
does his best to make saints of the whole parish. If two young persons
of a different sex live together without being married, our pastor
never rests until both have given up their scandalous life and are
married. If enmities exist, and lawsuits and quarrels, our pastor is
indefatigable until he effects a reconciliation. Thus, our pastor
is like an angel for our parish. Formerly there were many who hated
each other; we had dissensions among ourselves; but now everything is
peaceable and quiet in the village, and all this we owe to our pastor,
the Jesuit father.”
“And what he does for the children is beyond belief, your majesty,”
said Keller. “He visits the schools every day; the children love him.
In _former_ times, parents had to command the children to pray in the
morning and the evening; _now_ they pray without being told to do so.
And our children are so obedient, for our pastor impresses upon them
the full importance of the fourth commandment.”
“Has your pastor no enemies in the parish?” inquired the king.
“Yes, most gracious majesty; he has enemies, that is, three rascals,
who would like to see him driven out,” said the burgomaster.
“You see, gentlemen,” said the king to the officials, “that your
accusations against the Jesuits are by no means confirmed.”
“The Jesuit of Weselheim may perhaps be an exception,” replied the
grandmaster.
Franz Keller seemed possessed with a desire to speak, but he controlled
his impatience.
“Your majesty will excuse me for saying that the accusations against
the Jesuits appear very surprising to me,” remarked Ewald. “In
the Bible, we read that the Jews dragged our Saviour before the
high-priests, and accused him of different crimes. And when our Saviour
defended himself, one of the servants struck him in the face, whereupon
our Saviour said: ‘If I have spoken evil, give testimony of the evil;
but, if well, why strikest thou me?’ It is the same with the Jesuits.
If they are really as wicked and criminal as their enemies assert,
well, let them be brought before the law, and be punished according
to the law. But if nothing can be proved against them, why continue
to slander and persecute them, and to treat them like murderers and
thieves?”
“Very well said, and very true!” answered the king.
“Most gracious king, I can tell you what people are against the
Jesuits—the Freemasons,” began Keller, unable any longer to keep
quiet. “A short time ago, I heard them talking on the Vogelsberg. These
three gentlemen (pointing to the Freemasons) were there, and one other.
The one with the gray beard said: ‘The trowel or the cross, that is the
watchword!’ Then they all declared that the religion of Christ must be
exterminated; and, because the Jesuits are good preachers and zealous
priests, therefore they must be the first to be overthrown. And they
also said that, when the altars were destroyed, the thrones must be
demolished. What else they said, most gracious king, I will not grieve
you by repeating.”
The king looked silently, but with an expression of severe displeasure,
at the officials.
“Will your majesty permit us to withdraw?” inquired the grandmaster.
“You will remain; we have not finished yet,” replied the king sternly.
“Most gracious king,” entreated the burgomaster, “be kind enough to
look through the window.”
The king did as requested, and saw at the foot of the hill the whole
parish of Weselheim congregated together—men, women, and children.
They all stood with their faces turned towards the palace. Many knelt
upon the ground. The king was visibly affected at the sight.
“The whole village unite with us in asking your majesty to give us back
our dear, good, pious Jesuit father,” said the burgomaster.
At this moment, a chamberlain appeared, and handed the king a written
communication.
“He is very welcome; admit him at once!” commanded the king.
The delegation were attentive spectators of what was transpiring. In
the antechamber they heard the voice of the pastor, who now entered the
_salon_, and was most graciously received by the king. The presence
of royalty alone prevented loud exclamations of delight from his
parishioners, whose faces shone with joy.
“The Society of Jesus was very active during the last war,” said the
king, after certain formalities had been gone through. “How many German
Jesuits were on the scene of action?”
“Nearly all, your majesty—one hundred and eighty-eight,” replied the
Jesuit. “Our older members took care of the sick; for, during the war,
all our colleges were converted into hospitals.”
“No proof of hostility to the state,” remarked the king, turning to the
officials. “How many Freemasons were employed in attending to the sick
and wounded in the hospitals during the war?”
“The care of the sick does not belong to the vocation of a Freemason,”
answered the grandmaster shortly.
“Much is said and written to-day concerning the extraordinary power of
the Jesuits,” said the king to the reverend father. “I have in vain
endeavored to discover the secret of this power; you may perhaps be
able to enlighten me on the subject?”
“Your majesty, the so-called power of the Jesuits is a mere phantom
invented by our enemies to excite the fears of the credulous,” answered
the priest. “In fact, the Jesuits are, of all men, the weakest. They
are slandered, persecuted, suppressed. In many places, they have not
even the right to exist or to breathe, as in Bavaria and Switzerland.
All societies are protected in Bavaria, all associations can exist in
Switzerland, except the Society of Jesus. If the Jesuits, therefore,
possessed in reality the power claimed for them, they would not permit
their members to be treated like slaves, as they now are.”
“I believe you,” rejoined the king. “Being a foreigner, your reverence
had to abandon the sphere of your labor; but now I grant you the right
of a subject, and liberty to return to your mission. May you live many
years to be a blessing to the parish of Weselheim!”
He took the hand of the priest, and led him to the village delegation.
“Here, you have your pastor back again! Honor and obey him!” said he to
them.
“Most gracious king, may Almighty God reward you a thousand times for
what you have done!” exclaimed the men, down whose cheeks the tears
were streaming; and, if two of the chamberlains had not interfered, and
led them out of the _salon_, they would have committed many breaches of
etiquette, so great was their joy.
The king now approached the Freemasons; his manner was cold, but his
eyes were ablaze with indignation.
“I thank divine Providence,” said he, “for having exposed before my
eyes the cunning and malicious snare in which you sought to entrap
me. The Jesuits are not the enemies of culture nor of the state; but
the Freemasons are. The foundation of culture is Christianity, and
not Freemasonry, which is the enemy of Christianity. In my kingdom,
the cross, and not the trowel shall be the symbol of government. The
Jesuits neither teach nor practise a false and corrupt morality,
but the Freemasons do, for they seek to overthrow not only altars
but thrones. The Freemasons are unscrupulous, false, and perjured
officials, for they have presumed to say that their king to whom they
have sworn fidelity was a narrow-minded man who did not govern, but was
governed! It would be nothing more than just to have the whole order
prosecuted for high treason!”
The excited king ceased speaking. The Freemasons, who at first looked
defiant and unconcerned, now trembled with fright. His majesty stood
for a while in perfect silence. From the foot of the hill resounded
many hundred voices chanting the grand hymn of praise, the German _Te
Deum_, while they accompanied their beloved pastor to the village.
The king, who had recovered his self-command, now pronounced the
following sentence: “The director, the Counsellor of the High Court,
the professor of the university, and the government counsellor
Schlehdorn are from this time forth deprived of their offices. I shall
not institute judicial proceedings against them, out of regard to the
feelings of their innocent families!”
The king turned, and left the _salon_.
The Freemasons looked at one another. Upon the lips of the grandmaster
an ironical, revengeful smile was seen.
“A blow in the water will startle any one, if it is given
unexpectedly,” said he, “and our present discomfiture is only of that
nature!” he continued, with a peculiar movement of the hand, and in
language whose obscure meaning they evidently understood. “Brethren,
our labors in a small sphere are only discontinued that we may resume
the work on a grander scale; for the trowel of the Freemasons shall yet
build the arch that covers the grave of the greater as well as of the
smaller!”
The other Freemasons bowed affirmatively to the words of the
grandmaster, and followed him out of the _salon_.
WHAT IS CIVILIZATION?
THE word civilization, adopted into almost every European language, is
derived from the Latin of _civitas_, a city, and _civis_, a citizen.
Webster thus defines civilization: “It consists in the progressive
improvement of society considered as a whole, and of all the individual
members of which it is composed.” And further: “A well-ordered state of
society, culture, refinement.” Now, it is worth while to inquire into
the tangible ideal of that people to whose language we are indebted
for this comprehensive word. The Romans considered their empire the
appointed head, by divine right, of the whole world. They could not
take in the idea of their supremacy being disputed, much less resisted,
and hence the proud motto, “_Civis Romanus sum_,” which was meant to
express the _ne plus ultra_ of human dignity. No greater honor could
be bestowed upon a stranger, whether ally or conquered foe, than to
make him a Roman citizen. It was a title more valuable than that of
Cæsar; it had privileges attached to it which neither the blood of a
Machabee nor an Alexander could claim; it compelled greater respect
than the heroism of a Leonidas or the uprightness of a Socrates.
Thus early had false notions of material civilization corrupted the
genuine meaning of a word which should always stand, not for political
supremacy, but for moral excellence. Rome, the heart of the dominant
empire which had vanquished and absorbed at least two civilizations of
higher degree than its own, the Hebrew and the Greek, has transmitted
to the word civilization the spirit of its intensely local autonomy.
Every kindred word derived from the same root has a like meaning,
especially “civility,” a synonyme of “urbanity” (from _urbs_, a city),
thereby conveying the insinuation that city customs alone have that
grace and refinement necessary to pleasant social intercourse. Another
meaning naturally flowed from this arbitrary assumption of perfection
to imperial Rome. Civil came to mean national as opposed to foreign;
as we say, for instance, civil, for intestine, war. More or less all
nations of the world have adopted this way of looking upon civilization
as a local thing; and, to the greater majority of mankind, there is
a certain flavor of disparagement implied in the terms foreign and
foreigner. We speak in a tone of half-concealed pity of men from
far-off countries, as if they must needs be a little lower in the
scale of creation than our enlightened selves. We have not forgotten
that “barbarian” and “foreigner” were terms used interchangeably by
the Greeks, and our local pride still unconsciously crops out in the
most childish and laughable demonstrations. Nothing shows better how
very arbitrary is the interpretation of the word civilization than our
various estimates of its essence. The Chinese who wears yellow for
mourning smiles compassionately at the European in his dusky garment
of sorrow; and the European who is accustomed to eat his dinner with
a knife and fork thinks that a nation can hardly be civilized which
tolerates the use of chop-sticks. To come nearer home, we have known
an Englishman of distinguished birth and position refuse the hand of
his daughter to a French diplomat, a nobleman of the old stock, an
accomplished gentleman, a rich land-owner, for the weighty reason that
“he was a foreigner”!
The word “barbarian” (from the Greek _βάρβαρος_) is given in Webster’s
_Dictionary_ as meaning, in the first and literal sense, foreign.
Barber or Barbar was originally the native name of a part of the
coast of Africa. The Egyptians, fearing and hating its inhabitants,
used their name as a term of contumely and dread, in which sense it
passed to the Greeks and Romans. Thus the kindred words barbarous and
barbarity have kept the meaning of “cruel and ferocious,” but the main
stock of _βάρβαρος_ generally signifies the two almost synonymous
things, “foreigner” and “barbarian”! The imitative sound of _barber_
was applied by the Greeks to the ruder tribes whose pronunciation was
most harsh and whose grammar most defective. Dr. Campbell says that the
Greeks were the first to brand a foreign term in any of their writers
with the odious name of barbarism. This word with the Greeks had the
additional general meaning of ignorance of art and want of learning,
and as such has been used by Dryden. Barbaric remains to this day the
synonyme of foreign and quaint, far-fetched, as Milton, following the
Greeks, has used it:
“The gorgeous East with richest hand,
Showers on her kings _barbaric_ gold and pearl.”
But Dryden has also put the more unusual word barbarous for the same
thing:
“The trappings of his horse embossed with _barbarous_ gold.”
The misapplication of all these terms, and more especially of
“civilization,” is of daily recurrence. We cannot open a newspaper
without seeing its self-eulogium expressed in the term “a journal
of civilization”; we cannot read a leading article on the financial
prosperity of the country without finding it confidently stated that
such prosperity is an infallible sign of civilization; we hear of
railroads “carrying civilization” among the wild tribes of Central
Africa; and we see atheism and false science parading their unhappy
progress as the “march of civilization.”
Now, admitting the very just definition we have quoted above, that
civilization is “the progressive improvement of society _as a whole_,
and of each individual member of which it is composed,” it seems to
us conclusive that only one perfect form of it could exist on earth,
_i.e._ that which flourished for a short time in the Garden of Eden.
Mankind in the state of innocence was _ipso facto_ civilized, and
civilized to the highest moral and intellectual degree possible to
mere human creatures. Had there been no original sin, and had Adam’s
posterity continued in utter sinlessness to inhabit the peaceful
and fruitful earth, we should have had that well-ordered state of
society in which the only progressive improvement would have been
ever-increasing love and knowledge of God.
But this, the only perfect civilization, was lost with all other
precious gifts—incorruptibility, innocence, and clear insight into
the things of God. The state of grace followed the state of innocence,
and man, having fallen from his innate mastership over nature when he
fell from his mastership over himself, found that civilization and
progressive improvement must henceforward mean nothing to him but the
painful effort to regain as much of his former power as God would
allow him, in guerdon of his repentance, to regain. All civilization
since the Fall, therefore, has been only approximative, and can never
be more than this. This explains why the highest civilization has
been attained only since Christianity has prevailed, the state of
accomplished redemption being the most perfect mankind has yet reached,
superseding even the state of expectancy of the Hebrew dispensation.
It explains, too, why the Jews were the most civilized of all ancient
nations—a point to which we will refer at greater length in another
place. From the few details briefly mentioned in Genesis, we infer
that the earliest civilization after the Fall was by no means inferior
to our own as far as material prosperity was concerned. Besides the
obvious callings of husbandman and shepherd, always the first and
indeed indispensable foundation of civilized life, we find that during
the lifetime of Adam, _i.e._, the first thousand years after the
Creation, cities were built and the arts cultivated. Cain was the first
to build and organize a town, and his descendant Jubal is called the
father of “them that play on the harps and organ.” Tubal Cain was “a
hammerer and artificer in every work of brass and iron.” Hunting and
the use of weapons were of course familiar to the pioneers of the human
race, for tradition tells us that it was while hunting that Lamech
slew a man, supposed by some to have been Cain, mistaking him for a
wild beast. It was not long before solemn religious ceremonies were
instituted, as appears from this passage: “This man (Enos) began to
call upon the name of the Lord,” which is thus interpreted: although
Adam and Seth had called upon the name of the Lord before the birth
of their son and grandson Enos, yet Enos used more solemnity in the
worship and invocation of God. The natural bent of fallen man, however,
prevailed over the efforts of a few faithful souls, and that material
civilization which, could we in imagination reconstruct its gorgeous
completeness, would undoubtedly not fall below that of the great
empires of Assyria, Egypt, or Persia, led surely though insensibly to
moral corruption. The fatal beauty of the women of Cain’s race, “the
daughters of men,” their wealth too, doubtless their worldly prosperity
and lavish display, tempted the descendants of Seth, “the sons of God,”
till, in a few hundred years, “all flesh had corrupted its way,” and
“it repented God that he had made man.” This was the first example of
the deteriorating effect of mere animal civilization, and, alas! how
faithfully has it been copied in all ages since! How persistently and
with what unwearying perseverance have its details of profligacy been
imitated by the succeeding generations of mankind!
A historical review of each separate attempt at civilization made by
the dispersed nations after the building of the Tower of Babel would be
a serious task, and its result too long for these pages; but, before we
leave this part of our subject to turn to the more abstract question of
the essence of civilization, let us stop to remark what a high pitch
of human culture had already been attained in times so remote that,
save through revelation, no memorial of them remains to us. Wendell
Phillips has partially developed this idea in his lecture on the “Lost
Arts,” proving that three-fourths of our _discoveries_ are plagiarisms,
that our best witticisms are borrowed from the Indian and the Greek,
and that our most boasted arts are but gropings in the dark after some
vanished ideal of antiquity. And how much more learning than we can
conjecture must there not be utterly buried out of sight in the sealed
records of antediluvian times! The only likeness which we can safely
boast of with those colossal days is the likeness of unbelief and
corruption. The “mighty men of old,” of whom the Bible so mysteriously
speaks, were doubtless as much above our standard of intellect and even
of prosperity as vulgar superstition ranges them above our standard of
physical strength and height. A veil of mystery shrouds them and their
lives from our utmost research, and we know only one thing for certain;
that is, their sin and its awful doom—little more than is told us of
the fall of Lucifer and his angels, yet enough to teach us that all
civilizations which in their arrogance dare to defy the laws of God
must inevitably fall beneath his rod.
And now, what _is_ civilization? What _is_ the “good of society
considered as a whole”?
Two things are indispensable to it—the inviolability of the family,
and the stability of the laws of property. On these two pillars,
humanly speaking, is society built, and whatever is antagonistic to
these fundamental principles is necessarily and directly antagonistic
to civilization.
Paternal and patriarchal government was the first known because the
most natural; and, when the increasing number of families confused
the original system and complicated its duties, the ruler chosen to
take charge of the whole tribe or nation still looked to no higher
title than that of _father_ of his people. The stability of the laws
regulating property was in all lands reckoned the gauge of prosperity
and the test of national vigor. The desire of personal possession, of
undisputed ownership over a tract of land however small, is a natural
and legitimate instinct of man; its realization alone can bring with
it to each individual that independence, that self-respect, which, in
the aggregate, creates the feeling of national honor. Patriotism is not
an intangible virtue; it springs from the broader basis of domestic
affection; it follows the feeling of responsibility induced by the
knowledge of having a personal stake in your country’s advancement.
The Romans have left us their motto: _Pro aris et focis_—“For our
altars and our hearths.” If we could no longer qualify these hearths
as _ours_, what a lessened interest they must necessarily have in our
eyes! The man who works for himself alone is reckless even if brave,
lukewarm even if conscientious. He may do his work, but he does it
without enthusiasm. He who works for those near and dear to him, to
gain or defend a patrimony for those who in the future will take his
place and bear his name, is gentle, considerate, patient, far-seeing,
persevering, as well as brave and conscientious. But granted that
these social and domestic laws are well-guarded, in what else does
civilization consist? There are four things which dispute the title
to forming the highest test of a well-ordered state of society:
riches, political freedom, education, and religion. Some men would
combine these elements in varied quantities to form _their_ ideas of
civilization; others would sink every element but one, and try the
experiment as long as it could be made to minister to their own private
aggrandizement; others, again, look for the visionary supremacy of one
element alone, and the subordination to itself of every other, whether
baser or nobler. We need not say to which class we hope to belong—the
sequel will show.
Does civilization consist in riches, whether national or individual?
True, the command of wealth inspires respect in neighboring peoples;
for national wealth means large resources, speedy armaments,
flourishing colonies, and means of thwarting the commerce of lesser
nations. But national wealth is seldom attained unless from the basis
of individual wealth. It is impossible for the state to absorb and
administer such resources as these, and yet to compel private citizens
to lead lives of Spartan frugality. The individual cannot be made to
acknowledge any right on the part of the state which will interfere
with his own right of accumulating capital, provided he makes over to
the government a fair share of his profits in the shape of legitimate
tribute. Private wealth then becomes the source of private luxury and
extravagance, and behind extravagance lurks moral decay. Factitious
wants are created, an abnormal state of society is brought about,
unmanning the body and weakening the mind. To many men, riches simply
suggest new means of indulging in vice; and to all men, vice, in the
long run, means disease. Material prosperity has thus reached its
apogee, has overshot its mark, and has found a fitting punishment in
physical deterioration. There is yet another side to the question.
Inordinate riches in the hands of a few, especially if unsupported by
territorial prestige, by hereditary honors and the semi-feudal spirit
which in Europe still links the agricultural and landed interests
in personal association, are apt to breed class jealousies, and to
estrange labor from capital. A civil war far more terrible than an
armed insurrection is set on foot and slowly undermines the political
structure. It is true that the most fatal example of this kind was the
upheaval of the French Revolution of ‘93, and that it took place under
a monarchical government; but, though monarchical, it was not a feudal
government, and the men whose birth, wealth, and station marked them
out as the victims of the people’s rage were essentially men whose
associations had long been dissevered from the land. Their estates had
been abandoned to unscrupulous agents or sold to ambitious _roturiers_;
and for what reason? That its price might cover their needless display
at an unstable court! At the present day, where is socialistic
agitation most rife in Europe? In the manufacturing towns: not in the
agricultural districts. Almost to a man, every factory-gang is ready to
turn against its employer; while, in the country, laborers will even
die in the defence of their landlords. In the former case, the master
is always a “self-made” man, a man of the people, or at least one whose
associations are obscure; in the latter, the master is the hereditary
representative of gentle blood and gentle nurture, the personal friend
of each man on his estate, identified with the neighborhood, and
attached to the soil.
The verdict of history has certainly gone against the theory that
times of material luxury, pushed to its furthest extent, are therefore
times of great national prosperity. Athens was at the height of her
ultra-refined civilization when the rude and martial Roman conquered
her autonomy; Rome herself, made effeminate by the conquering vices
of her conquered foe, was at the giddiest pinnacle of merely physical
prosperity when the resistless tide of the barbarians poured over her
frontiers; Spain had just grasped the New World with its teeming riches
when she fell from her political supremacy in the Old; France was
revelling in her Augustan Age when the tocsin of the Revolution woke
her from her dalliance. Great wealth has everywhere been the herald
of national misfortune; and, as if to set off this truth yet more
palpably, we have the republics of Sparta and of Switzerland to show
us that, both in classic and in modern times, frugality is the best
preservative of freedom.
But the existence of abnormal wealth as a criterion of civilization
has yet another phase. If it is possible under a republican form of
government and under a constitutional régime, it is still more likely
to reach gigantic proportions under a despotic system. Thus the East
produces more princely fortunes than even the “enlightened” West,
because, wealth being restricted to fewer individuals, it follows
that these few fortunes must be colossal. Unlimited pomp, dazzling
trains of slaves and camels, a fabulous blaze of gems, a limitless
harem, seem to be matters of course for the favored few whose almost
omnipotence has become proverbial among men as typical of the East.
Therefore, if wealth be a gauge of civilization, we must conclude that
despotism is the most civilized of states, since it is certainly the
most favorable to the accumulation of riches. If so (and, for the sake
of argument, let us grant it), how shall we reconcile this conclusion
with the claims of the second and, according to some, infallible test
of civilization—political freedom?
We understand by this the extreme of so-called self-government, the
government by ballot and universal suffrage. We have had but very
lately many signs of its woful fallibility; we have seen how cleverly
it can throw the cloak of legality over the most unblushing frauds;
we have seen hired violence control the very medium of government
itself. Men who respected themselves would as soon touch pitch as
defile their hands with voting tickets, or stand up by the side of
illegally naturalized citizens, pressed into momentary service by the
unscrupulous manipulators of the ballot-box. A form of government
which in theory is more perfect than any other, and more in accordance
with ideal human dignity, but which in sober practice has sometimes
been found an inadequate safeguard against corrupting influences, is
not apt to strike any one who has been familiar with the results of the
last few years’ political wire-pulling as the most exalted criterion
of civilization. The cant phrase of political freedom has unhappily
come to mean political corruption, which hardly entitles this second
candidate for the exclusive patent of civilization to a lengthened
discussion in these pages. The third is education.
This is certainly a more plausible test than the two former. Learning,
the arts, the sciences, the classics, all relate to the higher part
of man’s nature, and reflect honor on those who strive to be their
interpreters. This seems worthy of man, akin to his primeval state,
and like the occupation of his future life. But alone even education
cannot stand. When dissevered from religion, it falls, either into
atheism or fanaticism, sometimes into both. At least one example of
its pernicious moral results when thus left to itself is the brilliant
shame of the Medicean renaissance. In the new groves of Academe, the
ducal gardens of Fiesole, heathen voluptuousness speedily followed
heathen philosophy; polished manners and elegant diction redeemed loose
morals and equivocal conversation; Christianity was voted _barbarous_,
and Christian pageants uncouth. It was the age of Boccaccio. The poison
spread far and wide, the fever of a misdirected and one-sided education
seized all classes, and the fathers of the church were forgotten for
the lascivious poets of Greece and Rome. The mysteries of Bona Dea
were almost enacted over again, the dances of Bacchus were revived,
and the processions of Venus and Cupid took the place of Christian
solemnities. The corruption was thus forced on the people, who, excited
by gorgeous public entertainments of pagan complexion, caught the
hollow enthusiasm of their rulers, and emulated the servile Romans of
the empire who cried out, _Panem et circenses_, while they blindly
surrendered their freedom into the crowned showman’s hands. Material
prosperity and godless learning combined, stifled the last semblance
of Florentine liberty under the rule of the Medici. In France it was
atheism concealed under the guise of learning which prepared the way
for the Revolution of ‘93; it was the delicately veiled irony, and the
sportive unbelief of Voltaire’s disciples, which first made the “little
rift within the lute.” The savage leaders of the Reign of Terror had
nothing to do save crown with the guillotine the elaborate system of
corruption already founded by the “philosophers.”
Education without religion has been as treacherous and as frail a
support to the civilization of men as the reed that pierces the hand
of him who leans upon it; political freedom (?) without religion has
been only another name for a retrograde movement towards anarchy, and
material wealth without the controlling influence of religion has
proved the most dangerous because the most emasculating of allies to
those nations who have built their civilization on its basis.
Each and all of these experiments have fallen far short of the ideal
of the Garden of Eden, and each has practically confessed by its
failure the radical infirmity of the theory it represented. The reason
is self-evident: a system which undertakes to guide the complex
workings of human nature cannot afford to disregard any of nature’s
manifold instincts, and, by obstinately refusing to give a place to
all legitimate aspirations, overbalances itself, and falls sooner or
later into a trap of its own setting. You cannot govern man through
his animal wants alone or through his intellectual yearnings only, any
more than you can rule him solely through his spiritual instincts. He
must be fed, clothed, and housed, true, but this alone will not satisfy
him; his reason cries out for development and exercise, and his heart
also puts in a claim to the notice of any one who would undertake to
rule him. It is true that man is not an angel, and that spiritual food
alone would not allay his hunger, but it is equally true that he is not
a brute being, to be abundantly satisfied with good fodder and a dry
stable. His nature is threefold: animal, intellectual, and spiritual,
and claims an equal recognition of each of its phases. Neither mere
riches addressed to the contentment of his lower instincts, nor mere
educational and political advantages addressed to the satisfaction
of his nobler self, are enough for his welfare; his soul is a higher
region yet, and one which demands yet more imperatively an adequate
amount of attention. This soul it is which, when bound and blinded
as it but too often is in mere worldly systems of civilization, ends
by grasping, like Samson, the insecure supports of this partial
civilization itself, and in the untamed strength of despair dragging
down the fabric in ruins at its feet.
There remains one more element which is still claimed by a brave
minority, as the essence of all true civilization, and that is
religion. This is the most comprehensive criterion of a “well-ordered”
state of society, for it includes all the rest as a matter of course.
Religion is not incompatible with the possession and accumulations
of wealth, as some erroneously suppose, but she requires that such
interests shall be amenable to the dictates of moderation, and of
charity; she does not scout learning as an ally, but eagerly welcomes
it, so long as it keeps within its province and does not use its power
to stifle the spiritual nature of man; she is no enemy to political
freedom or to any particular form of government whatever, but she
firmly resists the claims to omnipotence which every strong government,
whether popular or absolutist, has in the hour of its worldly triumph
invariably made. With a wisdom the counterpart of that which equalizes
and controls the various forces of nature, religion holds in her hand
the various emotions, passions, and necessities of man, and balances
according to a divine standard the proportions in which each one may
be legitimately satisfied. She subordinates the lower satisfactions
to the higher, in exact proportion as the lower nature of mankind is,
or should be, subordinate to the higher; she places delegates in each
inferior sphere, that there may be no violence done to the spiritual
order in furthering the interests of the material; she bids honesty
watch over the legitimate increase of wealth, integrity temper the
efforts of men in the cause of political freedom, and reverence guide
them in the pursuit of learning. She gathers up these single threads
of our lives, and, weaving them into a triple cord, imparts to them a
strength which her blessing alone can confer, and which individually
they could never have attained. It is she alone who skilfully brings
within the practical reach of the poor, the oppressed, and of the
ignorant, those theories which in the mouth of worldly apostles seem
either poetical dreams or subversive and socialistic principles.
It is she who is the true reformer, the true progressist, the true
patriot. But why is she so? Simply because she is also the only true
conservatrix in the world. Her mission is to foster the good, to seek
it out, to make it known, to assimilate it to herself, to absorb it
into her system. Material good is not excluded; wherever it is, it
belongs of right to her; whether it be old or new, foreign or native,
it matters not, religion takes it into her bosom, gives it immortality,
sanctions its use, recommends its adoption. Being founded on the
rock of truth, she can safely stoop to draw from the wreck of error
any fragment of good contained in it, whether it be a scientific, a
literary, or a domestic addition to the stock of ideas which is the
common property of human nature, and of which she stands the perpetual
guardian. This broad, open-armed, fearless, progressive spirit is
the nearest approach to the ideal of the lost paradise: this is
civilization—this is Christianity.
As an example of the superiority of religion over any other test of
civilization, let us return for a moment to what we have said of the
Jews. To the only reasonable and dignified conception of the Godhead
known to the nations of old, they added the only worthy conception of
human duties and responsibilities. Their domestic system was the only
one in which woman bore a seemly part; their political organization,
whether in the desert, under Moses and his “rulers over thousands,
and over hundreds, and over fifties, and over tens”[148] (the same
division afterwards prevalent in the Roman army), or in the land of
Chanaan under the Judges, was essentially self-governing, federal,
and independent. Their laws were minute in detail and stringent
in execution, not only after their establishment as a nation in
Chanaan, but during the forty years of their nomadic existence in
the wilderness, a period which with any other people would have been
one of irremediable lawlessness. Compacts and treaties are mentioned
in the Bible even before the direct segregation from the world of
what was afterwards known as the people of Israel. Abraham and Lot
agreed solemnly and peaceably to settle the differences between their
followers, by each tribe taking up its abode within certain given
limits; Abraham and Abimelech came to a public understanding, the
former meaning to do the heathen and alien leader no harm, and the
latter restoring a well of which his servants had possessed themselves
by force; Abraham insisted upon paying a full and fair equivalent
in money to the Hethite who offered him _gratis_ the funeral cave
of Mambre; Eleazar made between Isaac and Rebecca a formal marriage
contract; Esau when he had voluntarily sold his birthright, though
at the bidding of necessity, was bound to hold by his rash cession;
Jacob made and faithfully kept with his uncle Laban an engagement to
give him his services for fair wages for a given number of years. Such
social compacts, rigorously adhered to even when made with idolaters,
are among the most convincing proofs of the high state of a country’s
civilization, and present a strange, suggestive contrast with the rude
polity of nations who, at that time and even many ages later, knew no
right of property save that of forcible possession, and no guarantee of
good faith save that which the sword could enforce. Attention to the
duties of hospitality, another prominent sign of civilization, was a
characteristic of the Jews. We have so many Biblical examples of this
that it is impossible to give them. The division of the community into
fixed orders of occupation is another recognized sign of an advanced
state of society. Of course this and many others were held by the
Jews in common with several nations of heathendom, some eminently
distinguished for heroism, for honor, for learning, etc; and yet which
of all the polished nations of antiquity had not some festering sore
of pauperism, superstition, or barbarity, to conceal beneath its fair
outside of dazzling “civilization”? The people of God, on the contrary,
the only representatives of the true religion, were free from such
social ulcers, and, even when their history shocks us by scenes of
mysterious cruelty, it is universally admitted that the hand of God was
working through them, and that they were but as instruments wielded in
the dark by a power mightier than themselves.
Agriculture, or the “arts of peace,” called by some the representative
of civilization, was an honored calling among the Hebrews. The riches
of Judith and of Booz were fields and cattle; the promises of future
prosperity scattered through Holy Writ are always typified by “fields
and vineyards”; the inheritances and dowers of the sons and daughters
of Israel were herds and fields, and so jealous was each tribe of
its landed possessions that it was enacted that its members should
intermarry only among themselves, under pain of forfeiting all claim to
the legal portion allotted the offender. So careful of the condition
of the land and its products were the divinely inspired laws of the
Hebrews that they provided every seven years a season of rest, “the
Sabbath of the land,” when for a twelvemonth the fields should not be
ploughed nor the vineyards pruned, neither any fruit forced to grow and
produce by artificial means. It would take a volume to develop this
mysterious superiority of the chosen people, as regards even material
civilization, over every other contemporary nation during fully two
thousand years. They saw whole systems of social economy rise from
barbarism, and fade away into political dotage, or disappear beneath
the heel of conquest; they watched nations live and die, and drop out
of the memory of mankind as completely as Pharao’s hosts were hidden by
the waves of the Red Sea, and yet they stood firm and indestructible,
with unchanged laws, with fixed customs, a people small in number, but
great in tradition, invincible as the sun, immovable as a rock. And
why? Because their political existence and their social system was
founded on truth, and controlled by religion. The Hebrew nation was the
one holy and only true church of those days. And for the same reasons
which gave the Jews that supernatural vitality, Christianity is at
this day in the van of civilization. Everything we have said of the
one applies to the other; the signs which we noticed as such prominent
features of Jewish polity—division of orders, fixed occupations, care
for agriculture, good faith, property and family laws, individual
and federal government—whence have they come to us? We say it
unhesitatingly, from Christianity. To put it into plainer language, let
us say, from the church, and chiefly through the monastic orders.
These armies of peaceful conquerors invaded the morasses and forests
of the North, and, carrying with them all that made the Hebrew system
divine, planted that very system in the midst of the barbarian hordes.
The monks were the first agriculturists, the first mechanics, the first
engineers, of our modern civilization. What need to tell again the
story of their giant labors and glorious success? After teaching us
how to build our houses, to till our fields, to protect our rights, to
clothe our bodies, they taught us how to beautify our lives by art, and
store our minds with learning. They gave us cathedrals, that we might
know how glorious was the God they taught; they gave us Roman, Greek,
and Hebrew lore, that we might see how liberal was the Master they
served. The laws under which all European nations and their offshoots
now live were framed on the model of the Canons of the Church,
themselves based on the Tables of the Mosaic law; and the sciences, the
literature, and the arts, of which we in our pygmy self-glorification
are so proud, have been painfully transmitted to us by the patient
labor of monastic scholars. Christianity in the person of these heroic
pioneers has paved the way for all the civilization we can boast of,
and those who seek to divorce civilization from Christianity thereby
disown their very title-deeds. Once blot the church out of the map of
the world, and civilization will speedily follow. Thank God that that,
at least, is now impossible!
Having therefore inherited all that made the Hebrew system the most
perfect approach to the ideal of the Garden of Eden, Christianity
stands to-day in the position of the only legitimate representative of
true civilization. For one thousand five hundred years, Christianity
meant Catholicism, and to the reign of her undisputed supremacy belongs
every important discovery, every material progress, the world has ever
made. Why then, when we face to-day that world which owes it to the
church that it is strong enough to face anything—do we meet everywhere
the reproach of intolerance, of retrogression?
Is the reproach true to-day which in the days of S. Columba was false?
Have we changed, has the church changed? If not, where is the fault?
It lies, as all human mistakes do, in the confusion and perversion of
terms. The world in its aberration has turned against its teacher, and
wounded itself with the weapons that only a practised and steady hand
may safely wield. It has erected its own puny tribunal at the foot of
God’s throne, and judged the Eternal from its own point of view. If
the childish madness were not so sad in its results, it would make one
smile at its presumption. But it has the power of damning a human soul,
and of frustrating the work of God himself on Calvary, so that we dare
not smile at its arrogance, how supremely ridiculous soever it may be
from a merely philosophical point of view. It is this aberration of the
human mind which for the last three centuries has dubbed Christianity
as retrograde. When the Pope’s Syllabus made the difference clear
between true progress and its infidel counterfeit, the world cried out
that he was retrograde. “See” it said, “he condemns the liberty of the
press, the liberty of association, the right of self-government, the
spread of education; he would have heretics burnt at the stake, and all
Protestant sovereigns deposed from their thrones.”
Was it so? We know that it was not. We know that it was the _abuse_,
not the _use_, of these things which was condemned, and that the
denunciation of error is a very different thing from the extermination
of that error’s victims. We know this, and the world too knew it, but
it suited the purpose of the world to say otherwise, and to raise
against us the cry of intolerance, fanaticism. Well, be it so; but who
fashioned the languages in which that cry is raised, who taught the
world the meaning of such words as intolerance and fanaticism, who led
the way to the contrivance without which the liberty of the press could
not exist?
Our civilization, it is true, is of a different order from that now
in fashion. It is a civilization which has no need of iron ships and
monster armies; it can subdue and humanize by other methods than the
bullet and the shell. It tolerates all and any customs that do not
strike at morality; it can adapt itself to any nation, and make itself
_all things to all men_. It does not pin its faith to the color of the
skin, the fashion of a garment, or any social conventionality; it does
not supersede individuality, either personal or national, but engrafts
itself upon it and makes it serve a higher purpose. It does not address
itself exclusively to one branch of human development, but cultivates
them all, each in its turn, making them subservient at last to the
spiritual interests of the soul.
TO A FRIEND.
If ever, lady, any word of mine,
Spoken in sorrow, came to thy own heart
With any sense of comfort or of peace,
My sorrow that before was half divine
Becomes a joy! and I would never part
With its remembrance. Why should sorrow cease
That makes one happy? I would rather twine
Roses than cypress round a grief so dear;
And I could set as in an emerald shrine
That sadness in my soul for evermore.
How gladly would I live that evening o’er
Thinking of thee! Not vain, amid the scenes
Of that proud park, my mood was, from the shore
Watching the slow state of those ermined queens.
GRAPES AND THORNS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE.”
CHAPTER II.
A GLANCE FROM MR. SCHÖNINGER.
NONE but people of routine ever used their prayer-books while F.
Chevreuse was reading or singing Mass, and it was seldom that even such
people used them the first time they heard him; for it was not enough
that those who assisted should unite their intention with that of the
priest, and then pray their own prayers, recalled now and then to the
altar by the sound of the bell: their whole attention was riveted there
from the first.
That penetrating voice, which enunciated every word with such exquisite
clearness, speaking rapidly only because so earnest, was heard
throughout the church, and its vivid emphasis gave new life to every
prayer of the service. When F. Chevreuse said _Dominus vobiscum!_ one
replied as a matter of course—would as soon, indeed, have neglected to
answer his face-to-face greeting on the street as this from the altar;
the _Orate, fratres_, compelled the listener to pray; and, at the
_Domine, non sum dignus_, one felt confounded and abashed.
Was it, then, you asked yourself, the first time this priest had
said Mass, that he should stand so like a man who sees a vision? No;
F. Chevreuse had been fifteen years a priest. Had he, perhaps, an
intellect more high than the ordinary, or a superior sanctity? No,
again; though a clearer mind or a nobler Christian soul one would
scarcely wish to see. The peculiarity lay chiefly, we should guess, in
a large, impassioned, and generous heart, which, like a strong fountain
for ever tossing up its freshening tide, overflowed his being, and
made even the driest facts bud and blossom perennially. In that heart,
nothing worthy of life ever faded or grew old. Its possessions were
dowered with the freshness of immortal youth.
Still, these gifts might have been partially ineffectual if nature had
not added to them a sanguine temperament, and the priceless blessing
of a body capable of enduring severe and prolonged labor. F. Chevreuse
was spared that misery of a bright intelligence and an active will for
ever pent and thwarted by physical incompetence, the soul by its nature
constantly compelled to issue mandates to the body, which the body by
its weakness is as inevitably compelled to disobey. In that wide brain
of his, thoughts had ample elbow-room, and could range themselves
without crowding or confusion; and the broad shoulders and deep chest
showed with what full breathing the flame of life was fanned. His mind
was always working, yet there was no sign of a feverish head; the eyes
were steady, and the close-cut gray hair grew so thick as to form a
crown.
For the rest, let his life speak. We respect the privacy of such a
soul; and, though we would fain show him real and admirable, we sketch
F. Chevreuse with a shy pencil.
The church of S. John was a new and unfinished one on Church Street.
This street ran east and west, parallel with the Cocheco, and half-way
up the South Hill, which here sloped so abruptly that the buildings
on the lower side had one more story at the rear than in front, and
those on the upper side one more story in front than at the rear. In
consequence of this deceptive appearance, those who liked to put the
best foot forward preferred to live on the upper side, though it doomed
them to a north light in their houses, while those who thought more of
comfort than of display chose the other side with a southward frontage.
The church was set back so as to leave a square in front, and its
entrance was but four or five steps above the street; but at the back a
large and well-lighted basement was visible. The priest’s house stood
close to the street, on the eastern side of this square, and so near
that between the back corner of its main part and the front corner of
the church there was scarcely space for two persons to stand abreast.
This narrow passage, screened by a yard or so of iron railing, gave
access to a long flight of stairs that led to the basements of the
church and of the house.
Seen from the front, this house was a little, melancholy,
rain-streaked, wooden cottage, which might be regarded as a blot upon
the grandeur of the church, or an admirable foil for it, as one had
a mind to think. The door opened almost on the sidewalk, and beside
the door were two dismal windows with the curtains down. In the space
above, another curtained window was set between the two sharp slants of
the roof. On the side opposite the church, where a lane ran down to the
next street, the prospect was more cheering. You saw there an L as wide
as the main building, though not so deep, and projecting from it so as
to give another street door at the end of a veranda, and allow space
for two windows at the rear of the house. This L was Mrs. Chevreuse’s
peculiar domain, as the house was that of the priest. Her sitting-room
and bedroom were here; and no one acquainted with the customs of the
place ever came to the veranda door unless they could claim an intimate
friendship with the priest’s mother.
The parlor with the two dismal front windows beside the entrance
was used as a reception-room. Back of that was the priest’s private
sitting-room, with two windows looking out on the veranda, and one
window commanding the basement entrance of the church, the pleasant
green space around it, and the flight of stairs that led up to the
street. F. Chevreuse’s arm-chair and writing-table always stood in this
window, and behind them was a door leading into a little side-room
containing a strong desk where he kept papers and money, and a sofa on
which he took an occasional nap.
Up-stairs were two sleeping-rooms; down-stairs, as the hill sloped, the
kitchen, dining-room, and the two rooms occupied by Jane, the cook, and
Andrew, the priest’s man. There was space enough in the house, and it
had the charm of irregularity; but from the street, as we have said, it
was a melancholy-looking structure. F. Chevreuse, however, could not
have been better pleased with it had it been a palace. Within, all was
comfort and love for him; and he probably never looked at the outside.
The new church and his people engrossed his thoughts.
Mrs. Chevreuse was not so indifferent. “It would not look well for
me to go up on a ladder, and paint the outside walls,” she said to
herself, her only confidant in such matters; “but, if it could be
turned inside-out for one day, I would quickly have it looking less
like an urchin with a soiled face.”
No one could doubt this assertion after having seen the interior of
this castle of the rueful countenance. There she could go up on a
ladder without shocking any one, and from basement to attic the place
was as fresh as a rose. But the nicety was never intrusive. This lady’s
house-keeping perspective was admirably arranged, and her point of view
the right one. Cleanliness and order dwelt with her, not as tyrants,
but as good fairies who were visible only when looked for. If you
should chance to think of it, you would observe that everything which
should be polished shone like a mirror; that the white was immaculate,
the windows clear, and the furniture well-placed. You might recollect
that the door was never opened for you by an untidy house-maid, and
that no odors from the kitchen ever saluted your nostrils on entering,
though a bouquet on the stair-post sometimes breathed a fragrant
welcome.
Now, housekeepers know that the observance of all these little details
of order and good taste involves a great deal of care and labor; but
they sometimes forget that their exquisite _ménage_ loses its principal
charm when the care and labor are made manifest. It cannot be denied
that the temptation is strong now and then to let Cæsar know by what
pains we produce these apparently simple results, which he takes as a
matter of course; but, when the temptation is yielded to, the results
cease to be entirely pleasing. The unhappy man becomes afraid to walk
on our carpets, to touch our door-knobs, to sit in our chairs, eat
eggs with our spoons, lay his odious pipe on our best table-cover, or
tie the curtains into a knot. The touching confidence with which he
was wont to ask that an elaborate dinner might be prepared for him in
fifteen minutes vanishes from his face like a rainbow tint that leaves
the cloud behind. “A cold lunch will do,” he tells you resignedly, and
you detect incipient dyspepsia in his countenance. The free motions
that seemed to feel infinite space about them are no more. The anxious
hero pulls his toga about him in the most undignified and ungraceful
manner, lest it should upset a flower-pot or a chair. In fine, the
tormenting gadfly of our neatness stings him up and down his days, till
he would fain seek refuge and rest in disorder.
Mother Chevreuse knew all this perfectly, and behaved herself in so
heroic a manner that her son never suspected, what was quite true, that
the unnecessary steps he caused her might make several miles a day.
One morning after early Mass, toward the last of May, she seated
herself in the arm-chair by the window, and watched for the priest to
come in from the church. This was a part of her daily programme, and
the only time of day she ever occupied what she called his throne.
After his breakfast, they did not meet, save incidentally, till
supper-time; for, except when they had company, F. Chevreuse dined
alone. The mother had perceived that, when they dined together, there
had been a struggle between the sense of duty and courtesy which made
him wish to entertain her, and the abstraction he naturally felt in the
midst of the cares and labors of the day, and, ever on the watch lest
she should in any way intrude on his vocation, had herself made this
arrangement. The fact that he did not oppose it was a sufficient proof
that it was agreeable to him.
This mother was the softer type of her son, as though what you would
carve in granite you should first mould in wax. There was the same
compact form, telling of health, strength, and activity, the same
clear eyes, the same thick gray hair crowning a forehead more wide
than high. Their expressions differed as their circumstances did;
cheerfulness and good sense were common to both; but, where the priest
was authoritative, the woman was dignified.
Presently her face brightened, for the fold of a black robe showed
some one standing just inside the chapel door, and the next moment
F. Chevreuse appeared, his hands clasped behind him, his face bent
thoughtfully downward. Seeing him thus for the first time, you are
surprised to find him only medium height. At the altar, he had appeared
tall. You might wonder, too, what great beauty his admirers found in
him. But scarcely had the doubt formed itself in your mind, before
it was triumphantly answered. The priest’s first step was into a
shadow, his second into sunlight; and, as that light smote him, he
lifted his head quickly, and a smile broke over his face. Wheeling
about, he fronted the east. The river-courses had hollowed out a deep
ravine between him and the sunrise, and the tide of glory flowed in
and filled that from rim to rim, and curled over the green hills like
wine-froth over a beaker. He stood gazing, smiling and undazzled, his
face illuminated from within as from without. It might be said of F.
Chevreuse, as it was of William Blake, that, when the sun rose “he did
not see a round, fiery disk somewhat like a guinea, but an innumerable
company of the heavenly hosts crying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God
Almighty!’”
The mother watched, but did not interrupt him. She knew well that such
moments were fruitful, and that he was storing away in his mind the
precious vintage of that spring morning to bring it forth again at some
future time fragrant with the bouquet of a spiritual significance.
“Glimpses of God,” she called such moods.
He threw his head back, and, with a swift glance, took in the whole
scene; the fleckless blue overhead, the closely gathered city beneath,
the lights and shades that played in the dewy greensward at his feet,
and, turning about, his mother’s loving face—a fit climax for the
morning.
“_Bon jour, Mère Chevreuse!_” he called out, touching his _barrette_.
As he disappeared into the house, Mrs. Chevreuse went into her own
sitting-room, which opened from his, and gave a last glance at the
table prepared for his breakfast. The preparation was not elaborate. A
little stand by the eastern window held a pitcher of milk, a bowl and
spoon, and a napkin; and Jane, following the priest up-stairs, added a
dish of oatmeal pudding.
F. Chevreuse walked briskly through the entry, and threw the street
door wide open, then came back singing, “Lift up your heads, O ye
gates, and the King of glory shall come in!” and continued, as he
entered the room, his voice hardly settled from song to speech, “What
created things are more like the King of glory than light and air? They
are as his glance and his breath.”
The look that met his was sympathizing, but the words that replied were
scarcely an answer to his question. “Your breakfast is cooling, F.
Chevreuse,” she said.
He took no heed, but, clasping his hands behind him, walked to and
fro with a step that showed flying would have been the more congenial
motion.
“Mother,” he exclaimed, “the mysteries of human nature are as
inscrutable as the mysteries of God. Would the angels believe, if they
had not seen, that a Mass has been said this morning here in the midst
of a crowded city, with only a score or so of persons to assist? Why
was not the church thronged with worshippers, and thousands pressing
outside to kiss the foundation-stones? When I turned with the _Ecce
Agnus Dei_, why did not all present fall with their faces to the floor?
And when Miss Honora Pembroke walked away from the communion-railing,
why did not every one look at her with wonder and admiration?—the
woman who bore her God in her bosom! And just now, when the sun
rose”—he stopped and looked at his mother with a combative air—“why
did not the people look up and hail it as the signet of the Almighty?”
Mother Chevreuse smiled pleasantly. She was used to being set up as a
target for these unanswerable questions, especially in the morning, at
which time the priest was likely to be, as Jane expressed it, “rather
high in his mind.”
“If you could take your breakfast, my son,” she suggested.
“Breakfast!” He glanced with a look of aversion at the table that held
his frugal meal, considered a moment, recognized the propriety of its
existence, finally seated himself in his place, and began to eat with a
very good appetite. “You were quite right, my lady,” he remarked; “the
sunshine was drinking my milk all up. What thirsty creatures they are,
those beams!”
Let it not be supposed that F. Chevreuse was so ascetical as never to
eat except when urged to do so. On the contrary, he took good care to
keep up the health and strength necessary for the performance of his
multiform duties as the only priest in a large parish, and he used a
wise discrimination in allowing others to fast. “Some fasting is almost
as bad as feasting,” he used to say. “Besides injuring the health,
it clogs the soul. You look down upon eating when you have dined
moderately; but, when you have fasted immoderately, the idea of dinner
is elevated till it becomes a constellation. I do not wish to starve,
till, when I kneel down and raise my eyes, I can think of nothing but
roast beef. Asceticism is not an end, but a means.”
“Mother,” he said presently, laying down his spoon, “why is it that the
oatmeal and milk I get at home are better than that I find anywhere
else?”
“Children always think the food they get at home better than what they
get abroad,” she replied tranquilly.
Why should she tell him that what he called milk was cream, and that
the making of that “stirabout” was a fine-art, which had been taught
Jane line upon line, and precept upon precept, till every grain dropped
according to rule, and the motion of the pudding spoon was as exact as
a sonnet? Instead of being pleased, he would have been disturbed to
know that so much pains had been taken for him.
“I like no earthly comfort that has cost any one much trouble or pain,”
he would say. Like most persons who have been spared the petty cares of
life, he did not know that in this discordant world there is no earthly
comfort to any one which is not a pain to some other.
Breakfast over, the priest went promptly about his business; and
Mrs. Chevreuse, shutting the door between their rooms, brought her
work-basket to the stand where the tray had been, and seated herself to
mend a rent in a _soutane_.
It was a pleasant room, with its one window toward the church, and an
opposite one looking over the city and the distant hills, and most
enticingly comfortable, with deep chairs, convenient tables, and tiny
stands always within reach, and an open fireplace which was seldom,
save at mid-summer, without its little glimmer of fire at some time of
day. And even then, if the day was chilly or overcast, the fact that
it was mid-summer did not prevent the kindling of Mother Chevreuse’s
beltane flame. From this room and the bedroom behind it could be heard
on still nights the dashing of the Cocheco among its rocks.
Mrs. Chevreuse worked and thought. The sunbeams sparkled on the
scissors, needles, bodkins, and whatever bright thing it could find in
her work-basket, on her eyeglasses and thimble, on the smooth-worn gold
of her wedding-ring, and the tiny needle weaving deftly to and fro in
an almost invisible darn, of which the lady was not a little proud. Her
mind wove, too; not those flimsy fancies of youth so like spider’s webs
upon the grass, that glitter only when the morning dew is on them: the
threads of her dream-tapestry ended in heaven, though begun on earth,
and their severance could only change hope into fruition. And all the
time, while hand and heart slipped to and fro, the lady was aware of
everything that went on in the house. She heard Andrew come into the
next room with the morning mail, heard the sound of voices while he
received his orders for the day, heard him go clumping down-stairs,
and out through the kitchen into the chapel. Presently the clumping
resounded outside, and, glancing across the room, she saw the old man
standing on the basement stairs, his head on a level with her window,
looking at her across the space that intervened, and gesticulating,
with a twinkling candlestick in each hand.
Mother Chevreuse, still holding her work, went and threw the sash up.
“I think, madame, begging your pardon, that I can clean these just as
well as you can,” says Andrew, with a very positive nod and a little
shake that set all the glass drops twinkling and tinkling.
“Do you, Andrew?” returned madame pleasantly. “Very well, then, you can
clean them, and save me the trouble. But don’t forget to rub all the
whiting out of the creases.”
Andrew changed countenance as he turned slowly about to descend the
stairs. Mrs. Chevreuse had been gradually taking the care of the altar
from his rather careless hands, and this had been his diplomatic way of
escaping the candlestick cleaning of that day without asking her to do
it. He hobbled down-stairs again discomfited, and the lady went smiling
back to her work.
“It is all very well for Sharp’s rifles,” she remarked, threading her
needle; “but I don’t like being fired at in that spiral manner.”
Still weaving again with hand and heart, she heard Jane going about,
like a neat household machine doing everything in its exact time and
place, severe on interruption, merciless on mud or dust, ever ready
to have a skirmish on these grounds with Andrew; she heard the rattle
of paper from the next room, as letters and parcels were opened, the
scratching of F. Chevreuse’s quill as he wrote answers to one or two
correspondents, or made up accounts, and the little tap with which he
pressed the stamp upon the letters.
How peaceful and sweet her life was, all she loved within reach, all
she hoped for so sure! She breathed a sigh of thanksgiving, then
dropped her work and listened; for the priest was preparing to go out.
Every morning was spent by him in collecting for his church. He had
found in Crichton a thousand or more practical Catholics, with one
shabby old chapel to worship in, and nearly as many nominal Catholics
who did not worship at all; and in three years, with scarcely any
capital to begin with besides faith, he had raised and nearly finished
a large and beautiful church, and gathered into it the greater part of
the wanderers.
“Be prudent, my son!” the mother had warned him when he began what
seemed so venturesome an enterprise.
“I am so,” he replied, with decision. “It would be the height of
imprudence to leave these people any longer straying like lost sheep.
When the Master of the universe commands that a house be built for him,
is it for me to fear he will not be able to pay for it?”
She said no more. Mme. Chevreuse always remembered to distinguish
between the son and the priest, and was never more proud of her
motherhood than when her natural authority was confronted by the
supernatural authority of her child. But she always sighed when he
started on a collecting-tour, for his faith had to be supplemented by
hard work, and often he came back worn with fatigue, and depressed by
the sights of poverty, sorrow, and sin he had witnessed.
All had gone well with the church, however—so well that a new
enterprise had been added, and a convent school was just making its
small beginning in Crichton.
“Is madame visible?” asked a voice smothered against the door.
“_Entrez!_” she answered gaily; and the priest put his head in.
“Say a little prayer to S. Joseph for F. Chevreuse to-day,” he said;
“for he is collecting for the great note.”
“Oh!” She looked anxiously at him, and met a reassuring smile in return.
“Never fear, mother!” he said cheerfully. “Do not all the houses and
lands belong to God?”
“Certainly!” she answered, but sighed to herself as he went away: “it
is very true they all belong to God, but I’m afraid the devil has some
very heavy mortgages on them.”
Later in the day, Miss Ferrier called for Mrs. Chevreuse to go out and
visit the sisters at the new convent. “I have taken all I could think
of this morning,” she said, and enumerated various useful articles. “I
suppose they want nearly everything.”
Mrs. Chevreuse commended her liberality. “But I am glad you did not
think of cordage,” she added; “for that is the very thing I did
remember.”
She opened a large basket, and laughingly displayed a collection of
ropes and cords varying from coils of clothes-line and curtain-cord to
balls of fine pink twine. “Jane’s clothes-line gave out yesterday,” she
said, “and that made me think of this.”
Miss Ferrier gave a little shiver and shrug. “It is very nice and
useful, I know; but ropes always remind me of hanging.”
“Naturally,” returned the lady, tying on her bonnet: “that is their
vocation.”
“But hanging is such a dreadful punishment!” And the young woman
shivered again.
“Why, my pictures seem to enjoy it,” Mrs. Chevreuse replied,
persistently cheerful.
“Now, really, madame—“
“Now, really, mademoiselle,” was the laughing interruption, “what has
put your thoughts on such a track this morning? If you want my opinion
on the subject, I cannot give it, for I have none. All I can say is
that, if I thought any one were destined to kill me, I would instantly
write and sign a petition for his pardon, and leave it to be presented
to the governor and council at the proper time. Think of something
pleasant. I am ready now. We will go out through the house.”
She locked the veranda door, and put the key in her pocket. “I have
only to give Jane an order. Jane!” she called, leaning out the window.
A head appeared from the kitchen window beneath, and the mistress gave
her order down the outside of the house. “It saves so much going up and
down stairs for two old women,” she explained. “Now, my dear.”
They went into the priest’s sitting-room, and again the door was
locked behind them, and the key this time hung on a nail over the
writing-table. “Wait a moment,” said madame then, and began picking
up bits of paper scattered about the room. The priest had torn up a
letter, and absently dropped the fragments on the carpet instead of
into the waste-basket, and a breeze had been playing with them.
“How provoking men are,” remarked Miss Ferrier, stooping for a fragment
which a puff of air instantly caught away from her.
“Are they?” asked Mrs. Chevreuse quietly. “I do not know, I have so
little to do with them. Most people are provoking sometimes, I dare
say.”
Having made a second ineffectual dive for the strip of paper, the young
woman had not patience enough left to bear so cool an evasion. “F.
Chevreuse deserves a scolding for strewing this about,” she said.
The mother glanced at her with that sort of surprise which is more
disconcerting than anger. Miss Ferrier blushed, but would not be so
silenced.
“If you should oblige him to pick them up once,” she continued, “that
would cure him.”
“Oblige him!” repeated the mother with a more emphasized coldness. “I
never oblige F. Chevreuse to do anything. I should not dream of calling
his attention to such a trifle. He has higher affairs on his mind. Now
we will go.”
Their drive took them through the town by its longest avenue, Main
Street, which followed the Saranac half-way to its source. School
children in Crichton looked on Main Street as their meridian of
longitude, and were under the impression that it reached from pole
to pole. It crossed the Cocheco by the central one of three parallel
bridges, climbed straight up the steep North Height, and stretched out
into the country. The convent grounds were on the west bank of the
Saranac, twenty acres of rough land, roughly enclosed, with an old
tumble-down house that had been a tavern in the early days of Crichton.
It was a desolate-looking place, with not a tree nor flower to be seen,
but needed only time and labor to become a little Eden.
In the eyes of Sister Cecilia it was even now an Eden. Her ardent
and generous nature, made still brighter by a beautiful Christian
enthusiasm, saw in advance the blossom and fruit of unplanted trees,
and seeds yet in the paper. Full of delight to her was all this
planning and labor.
She was out-doors when the carriage drove up, in earnest consultation
with two workmen, directing the laying out of the kitchen-garden, and,
recognizing her visitors, hastened toward them with a cordial welcome.
Sister Cecilia was a little over forty years of age, tall and graceful,
and had one of those sunny faces that show heaven is already begun
in the heart. When she smiled, the sparkling of her deep-blue eyes
betrayed mirth and humor.
“Dread the labor?” she exclaimed, in answer to a question from Miss
Ferrier. “Indeed not! I was so charmed with the idea of coming to this
wild place that I had a scruple about it, and was almost afraid I ought
not to be indulged. It is always delightful to begin at the beginning,
and see the effect of your work.”
She led them about the place and told her plans. Here a grove was to be
planted, there the path would wind, vines would be trained against this
stone wall.
“But I don’t see any stone wall,” protested Miss Ferrier.
Sister Cecilia laughed. “I see it distinctly, and so will you next
year. There are piles of stones on the land which will save us a good
deal of money; and we are very likely to have some work done for
nothing. Do you know how kind the laborers are to us? Twenty men have
offered to do each a day’s work in our garden free of charge. Those
are two of them. Now, here we are going to have a large arbor covered
with honeysuckle and roses. It must be closed on the east side, because
there will be a river-road outside the wall some day, and we should be
visible from it. But the south side will be all open, so we can sit
under the roses and look down that beautiful river and over all the
city. You see the knoll was made on purpose for an arbor.”
As they went into the house, a slender shape glided past in the dusk
of the further entry. The light from a roof window, shining down the
stairs, revealed a face like a lily drooped a little sidewise, a wealth
of brown hair gathered back, and a sweet, shy smile. It was as though
some one had carried a lighted waxen taper through the shadows where
she disappeared.
“It is Anita!” exclaimed Miss Ferrier, stopping on the threshold of the
parlor. “Why did she not come to us?”
“That dear Anita!” said the sister. “She has a piano lesson to give
at this hour, and would not dream of turning aside from the shortest
road to the music-room. If you were her own mother, Mme. Chevreuse, she
would not come to you without permission. Yet such a tender, loving
creature I never knew before. Obedience is the law of her life. Next
spring she will begin her novitiate.”
The house was looked over, the other sisters seen, and the offerings
brought them duly presented and acknowledged; then the two ladies
started for home.
Miss Ferrier was rather silent when they were alone. She had not
forgotten the reproof of the morning, and she felt aggrieved by it.
Mrs. Chevreuse had known that she was but jesting, and might have been
a little less touchy, she thought. What was the matter that almost
every one was finding fault with her lately? Her mother accused her
of being cross and captious, her lover found her exacting, and Mrs.
Gerald had thought her too assuming on one occasion, and yet all she
was conscious of was a blind feeling of loss—some such sense as
deep-buried roots may have when the sky grows dark over the tree
above. Little things that once would have passed by like the idle wind
now had power to make her shrink, as the lightest touch will hurt
a sore; and trifles that had once given her pleasure now fell dead
and flat. The time had been when the mere driving through the city
in her showy carriage had elated her, when she had sat in delighted
consciousness of the satin cushions, the glittering harness and
wheels, and even of the band on the coachman’s hat and the capes that
fluttered from his shoulders. Now they sometimes gave her a feeling
of weary disgust, and she assured herself that she knew not why. If
any suspicion glanced across her mind that a worm was eating into the
very centre of her rose of life, and the outer petals withered merely
because the heart was withering, she shut her eyes to it, and kept
seeking here and there for comfort, but found none. Honora was the
only person who ever really soothed her; and, for some reason, or for
no reason, even Honora’s soothing now and then held a sting that was
keenly felt.
“Is it possible she is resenting my reproof?” thought Mrs. Chevreuse,
and exerted herself to be pleasant and friendly, but without much
success. Miss Ferrier’s affected gaiety was gone, and she had no
disposition to resume it.
“She is not so good-tempered as I believed,” the priest’s mother
thought when they parted, with one of those unjust judgments which the
good form quite as often as the bad.
Miss Ferrier drove on homeward. She had no need to tell the coachman
which way to drive, nor how, for he knew perfectly well that he was to
make his horses prance slowly through Bank Street, where, in a certain
insurance office up one flight of a granite building, Mr. Lawrence
Gerald bit his nails and fumed over a clerk’s desk, and half attended
to his business while inwardly protesting against what he called his
misfortunes. Perhaps his desk faced the window, or maybe his companions
were good enough to call his attention to it; for it seldom happened
that Miss Ferrier, glancing up, did not see him waiting to bow to her.
He did not love the girl, but he felt a trivial pride in contemplating
the evidences of that wealth which was one day to be his unless he
should change his mind. He sometimes admitted the possibility of the
latter alternative.
To-day he was not at the window; but his lady-love had hardly time
to be conscious of disappointment, when she saw him lounging in the
doorway down-stairs. He came listlessly out as the carriage drew up,
and at the same moment Miss Lily Carthusen appeared from a shop near
by, and joined them. This young lady took a good deal of exercise in
the open air, and might be met almost any time, and always with the
latest news to tell.
“I congratulate you both,” she said, in her sprightliest manner. “That
dreadful organist of yours has put his wrist out of joint, and cannot
play again for a month or two. Isn’t it delightful?” She laughed
elfishly. “Haven’t you heard of it? Oh! yes; it is true. It happened
this morning when he came down the dark stairway in his boarding-house.
He tumbled against the dear old balusters, and put his wrist out. I
never before knew the good of dark stairways.”
“Why, Lily! aren’t you ashamed?” remonstrated Miss Ferrier, smiling
faintly.
“Do you think I ought to be ashamed?” inquired Miss Lily, with an
ingenuous expression in her large, light-blue eyes.
“Yes; I do,” replied Miss Ferrier, much edified.
“Well, then, I won’t,” was the satisfactory conclusion.
“I am sorry for Mr. Glover,” Miss Ferrier remarked gravely.
“Now, my dear mademoiselle, please don’t be so crushingly good!” cried
the other. “You know perfectly well that he plays execrably, and spoils
the singing of your beautiful choir; and you know that you would be
perfectly delighted if F. Chevreuse would pension him off. Don’t try to
look grieved, for you can’t.”
“I don’t pretend to be a saint, Miss Carthusen,” said Annette, dropping
her eyes.
“And I don’t pretend to be a sinner,” was the mocking retort.
Mr. Gerald smiled at this little duel, as men are wont to smile at such
scenes. It did not hurt him, and it did amuse him.
“But the best part of the business is that F. Chevreuse has asked Mr.
Schöninger to play in his stead,” pursued the news-bringer. “He has
written a note requesting him to call there this evening.”
Miss Ferrier drew her shawl about her, and leaned back against the
cushions. She had an air of dismissing the subject and the company
which, not being either rude or affected, was so near being stately
that Mr. Gerald was pleased with it, and, to reward her, begged an
invitation to lunch.
“I had just come out for my daily sandwich,” he said; “but if you will
take pity on me—“
She smilingly made room for him by her side, and drove off full of
delight.
The afternoon waned, and, as evening approached, Mrs. Chevreuse sat
in her own room again, waiting for the priest to come home. She had
visited her sick and poor, looked to her household affairs, stepped
into the church to arrange some fresh flowers, and see that the
candlesticks shone with spotless brilliancy, and was now trying to
interest herself in a book while she waited. But it was hard to fix
her attention; it constantly wandered from the page. Jane had heard
and told her of the accident to their organist, and the rumor that
Mr. Schöninger was to take his place; but had not told the news by
any means with the glee of a Lily Carthusen. On the contrary, it had
seemed to her mind an almost incredible horror that a Jew was to take
any part in a service performed before the altar whereon the Lord of
heaven was enthroned. To Jane’s mind, every Jew was a Judas. That he
could be moral, that he could adore his Creator and pray earnestly
for forgiveness of his sins, she did not for an instant believe. The
worst criminal, if nominally a Catholic, was in her eyes infinitely
preferable to the best Jew in the world.
“Andrew declared it was so, madame, and that he carried a note to that
Mr. Schöninger before dinner,” she said, concluding her lamentation;
“but nothing will make me believe it till I hear F. Chevreuse say so
with his own mouth.”
“Oh! well, don’t distress yourself about it, Jane,” her mistress
replied soothingly. “Perhaps it is a mistake; but, if it is not, you
may be sure that F. Chevreuse knows best. He always has good reasons
for what he does. Besides, we must be charitable. Who knows but the
services of the church and our prayers might, by the blessing of God,
convert this man.”
“Convert a rattlesnake!” cried Jane, too much excited to be respectful.
But Mrs. Chevreuse, though she had spoken soothingly to her
subordinate, was not herself altogether satisfied. She was a woman
of large mind and heart; yet, if any one people in the world came
last in her regard, it was the Jewish people. Moreover, she had seen
Mr. Schöninger but once, and then at an unfortunate moment when
something had occurred to draw that strange blank look over his face.
The impression left on her mind was an unpleasant one that there was
something dark and secret in the man.
“Of course it will all be right,” she said to herself, annoyed that she
should feel disturbed for such a cause. “I am foolish to think of it.”
The street door was opened and left wide, after F. Chevreuse’s fashion,
and she heard his quick, light step in the entry. Dropping her book,
she smiled involuntarily at the sound. How sweet to a woman is this
nightly coming home of father, son, or husband! He came in, went to
the inner room, and opened and closed his desk, then returned to the
sitting-room, threw up the corner window, from which he could see into
her apartment, and seated himself in his arm-chair, leaning forward as
he did so to bow a smiling recognition across to her. His day’s work
was as nearly over as it could be. In the morning, he must go out to
meet his duties; in the evening, they must seek him. The hour for their
social life had come; and though subject to constant interruptions, so
that scarcely ten minutes at a time were left them for confidential
intercourse, they were free to snatch what they could get.
Mrs. Chevreuse put her book away, and opened the door between the two
sitting-rooms. “Father,” she said immediately, “is it true that you are
going to have that Jew play the organ at S. John’s?”
The priest rose hastily, and his mother’s foot was arrested on
the threshold; for just opposite her, coming into the room from
the entry, was Miss Lily Carthusen, leading a little girl by the
hand, and followed by “that Jew”; while, in wrathful perspective,
like a thunder-head on the horizon, gloomed the face of Jane, the
servant-woman.
The silence was only for the space of a lightning-flash, and the flash
was not wanting; it shot across the room from a pair of eyes that
looked as though they might sear to ashes what they gazed upon in
anger. The next moment, the eyes drooped, and their owner was bowing to
F. Chevreuse.
Miss Carthusen was perfectly self-possessed and voluble, seeming to
have heard nothing. “This little wilful girl would come with Mr.
Schöninger, madame,” she said; “and, as he is not going back, I was
obliged to come and see her home again safely.”
The truth was that Miss Lily, who boarded in the same house with the
gentleman, had encouraged the child to come, in order that she might
accompany her.
F. Chevreuse had blushed slightly but he showed no other embarrassment.
It was the first time that Mr. Schöninger had entered his house, and he
welcomed him with a more marked cordiality, perhaps, on account of the
unfortunate speech which had greeted his coming.
“You are welcome, sir! I thank you for taking the trouble to come to
me. It was my place to call on you, but my engagements left me no time.
Allow me to present you to my mother, Mme. Chevreuse.”
“My mother” had probably never been placed in so disagreeable
a position, but her behavior was admirable. The man she had
involuntarily insulted was forced to admit that nothing could be
more perfect than the respectful courtesy of her salutation, which
maintained with dignified sincerity the distance she really felt, while
it expressed her regret at having intruded that feeling on him.
“Yet they talk of charity!” he thought; and the lady did not miss a
slight curl of the lip which was not hidden by his profound obeisance.
The introduction over, she left Mr. Schöninger to the priest, and took
refuge with his little friend, since she could not with propriety leave
the room. The young lady was not agreeable to her. Mme. Chevreuse had
that pure honesty and good sense which looks with clear regards through
a murky and dissimulating nature; for, after all, it is the deceitful
who are most frequently duped.
Miss Carthusen went flitting about the room, making herself quite
at home. She selected a rosebud from a bouquet on the mantelpiece,
and fastened it in madame’s gray hair with her fingers as light as
snowflakes; she daintily abstracted the glasses the lady held, and
put them on over her own large pale eyes. “Glasses always squeeze my
eyelashes,” she said; “not that they are so very long, though, at
least, they are not so long as Bettine von Arnim’s little goose-girl’s.
Hers were two inches long; and the other girls laughed at them, so that
she went away by herself and cried. Perhaps, beyond a certain point,
eyelashes are like endurance, and cease to be a virtue. Who is it tells
of a young lady whose long lashes gave her an overdressed appearance in
the morning, so that one felt as though she ought to have a shorter set
to come down to breakfast in?”
Mrs. Chevreuse observed with interest the striking difference between
the two men who sat near her talking, both, as any one could see,
strong and fiery natures, yet so unlike in temper and manner. The
priest was electrical and demonstrative; he uttered the thought that
rose in his mind; he was a man to move the crowd, and carry all before
him. The ardor of the other was the steady glow of the burning coal
that may be hidden in darkness, and he shrank with fastidious pride
and distrust from any revelation of the deeper feelings of his heart,
and held in check even his passing emotions. He would have said, with
that Marquis de Noailles, quoted by Liszt: _Qu’il n’y a guère moyen de
causer de quoi que ce soit, avec qui que ce soit_; and, doubtless, he
had found it so.
F. Chevreuse had explained his wishes: their organist was disabled, and
they had no one capable of taking his place. If Mr. Schöninger would
consent to take charge of their singing, he would consider it a great
favor.
Mr. Schöninger had no engagement which would prevent his doing so,
and it need not be looked on at all as a favor, but a mere matter of
business. His profession was music.
F. Chevreuse would insist on feeling obliged, although he would waive
the pleasure of expressing that feeling.
Mr. Schöninger intimated that it was perhaps desirable he should meet
the choir an hour before the evening service.
The priest had been about to make the same suggestion, and, since the
time was so near, would be very happy to have his visitor take supper
with him.
The visitor thanked him, but had just dined.
Nothing could be more proper and to the point, nor more utterly stiff
and frozen, than this dialogue was. F. Chevreuse shivered, and called
little Rose—Rosebud, they named her—to him.
The child went with a most captivating mingling of shyness and
obedience in her air, walking a little from side to side, as a
ship beats against the wind, making way in spite of fears. Her red
cheeks growing redder, a tremor struggling with a smile on her small
mouth, the intrepid little blossom allowed herself to be lifted to
the stranger’s knees, her eyes seeking her friend’s for courage and
strength.
Mr. Schöninger smiled on his favorite with a tenderness which gave his
face a new character, and watched curiously while the priest reassured
and petted her till he won her attention to himself. His own experience
and the traditions of his people had taught him to look on the Catholic
Church as his most deadly antagonist; yet now, in spite of all, his
heart relented and warmed a little to one of her ministers. He knew
better than to take an apparent love for children as any proof of
goodness—some of the worst persons he had ever known were excessively
fond of them—yet it looked amiable in an honest person, and F.
Chevreuse’s manner was particularly pleasant and winning.
Embarrassed by the notice bestowed on her by all, yet, with a premature
address, seeking to hide that embarrassment, the child glanced about
the room in search of some diversion. Her eyes were caught by a picture
of the Madonna.
“Oh! who is that pretty lady with a wedding-ring round her head?” she
cried out.
“She,” said F. Chevreuse, “is a sweet and holy Jewish lady whom we all
love.”
The little girl glanced apprehensively at her friend—perhaps she
had been told never to speak the word Jew in his presence—and saw a
quick light flicker in his eyes. He was looking keenly at the priest,
as if trying to fathom his intention. Was the man determined to win
him in spite of his coldness? Was it his way of making proselytes,
this fascinating delicacy and tenderness? He did not wish to like F.
Chevreuse; yet what could he do in the presence of that radiant charity?
“I think our business is done, sir,” he said, rising.
The priest became matter-of-fact at once.
“It is not necessary for me to make any suggestions to your good
taste,” he said; “but I may be permitted to remark that our service
is not merely æsthetic, but has a vital meaning, and I would like the
music to be conducted earnestly.”
“I shall make it as earnest as your composers with allow, sir,” the
musician replied, with a slightly mocking smile.
“My composers!” exclaimed the priest, laughing. “I repudiate them. Was
it one of my composers who wrote the music of the _Stabat Mater_, and
set his voices pirouetting and waltzing through the woes of the Queen
of sorrows? The world accuses Rossini of showing in that his contempt
for Christianity. I would not say so much. I believe he thought of
nothing but the rhythm and the vowel-sounds.”
“And was it one of my composers,” the Jew retorted, “who set the _Kyrie
Eleison_ I heard on passing your church last Sunday to an air as gay as
any dance tune? If the words had been in English instead of Latin, it
would have sounded blasphemous.”
F. Chevreuse made a gesture of resignation. “What can I do if the
musicians are not so pious as the painters, if they will put the sound
in the statue, and the sense in the pedestal? My only refuge is the
Gregorian, which nobody but saints will tolerate. I am not a composer.”
The call was at an end, and the visitors went.
As soon as they were in the street, Miss Carthusen observed: “I notice
that F. Chevreuse adopts Paracelsus’ method of cure: he anoints with
fine ointment, not the wound, but the sword that made the wound.”
She had been annoyed at the little attention paid to herself in
contrast with the honor shown the priest’s mother, and wished to find
out if Mr. Schöninger kept any resentment toward Mme. Chevreuse. He
felt her inquisitive, unscrupulous eyes searching his face in sidelong
glances.
“The priest was very courteous to me,” he replied calmly. “And I should
think that madame might be a very agreeable person to those she likes.”
The young woman instantly launched into a glowing eulogy of the
priest’s mother, till her listener bit his lips. He was not quite ready
to be altogether charmed with the lady.
“And, _à propos_ of medicine,” said Miss Carthusen lightly, “it has
been revealed to me to-day who the first homœopathist was.”
“Is it a secret?”
“It was Achilles,” she replied. “Do you not remember that nothing but
Achilles’ spear healed the wound that itself had made?”
As soon as they were gone, Mme. Chevreuse turned to her son. “Need I
say how sorry I am?” she exclaimed.
Tears were in her eyes. She was touched to the heart that, though
he must have been deeply mortified, he should still not have failed
for a moment to treat her with even more than ordinary courtesy and
affection, as if to show their visitors that he did not dream of
reproving her.
“I knew that you felt worse about it than I did, dear mother,” he said,
taking her hand. “And this will remind us both that it is not enough
to be cautious in the expression of our thoughts. We must allow no
uncharitable feeling to remain in our hearts.”
“‘Murder will out,’” he added more lightly, seeing her moved. “And,
after all, isn’t Mr. Schöninger a fine fellow?”
Madame made no direct reply. She could not yet be enthusiastic about
the Jew. “I think we should have supper,” she said, and went down to
look after Jane.
“O madame! did you see the look that man gave you?” cried the girl.
“No matter about that,” the lady said calmly. “It was unfortunate that
I should not have known he was coming. You must be careful to give
some sign when visitors are coming in, and not introduce them in that
noiseless way.”
Madame held, with the Duke of Wellington, that it is not wise to accuse
one’s self to a servant. The humility, instead of edifying, only
provokes to insubordination.
“I was coming down from the chambers, and met them at the street door,
madame,” Jane made haste to say; “and I thought you would hear the
steps.”
“Very well, Jane; it’s no matter. I’m sure you do your duty faithfully.
And now we will have supper.”
CHURCH AND STATE IN GERMANY.
THE new laws for the regulation and adjustment of the relations between
church and state in Prussia, for the establishment of what Prince
Bismarck calls a _modus vivendi_ between the power spiritual and the
power temporal—laws which have won the approval of the liberal and
sectarian press in Europe and America—are substantially as follows: