Observe that these last quotations belong to the darkest, most savage

epoch of our history. Feudalism reigned supreme; that redoubtable

institution had recently come into existence, without having yet at

its side the Christian counterpoise of chivalry. But if we make a leap

of two or three hundred years, and arrive at the XIIth and XIIIth

centuries, all becomes brilliant, and history can furnish the list

of all the schools that then existed even in the smallest villages.

These statistics are extant, and can be consulted; and from so many

accumulated documents, which extend from 529 to 1790, the conclusion,

rigorously scientific, must be drawn that “from a distant period, even

at the foundation of our parishes, the clergy in the country dispensed

instruction to the agricultural classes. It was thus throughout the

middle ages; and even at a recent epoch we have seen the priests in

many parishes perform the functions of teachers.”[202] What do our

adversaries think of such exact testimony? All the schools, then,

having been founded by the church, what satanic skill was needed to

persuade the people that the church had not established one!

Still more scandalous is the objection that the church has failed in

her errand of mercy; for they accuse her of not having sufficiently

loved the poor and abandoned. We were stupefied, several years ago,

to find this strange assertion in a celebrated review: that the church

owed to the Protestants the idea of the Sisters of Charity. Now, we

have before our eyes acts truly innumerable, establishing clearly

that there were many thousand institutions of charity in France in

the XIIth and XIIIth centuries. During the first ages of the church,

in the midst of the persecution, the poor, _all poor_, were assisted

in their homes by the deacons; and, after the persecutions, these

same poor were reunited in splendid palaces, which were divided into

as many classes as there were miseries to relieve. But for the fear

of being called pedants, we would cite here the _Bretotrophia_, or

asylums for children; the _Nosocomia_, or houses for the sick; the

_Orphanotrophia_, reserved for orphans; and the _Gerontocomia_,

consecrated to old age.

Such establishments continued to exist from the XIIth and XIIIth

centuries in all the episcopal cities, in the monastic centres,

and in the humblest parishes, where they never ceased, during the

Christian ages, to soothe the suffering, feed the hungry, counsel the

erring, and instruct the ignorant. By these we are easily led to the

XIVth and XVth centuries, when we behold so many hospitals, so many

charitable institutions, flourishing on the surface of the Christian

soil. Where are the tears the church has not dried? the nakedness she

has not covered? the captives she has not redeemed? the sick she has

not visited? the strangers she has not received? the dead she has

not buried with her tears? the sinners she has not pressed to her

heart? the children she has not made smile, and has not instructed and

consoled? the laborers she has not loved? This is a blow to error and

misrepresentation; the proofs are clear—you can, you _must_ read them.

Again, they object that “the church does not occupy herself at the

present time with the _social, the labor question_.” I can show

a hundred books, bearing the greatest Catholic names, entirely

consecrated to this new science. For eighteen hundred years, the church

has not ceased for an instant to put political economy into action; for

she has not ceased an instant to lean towards all miseries to relieve

them; towards all enjoyments to purify them. Without ever having

regarded sacrifice and resignation as the last solution of the social

problem; without ever having renounced the hope of seeing the reign of

God in a happier future, she has never ceased to preach resignation to

the weak, and sacrifice to the powerful. For eighteen hundred years,

the church has also written her economical theory; for, on account

of the intimate connection between the social question and theology,

it can be said with all truth that, up to the XIXth century, there

have been as many books written of political economy as treatises of

theology.

Thanks be to God, the day has arrived when a science has been founded

entirely consecrated to the study of the social question. Far from

recoiling before it, the church has valiantly advanced to the charge.

Undoubtedly she has a hundred other works on hand, and is obliged to

choose the hour when she commences the task; the hour has sounded in

this same house, where you listen to me with so much patience; every

Monday a modest council is held, which also wishes to take the name

of _Jésus-Ouvrier_. From all parts of Paris come representatives of

the religious orders, and for that they joyfully sacrifice every

occupation; they occupy themselves with the labor question and the

workman. These meetings last two, three, and even four hours. They

seek to study the principles which govern this question; the history

of the efforts that have been made until the present day in favor of

the workman; the obstacles which oppose the solution of this grand

problem; and, finally, the remedies which can be brought to bear upon

these accumulated evils. This is what is done by these priests, these

religious, these Catholics; they will review one after the other the

workman, the workingman’s family, the workingman’s association. This is

the plan of the book whose materials they are gathering; these are the

three parts of a species of theology of labor which they are preparing

in concert. In twenty other places in Paris are held twenty other

assemblies, not less Catholic, animated by the same spirit, pursuing

the same end; and we can now say that the principle of Catholic social

economy is erected.

I will now conclude, and throw a last glance over the space we have

traversed together. I commenced with the cross, and will finish with it.

In one of our romances of chivalry, it is related that the wood of

the cross borne in front of the Christian army in a battle against

the Saracens suddenly assumed gigantic and miraculous proportions; it

touched the sky, and was more luminous than the sun. The infidels,

seized with terror, broke and fled, and the Christians counted another

victory. The cross of the Circles of Workingmen is small, very small,

and will not probably be the subject of such a prodigy; nevertheless,

I hope that its gentle light will end by assuring the victory; and the

victory that we desire is that the workman may be thrown in the arms of

Jesus Christ.

THE TEMPLE.

“Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost?”—1

Cor. vi. 19.

Come, I have found a temple where to dwell:

Sealed up and watched by spirits day and night;

Behind the veil there is a crystal well;

The glorious cedar pillars sparkle bright,

All gemmed with big and glistening drops of dew

That work their way from out yon hidden flood

By mystic virtue through the fragrant wood,

Making it shed a faint, unearthly smell;

And from beneath the curtain that doth lie

In rich and glossy folds of various hue,

Soft showers of pearly light run streamingly

Over the checkered floor and pavement blue.

Oh! that our eyes might see that fount of grace!

But none hath entered yet his own heart’s holy place.

—_Faber._

AN EVENING IN CHAMBLY.

SOME years ago, upon occasion of a visit to Rev. F. Mignault, at

Chambly, we were most agreeably surprised to meet an old and valued

friend whom we had not seen or even heard from for many years. We had

known him as a Protestant physician in Upper Canada, and our surprise

was none the less to see him now in the habit of a Catholic priest.

After the first salutations, tea was served, when we all withdrew to

the cosey parlor of our reverend host—which none can ever forget who

have once participated in its genial warmth, and inhaled the kindly

atmosphere of its old-time hospitality—and settled ourselves for a

long winter evening of social delight.

Our chat was opened by eager inquiries of the friend, whom we had known

as Dr. Morris, touching the change in his religion and profession.

After some hesitation, and smiling at the urgency of our request for

his narrative, he complied, saying:

“Should the tale tire you, let this challenge stand

For my excuse.”

My medical course was completed in a Scotch university, at an earlier

age than was usual with students of the profession.

Immediately after receiving my diploma, I joined a colony of my

countrymen who were leaving for the wild regions of Upper Canada. After

our arrival, not relishing the rough life in “the bush,” I decided to

settle in the little village of Brockville, instead of remaining with

the colony.

During the progress of the last war between Great Britain and the

United States, I had a professional call to go up the St. Lawrence, a

two days’ journey.

It was a glorious morning in June when, having accomplished the object

of my visit, I set out on my return trip. I was then a stranger to

that region, and, attracted by the peculiar beauty of the scenery

on the river, I determined to leave the dusty highway, and enjoy a

stroll along its banks for a few miles. Accordingly, dismissing my man

with the carriage, and directing him to await my arrival at a little

inn some miles below, I turned my steps towards the majestic stream,

whose flowing waters and wide expanse formed a leading feature of the

charming landscape before me, and an appropriate finish or boundary

upon which the eye rested with ever-increasing satisfaction and delight.

I had loitered on, absorbed in contemplation of the shifting scene,

pausing occasionally to watch the changes wrought by the wing of the

passing zephyr as it touched the polished mirror here and there,

leaving a ripple more like a magic shadow upon its surface than any

ruffling of its peaceful bosom, and peering into its abysses, with the

eye of an eager enthusiast, to see—

“Within the depths of its capacious breast

Inverted trees, and rocks, and azure skies,”

lulled, the while, by the blissful consciousness of present beauty, to

forget that—

“Garry’s hills were far remote,

The streams far distant of my native glens”—

over the thoughts of which my homesick spirit was but too prone to

brood.

I had reached a close thicket of low bushes that skirted the water’s

edge, when my steps were suddenly arrested by a rustling sound a little

in advance of me. Peeping cautiously through the leafy screen of my

secure hiding-place, I saw what seemed to my excited fancy more like an

apparition from another world than aught that belonged to this. Upon

the gentle slope of a hill which descended to the water, and close upon

the bank, stood a gigantic tree that threw its shadows far into the

stream, and at the foot of it sat a youthful maiden with a book in her

hand, the rustling leaves of which had first attracted my attention.

She seemed at times to pore intently over its pages, and at others to

be lost in reverie, while her eyes roamed anxiously up and down the

river.

As she reclined on the bank, her slight form enveloped in the

cloud-like folds of a white morning-dress, it was easy to imagine her

the _Undine_ of those wild solitudes, conning the mystic page that was

unfolding to her the mysterious lore, hidden from mortal ken, through

which the power of her enchantments should be gained and exercised.

While I gazed with admiring wonder upon the serene intelligence and

varying light which played about her fair features, and rested like a

glory upon her uplifted brow, I was surprised by the soft tones of a

voice proceeding from the tangled underwood that clothed the upward

sweep of the hill: “Sits the pale-face alone on this bright summer

morning?”

“O Magawiska! how you startled me, breaking so suddenly upon my dreams!

I was indeed sitting alone under the shade of this old tree, pondering

over a page in history; counting the white sails far up and down among

the Thousand Islands; watching the boiling whirlpools in the waters of

our dear old St. Lawrence; and thinking of more things than I should

care to enumerate, when your voice broke the spell, and disenchanted

me. How is it, Magawiska, that my sisters of the wilderness always

approach so softly, taking us, as it were, unawares?”

“In that, we do but follow the example given by all things which the

Great Spirit has created to inhabit the forest. But come away with

me, my White Dove, to the wigwam. That page in history is turned, and

strong hands are even now writing the next one in letters of blood!

Many a white sail has glanced through the mazes of the Thousand Islands

that will never thread that fairy dance again, and the waters, so pure

below, are already tinged further toward their source with the heart’s

blood of many a brave soldier! Let my fair one come away; for old Honey

Bee, the medicine-woman, has just returned from Chippewa, and may bring

some news of the gallant young captain who commands the _Water-witch_.

Floated not the thoughts of my pale sister to him from the folds of the

white sails she was so busy counting?”

“Nonsense, Magawiska! But your words alarm me. Surely the Honey Bee has

no bad tidings for me from him you name! What can she know of him?”

“I know not; only I heard her whispering to my mother in the Indian

tongue, and was sure she uttered the name of the Lightfoot more than

once.”

“Well, I will go with you, and hear whatever news she has for me.”

“Will my sister venture through the Vale of the Spirit-flowers, by

crossing which the distance to the wigwam is so greatly shortened?”

“Yes, if you are sure you know the way perfectly; for I have never

traversed its dreary depths myself.”

“Never fear! the Dove shall be as safe in the home of the wild bird as

in the nest of its mother.” Saying which, the young daughter of the

woods glided away over the hill, followed by her fair companion.

As they vanished, I quietly emerged from my hiding-place and followed

them at a distance, creeping cautiously along to avoid awakening any

sounds in the echoing forests, into which we soon entered, that would

reach the quick ear of the young native, and at the same time making a

passing note of her appearance. She was quite young and beautiful for

one of her race. Her form was very slight and graceful in every motion,

while her light, elastic step seemed scarcely to press the tender

herbage and moss under her feet in her noiseless course. As she passed

along, she ever and anon cast a sly glance over her shoulder, smiling

mischievously to see the difficulty with which her companion kept pace

with her rapid movements through the tangled recesses of the forest.

After descending the opposite side of the hill, they entered the dingle

at its base to which the young squaw had alluded. I was startled

when I found myself enshrouded in its dim shadows. So faint was the

light therein on this cloudless June morning as to make it difficult

to realize that the hour was not midnight! I could discern something

white upon the ground that I conjectured was mould which had gathered

in those damp shades. Upon examining more closely, I found it to be a

vegetable growth, embracing in form every variety of wild flowers that

abounded in the neighboring woods, but entirely colorless, owing to

the total absence of light. I gathered a quantity of these singular

“spirit-flowers,” which presented the appearance of transparent

crystallizations, hoping to inspect them by the full light of day; but

the moment they were exposed to the sun, to my great surprise they

melted like snowflakes, leaving only fine fibres, like wet strings, in

my hands.[203]

When they reached the wigwam, I secreted myself in a thicket near

by, where I could hear the conversation between the old squaw and

the beautiful stranger; for having then less knowledge of the Indian

character than I afterwards acquired, I could not feel quite safe to

leave her so entirely in their power. “Magawiska tells me,” she said,

with the blushing hesitation of maidenly reserve, “that you have just

returned from a distant voyage, and may know something of events which

are taking place far up the wilderness of waters.”

“And if the Honey Bee knows, and should fill your ear with tales of

bitterness, would not the pale-face say she was more ready to sting the

child she loves than to nourish her with sweetness? No, my White Dove!

return to the nest of thy mother, and seek not to hear of ills for

which there is no cure!”

“I must know, and I will not go until you have told me!” she vehemently

cried. “For the love of heaven! my mother, if you know aught of the

Lightfoot, tell me; for I can bear any ills I know better than the

dread of those I know not!”

“Even so; if the Bee must wound the heart she would rather die than

grieve, even so; the will of the Great Spirit must be done, and may he

heal what he has broken! There has been a mighty battle; the foes of

thy father are the victors. The _Water-witch_ went down in the midst

of the fight. The Lightfoot was known to be on deck and wounded when it

sank. Thy father is maddened at the triumph of his foes, but rejoices

over the fall of him whom he hated for his bravery in their cause, for

his religion, and for the love the young brave had won from the only

daughter of the old man’s heart and home.”

How my bosom throbbed in painful sympathy with the moans and stifled

sobs that burst from the young heart, crushed under the weight of this

series of dire calamities, knowing that no human aid or pity could

avail for its relief! After some time, she whispered faintly: “Is

there, then, no hope for the poor broken heart, so suddenly bereft of

its betrothed? Oh! tell me, my good mother of the wilderness, is there

no possibility that he may have escaped? If I could but see him, and

hear his gentle voice utter one assurance of constancy and affection,

even if it were his last, I think I could be reconciled. But this

terrible, unlooked-for parting! Say, mother, may he not have escaped?

May I not see him once again in life?”

“The hand of the Great Spirit is powerful to heal as to bruise! Since

it was not raised to protect and snatch thy beloved from death when

no other could have saved him, look to it alone, my child, for the

comfort thou wilt seek elsewhere in vain! Were there not hundreds of my

brethren who would gladly have given their heart’s blood for the life

that was dearer than their own, and had been offered in many conflicts

to shield them and theirs from danger? I tell thee, pale daughter of a

cruel foe, that wailing and lamentation went up from the camp of the

red men when the eyes of its fiercest warriors were melted to women’s

tears at the sight I have told thee of!”

Nothing more was said, and soon after the young stranger departed,

accompanied by Magawiska.

A few days later, I was summoned in the night to attend upon a

wounded soldier on the American shore of the St. Lawrence. I entered

a bark canoe with a tall Indian, whose powerful arm soon impelled

the light vessel across the broad, swift stream. After landing, he

conducted me into a dense and pathless forest, through which I had

extreme difficulty in making my way with sufficient speed to keep

within ear-shot of my guide. To see him was out of the question; the

interlaced and overhanging foliage, though the moon was shining,

excluded every ray of light, so that my course was buried in

bewildering darkness. A long and fatiguing tramp through the woods

brought us at length to a cluster of wigwams, and I was conducted to

the most spacious one—the lodge of the “Leader of Prayer”—where I

found a remarkably fine-looking young officer lying, faint from loss

of blood and the fatigue of removal. A Catholic missionary, whom I

had frequently met by the bedside of the sick, and in the course of

his journeys from one encampment to another of his Indian missions,

was sitting by him, bathing his hands and face in cold water, and

whispering words of encouragement and consolation during every interval

of momentary consciousness.

From him I learned that the Indians from the scene of action up the

lake had brought the wounded man thus far on the way to his friends,

at his earnest request. So anxious was he to reach home that he would

not consent to stop for rest after they left their boat, although the

increased motion renewed the bleeding of the wound, which had been

partially checked, until he was so far exhausted as to become wholly

unconscious, when they halted here, having brought him through the

woods on a litter. The priest had given him some restoratives, but had

been unable to check the flow of blood, which was fast draining the

vital current. He had administered the last sacraments to the young

man, who belonged to a family of Catholics who had recently removed

from Utica to a new settlement on the borders of Black Lake.

I made a hasty examination, and soon discovered the position of the

bullet. I succeeded in extracting it, after which the bleeding was

speedily and in a great measure staunched.

From the moment I looked upon him, however, I regarded his recovery as

more than doubtful. Had the case received earlier attention, and the

fatigue of removal been avoided, there was a possibility that youthful

energy might have carried him through the severe ordeal; though the

wound would have been critical under the most favorable circumstances.

When he became conscious for a moment during the operation, and looked

in my face, he comprehended the office I was performing, and read in my

countenance the fears and doubts which possessed my mind.

“Do not leave me, doctor, until all is over,” he faintly said. “This

reverend father will acquaint my friends with my fate, for he knows

them.”

I assured him I would remain with him, and he relapsed into the stupor

which I feared would be final.

We watched by him with silent solicitude. While the priest was deeply

absorbed over the pages of his breviary, my thoughts wandered from the

painful present back to the dear old land from which I was a lonely,

homesick exile; to bright scenes of the past, fond memories of which

neither time nor absence could obliterate, and drew a vivid contrast

between them and the circumstances of my new life, especially at this

hour. What would the dear friends with whom I had parted for ever

think if they could see me in the midst of this wild and dismal scene,

surrounded by the rudest features of savage life? With what dismay

would they not listen to the howling of wolves and the shrieking of

catamounts in the woods around us? How sadly would the continually

repeated plaint of the “whippoorwill” fall upon their ear; while, to

heighten the gloomy effect of the weird concert, the echoing forests

resounded with the shrill notes of the screech-owl, answered, as if

in derision, by their multitudinous laughing brothers, whose frantic

“Ha! ha! ha!” seemed like the exulting mockery of a thousand demons

over the anxious vigil in that Indian wigwam. I was gloomily pursuing

this train of thought, when a slight movement near the entrance of the

lodge arrested my attention, and aroused me from my reverie. Turning

my eye in that direction, I perceived by the dim light the form of

old Honey Bee entering softly, accompanied by a female, in whom, as

she approached the wounded man and the light fell upon her face, I

recognized, to my astonishment, the _Undine_ of my former adventure.

But, oh! the change a few short days had wrought in that fair face! The

very lineaments had been so transformed from their radiant expression

of careless joy to the settled pallor and marble-like impress of

poignant anguish that I could scarcely bring myself to believe it was

the same.

Calmly she approached and knelt by the sufferer, taking his hand and

bowing her fair forehead upon it. Thus she remained for some time in

speechless agony, when my ears caught the whispered prayer: “O my God!

if there is pity in heaven for a poor broken heart, let him look upon

me once more! Let me hear his gentle voice once again!” Then, placing

her mouth to his ear, she said clearly, in a low, pleading tone:

“Will you not speak to me once again, my own betrothed?”

Slowly, as if by a painful effort, the drooping eyelids lifted the long

lashes from his cheek, and his eyes rested with unutterable tenderness

upon the pale face which was bending over him. “Oh! speak to me! Say if

you know me!” she pleaded, with convulsive earnestness.

Repeatedly did the colorless lips vainly essay to speak, and at length

the words were wrenched from them, as it were, in broken sentences, by

the agonized endeavor:

“My own, my best beloved! May God bless and comfort you! I leave you

with him! He is good to the living and the dying. Trust in him, my own

love, and he will never fail you. I am going to him, but I will pray

for you ever, ever!” Then, with another strong effort, while a sweet

smile stole over the features upon which death had set his seal, “Tell

your father I forgive all!” A gurgling sound—a faint gasp—and the

light went out from the large dark eyes, the hand which had held hers

relapsed its grasp, and, before the holy priest had closed the prayers

for the departing spirit, all was over!

It was the old, old story, repeated again and again, alike in every

village and hamlet, on the bosom of old ocean, in the city and in the

wilderness, through all the ages since the angel of death first spread

his wings over a fallen world, and carried their dark shadow into

happy homes, banishing the sunlight, leaving only the cloud. The same

story, “ever ancient and ever new,” which will be repeated again and

again for every inhabitant of earth until “time shall be no longer,”

yet will always fall with new surprise upon the ears of heart-stricken

survivors, as if they had never before heard of its dread mysteries!

Thank God that it closes for those souls whose loved ones “rest in

hope” with consolations that become, in time, ministering angels over

life’s dark pathway, smoothing the ruggedness, lighting up the gloom,

even unto the entrance of the valley whose shadows are those of death,

and supporting them with tender aid through the dread passage.

Long did we remain in a silence broken only by bitter sobs pressed

from the bleeding heart of that youthful mourner. One by one the

Indians, each with his rosary in his hand, had entered noiselessly and

reverently knelt, until the lodge was filled with a pious and prayerful

assemblage.

In the course of my profession, I had witnessed many death-bed scenes,

but had never become so familiar with the countenance of the pallid

messenger as to be a mere looker-on. A sense of the “awfulness of life”

deepened upon me with each repetition of the vision of death. But I had

never before been present at one that so entirely melted my whole being

as this—so striking in all the attributes of wild and touching pathos!

God forgive me! I had hitherto lived without a thought of him or his

requirements, and wholly indifferent to all religion. My life, though

unstained by vice, had been regulated by no religious motives, and,

so far as any interest in religion was in question, beyond a certain

measure of decent outward respect, I might as well have claimed to be

a pagan as a Christian. I resolved by that death-bed, while I held the

cold hand of that lifeless hero in mine, and mingled my tears with

those of the broken-hearted mourner, that it should be so no longer!

Then and there I resolved to begin a new life, and offered myself to

God and to his service in whatever paths it should please his hand to

point out to me.

As the morning dawned, old Honey Bee, with gentle persuasions and

affectionate urgency, drew the afflicted maiden away, and I saw her no

more. I assisted the good priest to prepare the remains of the young

officer for the removal, which he was to conduct, and then sought his

advice and guidance in my own spiritual affairs, freely opening to him

the history of my whole life. After receiving such directions as I

required, and promising to see him again soon at Brockville, I returned

by the way I went, and never revisited that vicinity.

Some weeks later, I was called to the residence of a well-known

British officer, a leader of the Orangemen in Upper Canada, to attend

a consultation with several older physicians upon the case of his

daughter, who was lying in a very alarming state with a fever. Upon

entering the apartment of the patient, I was again surprised to

discover in this victim of disease the lovely mourner of that sad scene

in the wilderness. She lay in a partial stupor, and, when slightly

roused, would utter incoherent and mysterious expressions connected

with the events of that night, and painful appeals, which were

understood by none but myself, who alone had the key to their meaning.

If I had formerly been amazed to see the change a few days had

accomplished, how much more was I now shocked at the ravages wrought

by sorrow and disease! Could it be possible that the shrivelled and

hollow mask before me represented the fair face that had been so lately

blooming in beauty—shining with the joy of a glad and innocent heart?

The anguish of her haughty father was pitiful to see! Determined not to

yield to the pressure of a grief which was crushing his proud spirit,

his effort to maintain a cool and dignified demeanor unsustained by

any aid, human or divine, was a spectacle to make angels weep. Alas!

for the heart of poor humanity! In whatever petrifactions of paltry

pride it may be encrusted, there are times when its warm emotions will

burst the shell, and assert their own with volcanic power! When the

attending physician announced the result of the consultation, in the

unanimous opinion that no further medical aid could be of any avail, he

stalked up and down the room for some time with rapid strides; then,

pausing before me, and fixing his bloodshot eyes on my face, exclaimed

violently, “It is _better so_! I tell you, it is _better_ even so, than

that I should have seen her married to that Yankee Jacobin and Papist!

At least, I have been spared that disgrace! But my daughter! Oh! she

was my only one; peerless in mind, in person, and in goodness; and must

she die? Ha! it is mockery to say so! It cannot be that such perfection

was created only to be food for worms! As God is good, it may not,

_shall not_, be!”

While he was uttering these frantic exclamations, a thought struck me

like an inspiration. The image of old Honey Bee arose suddenly before

my mind. I remembered that she had gained the reputation among the

settlers of performing marvellous cures in cases of this kind by the

use of such simples as her knowledge of all the productions of the

fields and forests and their medicinal properties had enabled her to

obtain and apply.

Therefore, when the haughty officer paused, I ventured to suggest to

his ear and her mother’s only, that the Indian woman might possibly be

able to make such applications as might at least alleviate the violence

of the painful and alarming symptoms. He was at first highly indignant

at the proposal of even bringing one of that hated race into his house,

much less would he permit one to minister to his daughter. But when

I respectfully urged that she be brought merely as a nurse, in which

vocation many of her people were known to excel, and which I had known

her to exercise with great skill in the course of my practice, failing

not to mention her love and admiration for the sufferer, the entreaties

of the sorrow-stricken, anxious mother were joined with mine, and

prevailed to obtain his consent. I was requested to remain until she

should arrive. Nothing was said of the matter to the other physicians,

who soon took their leave.

When the old friend of the hapless maiden arrived, she consented to

take charge of the case only upon condition that she should be left

entirely alone with the patient, and be permitted to pursue her own

course without interruption or interference. It was difficult to bring

the imperious officer to these terms; but my confidence in the fidelity

of the old squaw, and increasing assurance that the only hope of relief

for the sufferer lay in the remedies she might use, combined with

the prayers of her mother, won his reluctant consent, if I could be

permitted to see his daughter daily, and report her condition. This I

promised to do, and found no difficulty in obtaining the permission of

the new practitioner to that effect.

Whether the presence of a sympathizing friend assisted the treatment

pursued I do not know. There are often mysterious sympathies and

influences whose potency baffles the wisdom of philosophers and the

researches of science. Certain it is that, to my own astonishment,

no less than to that of the gratified parents, there was a manifest

improvement in the condition of their daughter from the hour her new

nurse undertook the charge.

In a few weeks, the attendance of old Honey Bee was no longer

necessary. The joy and gratitude of the father knew no bounds. He would

gladly have forced a large reward upon her for services which had

proved so successful, but she rejected it, saying: “The gifts that the

Great Spirit has guided the Honey Bee to gather are not the price of

silver and gold. Freely he gives them; as freely do his red children

dispense them. They would scorn to barter the lore he imparts for gold.

Enough that the daughter of the white chief lives. Let him see that he

quench not the light of her young life again in his home!”

“What does she mean?” he muttered, as she departed. “Does she know? But

no, she cannot; it must be some surmise gathered from expressions of my

daughter in her delirium.”

In accordance with my promise, I had called daily during the attendance

of the Indian woman, who found opportunity, from time to time, to

explain to me the circumstances attending the rescue of the Lightfoot.

The Indians, by whom he was greatly beloved, supposed, when they saw

his vessel go down, that he was lost, as they knew him to have been

badly wounded. A solitary Indian from another detachment was a witness

of the catastrophe while he was guiding his canoe in a direction

opposite to that of the encampment, and on the other side of the scene

of action. He dashed at once with his frail bark into the midst of

the affray, to render assistance, if possible, to any who might have

escaped from the ill-fated vessel. While he was watching, to his great

joy he saw the young officer rise to the surface, and was able to seize

and draw him into the canoe. As he was passing to the shore, he was

noticed by the father of the officer’s betrothed, and the nature of his

prize discovered. A volley of musketry was immediately directed upon

the canoe, and the Indian received a mortal wound. He was so near the

shore that he was rescued by his party, but died soon after landing.

I told her that I had heard the remainder of the story from the

missionary at the wigwam.

She then informed me that, after she came to take charge of the maiden,

as soon as her patient became sufficiently conscious to realize her

critical condition, she had implored so piteously that the priest might

be sent for that it was impossible to refuse. When he came—privately,

of course, for it was too well known that her father would never

consent to such a visit—she entreated permission to profess the

Catholic faith without delay. After some hesitation, the priest

consented when he found her well instructed in its great and important

truths, heard her confession, her solemn profession of faith, and

administered conditional baptism; following the rite by the consoling

and transcendent gift which is at once the life and nourishment of the

Catholic soul and the sun of the Catholic firmament.

The squaw dreaded the violence of her father when he should discover

what had transpired, and enjoined it upon me to shield the victim, if

possible, from the storm of his wrath. Alas! she little dreamed how

powerless I should prove in such a conflict!

Before the strength of the invalid was established, that discovery was

made. I had known much of the unreasoning bigotry and black animosity

which was cherished by the Orange faction against Catholics; but I was

still wholly unprepared for his savage outbreak. He heaped curses upon

his daughter’s head, and poured forth the most bitter and blasphemous

lamentations that she had been permitted to live only to bring such

hopeless disgrace upon his gray hairs.

Despite the mother’s tears and prayers, he ordered her from the

house, and forbade her ever to return or to call him father again.

Once more did old Honey Bee come to the rescue of her _protégée_. Her

affectionate fears had made her vigilant, and, when the maiden was

driven from her father’s house, she was received and conducted to a

wigwam which had been carefully prepared for her reception. Here she

was served with the most tender assiduity until able to be removed to

Montreal, whither her kind nurse attended her, and she entered at once

upon her novitiate in a convent there.

The day after her departure, I also took my leave of that part of the

country, and, proceeding to a distant city, entered the ecclesiastical

state. In due time, I was ordained to the new office of ministering to

spiritual instead of physical ills, my vocation to which was clearly

made known to me by that death-bed in the wilderness.

And now that I have related to you how the Protestant doctor became a

Catholic priest, I must ask, in my turn, how it happened that you and

your family became Catholics.

“The story is soon told,” we replied. “Very probably our attention

might never have been called to the subject but for a great affliction

which was laid upon us in the sufferings of our only and tenderly

cherished daughter. She was blest with rosy health until her tenth

year, and a merrier little sprite the sun never shone upon.

“Suddenly disease in its most painful and hopeless form fastened itself

upon her, and, while sinking under its oppressive weight, she felt

more and more deeply day by day, with a thoughtfulness rapidly matured

by suffering, the necessity for such aid and support as Protestantism

failed to furnish. It was, humanly speaking, by a mere accident that

she discovered where it might be found.

“During an interval between the paroxysms of the disease, and a little

more than a year after the first attack, a missionary priest visited

our place, and her Catholic nurse obtained our permission to take her

to the house of a neighbor where Mass was to be celebrated.

“She was deeply impressed with what she saw, and the fervent address

of that devoted and saintly priest melted her young heart. She

obtained from him a catechism and some books of devotion. From that

time her conviction grew and strengthened that here was the healing

balm her wounded spirit so much needed. After long persuasion and many

entreaties, we gave our reluctant consent that she might avail herself

of its benefits by making profession of the Catholic faith. To the

sustaining power of its holy influences we owe it that her life, from

which every earthly hope had been stricken, was made thenceforth so

happy and cheerful as to shed perpetual sunshine over her home and its

neighborhood.

“By degrees she drew us, at first unwillingly, and at length

irresistibly, to the consideration of Catholic verities. Through the

grace of God operating upon these considerations, our whole family,

old and young, were soon united within the peaceful enclosure of the

‘household of faith.’

“When the work of our dear little missionary was thus happily

accomplished, she was removed from the home for which she had been

the means of procuring such priceless blessings to that other and

better home, the joys of which may not even be imagined here. With

grateful hearts we have proved and realized that for those whom God

sorely afflicts his bountiful hand also provides great and abundant

consolations.”

THE STORIES OF TWO WORLDS:

MIDDLEMARCH AND FLEURANGE.

BETWEEN the world of _Middlemarch_ and the world of _Fleurange_ there

yawns as wide a moral gulf as that which nature has set between the

continents. The one is a world with God, the other without. It is

not that George Eliot’s story partakes of the characteristics which

usually attach to female novelists, with their vague interpretations

of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments; nor, on the other hand, that

_Fleurange_ is in any sense a goody-goody book. But the authors

occupying essentially different stand-points, all things naturally wear

a different aspect; their characters are subject to a different order;

all life has a different meaning; so that, though the subject of each

is humanity, its crosses and loads of sorrow and pain, rather than its

laughter and gladness; though the men and women breathe the same air,

are warmed by the same sun their, faces wet with human tears, their

hearts sore with human sorrows; nevertheless, through either book runs

an abiding tone felt rather than heard, like an unseen odor pervading

the atmosphere, which affects the reader differently throughout. The

characters in the one believe in, pray to, love, obey, or rebel against

a definite, personal God; the presiding spirit in the other veils his

face, and it is not for man to say who he is. The author only sees men

and women gathered together in this world—how, they know not; why, it

is difficult to conceive—and all we know for certain is that here they

are, coming in contact one with the other, increasing, multiplying,

and dropping out after each one has added his necessary mite to the

immensity of the universe.

There are books and writings which seem rather the production of an age

than of any particular author; which seem to take up and gather into

one voice the long inarticulate breathing of a portion of humanity,

dumb hitherto for want of an oracle. Such were the writings previous to

the first French Revolution; such are the songs of Ireland; such, after

a certain fashion, is _Middlemarch_. It is measuring daily life by the

favorite doctrines of the day, whose holders profess to see things as

they are, and to judge of them purely and solely by what they see,

explaining them as best they may. To remind such people that often the

visible is the appearance only, the invisible the reality, is to speak

to them a language they will not understand.

_Middlemarch_ is a story of English provincial life as English

provincial life obtained fifty years ago; at the dawn, that is,

practically speaking, of this wonderful XIXth century; before

California and Australia had discovered their golden secret, when steam

was still in its infancy, electric telegraphs unknown, and the sciences

just beginning to take a bolder flight. In England, O’Connell was

thundering for Catholic emancipation, and the nation clamoring for that

vague thing in the mouth of the masses—reform.

Just as matters were in this chrysalis state, whilst the masses were

still undisturbed by the wonders of the century, or, if the phrase

is better, not educated up to them, George Eliot settles down in that

dullest of places, an English provincial district, to give us

“The story of its life from year to year.”

The story covers very extensive ground; all Middlemarch, in fact,

with its parishes and towns, its churches and taverns, its clergy and

magistrates, its physicians and shopkeepers, its gentry and its yokels,

its good men and its rascals, its maidens young and old, its loves

and its hates, its hopes and its fears, its marriages and deaths, its

thoughts, words, and deeds, from high to low—such is the broad scope

of the book, and the author has gathered all in in a manner to make

the reader wonder. Nothing has escaped her eye. One seems to have been

living in Middlemarch all his life, and every character comes and goes

with the face of an old acquaintance. It is not the author’s fault if

the district be a narrow one—narrow, that is, in ideas, in knowledge,

in faith, in all that ennobles man. It is not her fault if its great

ideas take the shape of “keys to all mythologies”; if its religion is

a poor affair at the best; if its leading men are religious hypocrites

like Mr. Bulstrode, or philanthropic asses like Mr. Brooke, who “goes

in” for everything, and talks the broadest and vaguest philanthropy

whilst he pinches his tenants. It is not the author’s fault if

generosity find no place in Middlemarch; if honesty is misunderstood

or at a discount; if the local physicians throw discredit upon Lydgate

with his youth, his burning desire to achieve, his cleverness, and

his genuine enthusiasm; if they call his ideas quackery, because they

threaten their pockets, as the yokels in turn look upon the railway

as destruction, and hold that steam takes the handle from the plough

and the pitchfork; as Middlemarch receives Dorothea Brooke’s generous

aspirations after a higher life than that which, in response to the

question of an ardent nature, “What can I do?” says, “Whatever you

please, my dear”—as “notions” which are wrong in themselves, because

undreamed of in Middlemarch philosophy, which, in Miss Brooke are odd,

and which, if carried a little farther, would find their fitting sphere

of action in the lunatic asylum.

It is not the author’s fault if all this be so; if there be nothing

in Middlemarch beyond the common good, and very little even of that,

whilst all the rest is mean, sordid, crooked, narrow, and outspokenly

wicked. Such is Middlemarch, and such is it given to us. The only

question is, How far does Middlemarch extend? Is it restricted to the

English county, or is it a miniature photograph of the world as seen by

George Eliot?

In the keynote to the whole book, the prelude, the author cries out

bitterly that in this world and in these days there is no place for

a S. Teresa. In this assertion, in this wail rather, the author does

not limit her district to Middlemarch. It is a doctrine meant to

apply to the broad world. Throughout the book the same thing is to

be observed. Though with wonderful consistency and truth of local

coloring, and continual recurrence of petty local questions and local

ideas, the author keeps the reader in Middlemarch from beginning to

end, nevertheless, whether with or without intention, from time to

time she strikes out with broader aim, and flings her sarcasm, or her

observation, or her moral, such as it may be, in the face of humanity.

Therefore, though it would be unfair to infer that George Eliot’s views

of the world, its possibilities, its hopes, its all that makes it what

it is, are confined to the cramped, narrow, provincial district chosen

as the subject of her story; to allege that she believes in nothing

nobler _now_ in humanity than what Middlemarch affords; yet so wide

is the district embraced, so various the subjects entered into, not

merely touched upon—religion, politics, the bettering of the poor,

marriage, preparation for the married state, and the effect of such

preparation on married life, the thousand conflicts that meet, and

jostle, and combine to make everyday life what it is—it is not unfair

to say that the author, in drawing within this somewhat narrow circle

the main elements which compose humanity, has taken Middlemarch up as a

scientist would take a basin of water from the sea to examine it—not

for the sake of that sample only, but with a view to the whole.

The chief interest of the story, if story it can be called, lies in

this: From the outstart, the author warns you that a S. Teresa has no

place in the world now; and, to prove that her warning is correct, she

takes up a character, Dorothea Brooke, endows her with the aspirations

after a great life, fits her naturally, as far as she can, with every

attribute, physical and moral, which she considers a S. Teresa ought

to possess; with religious feelings, with the continual desire to do

good, with charity, with purity, with the spirit of self-sacrifice,

with simplicity, and truth, and utter unconsciousness of self, with

wealth enough even, as the author says of Mr. Casaubon, “to lend a

lustre to her piety,” and sets her down in the narrow Middlemarch set,

where everything runs in a groove, and life is measured by all the

pettinesses, to see what will become of her.

The result may as well be told at once. S. Teresa proves a miserable

failure in Middlemarch. Instead of marrying, as the world—that

is to say, Mrs. Cadwallader—had ordained she should do, the

handsome, florid, conventional English baronet, Sir James Chettam,

a sort of aristocratic “Mr. Toots,” who is so amiable and admires

her so much that he brings her triumphs of nature in the shape of

marvellous Maltese puppies as presents, and says “exactly” to all her

observations, even when she desires him to say the contrary—out of

a spirit of religion, self-sacrifice, and veneration, and honestly

because she admires the man, or rather the being dressed out to suit

by her own imagination, she marries Mr. Casaubon, with his sallow

complexion, his moles, his blinking eyes, and his age, which is more

than double her own. Unsympathetic to the loving nature of the girl

as a wooden doll whose complexion has suffered and whose form is

battered by age, but which notwithstanding the girl invests with all

the qualities and beauty of a Prince Charming—a deception that time

alone and that ugly thing, common sense, can remove—S. Teresa speedily

discovers that her “divine Hooker,” as she fondly imagined him, is

after all only “a poor creature,” and she is probably saved from the

divorce court only by the timely death of the “divine Hooker.” She

discovered that she had married the wrong man—exactly what Middlemarch

told her; and there lies the provoking part of the story. Middlemarch

was right in its degree, and the woman, whose ideas soared so high

above it, was all the worse off for not taking its advice at the

outstart. S. Teresa repents of her sin, and characteristically atones

for it by marrying the right man—at least, the man she loves and who

loves her—and is dismissed in the following remarks, which close the

book:

“Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally

beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse

struggling under prosaic conditions. Among the many remarks passed on

her mistakes, it was never said in the neighborhood of Middlemarch

that such mistakes could not have happened if the society into which

she was born had not smiled on propositions of marriage from a sickly

man to a girl less than half his own age, on modes of education

which make a woman’s knowledge another name for motley ignorance, on

rules of conduct which are in flat contradiction with its own loudly

asserted beliefs. While this is the social air in which mortals begin

to breathe, there will be collisions such as those in Dorothea’s life,

where great feelings will take the aspect of error, and great faith the

aspect of illusion; for there is no creature whose inward being is so

strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new

Teresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life

any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all

for the sake of a brother’s burial; the medium in which their ardent

deeds took shape is for ever gone. But we insignificant people, with

our daily words and acts, are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas,

some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of Dorothea

whose story we know.

“Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were

not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Alexander

broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name

on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was

incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly

dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you

and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived

faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

George Eliot writes too earnestly to laugh at. Besides, she is not

a Catholic—very far from it; and therefore her views of what a S.

Teresa is or ought to be must be radically different from those of the

church from which S. Teresa sprang, in which she lived, labored, became

_Saint_ Teresa, and died. Were a Catholic to have written certain

portions of the extract quoted, he would only provoke laughter; but

with this author, the case is different.

It never seems to have occurred to her that S. Teresas are not

self-made; as little as the prophets were self-made prophets, or the

apostles self-made apostles. Neither were they made by the society

which surrounded them. The supernatural state of sanctity in its

fulness does not spring from humanity merely; else might we have

had eras of sanctity as there have been other eras, and there might

be truth in George Eliot’s words that there will be no place for a

“new Teresa.” Saints are the very opposite to that growing class so

glibly dubbed “providential men,” who seem to come from that vast

but rather undefined region which goes by the name of “manifest

destiny.” The individuals forming that happy class are set willy-nilly

by “Providence” in this world to accomplish some destiny—a theory

laughed at long ago by one of Mr. Disraeli’s worldly-wise characters

in the words, “We make our fortunes, and we call them fate.” What the

saints do they do very consciously. Sanctity consists in not being

merely blameless in life, but in devoting life to God, and turning

every thought, word, and action to him for his sake. The feeling that

produces this state of life may be influenced at the beginning by

earthly surroundings, may be shaped by good example or wise teachings,

but is essentially independent of them. Sanctity comes from a direct

call, as direct as the call of the apostles. It knows neither time nor

place, and is therefore as possible in the XIXth as in the XVIth or the

Ist century. But it is unknown outside of the church, because the head

of the church, “Christ Jesus our Lord,” alone has the power to call

his children to the sanctified state in this life. And if it be asked,

Why, then, does he not call all to be saints here? it is as though one

asked, Why did he not call all men to be apostles directly?

George Eliot’s difficulty springs from not knowing precisely what

constitutes a saint.

If she only reads the life of S. Teresa, she will find that the saint

of her admiration had to encounter a Middlemarch circle even in

Catholic Spain. She will find her “young and noble impulse struggling

under prosaic conditions”; that she had to stand the brunt of being

misunderstood and misrepresented; her schemes of reform, of good works,

her noble aspirations and ardent self-sacrifice, set down as “notions.”

In fact, the opposition which meets her heroine at every step in her

desire to do good and to be perfect, not only to herself but to others,

is puny compared with that which S. Teresa had to sustain all through

her life.

As a matter of fact, S. Teresa was much more of the ordinary woman than

George Eliot, with a novelist’s love, makes her heroine. In her youth,

she was subject to all the ordinary fancies of “the sex,” and has left

us the record of her vanities, which were neither more nor less than

those of ten thousand very excellent ladies living at this moment,

who are no more S. Teresas than they are Aspasias; but good Christian

women, girls with a happy future before them, or smiling mothers of

families. It was not her surroundings which made Teresa a saint: it was

her clear conception of duty, which no “prosaic conditions” could dim,

and her profound and very definite faith, not in that obscure creation

which George Eliot calls “the perfect Right,” but in Jesus Christ, her

God.

It was perfectly natural that George Eliot’s Teresa should fail; but

the mistake of the author consists in making the failure come from

without rather than from within—a mistake easily understood when it is

borne in mind that the author has no firm faith, possibly none at all,

in Christianity. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, all failed to make the

world better, not because they may not have wished it, but because they

had not the power. They were themselves uncertain of their schemes.

Their highest flights, like those of the best of modern philosophers

who possess no faith, never pass beyond intellectual excellence devoid

of soul. They may daze the intellect, but they do not touch the soul;

and the life of a man is never regulated by pure intellect. So they

fail, whilst the ignorant fishermen, who lose their personality in God,

move and convert the world.

In taking issue on these fundamental points with the author of

_Middlemarch_, many of the subjects touched upon would require

elaborate elucidation when read by those who are not of the Catholic

faith. But space does not allow of this, and, therefore, it is to be

understood that this article is supposed only to meet the eyes of

persons fully acquainted at least with the Catholic manner of looking

at things.

Dorothea Brooke fails in becoming a S. Teresa, as the author seems to

consider she should have become, not because she has lighted on evil

days and on a less congenial set than S. Teresa did, but because, in

Catholic phrase, she had no _vocation_.

To find out what is meant by a vocation, let us anticipate, and turn

a moment to _Fleurange_ at that point in the heroine’s history where,

having “tasted beforehand the bitter pleasures of sacrifice,” she

retires heart-broken to the convent where she spent her youth, to find

the rest and peace which seemed banished from the world after the

voluntary sacrifice she had made of her affections.

“Mother Maddalena stood with her arms folded, and listened without

interrupting her. Standing thus motionless in this place, at this

evening hour, the noble outlines of her countenance and the long folds

of her robe clearly defined against the blue mountains in the distance

and the violet heavens above, she might easily have been mistaken for

one of the visions of that country which have been depicted for us and

all generations. The illusion would not have been dispelled by the

aspect of her who, seated on the low wall of the terrace, was talking

with her eyes raised, and with an expression and attitude perfectly

adapted to one of those young saints often represented by the inspired

artist before the divine and majestic form of the Mother of God.

“‘Well, my dear mother, what do you say?’ asked Fleurange, after

waiting a long time, and seeing the Madre looking at her and gently

shaking her head without any other reply.

“‘Before answering you,’ replied she at last, ‘let me ask this

question: Do you think it allowable to consecrate one’s self to God in

the religious life without a vocation?’

“‘Assuredly not.’

“‘And do you know what a vocation is?’ said she very slowly.

“Fleurange hesitated. ‘I thought I knew, but you ask in such a way as

to make me feel now I do not.’

“‘I am going to tell you: a vocation,’ said the Madre, as her eyes lit

up with an expression Fleurange had never seen before—’a vocation to

the religious life is to love God more than we love any creature in the

world, however dear; it is to be unable to give anything or any person

on earth a love comparable to that; to feel the tendency of all our

faculties incline us towards him alone; finally,’ pursued she, while

her eyes seemed looking beyond the visible heavens on which they were

fastened, ‘it is the full persuasion, even in this life, that he is

_all_, our all, in the past, the present, and the future; in this world

and in another, for ever, and to the exclusion of everything besides.’”

The carrying out of this feeling made Teresa a saint. It is doubtful

whether such thoughts ever entered into George Eliot’s conception of

the character she is continually holding up before her readers as

impossible in these days. Certainly Dorothea Brooke, with all her

natural goodness, never conceived such a life as that possible. The

author may be right in attributing her defects to her Calvinistic

education, but that does not warrant the inference that anything

higher than a life which merely aims at an uncertain good, capable

of influencing those coming within its circle in a certain way, is

impossible in these days. When the author speaks of “great faith taking

the aspect of illusion,” before conceding, one would like to see the

“great faith.” Dorothea Brooke never knew what real faith was; from

beginning to end, all is uncertainty with her. From girlhood up she

lives in an atmosphere of self-delusion and imagination which can

find no other possible vent than aimless aspirations after imaginary

perfection, which must come into collision with the rough, practical

world, and must finally go to the wall. But when the world sees a man

or a woman acting steadily up to a practical belief which guides them

in all their actions, and meets every contingency, however unexpected,

and every calamity, however great, if it does not fall in and follow,

it will at least respect it and acknowledge that there is something in

it.

It may sound “a hard saying,” but practically there is no such thing

as “ideal beauty”; and those who, like George Eliot, strive after it

as the great good, pursue a phantom, a nothing, an emanation of their

own imagination, and, like the poet in Shelley’s “Alastor,” waste their

life in profitless longings, and when death comes—

“All

Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,

Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves

Those who remain behind nor sobs nor groans,

The passionate tumult of a clinging hope,

But pale despair and cold tranquillity.”

Persons of an undefined faith, women particularly, are very much

attached to this ideal beauty, and, not finding it in man, are apt

to rebel against “prosaic conditions”; and those who regulate their

actions by their thoughts find issue in absurdities, often in crime,

more or less gross. It would be well for these theorists to remember

that man after all has a considerable admixture of clay in his

composition, which may explain many of those vulgar but necessary

“prosaic conditions”; and until the human race comes to be fed on

“vril,” the world must continue to count upon and accommodate itself

to a vast amount of flesh-and-blood reality. And a beauty, far higher

than any ideal beauty, is visible in the everlasting struggle between

spirit and clay. There was no ideal in the death upon the cross, the

consummation of Christian sacrifice. All was terribly real there, and

flesh suffered as well as mind while a flutter of the spirit remained.

Here lies something greater than any ideal—the spirit bracing the

flesh, sustaining it when it faints, enabling it to bear all things,

not blindly and as coming by fate from the hands of a blind destiny or

careless power, but as trials sent from heaven to lead to heaven and

prepare for heaven.

That is the fault with Middlemarch. It has all the “prosaic conditions”

and nothing else. It wants nothing else; it positively revels in them.

And when anything higher comes to it, it sets the higher down as

“notions” in religion, or “quackery” in medicine, “or swallowing up” of

the little traffic by the big in railroads.

Into these “prosaic conditions” and surroundings the author drops

another character similar to that of Dorothea, as far as a man can

be similar in nature to a woman, save that his religion consists in

the passion for his profession, the ardent aspiration after the glory

of achievement, aided by all natural gifts, and strengthened by what

have been well called the “pagan virtues.” This is Lydgate, the young

physician, a stranger to Middlemarch, who is possessed by the desire

common to all young ambition of educating Middlemarch up to a lofty

standard, and using it as a lever to move a slow world. Though perhaps

as well fitted as man—considered merely as an intellectual animal

endowed with Christian instincts, moved by a generous if somewhat

impetuous nature, and void of the vices—could be for that purpose,

the result in his case is the same as in that of Dorothea. Instead of

lifting Middlemarch up to the level of his ideal, he finds himself

dragged down to it; and, strangely and perhaps truthfully enough, he

finds, in common with Dorothea, that the very being to whom he linked

his life is the stumbling-block in the way of his achievement. Dorothea

receives a fatal jar to her imaginings in the person of the husband she

adored by anticipation. Lydgate finds his nature crushed and resisted

at all points by the passive resistance of his wife. The woman is

mercifully relieved from her incubus by death; the strong man gives way

before his “so charming wife, mild in her temper, inflexible in her

judgment, disposed to admonish her husband, and able to frustrate him

by stratagem.”

“Lydgate’s hair never became white. He died when he was only fifty,

leaving his wife and children provided for by a heavy insurance on

his life. He had gained an excellent practice, ... having written a

treatise on gout—a disease which has a good deal of wealth on its

side. His skill was relied on by many paying patients, but he always

regarded himself as a failure: he had not done what he once meant to

do. As the years went on, he opposed his wife less and less, whence

Rosamond concluded that he had learnt the value of her opinion. In

brief, Lydgate was what is called a successful man. But he died

prematurely of diphtheria. He once called his wife his basil-plant,

and, when she asked for an explanation, said that _basil was a plant

which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man’s brains_.”

Such is the end of the naturally noble man who marries fair Rosamond,

“the flower of Middlemarch.” This fair Rosamond, like her historical

namesake, lives in a crooked labyrinth of devious ways, where she

fetters her knight, her king, who would fain go forth to conquer

kingdoms, and, if need be, take her with him. But her kingdom is

bounded by her own narrow domain, and she carries him on from labyrinth

to labyrinth, till he is lost and resigns himself to his fate.

When the lady who is pleased to assume the name of George Eliot first

startled the English reading world, there was great doubt as to the

sex of the new author. Certainly all such doubt, if any still existed,

would be set at rest for ever by the portrait of Rosamond Vincy. No

man could ever have executed that. No man could ever have gone down

into the very fibres of a woman’s nature, and drawn them all out one by

one, and laid them bare before us, to show what constitutes “that best

marble of which goddesses are made.” If Dorothea, with the strong touch

of Calvinism leading her noble nature astray, prove a failure, what

shall be said of “the flower of Mrs. Lemon’s school, the chief school

in the county, where the teaching included all that was demanded in the

accomplished female—even to extras, such as the getting in and out of

the carriage”?

Rosamond Vincy is, perhaps, the most finished portrait ever presented

of the intelligent animal of the female sex; clever enough to despise

Middlemarch, not because it is low, and mean, and sordid, but because

it is too narrow and unworthy to hold so fair and accomplished a

specimen of humanity as Rosamond Vincy. All young Middlemarch breaks

its heart about her. She refuses it quietly and persistently, wins

Lydgate in spite of himself, not because he is Lydgate, the generous,

ardent, high-souled young man, but because he brings with him the

atmosphere of an outer world, with a hint of great relations, a

distinguished person, and an unconscious air of superiority which

Middlemarch cannot offer. The result of the wedding of two such natures

may be imagined. George Eliot’s version of it is horribly real and

miserably natural; and perhaps the most powerful part of the book

is the struggle going on between the generous nature of the man and

the demon of self incarnate in the perfect form and the narrow but

acute intellect of the woman, who is so supremely selfish that she is

absolutely unconscious of her selfishness, and therefore incurable.

“Lydgate,” after vainly endeavoring to break down this barrier which

lay between them, invisible to the eyes of her who raised it, “had

accepted his narrowed lot with sad resignation. He had chosen this

fragile creature, and had taken the burden of her life upon his arms.

He must walk as he could, carrying that burden pitifully.”

And she, his “bird-of-paradise,” only once called his “basil-plant,”

when the man whose life had been lost on her died, “married an elderly

and wealthy physician, who took kindly to her four children. She made

a very pretty show with her daughters, driving out in her carriage,

and often spoke of her happiness as ‘a reward’—she did not say for

what, but probably she meant that it was a reward for her patience

with Tertius, whose temper never became faultless, and to the last

occasionally let slip a bitter speech which was more memorable than

the signs he made of his repentance. Rosamond had a placid but strong

answer to such speeches: Why, then, had he chosen her? It was a pity he

had not had Mrs. Ladislaw—Dorothea—whom he was always praising and

placing above her.”

With regret the examination into this wonderful book, of which three

of the salient characters only have been touched upon, must now close.

The story abounds in other characters, each perfect in its way, as

far as drawing and execution go. It forms quite a study in parsons as

in physicians; and those who quarrel with the author of _My Clerical

Friends_ must feel sore aggrieved at the clerical friends of George

Eliot. There is not a _priestly_ character among them; not a single

devoted man whose heart is given wholly to God, and whose mind is bent

solely on doing God’s work for God’s sake. The Middlemarch parsons are

a narrow set of men of undefined belief and cramped charity; their

belief being measured by their salary, and their charity beginning and

often ending at home with their wives and families. The only agreeable

characters among them as men are Mr. Cadwallader and Mr. Farebrother.

The first of these is a “good, easy man,” whose Gospel is as elastic

as his fishing-rod, of whom the author says, “His conscience was large

and easy like the rest of him; it did only what it could without any

trouble,” and whom his wife characteristically hits off in the sentence

that, “as long as the fish rise to his bait, everybody is what he ought

to be”; whilst she complains: “He will even speak well of the bishop,

though I tell him it is unnatural in a beneficed clergyman. What can

one do with a husband who attends so little to the decencies?” The

other, Mr. Farebrother, is the best preacher in Middlemarch, and really

a man of a noble nature; yet his poverty leads him to play whist for

money and even an occasional game of billiards at the Green Dragon. He

leads us to infer that he knows he has assumed the wrong profession,

but that it is too late to get rid of it.

The only man who really possesses anything in the semblance of

religion is Mr. Bulstrode, the Methodist banker, of whom wicked old

Featherstone, whose death is so powerfully told, says:

“What’s he? He’s got no land hereabout that ever I heard tell of. A

speckilating fellow! He may come down any day, when the devil leaves

off backing him. And that’s what his religion means: he wants God

A’mighty to come in. That’s nonsense! There’s one thing I made out

pretty clear when I used to go to church, and it’s this: God A’mighty

sticks to the land. He promises land, and he gives land, and he makes

chaps rich with corn and cattle.” That sounds very like the religion

of Tennyson’s Northern Farmer of the new style. As a matter of fact,

old Featherstone turns out to be right. Bulstrode is a hypocrite. His

life and his fortune have been built upon hypocrisy. He is rich on

money that does not belong to him and by wealth ill-gotten; he strives

to silence his conscience by a life of external mortification and by

works set on foot for the improvement of the poor and carried out in

his own way. Yet rather than lose his character for respectability and

goodness, he murders an old associate; that is, he consciously does

what the physician warned him might cause death.

Mrs. Cadwallader, spite of her wit and her mind, “active as phosphorus,

biting everything that came near into the form that suited it,” must

be dismissed in her own words, though she is the life of Middlemarch,

as one who “set a bad example—married a poor clergyman, and made

herself a pitiable object among the De Bracys—obliged to get her coals

by stratagem, and pray to heaven for her salad-oil”; as must also

Ladislaw, whom Mr. Brooke, who takes him up and transfers him to the

_Pioneer_, characterizes as “a kind of Shelley, you know,” whom he (Mr.

Brooke) may be able to put on the right tack; who has “a way of putting

things,” which is just the sort of thing Mr. Brooke wants—“not ideas,

you know, but a way of putting them.” Lydgate characterizes him best

as “a likable fellow, but bric-a-brac.” He is just the material out of

which Charles Lever constructed “Joe Atlee,” that prince of Bohemians.

It is difficult also to pass unnoticed by the Vincy and the Garth

families; thriftless Fred. Vincy, who is only saved from taking to that

last resort of an ignoble mind—“the cloth”—by honest Caleb Garth

and his merry, true-hearted daughter Mary, who is, perhaps, after

all the best and jolliest girl in the book, and whose plain, womanly

wit and common sense, plain and undisguised as her open face, is an

excellent foil to the pretty animalism of Rosamond Vincy and the vague

religiousness of Dorothea. What could be better than this by way of

preparation for old Featherstone’s decease?—

“‘Oh! my dear, you must do things handsomely where there’s last illness

and a property. God knows, _I_ don’t grudge them [the relatives on the

watch] every ham in the house—_only save the best for the funeral_.

Have some stuffed veal always, and a fine cheese in cut. You must

expect to keep open house in these last illnesses,’ said liberal

Mrs. Vincy.” Or than this picture of one of George Eliot’s favorite

characters?—

“Caleb Garth often shook his head in meditation on the value, the

indispensable might, of that myriad-headed, myriad-handed labor by

which the social body is fed, clothed, and housed. It had laid hold of

his imagination in boyhood. The echoes of the great hammer where roof

or keel were a-making, the signal-shouts of the workmen, the roar of

the furnace, the thunder and plash of the engine, were a sublime music

to him; the felling and lading of timber, and the huge trunk vibrating

star-like in the distance along the highway, the crane at work on the

wharf, the piled-up produce in warehouses, the precision and variety

of muscular effort wherever exact work had to be turned out—all these

sights of his youth had acted on him as poetry without the aid of

poets, had made a philosophy for him without the aid of philosophers,

a religion without the aid of theology. His early ambition had been to

have as effective a share as possible in this sublime labor, which was

peculiarly dignified by him with the name of ‘business.’”

After all, notwithstanding its wit and power, and fund of worldly

wisdom, one turns almost with a sense of relief from this

disheartening Middlemarch world to the world as seen in _Fleurange_.

Considered merely as a story, for unity of plot and rapidity of

action, _Fleurange_ is, to our thinking, far more interesting than

_Middlemarch_. A young girl who has been educated in an Italian convent

finds herself soon after leaving it thrown almost entirely upon the

world by the death of her father, an artist, to fight the battle of

life single-handed. “Young, beautiful, poor, and alone in Paris,

what will become of her?” With this question the book opens, and,

indeed, the whole story is plainly evolved from this idea. Instead

of wasting her efforts on an impossible S. Teresa, Mme. Craven takes

up the practical case of a young and religious girl, whose training

and education, whatever they may have amounted to in the point of

accomplishments, were built upon religion, not a vague unreality,

but a religion which in the plainest words taught her to kneel down

and pray, not to “the perfect Right,” as did Dorothea, but to God,

to Jesus Christ—a being, it may here be mentioned, who is carefully

excluded from _Middlemarch_. The reader need not infer that this inner

life of the heroine is insisted upon severely, and that he always

finds Fleurange upon her knees. Nothing of the sort. You only feel

unconsciously, by little touches here and there, by the tone of the

whole story, that the girl lives up to the practical accomplishment

of what she was taught in the convent by Madre Maddalena; that she

carries her religion out with her into the world as her only guide

amidst its manifold dangers; that she has not flung it aside with her

leading-strings; and that it is this and this alone which sustains her

in the midst of terrible suffering, and saves her from sinking under

the pressure of trial.

Fleurange goes first to her uncle’s family in Germany. Their loss of

fortune drives her out again from them into the service of a Russian

princess, where she is surrounded and flattered by all that the world

considers witty, brave, brilliant, and captivating. Her singular

beauty and innate nobility enable her to grace the lofty station to

which the Princess Catherine assigns her. Here, in Florence, in the

very household of his mother, she encounters for the second time Count

George de Walden, a handsome and highly accomplished young gentleman,

the adoration of his mother and possibly of himself, who is just

loitering around Europe, “seeing life.” He met Fleurange before in her

father’s studio as she sat for a picture of “Cordelia.” Of course, he

fell in love with her, as such young gentlemen will do whose time is

heavy on their hands. Father and daughter disappeared. He retained

the picture, but what he wanted was the original; and here, after

feeding on the memory of his unknown love for a year or so, he finds

her actually domesticated in his mother’s household. This is what a

playwright would consider “an excellent situation,” particularly as

the princess suspects nothing of what is passing under her eyes. As

a matter of course, they fall in love, and, equally as a matter of

course, they contrive to make their love known. And this is the trying

time for Fleurange.

It is not that she is dazzled with the prince, but with what she

considers the perfect man. And indeed, in the eyes of the world, Count

George is a perfect man, whilst, in the eyes of his mother, he is

something still more; and therefore a _mésalliance_ would to her, whose

heart was entirely her son’s—all the rest of her being divided between

the _modiste_, the physician, and the _salon_—seem a greater crime

than many of those which bring men to the scaffold. Fleurange knows

this, and therefore—though, when the confession is forced from her,

she does not even to himself deny her love for George and her desire

to be his wife—she is convinced that their union is impossible. She

does the best thing under the circumstances: she determines to leave

the household of the princess; and thus, not for the first time, do

the promptings of _duty_, of what one ought to do, of what God would

have us do, correspond with those of common sense. George has avowed

his love for Fleurange to his mother, and the confession has such an

effect upon her that she is cured for the time from an attack of one

of those incurable maladies not uncommon with ladies who are blessed

with everything that this world can offer. There is _caste_ even in

illnesses, and fashion in a complaint as in a bonnet. Thus, when some

years back the eye-glass became a fashionable ornament, all young

England, fashionable and would-be fashionable, suddenly grew weak

in one eye, whilst the “sons of industry” remained in their normal

condition.

The princess rises to the gravity of the situation, and extracts a

promise from her son that he will never marry Fleurange without her

consent. But all her difficulties are smoothed away by Fleurange

herself, who, even though the count has asked her to be his wife,

determines to sacrifice herself for his sake, and go.

“‘Fleurange,’ said the count, with a grave accent of sincerity far

more dangerous than that of passion, ‘you shall be my wife if you will

consent to be—if you will accept this hand I offer you.’

“‘With your mother’s consent?’ said Fleurange slowly, and in a low

tone. ‘Can you assure me of that?’

“After a moment’s hesitation, George replied: ‘No, not to-day; but she

will yield her consent, I assure you.’

“Fleurange hesitated in her turn. She knew only too well to what a

degree this hope was illusory, but this was her last opportunity

of conversing with him. The next day would commence their lifelong

separation, which time, distance, and prolonged absence would

continually widen. There was no longer any danger in telling the

truth—the truth, alas! so devoid of importance now, but which would,

perhaps, second the duty she had to accomplish quite as well as

contradiction.

“‘Ah! well,’ she at last replied, with simplicity. ‘Yes, why should I

deny it? Should life prove more favorable to us; if by some unforeseen

circumstance, impossible to conceive, your mother should cheerfully

consent to receive me as a daughter, oh! then what an answer I would

make you know without my telling you. You are likewise perfectly aware

that until that day I will never listen to you.’

“‘But that day will come,’ cried George vehemently, ‘and that speedily.’

“‘Perhaps,’ said Fleurange. ‘Who knows what time has in store for us?

And who knows that in time the obstacle may not come from yourself?’

“She endeavored to say these last words in a playful tone. They were

hardly uttered before she suddenly stopped; but the shade of the large

cypresses that bordered the road prevented George from seeing the tears

that inundated her face.”

Thus they part, under the cypresses. George thinks she is only leaving

for a short time, to return again. She goes back to the convent, to

bury there her broken heart and the hopes her own strong will has

blighted. But convents are not built on broken hearts; and Madre

Maddalena, who is none the less gifted with common sense and worldly

prudence for leading a retired and saintly life, sends her back into

the world “to continue the contest,” for the reasons already given,

with these words:

“O my poor child! it would be much easier for me to tell you to remain

and never leave us again. It would be sweeter for me to preserve you

thus from all the sufferings that yet await you. But, believe me,

the day will come when you will rejoice you were not spared these

sufferings; and you will acknowledge that she who is now speaking to

you knew you better than you knew yourself.”

Fleurange goes back to the world, to her uncle’s family, which is

gradually recovering its fall through the efforts of Clement, her

cousin, who was the first to welcome her among them. Notwithstanding

her suffering, she carries on all the duties of life like a Christian

woman, without despondency as though God were blotted out of the world,

and equally without that foolish ostentation of gaiety sometimes

assumed. She never thought with Dorothea that she had suffered “all the

troubles of all the people on the face of the earth.” The hour never

came to her “in which the waves of suffering shook her too thoroughly

to leave any power of thought”; not that she suffered or loved less

than Dorothea, but because she saw through all something higher than

human suffering and more lovely than human love. That pagan hour never

came to her, when Dorothea “repeated what the merciful eyes of solitude

have looked on for ages in the spiritual struggles of man”; when “she

besought hardness, and coldness, and aching weariness to bring her

relief from the mysterious incorporeal might of her anguish”; nor did

“she lie on the bare floor and let the night grow cold around her,

while her grand woman’s frame was shaken by sobs as if she had been a

despairing child.” Fleurange never, as did Dorothea, “yearned toward

_the perfect Right_, that it might make a throne within her, and rule

her errant wrong.” Whether she yearned or not, she knew what was right

and what was wrong, and, by praying to God for help and strength, she

did right. If women in love stop to ask themselves what is the “perfect

right,” in nine cases out of ten in love matters the perfect right will

be the absolute wrong. Right is fixed; there is a law in those things,

as in all questions of the soul, not evolved out of the individual’s

brains, but out of the heart of Christian charity, which is in Christ.

Duty does not depend on feeling “the largeness of the world,” and on

being “a part of that involuntary, palpitating life,” but on being

a creation of God. George Eliot tends to pantheism, and, spite of

herself, Christian instinct only prompts her heroine to do what is

right. If we are “a part of that involuntary and palpitating life,” and

_nothing more_, there is no _necessary_ reason for charity.

The difference between Dorothea and Fleurange, two characters which,

allowing for side differences of clime, are naturally similar, consists

in all the sufferings of the one bearing the aspect of self-torture,

whilst those of the other are a sacrifice. The sorrows of Fleurange,

which, after all, are much greater than those of Dorothea, are endured

for God’s sake and as coming from God. They are not a whit less

painful to nature on this account; but they are explicable, and have

a meaning which Dorothea never seems to realize. One suffers because

she cannot help herself; the other because it is God’s will. On George

Eliot’s principle, there is no guarantee for a person doing right at

all, inasmuch as it is so very difficult to determine what is right.

If right be “a part of that involuntary and palpitating life” _only_,

it has no meaning beyond what is contained in the word accident;

that is to say, right and wrong are effects of circumstance. Nor is

this forcing a meaning, as may be seen from various passages in the

book—unless, indeed, we have read them very wrongly. Thus, she speaks

of the spirit struggling “against _universal pressure_, which will

one day be too heavy for it, and bring the heart to its final pause.”

She sneers at our referring a man “to the divine regard with perfect

confidence,” and says: “Nay, it is even held sublime for our neighbor

to expect the utmost there, however little he may have got from us.”

And in another place: “Any one watching keenly the stealthy convergence

of human lots sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on

another, which tells like _a calculated irony_ on the indifference or

frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbor. Destiny

stands by sarcastic, with our _dramatis personæ_ folded in her hand.”

This sounds very fine, and that last sentence might have been written

by one of the Greek poets. It is beautifully pagan; but, after all,

human life is regulated in man and woman by a will that is free to use

or reject the “slow preparation of effects,” to laugh at the phantom,

destiny; and when it pleases God to bring this lesser life of time to

“a final pause,” man goes before his Creator to give an account of his

servitude indeed, but not of his slavery.

Fleurange writes from the convent to the princess. She herself had

arranged the plot which was to blind George to her final departure, and

this is how the princess receives the letter of the girl who had so

freely offered up her heart on the altar of duty. The princess knew of

the sacrifice. It is doubtful whether Rosamond Vincy ever displayed her

unconscious selfishness so thoroughly as this:

“The Princess Catherine, in an elegant morning _négligé_, was alone

with the Marquis Adelardi in her small _salon_, when a letter was

brought her on a silver salver. She glanced at the address.

“‘Ah! from Gabrielle’ [Fleurange], she exclaimed. ‘The very letter I

was expecting to-day.’

“She opened it and hastily ran over its contents. ‘Very well

done—very,’ she said. ‘Nothing could be more natural. She hit upon the

very best thing to say.... Here, Adelardi,’ continued she, throwing him

the letter, ‘read it. It must be owned that this Gabrielle is reliable

and true to her word. Moreover, she has a good deal of wit.’

“Adelardi attentively read the letter.

“‘What you have just remarked, princess, is very true; but this time

circumstances have favored you. This letter was not written for the

occasion; it is sincere from beginning to end. This young girl can keep

a secret, but is incapable of prevarication. This is not the kind of a

letter she would have written if the contents were not absolutely true.”

“‘Do you think so?’ said the princess. “It is of no consequence,

however, as to that, though it would simplify everything still more.

But in that case—ah! _ciel!_ let me look at the letter again.’

“She now read it entirely through, instead of merely glancing at the

contents.

“‘But in that case, I have lost my physician, and the only one who

ever understood my case. This, _par exemple!_ is a real misfortune. If

he had had time, at least, to answer my last letter, and tell me what

springs I should go to this year! Whom shall I consult now? May is

nearly gone, and next month I ought to be there. Really, I am unlucky!’

“‘What do you expect, princess?’ said the marquis, in a tone

imperceptibly ironical. ‘One cannot always have good luck.’”

In the quiet of her German retreat, Fleurange suddenly receives the

news that an insurrection has broken out in Russia, in which George is

implicated. He is taken prisoner, and only awaits in St. Petersburg the

sentence which is to banish him to that living tomb, Siberia. Fleurange

now sees the opportunity of uniting herself to her lover by burying

herself with him. As his hopes in this world are for ever blasted, she

obtains the consent of the princess to their union, and sets out for

St. Petersburg under the guidance of her young cousin Clement, who

knows the object of her mission. This journey and its results complete

the fourth book, entitled “The Immolation,” and in it the author rises

to a height of power in pathos, description, and incident which is all

the more telling that it was altogether unsuspected: The long ride

along the dreary strand through the day and through the night; the

crossing of the frozen river in the darkness, with the ice cracking

ominously beneath them; the scene where Clement and Fleurange are left

alone in the face of eternity and immediate death, and where, for the

first and last time, when hope of life seems banished, the confession

of his love bursts out of his young heart to the half-conscious

girl; the last struggle to carry her safe through on her mission of

self-immolation to the man she loves—all told in the same simple,

unpretentious style, but with an inner force that carries the reader

along, and absorbs him as though he were witnessing a tragedy.

The strain is sustained to the close of the story. Amid all the

fascination, and glitter, and glare of the imperial court of the Czar,

when the late Emperor Nicholas was in his “golden prime,” creeps the

oppressive sense of a mute but awful terrorism through an atmosphere

of combustible human passion all the more dangerous for being so

constrained. The petition of Fleurange is about to be granted; but, as

it passes through the hands of Vera, a favorite maid of the empress, it

is represented as coming from her, between whom and George a sort of

betrothal had taken place, and who is in love with him. His sentence,

through the instrumentality of Fleurange, is commuted to pardon on

condition that he should pass four years on his estates in Livonia,

and that he marry Vera before setting out. George is ignorant of the

arrival of Fleurange, of her petition, of her desire to bury herself

alive with him in Siberia. Vera sees Fleurange, and implores her to

save him by the still greater sacrifice of renouncing him for ever.

Fleurange goes back again without a word. The man for whom she made so

many sacrifices was utterly unworthy of her, and congratulates himself

that he escaped committing the foolishness of marrying her, though

really in love with her for a time. The selfishness of the mother

comes out in the son. As Fleurange and her cousin turn homewards, they

meet the bridal party leaving the church. Once more she seeks to bury

herself in the convent, and once more Madre Maddalena warns her back.

She tells her that, at her first visit, her sufferings appeared as the

expiation of an idolatry the extent of which she did not realize; but

that something more was essential—the shattering of the idol, though

its destruction seemed to involve the very breaking of her own heart.

The shattering of Dorothea’s idol brings a blank despair; and although

she marries Ladislaw, and is presumably happy with him, nevertheless

she felt “that there was always something better which she might

have done, if she had only been better and known better.” The final

shattering of Fleurange’s idol brings peace and opens her eyes to the

silent heroism that had stood at her side all through, and for every

pang of hers suffered a thousand. There is a vast amount of latent

power in this story that stands out the more it is considered. Clement

is kept in the background through much of the action. We only know that

he loves Fleurange, and, prominently as her self-sacrifice is advanced,

the shadow of his always overreaches it with the quiet that becomes a

true man. At last her eyes are opened, and she sees, no longer Clement,

“her brother,” but Clement, the man who has loved her all the while.

The closeness of their relationship—that of first cousins—was almost

necessary to bring out this part of the story, their almost continual

intercourse after their first seeing each other, without the idea ever

occurring to Fleurange that her cousin, who was a stranger to her up

to the age of eighteen, might possibly fall in love with her. It is no

encouragement to marriage within the prohibited degrees to hit upon

such an incident once in a story; as little as it is necessary to

inform the Catholic reader of what he or she will know beforehand: that

the dispensation of the church is necessary to the contracting such a

marriage.

The book, which has only been touched upon in its leading character,

will afford an excellent foil to _Middlemarch_ in many ways. The

latter, as perhaps the very title indicates, devotes itself chiefly

to the English _middle_ class. _Fleurange_ gives pleasant glimpses

of German and Italian life with what, from intrinsic evidence, might

be judged to be a very true picture of the Russian court and social

atmosphere. Though there are plenty of titled folk, it is a consolation

for once to find a princess talking like a rational being; not

always addressing her attendant as “minion,” her butler as “slave,”

and terrifying the ears and eyes of the groundlings by the splendor

of her cheap tragedy rhetoric, the glory of her equipages, or the

coruscations of her diamonds. Her son, the count, does not, as do most

of his class in the titled novel, divide his time between the stable

and the green-room. The marquis is not “a villain of the deepest dye,”

whether natural or artificial. Though an Italian, he does not carry a

poison philter about with him; he employs no bravos, he never carries

off Chastity in the shape of a milliner, to be finally chastised by

Virtue in a smock-frock. In fact, all these titled folk are very

unlike the article one is accustomed to find within flaming covers.

The heartlessness and artificiality almost necessarily evoked in the

high social atmosphere which Fleurange breathes for a time, is none the

less strikingly brought out because it is not taken in epigrammatic

parcels, as it were, and flung in your face, after the manner of the

author of _Middlemarch_. The lesson of Felix Dornthall’s wicked life

is none the less impressive because, when dying in the hospital ward,

Charity stands by his bedside and prays for him as the ill-spent life

flickers out in the darkness. It is no shock to human feelings to see

Fleurange in her bitter hours kneel down and pray for help to a God she

believes can help her. If life is not all “beer and skittles,” neither

is it all a continual mistake and a bitter trial. If we cannot have

“ideal perfection,” it may be a consolation to some to feel assured

that we can do very well without it, and that there is something in the

striving after _real_ perfection worthy of human endeavor. To George

Eliot, the world was born yesterday, and only grew with her growing

faculties. Christianity has practically gone by, and this is not the

age for its heroes and heroines. The sham and the cant of it only

remain. As long as the sham and the cant produce such characters as

Madre Maddalena, Fleurange, Dr. Leblanc, and Clement, we shall welcome

the sham and the cant in preference to the reality which can only give

us Dorothea and Lydgate as types of true nobility and all that the

perfection of manhood and womanhood may expect to come to nowadays.

Whilst admiring the wit, and the worldly wisdom, and that power which

only ripened genius can give of saying the best thing in the best

way which _Middlemarch_ displays throughout, we confess to a little

heartsickness at seeing all the nature of a woman author going out over

Rosamond Vincy.

_Fleurange_ is certainly a relief after the unnatural atmosphere

of _Middlemarch_, where all is false, uncertain, cold, hard, and

brilliant. Though the story is very human, and in this respect has

not a whit less of earth than the other, it suffers nothing by an

occasional glimpse of heaven. Poor humanity likes a little hope,

particularly when it has a very sound title to hope. These two authors

traverse it as a hospital; the one surgeon-like, knife in hand, cutting

and lopping the useless and unsightly limbs with bright, keen weapon

and merciless precision, leaving the dead to bury their dead; the

other, like a sister of charity, to bandage the wound, and comfort

the sick, and pray by the dying. How different is the same scene to

the eyes of each, and how different is each in the eyes of the sick

patients! While they admire the skill of the one, they shudder and

turn instinctively from her; on the other streaming eyes are bent, and

troubled hearts murmur, “God bless you!”

GRAPES AND THORNS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE.”

CHAPTER IV.

AN INCH OF FRINGE.

MR. SCHÖNINGER had been in such haste to keep his engagement the

evening before that he had made the rehearsal a short one, and the

company did not remain long after he went. Perhaps the family did not

seem to them quite so gay and pleasant as usual. Certainly no one

objected much to their going. The only remonstrance was that uttered by

Annette, when Lawrence Gerald took his hat to follow the last visitor.

“What! are you going, too?” she exclaimed involuntarily. She was

learning not to reproach him for anything, but it was impossible to

conceal her disappointment.

He showed no impatience. On the contrary, his voice was quiet and even

kind when he answered her.

“You cannot think it would be very pleasant for me to stay this

evening,” he said. “I want to wipe away some disagreeable impressions

before I come again. Besides, I must finish my afternoon’s writing

to-night.”

She had to own that he might well shrink from meeting her mother again

just then, particularly as the lady did not seem to have recovered

her good-humor. In fact, while they were standing together near the

conservatory, she crossed the front hall from one room to another, and

cast a watchful glance back at them, as if she would have liked to come

nearer, but hesitated to do so.

At sight of her, they turned away, and went out through the garden

door at the rear of the long hall, and came round the house instead of

going through it. This garden was extensive, occupying nearly or quite

two acres of land, and was surrounded by a low stone wall overgrown in

some places with vines, in others shaded by shrubs or trees. Crichton

was so well governed that high walls were not necessary to protect the

gardens, especially when people were so well known to be perfectly

willing and able to protect their rights as the Ferriers. A few notable

examples, made in a very spirited manner at the beginning of their

residence, had inspired transgressors with a wholesome awe of them

and their premises. Not a flower was broken, not a cherry nor a plum

disappeared from their trees, not an intruding footstep printed their

walks.

These grounds were now sweet with a profusion of June roses, and so

pink that, as Annette walked through them with her lover, they appeared

to be flushed with sunset, though sunset had quite faded, leaving only

a pure twilight behind. Besides the newly planted trees, which were

small, a few large maples had been left from the original forest, and

shaded here and there a circle of velvet sward. A superb border of blue

flower-de-luce enclosed the whole with its band of fragrant sapphire.

The two walked slowly round the house without speaking, and Lawrence

stepped through the gate, then, turning, leaned on it. Once out of Mrs.

Ferrier’s presence, he was not in such haste to go. Two linden-trees in

bloom screened them from observation as they stood there; and, since

pride no longer compelled him to keep up an indifferent or a defiant

manner, the young man yielded to his mood. He was sad, and seemed to

feel even a sort of despair. In a weak way he had admired all that

was admirable, and despised all that was ignoble, yet he had lacked

the resolution necessary to secure his own approval. He was still

noble enough to feel the loss of that more bitterly than any outside

condemnation. When he could, he deceived himself, and excused his own

shortcomings; but when some outward attack tore aside the flimsy veil,

and showed him how he might be criticised, or when some stirring appeal

revived the half-smothered ideal within him, then he needed all the

soothing that friendship or flattery could bestow. While listening

to Mrs. Ferrier that afternoon, he had not been able to exclude the

humiliating conviction that he had himself forged the chains that

held him in that ignoble dependence, and that ten years of earnest

endeavor would have set him in a position to command the fulfilment

of his wishes. But now, he assured himself, it was too late to begin.

His earliest foe, his own nature, had allied itself with one scarcely

less strong, a pernicious habit, and it was now two to one. He must be

helped, must go on with this engagement, and patch up the life which he

could not renew.

“If she would give up the point of our living with her, all would

be well,” he said presently. “Why couldn’t we board at the Crichton

House? I don’t mean to be idle, and don’t wish to be. I wouldn’t make

any promises to her, Annette, and I won’t make them to any one who

threatens me; but I am willing to tell you that I really mean to try.

All I want is to get out of my little way of living, and have a fair

start. You know I never had a chance.”

His lip and voice were unsteady, and, as he looked up appealingly

into her face, she saw that his eyes were full of tears. A grief and

self-pity too great for words possessed him. That element of childlike

tenderness and dependence which survives the time of childhood in some

men, as well as in most women, made him long for the pity and sympathy

of one to whom he had never given either sympathy or pity.

Annette, woman-like, found no fault, or at least expressed none. It

was enough if he needed her sympathy. She had thought that he only

needed her wealth. Her heart ached with pity for him, and swelled with

indignation against all who would censure him. His foes were her foes.

“I know you never had a chance, Lawrence,” she said fervently; “but

never mind that now. You shall have one. F. Chevreuse shall talk to

mamma, and make her give me at once what I am to have. It is my right.

Don’t be unhappy about the past, nor blame yourself in anything.

All lives are not to follow one plan. Why should you have begun as a

drudge, and spent all these years in laying up a little money? What

better would you be now for having the experience of an errand-boy

and a clerk, and for the memory of a thousand mortifications and

self-denials? You might have two or three thousand dollars capital,

and be, at best, a junior partner in some paltry firm, which I should

insist on your leaving. Is that so much to regret?”

He smiled faintly, and, his cause being so well defended, ventured to

attack it. “To be mortified is not necessarily to be degraded,” he

said. “I shouldn’t have been obliged to listen to the lecture I heard

this afternoon.”

“The degradation of that rests with me!” she exclaimed hastily, with

a painful blush on her face. “I do not like to think nor speak of it,

and I wish you would try to forget it. The time is come for me to tell

mamma that I am not a child. Leave all to me. I never fail when I am

roused, and I promise you, Lawrence, you shall not bear more than one

other insult for my sake. And for the past, I charge you again, do not

suffer any one to dictate to you what you should have done. Let them

correct themselves, which will, perhaps, be sufficient to employ their

time.”

She could see he was cheered, not much, but a little. He tossed his

head back, and glanced about with an air of renewed courage and

determination. But no thought for the heart that he had burdened with

his pain and care entered his mind. She had given her help eagerly,

glad to give, and he accepted it as a matter of course, and, having got

what he wanted, went away with a careless good-night.

Annette went into the house, and soon the doors were locked. Mrs.

Ferrier always went to bed early, and the servants usually followed her

example.

Annette leaned from her window, and counted the city lights going out,

and the noises sinking into silence. As it grew later, the sound of the

Cocheco became fitfully audible, borne on the cool northwestern breeze,

and presently grew steadier, till only one other sound, the pulse of a

far-away steam-mill, was heard tossing on that spray-like murmur like a

little ball on the water-column of a fountain.

Cool as it was, the room seemed close to her. She was restless, too,

yet could not move about without being heard by her mother. So she

opened her door, and crept softly down-stairs. The long drawing-room

windows looking into the conservatory had been left open, and some

of the sashes in the conservatory were still lowered from the top. A

light and fragrant breeze came through, bringing a sound of rustling

leaves. She stepped over the sill, and threw herself down on a sofa

just outside. The large space was a relief from that cramped feeling

that had brought her down-stairs. Besides, there was only glass between

her and all out-doors. She saw the star-lighted skies, those languid

stars of summer, soft as humid eyes, and the dark trees of the garden,

and the faint outline of hills against the near southwestern horizon.

The flowering plants showed like black shadows lurking about the bases

of the pillars, and the pillars themselves appeared to stretch upward

to the sky, and curl over in capitals of purple acanthus-leaves fringed

with stars.

Annette rested her head on the sofa-cushions. The space and motion

outside and the waving boughs and vines had a quieting effect; yet she

was in that state of feverish wakefulness wherein one can be quiet only

in a position from which it is possible to start at any moment.

Her life was changing in its hopes and aims, and she was in all the

tumult of that revolution. The vague, sweet expectations and rosy hopes

which are planted in the heart of every female infant, which spring

up and bud in the maiden’s soul, which blossom or are nipped in the

woman’s, as God shall will, were withered in hers, had withered long

ago, and she was only now owning it to herself. There was to be no

tender homage and care for her. No one was to take delight in her, to

seek her for herself, to think anxiously lest she be grieved or hurt.

Whatever pain might come to her in life, she must bear it in silence.

To tell it where alone sympathy would be precious and helpful to her

would be to bore her listener. Hers was the part to give, not to

receive. Without a man’s strength and hardness, she was to take the

man’s portion, support, cheer, encourage, and defend, and all without

thanks.

An awful sense of isolation seized upon her. There had come to her that

moment which comes to some, perhaps to most people, once in a life,

when all the universe seems to withdraw, and the soul hangs desolate in

the midst of space, the whole of creation alien. One shrinks from life

then, and would gladly hide in death.

Annette was too sad and weary to cry out. She lay quiet, and looked

at the tree-shadows. Some good thought crossed her mind, a whisper of

her guardian angel, or an inspiration of the Comforter—“Fall down and

pray to God for help!” it said; but found her insensible. A human love

inexpressibly bitter and engrossing blunted her heart to all else. She

mutely asked God to be merciful to her, but formed no other petition.

While she gazed without abstractedly, only half conscious of what she

saw, a darker shadow appeared under a tree just visible past the angle

of the house. What seemed to be a man’s form leaned forward partially

into her view, drew something from a garden-chair under the tree,

then disappeared. She was too much occupied by her own thoughts to be

alarmed, and, moreover, was not in any danger. She only wondered a

little what it might mean, and presently understood. Mr. Schöninger,

coming from a long drive that afternoon, had brought a shawl over his

arm, and she had noticed after he went away that it had been forgotten

on the garden-chair where he had thrown it on entering. It might be

that, returning home now, he had recollected, and come into the garden

for it.

Slight as the incident was, it broke the train of her painful thoughts.

She sat up with a gesture that flung the past with all its beautiful

hopes and wishes behind her, and welcomed the one thought that came

in their stead, sad yet sweet, like a smile half quenched in tears.

Lawrence Gerald did not love her, but he needed her, and she took up

her cross, this time with an upward glance.

When we have set self aside, from whatever motive, the appeal to God

for help is instinctive, and seems less a call than the answer to a

call. As though Infinite Love, which for love’s sake sacrificed a God,

could not see a trembling human soul binding itself for the altar

without claiming kindred with it. “My child, the spark that lights thy

pyre is from my heart. Hold by me, and it shall not burn in vain.”

Yet that the happiness of giving love and help is nobler and more

elevating than the pleasure of receiving them Annette did not then

realize, perhaps would not have believed. Who does believe it, or, at

least, who acts upon the belief till after long and severe discipline,

till the world has lost its hold on the heart, and it has placed all

its hopes in the future? Fine sentiments drop easily from the lips of

those to whom they cost nothing, or who have forgotten the struggles by

which their own peace was won. Those who are fed can talk eloquently

of patience under starvation, and those who are warmed can cry out on

the folly of the poor traveller who sinks to sleep under the snowdrift.

Verily, preaching is easy, and there is no one who has such breath to

utter heroic sentiments as he who never puts them in practice.

As Annette lay there, growing quieter now that all was settled, clouds

came up from behind the hills, and slowly extinguished the stars.

Opaline lightnings quivered and expanded inside those heavy mists

without piercing them, as though some winged creature of fire were

imprisoned there, and fluttering to escape; and every time the air grew

luminous, the azaleas and rhododendrons bloomed rose-red out of their

shadows. Deep and mellow thunders rolled incessantly, and a thick rain

came down in drops so fine that the sound of their falling was but a

whisper. It was a thunder-storm played _piano_. Annette was lulled to

a light sleep, through which she still heard the storm, as in a dream,

growing softer till it ceased. And no sooner did she dream it had

ceased than she dreamed it had recommenced, with a clamor of rain and

thunder, and a wind that shook the doors and windows, and a flash like

a shriek that syllabled her name.

She started up in affright. The sky was clear and calm, and the storm

had all passed by; but the wet trees in the garden shone with a red

light from the windows, and there was noise and a hurrying to and fro

in the house, and her mother was calling her with hysterical cries.

Annette would have answered, but her tongue was paralyzed with that

sudden fear. She could only hasten into the house with what speed the

deathly sickness of such an awakening allowed her.

Mrs. Ferrier was walking through the rooms, wringing her hands, and

calling for her daughter. “Where is Annette? What has become of

Annette?” The servants stood about, silent and confounded by the noisy

grief of their mistress, unable to do anything but stare at her.

There is usually but one chief mourner on such occasions, however many

candidates there may be for the office. The one who first raises the

voice of lamentation leaves the others _hors de combat_.

In one of her turns, Mrs. Ferrier saw Annette leaning pale and mute on

a chair near by.

“O Annette, Annette! do you know what has happened? Oh! what shall I

do?” she cried.

Annette could only cling to the chair for support. Her mouth and throat

were too dry for speech.

“Somebody has killed Mother Chevreuse!” The girl slipped down to her

knees, and hid her face a moment. Nothing had happened to Lawrence,

thank God! Then she stood up, shocked and grieved indeed, but no longer

powerless.

“Will you tell me what it is, John?” she asked, turning to the man.

“Tell me all you know about it.”

Her mother’s noise and volubility were too irritating.

John’s story was soon told. Lawrence Gerald, having been awakened by

a messenger from the priest’s house, had been up there to call them

before going for F. Chevreuse. He wished some of them to come down

immediately.

Annette’s mind was clear and prompt in any emergency which did not

touch her too nearly. She saw at once all that was necessary to be done.

“Ma, please don’t take all the attention to yourself,” she said rather

impatiently. “It isn’t you who are killed. Try to think of what should

be done. John, you and Bettie will go down with me. The rest of you

lock the house securely, and let no one in whom you don’t know. Louis

and Jack will take care of you.”

Bettie flew with alacrity to prepare herself, willing to brave all

perils in the company of John; but, coming down again, found that her

mistress was also going. There was no help for it. The servant-maid

fell humbly into the rear, while Mrs. Ferrier clung to the arm of

the footman, and saw an assassin in every shadow. At sight of a man

hurrying up the hill toward them, she cried out, and would have fled if

her daughter had not held her.

“Nonsense, ma! it’s Lawrence,” Annette said, and went to meet the

breathless messenger.

“I’m going after F. Chevreuse,” he explained. “Can I have one of your

horses?”

He stopped only for Annette’s reply: “Take anything you want!” then

hurried on up the hill.

The little cottage by the church was all alight, and people were

hurrying about, and standing in the open door and the entry.

“Now, recollect, ma, you must keep quiet, and not get in anybody’s

way,” was the daughter’s last charge as they drew near; then they went

into the house.

Honora Pembroke met Annette at the door of the inner room. The two

girls clasped hands in silence. They understood each other. The one was

strong to endure with calmness, the other strong to do with calmness;

and, till F. Chevreuse should come, all rested on them. Mrs. Gerald,

weaker of nerve, could only sit and gaze about her, and do what she was

told to do. Jane was in the hands of officers, who were trying to find

out what she knew, and prevent her saying too much to others. It was

not an easy task; for what the woman knew and what she suspected were

mingled in inextricable confusion, and the only relief her excitement

could find was in pouring out the whole to whoever would listen. An

argument was, however, found to silence her.

“You will help the rogue to escape if you tell one word,” the detective

said. “If you want him to be punished, you must hold your tongue. Have

you told any one?”

“Nobody but Lawrence Gerald,” Jane answered, recovering her

self-control. It would be hard to keep silence, but she could do it for

the sake of punishing _that man_.

“Well, say nothing to any one else. Look now, and remember how it

looks, then forget all about it till you are asked in court.”

Jane and the two policemen in the little room with them drew nearer and

scrutinized closely the contents of a slip of paper that the detective

held in his hand. It was an inch or so of grey worsted fringe torn

from a shawl; and, clinging to the fragment, a single human hair, of a

peculiar light-brown shade.

Poor Mother Chevreuse! This little clue had been found clenched in her

stiffening fingers when they took her up.

The three looked intently, then drew back, and the detective carefully

folded the paper again, and placed it in his pocket-book.

An hour later, F. Chevreuse arrived. We will not enter the house with

him. The two guests that there await him, death and an unspeakable

grief, demand that homage of us, that we do not intrude.

As Lawrence Gerald was driving away from the door after having brought

the priest, Jane called out to him, and, when he stopped, leaned over

the wheel into the carriage.

“Don’t let a soul on earth know what I told you we found in her hand,

nor what I saw,” she whispered.

He muttered some half-stifled word about not being a tattler.

“Promise me you won’t,” she persisted, laying her hand on his arm.

He gave the promise impatiently—women’s ways are so annoying when one

is excited and in haste—shook her hand off, and drove away.

Let us pass over the first days that followed. The gossip, the

wonderment, the show of grief that is merely excitement, and, still

more, the grief that is real, and shrinks from showing itself—who

would not wish to escape sight and sound of them? We may well believe

that one so beloved and honored was followed to her last home by the

tears and blessings of a crowd, and that one so bereaved was the object

of an immense sympathy and affection. We may also be sure that those

to whom the law gives in charge the search for such offenders did not

neglect their task. We will not fraternize with the detectives nor with

the gossips. Let them do their work, each after his kind.

When weeks had passed away, Mrs. Gerald had not yet dared to mention

his loss to F. Chevreuse; but he spoke of it to her; and, having

once spoken, she felt sure that he wished the subject to be avoided

thereafter.

“It seems to me that I never was a real priest till now,” he said. “I

was not conscious of making any sacrifice. I had a pleasant home, and

one there to whom I was all in all. Now I have no earthly tie, nothing

to come between me and my Master’s work. I don’t mean to say that she

was an obstacle; on the contrary, she was a great help; but she was

also an immense comfort, more a comfort than I deserve, perhaps. I do

not deny that it is sad, but I know also that it is well. There are no

accidents in God’s providence. The only thought almost too hard for me

to bear is that I took her affection so carelessly. She gave her all,

and I did not remember to tell her that it was precious to me. She was

a tender, loving creature, and, when I was a child, she gave me that

fondness that children need. I forgot that she might need fondness as

much when she grew old. I forgot that, while I had a thousand duties,

and interests, and friends, she had nothing but me.

“It is too late to talk of it now; but if I could have been permitted

one minute to go on my knees to her, and bless and thank her for all

her love, I could bear this better. For that man, whoever he may be, I

have no feeling but pity. Unless the safety of others should require

it, I hope he may not be taken. I haven’t a doubt the unfortunate

wretch wanted the money, but didn’t mean to hurt any one, except in

self-defence. I do not wish to know who he is.”

Mrs. Gerald was too much affected to utter a word in reply. It did not

seem to be F. Chevreuse who was speaking to her in that sad voice, from

which the ringing tone had quite gone, and that pale face was not like

his. It seemed, too, that in those few weeks his hair had grown white.

He resumed after a moment: “There are some things at the house I would

like to have you see to. Whatever is valuable in money, the silver

and a few other things, I mean shall go toward a new altar-service.

She wished it. But there are some trinkets and things that she used,

and clothing and books, that I would like to have you take away. I

don’t want to see them about. Let Honora choose whatever she likes for

herself. My mother was fond of her. Keep what you wish, and give some

little _souvenirs_ to those who would value them for her sake. And now

let us set our faces forward, and waste no time in vain lamentations.”

“O Mrs. Gerald!” Jane cried, when the lady went there in compliance

with the priest’s request, “my heart is broke! All the light is gone

out of the house.”

“Don’t speak of that,” Mrs. Gerald said. “Tell me of F. Chevreuse. Is

he quiet? Does he eat anything?”