I
In a Spanish town on an island of the Mediterranean there is a convent
of the Barefooted Carmelites, where the rule of the Order instituted by
Saint Theresa is still kept with the primitive rigor of the reformation
brought about by that illustrious woman. Extraordinary as this fact may
seem, it is true. Though the monasteries of the Peninsula and those of
the Continent were nearly all destroyed or broken up by the outburst of
the French Revolution and the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars, yet on
this island, protected by the British fleets, the wealthy convent and
its peaceful inmates were sheltered from the dangers of change and
general spoliation. The storms from all quarters which shook the first
fifteen years of the nineteenth century subsided ere they reached this
lonely rock near the coast of Andalusia. If the name of the great
Emperor echoed fitfully upon its shores, it may be doubted whether the
fantastic march of his glory or the flaming majesty of his meteoric life
ever reached the comprehension of those saintly women kneeling in their
distant cloister.
A conventual rigor, which was never relaxed, gave to this haven a
special place in the thoughts and history of the Catholic world. The
purity of its rule drew to its shelter from different parts of Europe
sad women, whose souls, deprived of human ties, longed for the death in
life which they found here in the bosom of God. No other convent was so
fitted to wean the heart and teach it that aloofness from the things of
this world which the religious life imperatively demands. On the
Continent may be found a number of such Houses, nobly planned to meet
the wants of their sacred purpose. Some are buried in the depths of
solitary valleys; others hang, as it were, in mid-air above the hills,
clinging to the mountain slopes or projecting from the verge of
precipices. On all sides man has sought out the poesy of the infinite,
the solemnity of silence: he has sought God; and on the mountain-tops,
in the abysmal depths, among the caverned cliffs he has found Him. Yet
nowhere as on this European islet, half African though it be, can he
find such differing harmonies all blending to lift the soul and quell
its springs of anguish; to cool its fevers, and give to the sorrows of
life a bed of rest.
The monastery is built at the extremity of the island at its highest
part, where the rock by some convulsion of Nature has been rent sharply
down to the sea, and presents at all points keen angles and edges,
slightly eaten away at the water-line by the action of the waves, but
insurmountable to all approach. The rock is also protected from assault
by dangerous reefs running far out from its base, over which frolic the
blue waters of the Mediterranean. It is only from the sea that the
visitor can perceive the four principal parts of the square structure,
which adheres minutely as to shape, height, and the piercing of its
windows to the prescribed laws of monastic architecture. On the side
towards the town the church hides the massive lines of the cloister,
whose roof is covered with large tiles to protect it from winds and
storms, and also from the fierce heat of the sun. The church, the gift
of a Spanish family, looks down upon the town and crowns it. Its bold
yet elegant façade gives a noble aspect to the little maritime city. Is
it not a picture of terrestrial sublimity? See the tiny town with
clustering roofs, rising like an amphitheatre from the picturesque port
upward to the noble Gothic frontal of the church, from which spring the
slender shafts of the bell-towers with their pointed finials: religion
dominating life: offering to man the end and the way of living,--image
of a thought altogether Spanish. Place this scene upon the bosom of the
Mediterranean beneath an ardent sky; plant it with palms whose waving
fronds mingle their green life with the sculptured leafage of the
immutable architecture; look at the white fringes of the sea as it runs
up the reef and they sparkle upon the sapphire of its wave; see the
galleries and the terraces built upon the roofs of houses, where the
inhabitants come at eve to breathe the flower-scented air as it rises
through the tree-tops from their little gardens. Below, in the harbor,
are the white sails. The serenity of night is coming on; listen to the
notes of the organ, the chant of evening orisons, the echoing bells of
the ships at sea: on all sides sound and peace,--oftenest peace.
Within the church are three naves, dark and mysterious. The fury of the
winds evidently forbade the architect to build out lateral buttresses,
such as adorn all other cathedrals, and between which little chapels are
usually constructed. Thus the strong walls which flank the lesser naves
shed no light into the building. Outside, their gray masses are shored
up from point to point by enormous beams. The great nave and its two
small lateral galleries are lighted solely by the rose-window of stained
glass, which pierces with miraculous art the wall above the great
portal, whose fortunate exposure permits a wealth of tracery and
dentellated stone-work belonging to that order of architecture
miscalled Gothic.
The greater part of the three naves is given up to the inhabitants of
the town who come to hear Mass and the Offices of the Church. In front
of the choir is a latticed screen, within which brown curtains hang in
ample folds, slightly parted in the middle to give a limited view of the
altar and the officiating priest. The screen is divided at intervals by
pillars that hold up a gallery within the choir which contains the
organ. This construction, in harmony with the rest of the building,
continues, in sculptured wood, the little columns of the lateral
galleries which are supported by the pillars of the great nave. Thus it
is impossible for the boldest curiosity, if any such should dare to
mount the narrow balustrade of these galleries, to see farther into the
choir than the octagonal stained windows which pierce the apse behind
the high altar.
At the time of the French expedition into Spain for the purpose of
re-establishing the authority of Ferdinand VII., and after the fall of
Cadiz, a French general who was sent to the island to obtain its
recognition of the royal government prolonged his stay upon it that he
might reconnoitre the convent and gain, if possible, admittance there.
The enterprise was a delicate one. But a man of passion,--a man whose
life had been, so to speak, a series of poems in action, who had lived
romances instead of writing them; above all a man of deeds,--might well
be tempted by a project apparently so impossible. To open for himself
legally the gates of a convent of women! The Pope and the Metropolitan
Archbishop would scarcely sanction it. Should he use force or artifice?
In case of failure was he not certain to lose his station and his
military future, besides missing his aim? The Duc d'Angoulême was still
in Spain; and of all the indiscretions which an officer in favor with
the commander-in-chief could commit, this alone would be punished
without pity. The general had solicited his present mission for the
purpose of following up a secret hope, albeit no hope was ever so
despairing. This last effort, however, was a matter of conscience. The
house of these Barefooted Carmelites was the only Spanish convent which
had escaped his search. While crossing from the mainland, a voyage which
took less than an hour, a strong presentiment of success had seized his
heart. Since then, although he had seen nothing of the convent but its
walls, nothing of the nuns, not so much as their brown habit; though he
had heard only the echoes of their chanted liturgies,--he had gathered
from those walls and from these chants faint indications that seemed to
justify his fragile hope. Slight as the auguries thus capriciously
awakened might be, no human passion was ever more violently roused than
the curiosity of this French general. To the heart there are no
insignificant events; it magnifies all things; it puts in the same
balance the fall of an empire and the fall of a woman's glove,--and
oftentimes the glove outweighs the empire. But let us give the facts in
their actual simplicity: after the facts will come the feelings.
An hour after the expedition had landed on the island the royal
authority was re-established. A few Spaniards who had taken refuge there
after the fall of Cadiz embarked on a vessel which the general allowed
them to charter for their voyage to London. There was thus neither
resistance nor reaction. This little insular restoration could not,
however, be accomplished without a Mass, at which both companies of the
troops were ordered to be present. Not knowing the rigor of the
Carmelite rule, the general hoped to gain in the church some information
about the nuns who were immured in the convent, one of whom might be a
being dearer to him than life, more precious even than honor. His hopes
were at first cruelly disappointed. Mass was celebrated with the utmost
pomp. In honor of this solemn occasion the curtains which habitually
hid the choir were drawn aside, and gave to view the rich ornaments, the
priceless pictures, and the shrines incrusted with jewels whose
brilliancy surpassed that of the votive offerings fastened by the
mariners of the port to the pillars of the great nave. The nuns,
however, had retired to the seclusion of the organ gallery.
Yet in spite of this check, and while the Mass of thanksgiving was being
sung, suddenly and secretly the drama widened into an interest as
profound as any that ever moved the heart of man. The Sister who played
the organ roused an enthusiasm so vivid that not one soldier present
regretted the order which had brought him to the church. The men
listened to the music with pleasure; the officers were carried away by
it. As for the general, he remained to all appearance calm and cold: the
feelings with which he heard the notes given forth by the nun are among
the small number of earthly things whose expression is withheld from
impotent human speech, but which--like death, like God, like
eternity--can be perceived only at their slender point of contact with
the heart of man. By a strange chance the music of the organ seemed to
be that of Rossini,--a composer who more than any other has carried
human passion into the art of music, and whose works by their number and
extent will some day inspire an Homeric respect. From among the scores
of this fine genius the nun seemed to have chiefly studied that of Moses
in Egypt; doubtless because the feelings of sacred music are there
carried to the highest pitch. Perhaps these two souls--one so gloriously
European, the other unknown--had met together in some intuitive
perception of the same poetic thought. This idea occurred to two
officers now present, true _dilettanti_, who no doubt keenly regretted
the Théatre Favart in their Spanish exile. At last, at the Te Deum, it
was impossible not to recognize a French soul in the character which the
music suddenly took on. The triumph of his Most Christian Majesty
evidently roused to joy the heart of that cloistered nun. Surely she was
a Frenchwoman. Presently the patriotic spirit burst forth, sparkling
like a jet of light through the antiphonals of the organ, as the Sister
recalled melodies breathing the delicacy of Parisian taste, and blended
them with vague memories of our national anthems. Spanish hands could
not have put into this graceful homage paid to victorious arms the fire
that thus betrayed the origin of the musician.
"France is everywhere!" said a soldier.
The general left the church during the Te Deum; it was impossible for
him to listen to it. The notes of the musician revealed to him a woman
loved to madness; who had buried herself so deeply in the heart of
religion, hid herself so carefully away from the sight of the world,
that up to this time she had escaped the keen search of men armed not
only with immense power, but with great sagacity and intelligence. The
hopes which had wakened in the general's heart seemed justified as he
listened to the vague echo of a tender and melancholy air, 'La Fleuve du
Tage,'--a ballad whose prelude he had often heard in Paris in the
boudoir of the woman he loved, and which this nun now used to express,
amid the joys of the conquerors, the suffering of an exiled heart.
Terrible moment! to long for the resurrection of a lost love; to find
that love--still lost; to meet it mysteriously after five years in which
passion, exasperated by the void, had been intensified by the useless
efforts made to satisfy it.
Who is there that has not, once at least in his life, upturned
everything about him, his papers and his receptacles, taxing his memory
impatiently as he seeks some precious lost object; and then felt the
ineffable pleasure of finding it after days consumed in the search,
after hoping and despairing of its recovery,--spending upon some trifle
an excitement of mind almost amounting to a passion? Well, stretch this
fury of search through five long years; put a woman, a heart, a love in
the place of the insignificant trifle; lift the passion into the highest
realms of feeling; and then picture to yourself an ardent man, a man
with the heart of lion and the front of Jove, one of those men who
command, and communicate to those about them, respectful terror,--you
will then understand the abrupt departure of the general during the Te
Deum, at the moment when the prelude of an air, once heard in Paris with
delight under gilded ceilings, vibrated through the dark naves of the
church by the sea.
He went down the hilly street which led up to the convent, without
pausing until the sonorous echoes of the organ could no longer reach his
ear. Unable to think of anything but of the love that like a volcanic
eruption rent his heart, the French general only perceived that the Te
Deum was ended when the Spanish contingent poured from the church. He
felt that his conduct and appearance were open to ridicule, and he
hastily resumed his place at the head of the cavalcade, explaining to
the alcalde and to the governor of the town that a sudden indisposition
had obliged him to come out into the air. Then it suddenly occurred to
him to use the pretext thus hastily given, as a means of prolonging his
stay on the island. Excusing himself on the score of increased illness,
he declined to preside at the banquet given by the authorities of the
island to the French officers, and took to his bed, after writing to the
major-general that a passing illness compelled him to turn over his
command to the colonel. This commonplace artifice, natural as it was,
left him free from all duties and able to seek the fulfilment of his
hopes. Like a man essentially Catholic and monarchical, he inquired the
hours of the various services, and showed the utmost interest in the
duties of religion,--a piety which in Spain excited no surprise.