CHAPTER XI.

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The Catholic World, Vol. XXV

The Catholic World.

A Monthly Magazine Of General Literature And Science

Vol. XXV.

April, 1877, To September, 1877.

New York:

The Catholic Publication Society Company,

9 Barclay Street.

1877.

CONTENTS

Alba’s Dream, 443, 621, 735

Along the Foot of the Pyrenees, 651

Among the Translators, 721

Ancient Music, Prose and Poetry of, 395

Anglicanism in 1877, 131

Catacombs, Testimony of the, 205

Christendom, The Iron Age of, 459

Cluny, The Congregation of, 691

College Education, 814

Colonization and Future Emigration, 677

Congregation of Cluny, The, 691

Copernican Theory, Evolution and the, 90

Count Frederick Leopold Stolberg, 535

Destiny of Man, Doubts of a Contemporary on the, 494

De Vere’s “Mary Tudor,” 261

Divorce and Divorce Laws, 340

Doubts of a Contemporary on the Destiny of Man, 494

Echternach, The Dancing Procession of, 826

Emigration, Colonization and Future, 677

English Rule in Ireland, 103

Eros, The Unknown, 702

European Exodus, The, 433

Evolution and the Copernican Theory, 90

France, The Political Crisis in, and its Bearings, 577

French Clergy during the late War in France, The, 247

Gothic Revival, The Story of the, 639

How Percy Bingham Caught his Trout, 77

Ireland, English Rule in, 103

Irish Revolution, The True, 551

Iron Age of Christendom, The, 459

Jane’s Vocation, 525

Job and Egypt, 764

Judaism in America, The Present State of, 365

Juliette, 667

Lavedan, The Seven Valleys of the, 748

Lepers of Tracadie, The, 191

Letters of a Young Irishwoman to her Sister, 56, 218, 377

Madonna-and-Child, The, a Test-Symbol, 804

Marshal MacMahon and the French Revolutionists, 558

“Mary Tudor,” De Vere’s, 261

Millicent, 777

Nagualism, Voodooism, etc., in the United States, 1

Nanette, 270

Natalie Narischkin, 32

Nile, Up the, 45, 236

Pan-Presbyterians, The, 843

Phil Redmond of Ballymacreedy, 591

Political Crisis in France and its Bearings, The, 577

Pope Pius the Ninth, 291

Pope’s Temporal Principality, The Beginning of the, 609

Presbyterian Infidelity in Scotland, 69

Present State of Judaism in America, The, 365

Prose and Poetry of Ancient Music, 395

Prussian Chancellor, The, 145

Pyrenees, Along the Foot of the, 651

Revolutionists, Marshal MacMahon and the French, 558

Romance of a Portmanteau, The, 403

Sannazzaro, 511

Scotland, Presbyterian Infidelity in, 69

Seven Valleys of the Lavedan, The, 748

Shakspere, from an American Point of View, 422

Six Sunny Months, 15, 175, 354, 478

Stolberg, Count Frederick Leopold, 535

Story of the Gothic Revival, The, 639

Tennyson as a Dramatist, 118

Testimony of the Catacombs, 205

The Beginning of the Pope’s Temporal Principality, 609

The Dancing Procession of Echternach, 826

The Doom of the Bell, 324

The European Exodus, 433

The Romance of a Portmanteau, 403

The True Irish Revolution, 551

The Unknown Eros, 702

Tracadie, The Lepers of, 191

Up the Nile, 45, 236

Veronica, 161

Voodooism, Nagualism, etc, in the United States, 1

POETRY.

A Thrush’s Song, 689

A Vision of the Colosseum, 318

A Waif from the Great Exhibition, 101

Ashes of the Palms, The, 142

Aubrey de Vere, To, 676

Birthday Song, A, 523

Brides of Christ, The, 420, 556, 701

Cathedral Woods, 665

Colosseum, A Vision of the, 318

Dante’s Purgatorio, 171

From the Hecuba of Euripides, 353, 550

From the Medea of Euripides, 638

Higher, 456

Italy, 745

Magdalen at the Tomb, 637

May, 246

May Carols, Two, 217

May Flowers, 189

Papal Jubilee, The, 289

Pope Pius IX., To, 363

Purgatorio, Dante’s, 171

St. Francis of Assisi, 11

The Ashes of the Palms, 142

To Aubrey de Vere, 676

Translation from Horace, 854

Wild Roses by the Sea, 338

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

A Question of Honor, 716

An Old World as seen through Young Eyes, 143

Beside the Western Sea, 718

Bessy, 720

Biographical Sketches, 717

Biographical Sketches of Distinguished Marylanders, 573

Carte Ecclésiastique des Etats-Unis de l’Amérique, 288

Childhood of the English Nation, The, 284

Christ, The Cradle of the, 281

Christopher Columbus, The Life of, 572

Classic Literature, 280

Code Poetical Reader, The, 287

Complete Office of Holy Week, The, 144

Comprehensive Geography, The, 144

Consolation of the Devout Soul, The, 286

Cradle of the Christ, The, 281

Discipline of Drink, The, 575

Dora, Bessie, Silvia, 720

Dr. Joseph Salzmann’s Leben und Wirken, 285

Ecclesiastical Law, Elements of, 860

Edmondo, 720

English Nation, Childhood of the, 284

Essays and Reviews, 429

Geometry, Elements of, 860

God the Teacher of Mankind, 720

Golden Sands, 430

Heroic Women of the Bible and the Church, 288

Hofbauer, Ven. Clement Mary, Life of, 432, 572

Known Too Late, 576

Lady of Neville Court, The, 432

Legends of the B. Sacrament, 574

Libraries, Public, in the United States of America, 855

Life of the Ven. Clement Mary Hofbauer, 432, 572

Magister Choralis, 430

Marylanders, Distinguished, Biographical Sketches of, 573

Musica Ecclesiastica, 144

Paradise of the Christian Soul, The, 576

Philip Nolan’s Friends, 719

Priesthood in the Light of the New Testament, 713

Problem of Problems, The, 282

Reply to the Hon. R. W. Thompson, 719

Report of the Board of Education of the City and County of New York, 715

Roman Legends, 718

Salzmann’s Leben und Wirken, 285

Sidonie, 574

Songs of the Land and Sea, 720

Spirit Invocations, 576

Summa Summæ, 288

The Catholic Keepsake, 720

The Little Pearls, 718

The Pearl among the Virtues, 720

The Story of Felice, 720

The Wonders of Prayer, 718

Why are We Roman Catholics? 288

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXV., No. 145.—APRIL, 1877.

NAGUALISM, VOODOOISM, AND OTHER FORMS OF CRYPTO-PAGANISM IN THE UNITED

STATES.

When the Almighty introduced the children of Israel into the Promised

Land he enjoined the utter extirpation of the heathen races, and the

destruction of all belonging to them. But the tribes grew weary of war;

they spared, and their subsequent history shows us the result. The

Chanaanites became in time the conquerors and made the Hebrews their

subjects politically and in religion. The paganism learned on the banks

of the Nile had become but a faint reminiscence in the minds of the

descendants of those who marched out under Moses and Aaron; but the

worship of Baal and of Moloch and of Astaroth overran the land. A long

series of disasters ending with the overthrow of their national

existence, and a seventy years’ captivity, were required to purge the

Hebrew mind of the poison imbibed from the heathen remnant. Then all the

power of the Alexandrian sovereigns failed to compel them to worship the

gods of Greece. _Omnes dii gentium dæmonia_ is a statement, clear,

plain, and definite, that we Catholics cannot refuse to accept. Modern

indifferentism may regard all the pagan worships as expressions of

truth, and the worship of their deities as something merely symbolical

of the operations of nature, not the actual rendering of divine honors.

But to us there can be no such theory. The worship was real and the

objects were demons, blinding and misleading men through their passions

and ignorance. The very vitality of paganism in regaining lost ground,

and in rising against the truth, shows its satanic character.

The experience of the Jewish people is reproduced elsewhere. When

Christianity, beginning the conquest of Europe with Greece and Italy,

closed its victorious career by reducing to the cross the Scandinavians

and the German tribes of Prussia, later even than the conversion of the

Tartaric Russians, there was left in all lands a pagan element, on which

the arch-enemy based his new schemes of revolt and war upon the truth.

We of the Gentiles, whether from the sunny south or the colder north,

bear to this day, in our terms for the divisions of the week and year,

the names of the deities whom our heathen ancestors worshipped—the

demons who blinded them to the truth. The Italian, Frenchman, and

Spaniard thus keep alive the memory of Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Venus,

and Saturn; the German and Scandinavian tribes of Tuisco, Woden, Thor,

Freya, and Sator. Janus opens the year, followed by Februata, Juno, and

Mars; Maia claims a month we dedicate to Mary, and which the Irish in

his own language still calls the Fire of Baal—Baal-tinne.

Earth and time even seem not enough; we go, so to speak, to the very

footstool of God, and name the glorious orbs that move in celestial

harmony through the realms of space, from the very demons who for ages

received from men the honors due to God—from Jupiter and Saturn, Venus

and Mars, Juno and Ceres, Castor and Pollux, and the whole array of gods

and demi-gods.

And it is a strange fact that the only attempt made to do away with

these pagan relics was that of the infidel and bloodthirsty

Revolutionists of France, pagan in all but this.

We bear, as it were, badges of our heathen origin—tokens, perhaps, of

the general apostasy which, as some interpreters hold, will one day

behold the Gentile nations renounce Christianity, when the number of the

elect is to be completed from the remnant of the Jews.

In the heresies, schisms, and revolts against the church the pagan

element appears as an uprising, an attempt to retrieve a defeat by

causing an overthrow of the victorious church even where a restoration

of the old demonic gods seems in itself hopeless. The German tribes and

those of Scandinavia, receiving the faith later than the Latin and

Celtic races, revolted from the church while the remembrance of pagan

rites and license was still fresh. The so-called Reformation was

essentially gross and sensual, and none the less so because the

Christian influence made the absolute rejection of God for a time

impossible, and compelled it to borrow tone, and expression, and the

outer garb of Christianity. Vice, in its open and undisguised form,

would have shocked communities that had tasted of Christian truth. The

arch-enemy was subtle enough to meet the wants of the case, and to

present what would appear to the sixteenth century as true, as shrewdly

as he presented the grosser forms to earlier minds gross enough to

accept them. But, it may be said, it is going too far to make all

heresies diabolical; yet the church so speaks. If, in the prayer for the

Jews on Good Friday, it asks that God would remove the veil from their

hearts, that light might shine in upon the darkness, we cannot but

observe that when the petitions arise for those misled by heresy, the

church speaks of them as souls deceived by the fraud of the devil. The

New Testament is full of allusions to this war of the arch-enemy: he is

held up as one who will come to some as a roaring lion, terrifying and

alarming; while to others he comes as an angel of light, plausible and

Heaven-sent, as it were, raising up false teachers whose reasonings

would, were that possible, deceive even the elect. And St. Paul tells us

that our struggle is not with flesh and blood—not with the men who are

but instruments—but with the spirits of darkness who are the prime

movers.

The war waged took different forms. In the north sensualism and the

grosser forms of self-indulgence were the revolt against the spirit of

mortification, of self-conquest and control. It required and had no

aid from the imagination, art, poetry, music. But at the south the old

pagan classics, imbued with the religion of Greece and Rome, became

the literature of the new Christian world and exercised a

steadily-increasing pagan influence. In the French Revolution, and in

the modern less bloody but as deadly Masonic war, we see the old pagan

ideas and thoughts come as if spontaneously to the surface. From the

reverence for all connected with the old pagan worship down to pagan

cremation we see the revival, less gross, less sensual than in the

north, idealized by the conception of beauty in form and color, with

all the allurement of symmetry to win the eye, the ear, the

imagination. That ancient art and the ancient classics have been a

potent instrument in weakening the Christian spirit, and in paganizing

the learned and the young whom they train, is admitted, and attempts

are made to counteract the influence.

Our country was settled by communities more or less imbued with all the

Old-World paganisms, some of which shot out into new and strange forms,

generally of the northern type, hiding sensualism under a cloak of

religion, as in the Oneida community and the Mormons, the latter going

directly into the ancient pagan channel in their anthropomorphic

conception of God.

But besides this pagan element—the more insidious because scarcely

suspected by most, and which many even now would treat as absolutely

null for evil—the country was, in its aboriginal inhabitants, utterly

pagan; and within our limits the remnant of those nations and tribes

which now represent the original occupants are to a very great extent as

pagan as they were three centuries ago. Even where tribes have been

converted to Christianity, and been for a long series of years under

Christian teachers, a pagan element often remains, nurtured in secret,

and heathen rites are practised with the utmost fidelity by many who

keep up the semblance of being faithful worshippers of the true God.

This crypto-paganism is termed by the Spanish writers in Mexico

nagualism, and, from its secret character, formed one of the greatest

afflictions of the missionaries, eating out the very heart of the

apparently flourishing tree planted by the toil and watered by the blood

of the earlier heralds of the Gospel.

Another pagan element came with the negro slaves—barbarous men torn from

Africa, without culture, imbued with the most degrading superstitions of

fetichism, and believers in the power of intercourse with the evil

spirits whom they dreaded and invoked. In the utter disregard of their

moral welfare which prevailed in the English colonies, no attempt was

made in colonial days to eradicate their pagan ideas and to instil

Christian principles; on the contrary, efforts were actually made to

prevent their instruction and baptism, from an idea that Christianity

was incompatible with a condition of slavery.

In time the negro slaves and their descendants imitated externally the

religious manner of their white masters, but their old fetichism was

maintained, with the invocation of evil spirits and attempted

intercourse with them. The more Christianity in any form penetrated

among these people, the more this pagan element assumed a secret

character, until it became, as it is in our day in the West Indies and

the South, under the name of vaudoux or voodoo worship, the secret pagan

religion of the negro and mixed races.

Another pagan element—which cannot be called cryptic, because it meets

the full meridian blaze of day, as though it were a thing entitled to

existence and protection without limit or check—is the Buddhic worship

of the Chinese, with perhaps the less debasing ancient paganism of that

nation. Temples arise and pagan worship is carried on before hundreds of

altars, chiefly on the Pacific slope. This, with the degraded morals of

the heathenism it represents, forms a question difficult to solve, and

exciting grave attention not only in California, but in other parts of

the country.

The facility with which Mormonism has gained hundreds of thousands of

votaries to its monstrous doctrines, and the difficulty under our system

of laws of counteracting its influence, leaving its suppression simply

to the general condemnation it receives from the public opinion of the

country, convince all thinking men that it is a great and serious danger

to the well-being of our country in the future. It lies between the

unchecked, uncensured paganism of the Chinese in California and the

heathenism of the wild Indian tribes, the nagualism of the New Mexican

Pueblos, and, still further east, the voodooism of the negro. Who can

foresee the fearful creation of evil that the Prince of Darkness may

form out of this material ready to his hand? Buddhism overran nations of

various origin, civilization, and mode of life—the lettered Chinese, the

nobler Japanese, the wild Tartar; it has adaptability, as seen in its

assuming external Christian dress and ideas, taken from early envoys of

the faith. Mormonism shows a vitality and a power of extension that none

who remember its origin could, at the time it arose, have believed

within the limits of possibility. The voodoo mysteries permeate through

a population numbered by millions. If nagualism and Indian paganism

exist only among tribes rapidly hurrying to extinction, these tribes

have shown in some cases recuperative power, and, fostered by the

stronger heathen elements, may revive sufficiently to be a source of

mischief. It may be said that, except in the case of the Mormons, this

element is confined to inferior races—the Mongolian, negro, and

Indian—and cannot affect the mass of the American people; but this is

really not the fact, as in almost every case whites living near the

inferior races do actually imbibe some of these pagan superstitions and

become believers in them and in their power, while the spread of the

so-called spiritualism through all classes in this country shows at once

a vehicle for the propagation of any form of diabolism that may rise up

with dazzling powers of attraction.

The influence of crypto-paganism on the whites can be seen in our

history. The New England settlers made comparatively short work of the

native tribes, who were in their eyes Chanaanites not to be spared.

But though they slaughtered the men, women were saved, and not always

from motives that will stand too close a scrutiny. Indian women became

slaves in the houses of the New England colonists. If there was any

outward conformity to Christian usage, most of them remained at heart

as heathen as ever. The Indians of almost every known tribe avowedly

worshipped the Spirit of Evil. North and South missionaries found the

natives acknowledge and justify this practice. As a rule they admitted

a Spirit of Good, but, as they argued, being inherently good, he could

do only good to them, and need not be propitiated; whereas the Spirit

of Evil continually sought to injure men, and must necessarily be

propitiated to ward off the intended scourge. This adoration of the

Evil One, and the attempt to propitiate him, win his favor, and do his

will, the Indian slaves bore with them in their bondage. What New

England witchcraft really was—diabolic, delusion, or imposture—has

never been settled. No sound Catholic divine versed in mystic theology

has ever, to our knowledge, marshalled and sifted the facts, and the

evidence cited to support them, in order to come to any reasonable

theory in the matter. New England of the seventeenth century firmly

believed it diabolical; New England of the nineteenth century as

dogmatically decides that it was delusion or imposture; but,

unfortunately, neither seventeenth-century nor nineteenth-century New

Englandism can be deemed a very safe guide, and each is condemned by

the other and admits its liability to err, although both had the same

energy for forcing their opinions for the time being on all mankind.

But, whatever the real character of New England witchcraft was, one

thing is certain: Indian crypto-paganism was at the root of it. Tituba,

the Indian servant of Samuel Parris, the minister of Salem, practised

wild incantations and imbued the daughter and niece of her master with

her whole system of diabolism. The strange actions of the children

excited alarm. Tituba was arraigned as a witch and confessed her

incantations; but the devil protects his own. Witchcraft trials began,

and Tituba and her fellow Indian slaves, who must have quaked for the

moment, saw themselves, not punished, but used as witnesses, until more

than a hundred women were apprehended and most of them committed to

prison. It did not end there. The gallows was to play its part. Nineteen

were hanged, and one Giles Corey was pressed to death. If Tituba invoked

her demon to avenge his fallen votaries in her tribe, she was gratified

by beholding the victorious whites murder each other at her instance.

Neither Tituba nor any other of the Indians, though they avowed their

intercourse with the fallen spirits, was tried or condemned for

witchcraft. What took place in the Parris household took place in

hundreds of others where Indian slaves were kept, as in our time in the

South. Thousands of children have there been imbued by their negro

nurses with the pagan obeah and voodoo superstitions, as doubtless on

the Pacific slope many a mother is horrified to find her child’s mind

filled with the grossest heathenism by the Chinese servant, and fondly

hopes she has disabused her little one, when, in reality, the faith and

the terror then implanted in the child’s susceptible mind will last

through life, burned into the very soul by the vivid impression

produced.

A Catholic may say that the grace of baptism will protect many from this

evil; but, alas! to how many thousands of families in this land is

baptism a stranger! In them there is nothing to check the insidious

progress of evil.

The Huron nation was converted to Christianity by the early Catholic

missionaries, and the Iroquois were induced by them to abandon the

worship of their evil spirit Tharonhyawagon, or Agreskoue, whose name

even seems to be unknown to the present so-called pagan bands, who

worship the God of the Christians, but with strange heathenish rites.

The vices prevalent among the Hurons of Ohio, nominal Catholics in the

last century, show that secret worship of evil spirits still prevailed.

All know how the medicine-men have maintained their ground among the

Chippewas, Ottawas, and other Algonquin tribes on the borders of the

great lakes, although Catholic missionaries began their labors among

them two centuries ago. Whenever for a time Catholicity has seemed to

gain a tribe, any interruption of the mission for a brief period seems

to revive the old diabolism. There are medicine-men now with votaries as

earnest as any whom Dablon, Marquette, and Allouez tried to convert in

the seventeenth century. But data are wanting for a full consideration

of the subject as to these and other northern tribes.

Of the nagualism in the Texas tribes after their conversion by the

Franciscan missionaries we have evidence in the life of Father Margil, a

holy and illustrious laborer in that field. The tribes among whom he and

his compeers labored have vanished, but the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico

still remain. The succession of missionaries became irregular; no bishop

visited those parts to confirm the converts; the revolutions following

that which separated Mexico from Spain almost utterly destroyed the

Indian missions of New Mexico. Then the nagualism which had been

evidently maintained from the first by a few adepts and in great secrecy

became bolder; and these tribes, whose conversion dates back nearly

three centuries, revived the old paganism of their ancestry, mingled

with dreams of Montezuma’s future coming, taught them by the Mexican

Indians who accompanied the first Spanish settlers.

Father Margil once asked some Indians: “How is it that you are so

heathenish after having been Christians so long?” The answer was: “What

would you do, father, if enemies of your faith entered your land? Would

you not take all your books and vestments and signs of religion, and

retire to the most secret caves and mountains? This is just what our

priests, and prophets, and sooth-sayers, and nagualists have done to

this time and are still doing.” Experience showed, too, that this

worship of the evil spirit assumed the form of various sects, some

imitating the Catholic Church in having bishops, priests, and

sacraments, which they secretly administered to consecrate their victims

to Satan before they received the real ones from the hands of the

missionaries.

All those who have studied at all the pueblos of New Mexico describe to

some extent the nagual rites, some of which are indeed hidden under the

veil of secrecy in their estufas, but others are more open and avowed.

Colonel Meline, after noting the execution of two men accused of

witchcraft and sacrificing children, says of the Pueblos generally “that

they are more than suspected of clinging to and practising many of their

ancient heathen rites. The estufa is frequently spoken of as their

heathen temple.”[1]

Footnote 1:

Meline, _Two Thousand Miles on Horseback_, pp. 225-226.

A report addressed to the Cortes in Spain by Don Pedro Bautista Pino in

1812 says: “All the pueblos have their estufas—so the natives call

subterranean rooms with only a single door, where they assemble to

perform their dances, to celebrate feasts, and hold meetings; these are

impenetrable temples where they gather to discuss mysteriously their

good or evil fortunes, and the doors are always closed on the Spaniards.

“All these pueblos, in spite of the sway which religion has had over

them, cannot forget a part of the beliefs which have been transmitted to

them, and which they are careful to transmit to their descendants. Hence

come the adoration they render the sun and moon, and other heavenly

bodies, the respect they entertain for fire, etc.”[2]

Footnote 2:

_Noticias._, pp. 15, 16.

“The Pueblo chiefs seem to be at the same time priests; they perform

various simple rites by which the power of the sun and of Montezuma is

recognized, as well as the power (according to some accounts) of the

Great Snake, to whom, by order of Montezuma, they are to look for life.

They also officiate in certain ceremonies with which they pray for rain.

There are painted representations of the Great Snake, together with that

of a misshapen, red-haired man declared to stand for Montezuma. Of this

last there was also in the year 1845, in the pueblo of Laguna, a rude

effigy or idol, intended, apparently, to represent only the head of the

deity.”[3]

Footnote 3:

Bancroft, _Native Races_, iii. 173, 174.

Others portray their setting up of idols or mementos of their national

deities, and surrounding them with circles of stones, repairing to the

spot regularly to pray.

The Pueblos thus show, after nearly three centuries of Catholic

instruction, almost ineradicable elements of heathenism.

Of the real interior life of other tribes we know comparatively little:

but by the example of so-called prophets who arise from time to time in

one part or another, giving new life to the old heathenism, borrowing

some idea from Christianity, and using their new creed as a means to

excite a great national feeling, we see clearly that in the Indian mind

the old worship, though dormant and concealed, has still a power and

mastery.

To this deep-rooted feeling the Mormons have appealed, and succeeded in

drawing large numbers within the circle of their influence. Almost all

the Indian wars are stimulated by some prophet promising victory and the

triumph of the old Indian beliefs.

The Cherokees have embraced many usages of civilization, and the

Choctaws approach them. The Chickasaws, the other great tribe in Indian

Territory, retain more of their old manners. In all these tribes

Protestantism has gained a hearing and has a few church members; but

there are strong pagan parties, and even among the Christian part there

is undoubtedly a strong old heathen element beneath an outward

conformity to Christianity. It was strongly urged on Congress a few

years since to erect this tract into a recognized territory of Oklahoma,

with a government like that of other Territories, preparatory to its

admission as a State. The outbursts of savage fury between factions in

the tribes, however, made men hesitate to give autonomy to them.

Investigation will, we think, show that crypto-paganism largely controls

this mass of native Indians, and is the great obstacle to their

improvement. It is, however, confined to themselves, and we do not find

that even in New Mexico the whites of Spanish origin have, during their

long residence near the pueblos, adopted to any extent the heathenish

usages of those tribes. The isolation of the nations in Indian Territory

has also prevented any great external influence. Thus this Indian

crypto-paganism, though wide-spread and unbroken, seems doomed, unless

taken in hand by some master-spirit.

The voodoo worship of the negroes shows greater vitality and

diffusiveness. The slaves taken in early times to St. Domingo came from

all parts of Africa, some from the fiercest tribes addicted to human

sacrifices and cannibalism. They brought over their demonic worship, and

by their force of character propagated it among the negroes generally.

It became the great religion of the slaves, was secretly practised, and

exercised a very powerful influence. As a secret society, with terrible

forms of initiation and bloody rites, it became a power in Hayti, and

has caused more than one revolution. Cases of the offering up of infants

in sacrifice, and devouring the victims, were exposed a few years since,

and numbers were arrested. Some were put to death, but the power of the

organization was unbroken, and Soulouque, if we are not mistaken, was

said to have owed his power to the voudoux.

St. Domingo was part French and part Spanish, and in time voodooism

spread from the French portion of the island, where it seems to have

originated, to the Spanish division, and thence to Cuba.

In this latter island it exists to this day, and has found votaries

among the whites. A recent French traveller—Piron—describes a fearful

scene which he witnessed in the house of a lady whom he never would have

suspected of any connection with so monstrous a sect. A naked white girl

acted as a voodoo priestess, wrought up to frenzy by dances and

incantations that followed the sacrifice of a white and a black hen. A

serpent, trained to its part, and acted on by the music, coiled round

the limbs of the girl, its motions studied by the votaries dancing

around or standing to watch its contortions. The spectator fled at last

in horror when the poor girl fell writhing in an epileptic fit.[4]

Footnote 4:

Piron, _L’Ile de Cuba_, pp. 48-52.

While France held St. Domingo and Louisiana the intercourse between the

two colonies was constant, and voodooism took root on the banks of the

Mississippi soon after its settlement. The early historian of Louisiana,

Le Page du Pratz, says: “The negroes are very superstitious and attached

to their prejudices and to charms which they call grisgris. These should

not be taken from them or spoken about; for they would think themselves

ruined, were they deprived of them. The old negro slaves soon disabuse

them.”[5] These old negroes were scarcely, it will be confessed,

apostles to convert idolaters. In fact, their influence extended only to

inducing the new-comers to practise their rites and use the symbols in

secrecy.

Footnote 5:

_Hist. de la Louisiane_, i. p. 335.

Le Page du Pratz himself, in defeating a negro plot to massacre the

colonists at New Orleans as the Indians had done at Natchez, found that

they attributed their defeat to his being a devil—that is, possessing

one more powerful than their own. The voodoo rites have been kept up in

Louisiana from the commencement, and the power exercised by the priests

and priestesses of this horrible creed is very great. Working in secret,

with all the terrors of mystery and threats of bodily harm, it is just

suited to the negro mind, and has spread over much of the South. As in

Cuba and St. Domingo, the white children in many cases learn of it from

their negro nurses, and the weak, as they grow up, never shake off its

hold on their imagination. Human sacrifices are certainly offered in

their infamous rites, and the escape of an old negro doomed to the

sacrificial altar drew down upon the voodoos the police of New Orleans

only a few years ago.

The Abbé Domenech[6]—whom we should hesitate to cite, were not his

accounts here in conformity with numerous others—represents voodooism as

having not only spread through Texas, but into Mexico where, in a

depraved border community, its horrid rites and secret poisonings are

carried on. His details as to the mode of worship in New Orleans—the

nudity, the use of serpents, the dances—correspond with the accounts

given from Cuba. Reports from Mobile attest its existence there with

similar features.

Footnote 6:

_Missionary Adventures in Texas and Mexico._

Where voodooism prevails it has not only its adepts and votaries, but a

large class who, full of terror, buy at exorbitant prices from voodoo

priests charms against its spells.

The late war has given the negroes opportunities for education and a

future, but the new prosperity has not broken the power of voodooism. Of

a thing kept secret and hidden, which many will deny and more be ashamed

of, it is not easy to get precise data or details. Yet from time to time

revelations are made attesting its vitality. A negro member of the

Louisiana Legislature, and a minister in one of the Protestant

denominations, was reported within a few years as undergoing certain

rites to free himself from the spell of a voodoo priestess. We may

therefore easily infer that the negroes, being not only self-governing,

but governing the whites in many parts by force of numbers, are not

likely to be influenced so much by whites as by the crafty and aspiring

among themselves. They will concentrate, and in their concentration this

voodoo power cannot but increase and all vestiges of Christianity

disappear. The field upon which it can work—the vast colored population

of the South—is ready for it. Some may think the whole matter a shallow

imposture that will soon die out before the effulgence of newspapers;

but it really shows no signs of decline, and, if no cases have been

unearthed which show such frightful enormities as those in Hayti, it is

certainly attended with ceremonies which, for their very indecency and

pampering of the worst vices, should cause it to be rooted out, even by

those who would regard the direct worship of the devil as something with

which the state cannot interfere.

Open the map of the United States, and see how a band of country from

the Atlantic to the Pacific is thus permeated by heathenism. In the

Southern States the voodoo worship; New Mexico and Indian Territory with

nagualism; Utah with Mormonism; California with Buddhism. Throughout

this tract the church planted there from one to three centuries is still

weak, and, except in California, is not gaining ground with any

rapidity. Everywhere Catholic influence is less potent than others. The

very climate, enervating and disposing to ease and indulgence, seems to

lend power to systems that gratify the passions which the church teaches

her children to mortify and control.

It looks as though the Prince of Evil were seeking to form a kingdom for

himself, combining all the elements for his evil spirits to carry on the

war of conquest. St. Jude represents Satan as endeavoring to secure the

body of Moses, doubtless to lead the Jews into idolatry and make them

worship him. If he tried to induce even our Lord to fall down and

worship him, we cannot wonder that he should try to induce weak men to

do so. St. Paul constantly represents to us our struggle in life as a

war against the evil spirits. St. Ignatius, in the “Exercise of the Two

Standards,” pictures Satan as arrayed against our Lord with all his

hosts. The battle seems to take actual form, and we should be prepared

for it. In this battle we have powerful auxiliaries placed at our

command, in the persons of the angelic powers, and though the church,

through her whole liturgy and offices, reminds us of their ministry and

invokes their aid,[7] we seem to be forgetful of their existence, and go

into the fight unaided by forces at our command—forces never defeated,

and ready to meet our call. What wonder that we are often worsted? Our

books of devotion give a single prayer to our guardian angel. Few think

beyond this. The angel guardians of the country, of our city, of our

church, our home, of our family, of those committed to our charge, are

all fighting for us, earnestly if we seek their aid. St. Michael, the

guardian angel of the Jewish nation, defeated Satan’s attempt to use the

body of Moses for his wicked designs. So in our day the greater

manifestation of diabolical agencies should lead us to ask God to send

his angels to our aid. The parents, in training and protecting from evil

the children given to them, have mighty coadjutors in the angels of

these very children, the teacher in those of his scholars, the pastor in

those of his flock. There may be saints to whom we have a special

devotion; but in the angels we have powerful spirits directly deputed by

God to aid us, and whose duty it is, as it were, to combat by our side

against the enemies of salvation.

Footnote 7:

Thus in the Mass she asks that the offerings be carried on high by the

angels; in the Asperges, and Complin she begs God to send down his

angels to cherish, guard, and protect all within the building; in the

Itinerary she calls St. Raphael especially to protect all who travel;

in the baptismal service she asks God to send an angel to guard the

catechumen and lead him to the grace of baptism; in Extreme Unction,

to give all dwelling, in the house a good angel guardian; the

Commendation of the Departing Soul is a constant appeal to the holy

angels; and the prayer after death asks that the departed soul may be

received by the holy angels and brought to Paradise, her real country.

She even asks that an angel be deputed to guard the grave.

But we are not giving a devotional treatise: or attempting to propose

any new form. Our country is dear to us, and, although it were too

sanguine to hope that in the days of any now living the true faith will

reach such a point that its influence will be marked on the public mind

and heart, we cannot be insensible to the apparently formidable

gathering of heathen elements in a section of country where the very

climate seems to lend them new force in building up a great empire of

paganism.

A new impulse has been given to our Indian missions, which, owing,

doubtless, to causes easy of explanation, have never received from the

Catholic body at large in the United States the moral and temporal aid

they so richly deserved. In fact, the missionaries labored on, almost

ignored and forgotten, so that an attempt was made through the

instrumentality of the federal government to crush them out altogether.

This has roused Catholics to an interest in them, and this interest

should be kept up. By prayer, by alms, by direct aid, we must help the

missionaries and their coadjutors, the devoted religious women in the

missions, to fight the good fight, and root out, so far as lies in us,

the paganism of the Indian tribes, where still avowed or cloaked under

an external show of Christianity.

On another paganism, that of the Chinese, and on that of the Mormons, we

cannot apparently act yet directly, but we can meet them by prayer, and

in the regions infected Catholics should exercise the utmost vigilance

that this pagan influence should never enter their households, lest

their children, if not themselves, may at last imitate the wisest of

kings, not in his wisdom, but in his idolatry.

The great and festering sore of voodooism afflicting the negroes calls

for all our zeal, as Catholics, to help the bishops and clergy in the

South, and the English society which has entered this field, by prayer,

by material aid, by earnest and sustained efforts to preserve the purity

of faith among colored Catholics. The Church in the Southern States,

crippled by the disasters of the late war, is entirely unable to cope

single-handed with the new duty imposed upon it by the altered condition

of affairs. She appeals to us, and as Catholics we cannot remain deaf to

her call.

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI.

O love! you lay the volume by

That held you like a holy chime—

_Life of St. Francis_—with a sigh

Which says: “That was a pleasant time

In old Perugia’s mountain-town

On the Umbrian valley looking down—

Flushed like an Eden in sublime

Environment of mountains vast;

And do not you, as I, recall

What, morn and even, and first and last,

Attracted most of all?

“The peaks of Apennine we knew

By heart—the many-citied land

Where-through the infant Tiber drew

A thousand streams in silver band,

Filled with the murmur of the pines

That told the olives and the vines

They heard the sea on either hand.

But, kindled on its lofty cape,

A light-tower to that inland coast

O’er waves of greenwood, corn, and grape,

What object charmed us most?

“Assisi seated in the sun!

All round from Monte Sole’s height

The insistent fascination

Of its white walls enthralled our sight.

And moon and starlight on its slope

Showed but a dimmer heliotrope.

We watched it many a mellow night:

Once when a warrior comet came,

And flashed, in high heaven opposite,

A sheathless sword of pallid flame.

Drawn from out the infinite.

“To sweet St. Francis’ native town,

Alas! we made no pilgrimage;

Nor to St. Mary’s, lower down,

His Portiuncula hermitage.

We knew but by its star-like shine

The splendors of Assisi’s shrine,

In mystic triple stage on stage.

It only asked one summer’s day—

How strange it seems in you and me!—

That narrow vale of Umbria

Made severance like the sea.”

O gentle wife! I cannot tell

To wistful eyes of retrospect

What _dolce far niente’s_ spell,

In that midsummer, caused neglect;

What imp, procrastination hight,

Seduced us when we meant no slight.

In life, all paradox and defect,

Easy is difficult—the friend

Next door to visit—duties small,

To be done any day, that end

In not being done at all.

“How can this trite philosophy

Console me in my great regret?”

Nay, love, look not so tearfully,

And we will find some comfort yet.

What figure, think you, in those streets

The gentle, loving youth repeats,

Singing his gay French canzonet?

Doth either temple’s sumptuous pride

Suit stone and crust for bed and board,

And bridegroom joyful in his bride—

The poverty of our Lord?

O brown serge holier than the cope!

Was mystery veiled in long-sleeved gown?

And awful was his girdle-rope?

Were skirts that swept his ankles brown?

Bore he, in hands and feet and side,

The five wounds of the Crucified?

Did high God send his seraph down,

On the lone mount, to imprint such sign?

His brethren wondered, overawed;

Yet not even this made more divine

That sweet-souled man of God!

O happy swallows! circling skim

And twitter o’er the gray church-towers.

He called you sisters; ye with him

Chirped sweetly when he sang the Hours.

And ye, his brothers innocent,

With whom he talked where’er he went,

Play, lamb and leveret, in the flowers!

Wise foolishness and melting ruth—

That move deep chords, O love! in you—

Born of child-instincts, or a truth

He and the angels knew!

“O Sun, my brother above all!

Stars, Sister Moon, in praise accord.

Chaste, humble, useful, precious, full,

O Sister Water, freely poured!

Robust and jocund, strong and bright,

O Brother Fire! illume the night.

Live tongues of beauty, praise the Lord!

O Brother Wind! thy wonders weave

In clouds and the blue sky above,

Wherefrom all creatures life receive,

And weave them all of love.

“Confess the Lord, O Mother Earth!

Through whom so beautiful thou art.

To herb, fruit, flower, he giveth birth

And color from Love’s eyes and heart.

Serve God!” he sang. His sermons good,

Dear to shy creatures of the wood,

Could even to bole and branch impart

Their glowing sense: a conscious soul

Kin to his own in all things moved.

His monument is grand—the whole

Creation that he loved.

O Life, that sought to imitate

The one pure type, its perfect Chief,

By its own purity separate

As is the dew-drop on a leaf,

Which yet doth from its luminous veil

A glory to the flower exhale!

Close sympathy with no touch of grief!

Let fair Assisi on its slope,

An unremote yet reachless star,

Lend to our hearts another trope,

So near and yet so far.

O Poet, who in faltering rhyme

First wove the Tuscan into song!

O poem and miracle sublime,

Thyself, in Dante sweet and strong!

To his fourth circle of Paradise,

To the King-splendor of the skies,

Dost thou, the elder seer, belong.

Thee “Sister Death” hath glorified;

And what an image we have won:

Through kindled mists of mountain-side,

Assisi in the sun!

SIX SUNNY MONTHS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.

CHAPTER XI.

A MORNING WITH ST. PETER.

As the day approached for their visit to the crypt of St. Peter, Mr.

Vane absented himself very much from the house, and the last day was

spent entirely away, from early in the morning till late in the evening.

They understood that he was to make his First Communion with them, but

asked no questions, leaving him entirely free, and he gave no

explanation. The Signora and the two daughters made a Triduum for him in

the mornings; and so deeply did they feel the event for him that they

looked forward to their own Communion almost as if it were to be their

first, and lived as though in retreat for two or three days.

“I feel,” Bianca said, “as if I had been having clandestine interviews

with some one outside the house, and that now papa were going to invite

him home, and make a feast in his honor. Dear papa! how very good he is;

how much better than his daughters!”

She would have been quite shocked and alarmed had any one told her that

she entertained such a sentiment, but there was, in fact, in her heart

an undercurrent of pride in her father’s piety, and a feeling that the

Lord would certainly be particularly pleased with him.

At length the day dawned, the sweet bells of Santa Maria Maggiore, the

slipshod bells of Sant’ Antonino, all the bells in hearing, ringing

their three, four, five, and one out of the white silence of the aurora.

The Signora smiled to hear, through the open doors, Isabel start awake

at the sound, and exclaim in her clear voice: “The angel of the Lord

declared unto Mary.”

“I really must not have such a preference for Bianca,” she said to

herself, “especially now when Bianca has a lover. Isabel is very honest

and earnest.”

The Alba turned to a rosy silver, the silver deepened to gold, the north

and west were Tyrian purple, and the sun was on the eastern horizon,

painting the long lines of the aqueducts, and the billows of the

Campagna, and the towers, high roofs, and cupolas of the city with a

fiery pencil. A flock of goats pattered by in the street, to be milked

at the doors; hand-carts piled with fruit were dragged slowly in from

some garden near the walls; three men walked slowly past, in single

file, with large baskets on their heads piled with rich flowers. The

perfume of them came up to the window as the Signora leaned out. A

wine-cart came slowly down from the Esquiline piazza, laden high with

small barrels and half and quarter barrels, brought in by night to the

Roman shops from cool grottoes in the Castelli Romani, set here or there

on the beautiful mountains that were now a velvety blue under the

eastern sky. At the back of this cart was perched high the little white

dog, with his nose on his paws, and his eyes half shut, but all ready to

start up with a sharp bark if any one but looked hard at his precious

load. In front, under the side awning, slept the driver. The horse

dreamed along through the morning, and the little bunch of bells slung

to the cart jingled softly as they went.

“It is certainly earth, but a most beautiful earth,” the Signora

thought, sighing with content, as she went out to fasten the girls’

veils on for them.

“There is no need of putting on gloves,” she said, seeing Isabel drawing

hers on. “Didn’t you know, child, that one should not wear gloves when

going to Communion?”

“Live and learn,” said Isabel, and took her gloves off again. “I have

had a doubt on the subject, but I never knew.”

“Another little item you may not know,” the Signora said. “The

_canonico_ being a bishop, you have to kiss his ring before receiving.

He will himself touch it to your lips after he has taken the Host in his

finger and thumb to give you. When I first came here, I was embarrassed

by many of these customs, which everybody here takes for granted, you

know.”

Nothing could be pleasanter than Mr. Vane’s manner that morning—serious

and quiet, but less grave, even, than usual. Seeing Isabel’s eyes fixed

anxiously on him while the Signora spoke, he smiled and said: “I am glad

your education is not quite finished, my dear. I am still more ignorant,

and you must all teach me. I wish, Signora, that you would be so good as

to stay by me this morning, so that, if I should be in doubt, I may look

at you. I think you would be more correct and prompt than the children

here.”

“Certainly,” she said, “I will be near you.”

The porter had sprinkled and swept the stairs just before they went

down, and the place was shaded, fresh, and cool. Carlin was whistling to

his baby while his wife prepared breakfast—a whistling as soft and clear

as the song of a bobolink. The other birds adopted him, and answered him

back from the garden, a little surprised, it may be, at the length and

smoothness of his carol. The air was so richly scented with

orange-flowers that one might almost have thought worth while to bottle

it, and there was a rustling sound, exquisitely cool and pervading, of

falling water. In a shady corner near the door of the porter’s room was

a tiny brazier with a handful of glowing coals in it, and over this

Augusto was making his early cup of coffee. Out doors everything shone

with a golden color—the light, the houses, the streets—and in that frame

the sky was set like a gem, so blue that it could be compared to

nothing, and nothing could approach it.

They did not look about as they drove slowly through the city, but,

leaning back silent, had a mingled sense of Rome and heaven. It was

impossible for any of them to imagine anything more perfect, or to ask

for any addition to their happiness. Earth and heaven had united to

bless them, and every gift of earth worth the taking was theirs. To have

been sovereigns would have oppressed them; to have had millions at their

disposal would have been a care and annoyance. They had enough, and

their cup was running over.

The narrow streets were beginning to stir as they passed, and some were

dim, and all were in shade. Not a ray of sunshine touched them, except

in the piazzas, till they reached the bridge of Sant’ Angelo. Then all

was light, for the sun shot straight on through the Borgo, and all the

piazza of St. Peter’s was in a blaze. They were almost faint with the

heat as they walked up the ascent; but in a few minutes they were inside

the sacred door, where, before entering, summer and winter meet to give

the kiss of peace on the threshold, and the one quenches her fiery

arrows, and the other warms his frosty breath.

Not a person was in sight as they went in, but they heard, faintly and

far away, the mingled voices of the choir coming and going. The circle

of ever-burning lamps twinkled like a constellation before them, and

invited their steps. Half way up they paused before the chapel of the

Blessed Sacrament, which is an exception to the cheerful grandeur of St.

Peter’s. For this dim chapel gives a sense of remoteness and mystery,

and the inner chamber, from which the eyes can see no outlet, seems to

lead to some edifice still more vast; as though St. Peter’s were life

and day, but here was the way to death and night, yet a way not gloomy

and dreadful, but only solemn and mysterious. The Baptistery is merely

dark, and produces no such impression.

When they reached the bronze statue, the ladies kissed the foot and

passed on, but Mr. Vane stood thoughtfully there for some time before

following. And even then he did not pay the accustomed homage to the

venerable image. His soul had saluted it, may be; but he was of a

different sort from those who have the act of reverence always ready,

whether the heart move or not; who will kiss the relic between the

kisses of the shameless, and touch what is holy with lips that have just

lied, and which are prompt to lie again. This man’s outward devotion was

ever the blossom of a plant that grew in his heart, and filled it so

that the act was an overflowing.

Marion was already waiting for them at the grand altar. They recognized

each other silently, and seated themselves on the steps to wait, being

early. The Signora placed herself beside Mr. Vane, and, noticing that he

drew a deep breath, and looked about with a glance that took in their

position there in the centre of that immense cross, she pointed upward

where the dome, glorious with light and color, rested on the legend that

had turned the face of the world: “_Thou art Peter, and on this rock I

will build my church. And I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of

heaven._” The legend ran in a circle of gigantic letters rimmed with

gold, and the circle and the dome were as the ring and mitre of the

church let down from heaven, and hovering in air over the ashes of the

first pontiff.

A Mass was being said at the altar directly before them, at the end of

the south transept, but not a sound of it reached them. They saw

indistinctly the priest, and the mosaic crucifixion of St. Peter over

the altar. They heard the _coro_, now swelling loudly in a brave, manly

chant as the whole chapter joined, now sinking in a cadence, now fine

with a boy’s clear treble. The bronze canopy above them glittered in

every gilded point, the twisted columns that supported it soaring like

flame and smoke entwined. The wreath of lamps about the confession was

as bright as the ever-burning flames within them, and the polished

marble answered them back, blaze for blaze. Below—a frozen prayer—knelt

the guardian statue, its face turned to the screen behind which rest the

relics of St. Peter. Two or three persons, entering the church, looked

small as mice down the nave, and intensified the sense of magnificent

solitude about them. All this light and splendor seemed so independent

of, so superior to, human presence that human beings appeared to be only

permitted, not invited, to come. It was a temple for the invisible God.

“There is no outward difference,” the Signora said to Mr. Vane, “between

Catholicity and Protestantism which strikes me more than our ways of

going to church, and the reasons for going. Protestants go to hear a man

talk, and the man goes to talk to them. The affair is a failure if

either is missing; for the minister needs the people, and the people

need him. On the contrary, one person alone in a Catholic church may

accomplish a perfect act of worship. When the priest has offered up a

Mass, though no one assist, the world is better for it; and when a

worshipper has prayed all alone in the presence of the Blessed

Sacrament, he has performed a supreme act of piety. There is all the

difference between the dwelling-house of God and the house where people

go to talk about God.”

“I always felt as if there were too much wind in Protestantism,” Mr.

Vane said.

Presently a little company appeared coming out of the sacristy—two boys

in white _cotte_, the _canonico’s_ chaplain and another priest, also in

_cotte_, and, lastly, monsignor the _canonico_ himself, in a purple silk

soutane of a color so bright that it was almost red. They passed across

the basilica toward the pier of Veronica, and paused there at the

altar-rail till the Signora and her friends joined them. A pleasant

salutation was exchanged, and the Signora managed to whisper to the

_canonico_ that Mr. Vane was to make his First Communion that morning.

The beautiful face of the prelate brightened with a pleased surprise,

and he turned again and cordially offered his hand to the new convert,

who, to the delight of the ladies, bent and kissed the ring on it.

Then the boys lighted their wax tapers, and the party went in behind the

altar, down the narrow stair, and through the circling corridor, and

found themselves in the heart of St. Peter’s.

This chapel is a tiny place in comparison to the church above, but

capable of accommodating many more than the five who are permitted to

visit it at a time. Two persons could kneel abreast at each side of the

central passage, and four or five ranks, may be, might find room. The

end next the screen, visible in the confession from above, is open, the

altar being at the upper end, and the whole has not a ray of daylight.

From this chapel one can look back and see through the screen Canova’s

marble pontiff, and the ring of golden lamps on the railing of the

confession, and, perhaps, some worshippers kneeling outside the

sanctuary which one has had the privilege of entering. Directly overhead

are the grand altar and the dome.

The Signora took a _prie-dieu_ near the altar, motioning Mr. Vane to a

place beside her; the sisters knelt behind them at either side the

chapel; and Marion, quite apart, and behind the rest, leaned in a chair

and hid his face in his hands. He had been surprised into the situation,

and, though he had tried sincerely to do his best, was still a little

alarmed by it. Shaken out of his usual artistic mood, which regarded

first what appeared, and then peeped inside from without, he found

himself suddenly whirled into the centre, where, either from darkness or

from too much light—he knew not which—he could not see. It was one of

those moments of fear in persons who communicate seldom but sincerely,

which presently give place to the most perfect reassurance and peace.

The Mass was over. Monsignor laid aside his vestments, and knelt at a

_prie-dieu_ reserved for him; his chaplain placed a book on the desk

before him, and withdrew, and there was silence.

The church could do no more for them. She had brought them to St.

Peter’s tomb, and given them the Bread of angels.

It was impossible that the mind should not shake off the present and go

back to the time when the dust in the shrine before them lived, and

moved, and spoke, and when the invisible Lord in their breasts was the

visible Lord in the flesh, teaching, persuading, and suffering. The Lord

in their hearts said to the apostle in the shrine: “Wilt thou also go

away?” And the apostle answered him: “Lord, to whom shall we go?” And

again Peter said: “Lord, thou shalt never wash my feet.” And Jesus

answered him: “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” The Lord

in their hearts was he who stood in the palace of the high-priest, bound

and smitten upon the cheek, and Peter, standing by, denied that he knew

him. The pallid lamps shone on the face of the Master turned for one

reproachful look, and the red light of the coals burned up, as if the

very fire blushed, in the face of the cowardly follower. They saw the

seaside, where the risen Lord stood and called, and Peter, no longer a

coward, but on fire with love and joy, flung himself into the sea to go

to him. And yet again, in this memory which had become a presence and a

voice, the Lord spoke to Peter: “Lovest thou me?” And Peter answered him

once, and again, and, grieving, yet again: “Thou knowest that I love

thee.” And Jesus said to him: “Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep.”

O perfection of power and of obedience; for within this hour, which

memory, unrolling again her shrunken scroll, showed to be eighteen

centuries distant—within this hour both the sheep and the lambs had been

fed!

“I feel as though I had a garden in my heart,” Marion said to the

_canonico_ as they went up into the church again.

The two were walking slowly and last, and in speaking Marion bent and

kissed the prelate’s hand.

The hand held his a moment closely, and the _canonico_ replied: “Where

the Tree of Life is, there is always a garden.”

This conversation they had listened to between the Master and Peter

followed them down the church, whose splendors seemed rather like

virtues made visible than like any work of the hands of man. If they

should ever be so lost and ungrateful as to leave this fold, to whom,

indeed, should they go? And unless the Lord washed them from their sins,

surely they could have no part with him. They still saw the lessening

vision of the high-priest’s dim and solemn house as they passed down the

church and out through the first portal; then the second fell behind

them, and an Italian summer day caught them to its glowing breast.

“It seems to me,” the Signora said, “as if we had just been ordained,

and were being sent out as missionaries. Of course you go home to

breakfast with us, Marion,” she added.

“I was thinking of Fra Egidio this morning,” said Bianca softly, as they

drove home through the hot sunshine. “He used to say, instead of 'I

believe in God,’ 'I _know_ God.’”

“That blessed Fra Egidio!” struck in Isabel, who had lately been reading

about him. “He used to go into ecstasies, papa, whenever he heard the

names of God or of heaven. And when he went into the street, sometimes

people would call out, 'Fra Egidio, paradiso! paradiso!’ and instantly

he would be rapt into an ecstasy, and perhaps be lifted up into the air.

Why doesn’t some one go into ecstasies now at the thought of heaven?”

“Nobody prevents you, my dear,” her father said. “If you will be so lost

to the world and so given to God that the mere hearing his name will

lift you from the earth, so much the better.”

“You are quite right, papa,” she answered gently. “I had better look to

myself.”

He smiled and laid his hand tenderly on hers.

“I was particularly pleased with the account of the interview between

Fra Egidio and St. Louis,” the Signora said. “The king came incognito to

visit the ecstatic, and went to the convent in Perugia where he was

living. Fra Egidio, knowing supernaturally that he was there, and who he

was, went out to meet him. They fell on their knees on the threshold,

and embraced each other, and, after remaining for some time in that

silent embrace, rose and separated, without having uttered a word. That

was truly a heavenly meeting.”

Their attention was here attracted to a clergyman who walked slowly

along the shady side of their street, accompanied by his chaplain. This

prelate, the patriarch of Antioch, was of a venerable age, and wore a

long beard. He alone, perhaps, of all the prelates in Rome, appeared in

the street with the distinguishing marks of his rank—the chain and

cross, the red-purple stockings, sash, and buttons, and the green tassel

on his hat.

A little boy on the sidewalk caught sight of him, and instantly snatched

his cap off and ran to kiss the patriarch’s hand. The action was

perfectly natural and simple, and performed with a charming mixture of

reverence and confidence.

“How pretty it is!” exclaimed Isabel. “And there is another.”

A little girl had left her mother’s side, and run also to kiss the

patriarch’s hand as he passed. No idea seemed to have entered her curly

head that she was approaching too nearly a grand personage, or that he

would be annoyed or interrupted by her homage, any more than a crucifix

or a picture of Maria Santissima would have been.

“The Roman clergy have the sweetest manners with the poor,” the Signora

said; “and the highest dignitaries, when they are in public, are

approached with a facility which I found, at first, astonishing. I

recollect going to St. Agatha’s, the church of the Irish College, to the

Forty Hours, shortly after I came here. It is in a populous

neighborhood, as you know, and the streets swarm with children. A

clergyman came into the church and knelt at a _prie-dieu_ just in front

of me. There were a dozen or so children wandering about, and presently

they collected at this _prie-dieu_, and, sitting on the step or standing

at the desk, almost leaning on the priest’s shoulder, they stared at the

people and whispered to each other. I expected to see him send them away

or go away himself; but he only put his hands over his face and remained

immovable. I had almost a mind, for a minute, to go and speak to the

children, but, fortunately, did not. After a while, nervous, impatient

Yankee though I am, with a passion for an orderliness which strikes the

eyes, I began to see the beauty and true piety of this gentle behavior,

and to find something more edifying in that priest who suffered the

little ones to come near him, and near the Lord, than I should have

found if he had gone into an ecstasy before the Blessed Sacrament. It

was the sweetest charity. Indeed, much of that which seems to us to be

cowardice in the Romans is nothing but a spirit of gentleness fostered

by religion. They are non-combatants. The church found them a fiery and

warlike people, constantly committing deeds of violence, fond of

conquest, and impatient of control, and she has subdued them to

children. If they are too submissive to usurpation, that is better than

the other extreme. The lion has become the lamb, and the lamb is ever

the victim. And now here we are at home.”

Annunciata and Adriano had conspired to make the breakfast as festal as

possible, and had succeeded perfectly. But for the light west wind that

fluttered in at the still open windows, the air of the rooms would have

been too fragrant; and but for the long morning fast and drive, the

breakfast would have been too profuse. It was, in fact, both breakfast

and dinner, it being nearly noon when they sat down; and they sat two

hours talking before they separated. Just before they rose from the

table Annunciata came in, bearing a large dish covered with green

leaves, a smile of triumph on her face. She placed the dish in the

centre of the table, and looked at her mistress.

“_Brava!_” exclaimed the Signora. “Now, children, do you recognize that

leaf?” lifting one from the dish, and holding it up between a thumb and

finger. “Do you know what tree grows a hand for a leaf? Do you see the

shape?”

“'In the name of the prophet, figs!’” quoted Isabel.

“Yes, the first figs of the season, and perfect; just soft enough to

flatten on the plate and against each other, yet firm; and, withal,

sweeter than honey. You should see the woman who brings them to me—a

rosy, russet creature, with eyes as black as sloes, and pounds of gold

on her neck and hands. That gold she wears always. It is their way. She

has four gold chains, one hanging below the other, and each bearing a

medallion. Through these shines a large gold brooch. Her earrings are

immense hoops, and she wears gold rings on every finger, piled up to the

joints. She was once so ill that they thought best to give her Extreme

Unction, and, when the priest came to administer the sacrament, he found

her lying, pale and speechless, but with all her rings and lockets on.

These people do not value stones, but they glory in pure, solid gold.”

“Might it not be their dowry?” Mr. Vane asked.

“Very likely; sometimes it certainly is. Sometimes the dowry is in

pearls, and a _contadina_ will have strings and strings of them. I am

told, however, that the common people in Rome have a saying that pearls

are for butchers’ wives. I don’t know why, and one has been pointed out

to me as owning half a dozen strings of them. They are not a good

investment, however, for they are easy to spoil and easy to steal. A

very safe and sensible way for providing a girl’s dowry exists in one of

the towns near Rome. All along the river-bank is level land divided into

small lots. When a girl is born, the father buys one of these, if he is

able, and plants it full of a sort of tree that grows rapidly, and is

much used for certain kinds of wood-work. While the girl grows her dowry

grows; and when she marries, the trees are cut down and sold. I have

often wished that American fathers of families would make some provision

for their children when they are born, setting aside a sum, if it should

be ever so small, to increase with their years, and be a help in giving

them a start in the world. It seems a sin that parents should bring a

family of children into the world, all dependent on one life, and, if

that life be cut off, be thrown out helpless and unprovided for. How

often we see, by the death of a father whose labor or salary maintained

his family in comfort, the whole family plunged in distress and left

homeless! How would Bianca, here, like to have her dowry in pearls?”

“She has a mouth full of them,” said Marion hastily. He could not bear

that his lady should be thought in want of a dowry, when she was a

fortune in herself. “And those are not her only jewels.” He reached,

and, taking her hand, gathered together the little pink finger-tips like

a bunch of rosebuds. “She has ten rubies fit for a crown,” he said, and

touched his lips to the clustered fingers, while the girl laughed and

blushed.

Mr. Vane seemed to be struck with a sudden recollection. He put his hand

to his forehead and considered, then rose from his chair. “Wait a

minute,” he said, and went into his own room, where they heard him

opening his trunk, and searching about in it. Presently he returned with

a tiny morocco case. “It is the merest chance in the world that I did

not leave this in America,” he said. “I did not dream of bringing it.

Bianca’s mother left a pair of ear-rings for the girl who should marry

first.”

He opened the case and took them out—two large, pear-shaped pearls, of

exquisite lustre, hanging from a gold leaf, on which a small, pure

diamond glistened like a speck of water.

“And you could have such a treasure with you, and never say anything

about it!” the Signora exclaimed. “O the insensibility of men! And these

girls never saw the pearls before!”

She fastened the jewels in the pretty ears they were destined for.

“These are two gems you forgot in your enumeration, Marion,” she said.

“And, by the way, how fitting it is that, when the ears are shells,

there should be pearls hung in them!”

“I’m glad you think them so pretty,” Mr. Vane said with compunction. “I

really never did think of them before. Perhaps it was very stupid of

me.”

“On the contrary, it was very wise of you, papa,” Isabel said. “They are

a great pleasure to us all now; but if we had known of them, I should

now feel as if they had been taken away from me.”

“When you are engaged, you shall have a pair as pretty, if they are to

be found,” her father said.

They drank Bianca’s health; and, the talk still running on gems, Marion

told an incident of a ring which a friend of his had lost in the snow,

in some part of Germany, as he stood looking down on the town from a

hill outside. Several months afterward, going to the same spot, he saw

the ring at the top of a little plant. The first sprout had come up

inside it as it lay on the ground, and, growing, had lifted it, till it

stood almost a foot high, glistening round the green stem.

“What a disappointed little plant it must have been when its gold crown

was taken off!” the Signora said regretfully.

“It no doubt grew better without it,” Mr. Vane replied. “Besides, the

ring did not belong to it.”

It was the tiniest little intimation of a correction, and the Signora

was highly pleased. He saw the smile with which she received it, and was

content. Nothing can express more kindness than a gentle reproof, and

nothing can show more affection than to take pleasure in such a reproof.

When they had separated, the Signora went into the kitchen to give a

private and special commendation to Annunciata for her well-doing that

morning, and to glance at that part of her domain. She never omitted

this word of praise, and the faithful servant counted herself well paid

for any pains she could take when she had been assured that what she had

done had given pleasure.

This Roman kitchen was as little as possible like the New England

kitchen. Closets and pantries there were none; the single stone walls

did not admit of them. Two large cases of covered shelves took their

place. Instead of the trim range with its one fire-place, was a row of

five little furnaces, over each of which a dish could be set. A

sheet-iron screen extended out over these, like the hood of a chaise.

All the side of the chimney, where it extended into the room, shone with

bright copper and tin cooking vessels, hanging in rows. Underneath were

two baskets, one with charcoal, another with _carbonella_—the charred

little twigs from the baker’s furnaces, that can be kindled at a lamp.

One of the furnaces still had a glow of coals within it, and near by was

the feather fan that had been used to kindle and keep it bright. The

brick floor was as clean as sprinkling and sweeping could make it. They

never wash a floor in Rome, and only the fine marbles and mosaics ever

get anything better than that sprinkling and sweeping. The one window

looked across the court to the Agostinian convent attached to Sant’

Antonino, and to the little belfry with the two bells that never could

be made to strike the right number of times, and into the garden of the

_frati_, where rows of well-kept vegetables were drinking in the sun as

if it were wine.

This kitchen was quite deserted, except for the cat, who was standing,

with a very mild and innocent expression of countenance, close to the

closed door of a cupboard where meat was kept. She glanced calmly at the

Signora, and walked away slowly and with dignity.

“Where is Annunciata, Signor Abate?” inquired the Signora.

The cat turned and mewed with great politeness, but in an interrogative

tone, as who should say, “I beg your pardon?”

And then a splashing and bubbling of water from without reminded the

_padrona_ that her handmaiden was washing that day—was “at the

fountain,” as they express it.

“Why should I not go down for once and see how it seems there?” she

thought. “After all, this girl is dependent on me, lives with me, serves

me in everything, is at my call night and day, and I do not touch her

life except at certain points—the table, the cleanliness and order of

the house, and the errands she does for me outside. I don’t know much

about her, after all.”

She opened a door that she had never passed in the years she had lived

in that apartment, and descended a narrow stone stair that wound in a

steep spiral, lighted at each turn by a small hole pierced in the outer

wall. Down and down—it seemed interminable, but was, in reality, two

stories and a half. The landing was in a dim store-room a little below

the ground level, and used as a cellar. From this a passage and door led

into a small court enclosed between an angle of the house and a high

wall, like a room with the ceiling taken off. Here a spout of water

flowed into a double fountain-basin, where the girl stood washing and

beating linen on the stone border. As she worked, steadily, and too much

absorbed to see her mistress standing near her, tears rolled down her

face, and dropped one by one on the clothes in her hands.

The Signora looked a moment, astonished and shocked. Was this the girl

who had come and gone from early morning cheerfully at her bidding, and

who had smiled as she served the table within half an hour? She stood

awhile looking at her, then quietly withdrew, and, going up-stairs

again, rang a hand-bell from the window. Annunciata came up immediately,

quite as usual, with no sign of tears in her face, except a slight flush

of the eyelids, and made her usual inquiry: “_Che vuole?_”—What does she

wish for?

“I have several things to say,” her mistress replied. “I came out first

to thank you for having given us such a beautiful breakfast. Everything

was well done. I forgot you were at the fountain.”

The smile came readily, and with it the ready word: “It pleased

her?”—always the ceremonious third person.

“And now I want to ask you something,” the Signora went on kindly. “Sit

down. If you do not like to tell me, you need not. But I should be very

sorry if you had any trouble, especially anything in which I could help

you, and did not let me know. You have been crying. Are you willing to

tell me what is the matter?”

The girl looked as startled as if she had been caught in a crime, and

began to stammer.

“If it is something you do not want to tell me, I will not say any more

about it,” her mistress went on. “You have a right to your privacy, as I

have to mine. But if there is anything I can do for you, tell me

freely.”

There was a momentary struggle, then the tears started again, and all

the story came out. Annunciata had received, three days before, news of

the death of her only brother, who had died of fever in some little town

a day’s journey from Rome, and was already buried when she learned first

that he was sick.

The Signora listened with astonishment and compunction. For three days

this girl had gone about with a bitter grief hidden in her heart,

missing no duty, submitting, perhaps, to a little fault-finding now and

then, and weeping only when she believed herself unobserved, and all the

time, while she suffered, ministering to and witnessing the pleasures of

others.

“My poor girl, why did you not tell me at first?” she asked gently.

“Oh! why should I?” was the reply. “You were all so happy and you could

not bring the dead back.”

“I could have sympathized with you, and given you a few days’ rest,” the

Signora said. “I would not have allowed you to work.”

“It was better for me to work,” the girl replied, wiping her eyes. “I

should only have cried and worried the more, if I had been idle.”

There seemed nothing that could be done. That class of poor do not adorn

the resting-places of their dead, or the Signora would have paid the

cost; they do not wear mourning, or, again, she would have paid for it;

and this girl had no family to visit and mourn with. In her brother she

had lost all. The only service possible—and that she accepted

gratefully—was to have Masses said for the dead. That settled, the

Signora dismissed her to her work again, and shut herself into her

chamber, but not to sleep.

“O the unconscious, pathetic heroism of the suffering poor!” she

thought. “Where in the world have I a friend who would cover such a

grief with smiles rather than disturb my pleasure? Where in the world

does one see such patience under pain and hardship as is shown by the

poor? They sigh, but they seldom cry out in rebellion. They accept the

cross as their birthright, and both they and we grow to think that it

does not hurt them as it would hurt us. How clearly it comes upon me now

and then, why our Lord lived and sympathized with the poor, and why he

said it would be so hard for the rich to enter heaven!”

She was looking so serious and unrefreshed when the family gathered

again that they at once inquired the cause, and she told them.

“I feel as though I must have been lacking in some way,” she concluded,

“or a servant who has been with me so long, and who has no nearer friend

in the world than I am, would have come to me at once with her troubles.

If the relations between servants and employers are what they should be,

the servants should go to the master or mistress with all their joys and

sorrows, just as children go to their parents. I have been thinking that

there is one reason why, the world over, people are complaining of their

servants. They have contented themselves with simply paying their wages

and exacting their labor. There has been no sympathy. The association

has been simply like that of fish and fowl, instead of that of the same

creatures in different circumstances.”

“I have always thought that in America,” Mr. Vane said. “There is not a

country in the world, probably, where families have been, as a rule,

more disagreeable toward their servants, and servants so troublesome, in

consequence, to their employers. But I believe it is very seldom that a

good mistress or master does not make a good servant, so far as the will

goes.”

Seeing her still look downcast and troubled, he added: “You should not

reproach yourself. It is rather your kindness toward this girl which has

won such a devotion from her. If you had lacked in kindness and sympathy

toward her, she would have been far more likely to have shown her

trouble, and made it an excuse for not attending to her work as usual.”

“Do you think so?” she asked, brightening; and thought in her own mind,

“How very pleasant it is to be reassured when one is distressed about

things!”

And then later, when they heard Annunciata in the kitchen, the sisters

went out and spoke each a kind and pitying word to her, touching her

hard hand softly with their delicate ones; and when she came in later to

perform some service, Mr. Vane had also a word of sympathy. But,

greatest comfort of all, the Signora and Bianca went up to the Basilica

and arranged that a Mass should be said the next morning for the dead,

and Annunciata was told that she should go with them to hear it.

That evening the servants were instructed to deny the family to every

one but Marion, and, when the sun was low, they all went out on the

_loggia_ to see the night come in, and breathe the sweet freshness that

still came with it. For it is only in dog-days that the Italian nights

are too warm for comfort, and not always then. The great heat comes and

goes with the sun.

As they went into the _loggia_, there was a rustling noise in the garden

underneath, and out from the trees leaning against the wall flew clouds

of sparrows, and dispersed themselves in every direction. It would

appear that every twig must have held a bird.

“I am sorry we have disturbed their nap,” Mr. Vane remarked. “How

disgusted they must be with our curious nocturnal habits!”

They did not wish to talk, but only to think and see, and speak a word

as the mood took them. The miraculous shadow of St. Peter still hovered

above their spirits. They sat in silence, receiving any impression that

the scene might make.

Flocks of birds flew in from the seaward, all hastening to some nest or

tree-home, their bodies clear and dark, their swift wings twinkling

against the topaz sky. The evening star, at first softly visible, like a

diamond against another gem, began to grow splendid, while the glowing

west changed by imperceptible degrees to a silvery whiteness, and took

on an exquisite hint of violet, as if it thought, rather than was, the

color. The flowers disappeared in masses of dark green, the gray towers

and roofs deepened to black, the pure air was delicious and beaded with

coolness, like a summer drift sprinkled with snow. The _Ave Maria_ began

to sound here and there, echoed from one church to another. Now and then

some bell, besides the Angelus, rang out with a festal clangor for five

minutes, a musical chorus coming in from the southward.

“What a grand procession of saints walk for ever through the Roman

days!” the Signora exclaimed. “It would be something dazzling to the

mind, if one could live on a central height, and hear the bells announce

the different _festas_ as they come, singly or in groups, and know who

and what each saint is. For example, this evening we hear from the

Aventine the rejoicing announcement that to-morrow is the _festa_ of St.

Alexis in his church, and from another church is called out the name of

St. Leo IV., and from another St. Marcellina, the sister of St. Ambrose,

and twelve martyrs will be celebrated in another church. If we should go

to-morrow to either of those, we should find them adorned, sprinkled

with green out into the very street, High Mass or Vespers going on, and

the relics exposed on the altars. To-morrow night other bells will ring

in other saints and martyrs. The night after, from a church in Monte

Citorio will come the call, _Ecco_ St. Vincent of Paul! and the secular

missions and the Sisters of Charity will be doing their best in his

honor, and there will be cardinals, and pontifical vespers, and a

panegyric. Four or five churches will celebrate their special saints the

next day, and the next will be St. Praxides, on the Esquiline here; and

the day after we shall be invited to pay our respects to St. Mary

Magdalen. And then on to St. James the Great, which will be a great day;

and the day after comes St. Anna, the mother of the Blessed Virgin; and,

a little later, St. Ignatius marches by. What it would be to set the

world aside, sit aloft on some tower there, listen to the announcements

rung out from belfry after belfry, meditate, and look with the eyes of

faith on what comes! What faces of young maidens, delicate spouses of

Christ, bent like clusters of living flowers to listen to the voices

that praise them, turned again heavenward to ask for blessings on their

clients! What queenly women incline their crowned heads, when the

Sacrifice goes up in their name, to see who of those who offer it is

worthy and sincere! What glorious men, strong and shining, gaze down

into the battle-field where their triumph was won, to read in the

upturned faces of the combatants how the fight goes, and who needs their

aid! I sometimes think that the saints look only when they are called by

name, but that the Blessed Mother looks always. It is the mother who

goes after the child who forgets, and watches over it while it sleeps.”

The flocks of sparrows that had fled at their approach, weary of waiting

for them to go away, after peeping and reconnoitring the situation,

began to come back and flutter in under the foliage again. For a few

minutes the trees stirred all through with them, as if with a breeze;

then the little heads were tucked under the tired wings, and they all

went to sleep, and, perhaps, dreamed.

The family smiled and hushed themselves, not to disturb their rest. Each

heart was softly touched by the nearness of so many tiny sleepers. Peace

seemed to float silently out from under the thronged branches and laden

twigs of those motionless trees, in which no passer-by would have

detected a sign of life.

“I think,” the Signora said softly after a while, “that when the priest

comes next Holy Saturday to bless my house, I would like to have him

bless these trees too, that no net or trap may be thrown over them by

night, and no rifle be fired into them by day. The trees and their

tenants belong to my household.”

“Your house is blessed every year?” Mr. Vane asked.

“Yes. On Holy Saturday the priest goes round through every parish, a

little boy with him bearing holy water, and blesses all the houses, if

the people desire it. The custom is, too, to have ready on a table a

dish of boiled eggs, an ornamented loaf of cake, and a plate of

sausages. These are blessed, to be eaten Easter Sunday. I am not sure,

but I fancy that the custom is a remnant of times when the Lenten fast

was, perhaps, more strictly and universally observed than now. Now,

whether from a deterioration of health or of faith, very few persons

consider themselves strong enough to observe the regulations perfectly.

Modern civilization seems to be very weakening in every way.”

“I am inclined to think that good comes, or will come, out of all these

changes and seeming failures,” Mr. Vane observed. “If the races have

become weaker physically, their passions have also become weaker; and it

may be that, in order to tame them, it was necessary to reduce their

physical strength. We do so sometimes with wild animals. Perhaps when we

shall have learned better how to live, and, after running the circle of

follies, grown soberer and wiser, the increasing vitality will go more

in the intellectual and spiritual ways than it did before. I am hopeful

of the human race, from the very fact that it is so uneasy about itself.

The audacious boldness of some nations seems to me to spring from

desperation rather than confidence. There is no confidence anywhere.

Fear rules the world. Everywhere strong, or even desperate, remedies are

proposed, and philanthropic doctors abound.

“Malgré les tyrans,

Tout réussira,”

sing the communists; and I believe that things will come out right in

spite of every difficulty, and be more secure because of the

difficulties past. When we shall have looked about in vain in every

other direction, we shall at last learn to look upward for the solution.

But excuse me for talking so long in this beautiful silence. Your Easter

eggs were not meant to hatch such a sermon, Signora.“

They rose, presently, to go into the house, and, as they loitered slowly

along the passages, Mr. Vane remarked to the Signora: “I observe that

the natural direction of your eyes is upward.”

“Is it?” she asked. “Come to think of it, I believe you are right. It is

always cramping for me to look down. I recollect that, when I was a

child, if I dropped my eyes on being a little embarrassed, it was almost

an impossibility for me to raise them again.”

Going in past the kitchen, they found Adriano in chase of a cockroach

that had dared to show itself there, and they stopped to learn the

result, feeling that it interested them. It was not successful, and the

man rose from his knees very much vexed.

“These _bagarozzi_ don’t know what Ascension day is nowadays, or they

would hide themselves,” he said.

Mr. Vane asked what connection there was between _bagarozzi_ and

Ascension day, and the servant-man, albeit a little ashamed of having

committed himself to tell a story, explained:

“When I was young, it was a custom among the Roman boys, on the vigil of

the Ascension, to go down into our cellars, or those of our neighbors,

and catch as many _bagarozzi_ as we could. When evening came, we fixed

to the back of each one a bit of wax taper, melting the end to make it

stick. Half an hour or so after _Ave Maria_ we marshalled our bugs,

lighted the tapers on their backs, and sent them off in a procession.

While they went we sang a song we had. It was a pretty sight to see the

little tapers scampering off through the dark.”

“Why! I should think it would have scorched them!” Bianca exclaimed with

surprise.

The man laughed at her simplicity. “Who knows?” he said, with a shrug.

“They never came back to tell us.”

Isabel inquired what the song was to which this novel procession

marched.

The man laughed again and repeated the doggerel:

“'Corri, corri, bagarone;

Che dimane è l’Ascensione;

L’Ascension delle pagnotte:

Corri, corri, bagarozzi.’”

Which might be rendered: “Run, run, my noble roach; for to-morrow is

Ascension day—Ascension day of the little loaves. Run, roach, run.”

“What demons of cruelty children can be!” remarked Isabel as the family

went on.

Adriano laughed as he looked after them. “How queer these _forestieri_

are!” he said. “They want to see everything and know the name of

everything. The signorine here ask me the name of every tree and flower

in the garden, and every bird and bug that moves. How should I know? My

niece, Giovannina, says there’s an English-woman going about getting the

poor old women to tell her fables, and ghost-stories, and all sorts of

nonsense; and they say that she prints it in a book. They must be in

great need of books to read. Then the _padrona_ will stand and look at

the moon as if she never saw nor heard of it before, and expected it to

drop down into the garden and break into golden _scudi_. I saw her one

day this spring, on _Monte Cavallo_, stand half an hour and stare at the

sky, just because it was red where the sun went down. The sky is always

red when the sun sets in clouds. Two or three _signori_ thought she was

stopping to be noticed, and they walked about her, and one of them

leaned on the railing close to her, staring at her all the time, and by

and by spoke to her. I went up behind her, but she didn’t know I was

there. She hadn’t seen any one till she heard the man say good-evening

to her. You should have seen the way she looked at him. Then she caught

sight of me. 'Adriano,’ she said, 'I’ll give you a hundred lire to fling

that fellow over the terrace head first.’ I told her that it would cost

me more than a hundred lire to do it. She put out her lips—I suppose she

thought I was a coward—and muttered a word in English. Then she said to

me, as she turned her back on the man, loud enough for him to hear: 'How

dare such rascals come up when the sun shines!’ But she wouldn’t let me

walk beside her, but made me follow her all the way home. And she was so

mad that, when I started to say something as we reached the door, she

stopped me. 'When I want you to speak, I shall ask you a question,’ she

said.”

“The Signora is very kind,” Annunciata said.

“I didn’t say she wasn’t,” the man replied dogmatically. “But it doesn’t

become ladies to go into the street alone, nor to stop to look at

anything, nor to glance about them.”

The girl did not reply. She had been trained in the same opinions, and

did not know how to combat them. But sometimes it seemed to her that the

streets and the public places were for women as well as for men to see,

and that a woman should not be a prisoner because she had not a carriage

or a servant to attend her. Moreover, she sympathized, in her simple

way, with many of the Signora’s tastes. To her the song of the birds

they fed with crumbs from the windows was a sort of thanks, and she

regarded them as little Christians; and now and then, when she looked at

the sky, something stirred in her for which she had not words—a pleasure

and a pain, and a sense of being cramped into a place too small for her.

She could not express it all, and did not quite understand it. But there

was just enough consciousness to make Adriano’s _pronunciamiento_ rankle

a little. The inner ferment lasted while she polished the knives and her

companion blacked carefully a pair of boots; then she burst forth with

an expression of opinion which astonished even herself, for it sprang

into speech before she had well seen its meaning—an involuntary

assertion of nature. “I believe that women should settle their own

business, and men settle theirs,” she said. “I haven’t seen the man yet

that knows enough to teach the Signora how she ought to behave nor what

she ought to do; and many’s the man she could teach. Men are poor

creatures. Women can’t do anything with them without lying to ’em.

That’s what gives them such a great opinion of themselves, because most

women flatter them when they want to get anything out of them.”

“_Ma, che!_—well, to be sure!” exclaimed Adriano. It wasn’t worth

arguing about. He merely laughed.

Meantime, gathered in the _sala_, the family made plans for the coming

days while they waited for supper. Bianca, seated at the piano, was

trying to recall a fragment of melody she had heard a soprano of the

papal choir sing at a _festa_ not long before. “The cadence was so

sweet,” she said. “It was common—a slow falling from five and sharp four

to four natural—but the singer put in two grace-notes that I never heard

there before. He touched the four natural lightly, then sharped it, then

touched the third and slid to the fourth. It was exquisite, and very

gracefully done. His voice was pure and true, and the intervals quite

distinct.”

“I asked his name,” Isabel said, “and was disgusted to hear a very

common one, which I have forgotten. A beautiful singer ought to have a

beautiful, birdy-sounding name.”

“He can make his own name sound 'birdy,’ if you give him time,” Mr. Vane

said. “Take Longfellow as an example. There couldn’t be a more absurd

name. Yet the poetry and fame of the man have flowed around it so that

to pronounce the name, Longfellow, now is as though you should say

hexameter.”

And then what were they to do, and where were they to go to-morrow, and

the day after, and the day after? They ran over their life like a

picture-book which was so full of beauties they knew not which to look

at first. All felt that they were laying up sunny memories for the years

to come—memories to be talked over by winter evening fires in their

country across the sea; memories to amuse and instruct young and old,

and to enrich their own minds. And not only were they furnishing for

themselves and their friends this immense picture-gallery and library of

interesting facts and experiences, but they were expanding and vivifying

their faith. They were making the personal acquaintance, as it were, of

the saints, and seeing as live human beings those of whom they had read

in stories so dry as to make them seem rather skeletons than men and

women. To enter the chamber where a saint had prayed, had slept, had

eaten, had yielded up his last breath; to stand in some spot and think:

“Here he stood, on these very stones, and saw faces of heaven lean over

him, and heard mouths of heaven speak to him; or here, when such

temptations came as we weakly yield to or weakly resist, he fought with

prayer, and lash, and fasting”; to look at a hedge of rose-bushes, and

be told: “Here, when he was tempted, a man, weak as other men, flung

himself headlong among the thorns”—this was to waken faith and courage,

and make their religion, not an affair of holidays and spectacles, and

communions of once a year, but of every day, and of private hours as

well as of public.

“Half our Roman holiday is gone,” Mr. Vane said, “and for at least four

weeks of the other half the heat will allow us to do little or nothing.

I recommend you girls to treasure all your little pleasures, and keep an

exact account of them. The more fully you write everything out, the

better. These diaries of yours will probably be the most interesting

books you could have after a few years.”

“I am trying to forget all about America,” Isabel said, “to fancy that I

have always lived here, and always shall live here, and to steep myself

as much as possible in Italian life, so that, when I go back, I may see

my own country as others see it, but more wisely. It seems to me that a

country could be best judged so by one who knows it well, yet has been

so long withdrawn from it, and so familiar with other modes of life, as

to see its outlines and features clearly.“

“You are right,” Marion said.

“I never knew how beautiful, how more than beautiful, American nature is

till I had seen the famous scenes of Europe. One-half the superiority is

association, and half the other half is because attention has been

called to them by voices to which people listened. Our very climate is

richer. Here nobody knows how beautiful the skies can be. They like

sunshine, and rainy weather is for them always _brutto tempo_. The

grandeur of a storm, the exquisite beauty of showery summer weather and

of falling and fallen snow, they know nothing about. They endure the

rainy season for the sake of the crops, scolding and shivering all the

time. To watch with pleasure a direct, pelting, powerful rain would

never enter their minds; and if they see you gazing at the most glorious

clouds imaginable, it would be to them nothing but _curioso_. We do not

need to go abroad for natural beauty.”

It was getting late and time to say good-night. A silence fell on them,

and a sense of waiting. Then Mr. Vane said: “We have made a Novena

together for the communion of this morning. May we not once more say our

prayers together in thanksgiving?”

No one replied in words; but the Signora brought a prayer-book and

arranged the lamp beside Mr. Vane. He obeyed her mute request, and for

the first time, as head of the family, led the family devotions. Then

they took a silent leave of each other.

NATALIE NARISCHKIN.[8]

Footnote 8:

_La Sœur Natalie Narischkin_, _Fille de la Charité de S. Vincent de

Paul_. Par Mme. Augustus Craven. Paris: Didier et Cie., 35 Quai des

Augustins.

The name of Narischkin is in Russia like the name of Bourbon in France,

Plantagenet or Stuart in Great Britain. The mother of Peter the Great

was a Narischkin, and her baptismal name was Natalie. The family have

always esteemed themselves too noble to accept even the highest titles,

regarding their patronymic as a designation more honorable than that of

prince. Madame Craven has just added to the list of her charming and

extremely popular works a new one, which is a companion to the _Sister’s

Story_, by writing the biography of a lady of the Narischkin family who

was a Catholic and a Sister of Charity. Natalie was a friend of

Alexandrine and Olga de la Ferronays. The narrative of her early life

retraces the ground, familiar to so many, over which we have

delightfully wandered in company with the fascinating group of elect

souls, whose passage over the drear desert of our age has been like the

waving of angels’ wings in a troubled atmosphere.

It seems scarcely correct to call Natalie Narischkin a convert. Her

parents belonged to the Russian Church, and of course she was taught to

regard herself as a member of the same. They resided, however, always in

Italy, and Natalie was accustomed, in her childhood and youth, to

associate freely with Catholic children and young people, and to

accompany them to the churches and convents where they were wont to

resort. Russian children receive infant communion, beginning with the

day of their baptism, several times a year until they attain a proper

age for confession, when there is a careful preparation and a solemn

ceremony for the first adult communion, as with us. They are confirmed

immediately after baptism. We are not told anything about Natalie’s

receiving either infant or adult communion, but it is to be presumed

that she was made to follow the usual practice, since there are Greek

churches in Venice and other Italian cities. Her early associations were

much more numerous, strong, and tender with the church of Italy and

France than with the estranged church of her own nation. There was no

difference in faith between herself and her Italian and French

companions to make her sensible that the religion in which she was bred

was different from the one in whose sacred rites she was continually

taking part, at whose altars and shrines she frequently and devoutly

worshipped. Even the peculiar ceremonies and forms of the Sclavonic and

Greek rites were less familiar to her than those of the Latin rite. The

only barrier between herself and her Catholic companions which could

make Natalie sensibly feel a separation between them was her exclusion

from participating in the sacraments administered by Catholic priests.

This separation between priests and people professing the same faith,

offering the same Sacrifice, administering and receiving the same

sacraments, could only puzzle and surprise the mind of a child; but it

requires a more mature understanding and complete knowledge to

appreciate the obligation of renouncing all communion with a

schismatical sect, however similar it may be to the true church. While

Natalie was a child some of the little boys and girls with whom she

played, particularly one little boy who became afterwards a martyr in

China, used to assail her with controversy. Her older friends were more

judicious, and waited patiently until her ripening intelligence and

expanding spiritual life should prepare her for a more complete work of

grace and a more perfect understanding of Catholic doctrine. In the

instance of Madame Swetchine we see how much study and thought are

necessary to produce in the mind of one who has grown up to maturity

under the influences of the Russian Church a firm intellectual

conviction that organic unity under the supremacy of the Roman See is

essential to the being of the Catholic Church, and not merely the

condition of its well-being and perfection. In Madame Elizabeth

Gallitzin we discern how, in another way, national prejudice, and

traditional hostility to what is regarded as anti-Russian, caused in her

bosom a violent struggle against reason and conscience, even though the

Catholic religion was that of her own mother. The case was wholly

different with Natalie Narischkin. She did not think about the question

of controversy at all, and was free from the national prejudices of a

Russian. Her mother took no pains to instil them into her mind, or to

place any obstacle in the way of the Catholic influences around her. She

grew up, therefore, a Catholic, with only an external barrier between

her inward sentiments and their full outward profession. The interior

cravings of her spiritual life were the chief and real motive prompting

her to pass over this barrier and find in the true church that which the

broken, withered branch could not give. The requisite theological

instruction in the grounds of the sentence of excision by which the

Russian hierarchy is cut off from Catholic communion was a subsequent

matter, and not at all difficult to one who was, like Natalie,

intelligent, candid, and full of the spirit of the purest Catholic

piety. There was really nothing in the way except the authority of her

mother, whose chief motive of opposition was the fear of the emperor’s

displeasure. When this obstacle was removed, Natalie easily and without

an effort leaped over what was left of the external barrier.

We have anticipated, however, what belongs to a later period of her

history. And going back to the time of her childhood, we will let Madame

Craven herself describe the situation in which she was placed while she

was growing up into womanhood. It will be noticed that Madame Craven

speaks in the plural number, indicating that Natalie is not the only

young Russian to whom her remarks apply. This will be understood when we

explain that her sister Catharine sympathized with her in all her

religious feelings, though she delayed, on account of her dread to

encounter the opposition of her family, until a much later period her

own formal abjuration.

“The entire childhood of these young girls had been passed at

Naples, and they had been there environed by impressions which

nothing in their Greek faith, no matter how lively it might have

been, could counteract. The adoration of Jesus Christ, the

veneration of the Holy Virgin and the saints, faith in the power of

absolution and the real presence in the Blessed Sacrament, were the

grand and fundamental doctrines which they had imbibed with their

mother’s milk. Brought up at a distance from their own country, they

might almost have believed themselves to be in the centre of their

own religion, living as they were within the bounds of that great

church which possesses all the gifts claimed by their own, with the

added power of distributing and communicating them to all, without

distinction of place, language, nation, or race. It is difficult to

comprehend how any Russian whose soul is imbued with piety, on

returning to his own country after having been brought up abroad,

can find himself at ease in the bosom of Greek orthodoxy. In truth,

it appears to us that the limits of a national church must seem very

suffocating to any one who has felt, even for an instant, the

pulsation of that universal life in the heart of the Catholic Church

which is unconfined by mountains, rivers, or seas, which is

contained within no barriers of any kind whatever, and bears the

name of no particular nation, because it is the mother of all

nations collectively. Therefore no one ever has been or ever will be

able to fasten any denomination of this sort upon the only church

who dares affirm that she alone possesses the truth in all its

completeness. At the first view one would say that every church

ought to make this claim under the penalty of being deprived of any

reason for its existence. It is nevertheless true that only one

loudly proclaims it; and those who hate as well as those who love

the Catholic Church alike declare that she is a church in this

respect singular among all others. Thus has she preserved through

all ages a designation expressive of the idea realized in herself,

and will preserve the same for all coming time! A multitude of her

children have separated themselves from her, yet none of them have

succeeded in despoiling her of the glorious title which suffices to

make her recognized everywhere and by all. As for other churches or

sects, when it is not the name of some man or nation which they

substitute for her name, it is some kind of term or epithet which,

even when it aims at giving a semblance of antiquity, betrays

novelty in the very fact that it is necessary to employ it in order

to be understood; and this is true in our own day just as much as it

was in the time of St. Augustine. The overwhelming force of good

sense and all the laws of human language determine _that words

express what they designate_! At this day, as well as at that

earlier period, neither friends nor enemies will ever give this

grand name of CATHOLICS to any except those to whom it really

belongs, and the same good sense proclaims as an indubitable fact

which is that church whose children these are.

“Natalie had remained a long time without paying any attention to

this controversy. She belonged all the while to the Catholic Church

by all her pious habitudes, by all her childlike affections, finally

and chiefly by the bond of the true sacraments which the Greek

Church has had the infinite privilege of preserving, and which form

a tie between ourselves and the Greeks whose value cannot be too

highly estimated—a tie so powerful that even in one case where it is

only imagined to have a real existence (_i.e._, with those Anglicans

who persuade themselves that a chain wanting a multitude of links

has not been broken) it has served in our days more than ever before

to awaken in their hearts a sentiment inclining them to a nearer

sympathy with our own. Belief in the truth of the words of Jesus

Christ and in his real presence on the altar, the adoration and love

of our Lord, the search after those who have possessed in the

highest degree this faith and love, have opened the way by which a

great number of souls have come to prostrate themselves before the

tabernacles of the Catholic Church who had been previously outside

of her visible fold, and had belonged to her only by virtue of their

good faith and love of truth.

“With how much greater reason must one who belonged to the Greek

Church have felt herself closely united to those whose faith was

professed and whose practices were approved in respect to such a

great number of points by her own church, which has even ventured to

adopt the counsels of perfection and to speak of the '_spiritual

life_’ and of '_Christian perfection_,’ after the manner of

Catholics!

“But it is just here that she betrays her weakness; for when it is a

practical question of undertaking and nourishing this spiritual

life, where can she go to seek the living words, the sermons, the

books, the apostolic men whom she requires? Where and from what

source can one draw the vital force of this true and daily life, of

this _living_ life, if I may hazard the expression, always similar

to itself, yet unceasingly renovated like the seasons of the year?

Where can this vivifying influence be found, except in that same

Catholic Church which, although it makes the mind bend under the

necessary and salutary yoke of authority, never permits uniformity

to engender tediousness, and possesses in its completeness that

deposit a part of which the Greek Church suffered to escape on the

day when it broke the bond of unity? Since then, although apparently

rich, she has remained empty-handed; and while the Basils, the

Athanasiuses, the Gregories, the Chrysostoms, and the numerous other

holy and immortal doctors have had immortal successors in the

Occident, the church of the Orient, once queen of eloquence and

science, has become mute; and her children know not to-day whether

she can speak or even write, since it is not given to them to hear

her any more break silence; and, if they would warm up their piety

by holy reading, and give their minds the sustenance they require,

they are forced to have recourse to the Catholic Church, since it is

there alone they can find their necessary aliment. Truly, we cannot

help thinking that if the barrier which separates Greeks from

Catholics were not upheld by hatred, it must fall down in an

instant. This hatred is something which has no argument whatever in

its justification, and which accepts, in behalf of the church which

it covers as a shield of defence, the very conditions of death,

immobility and silence, in lieu of a living existence.

“However this may be, and whatever more might be said on this vast

and interesting subject, it cannot in any case be disputed that the

divergences existing between us and the great Greek Church have

nothing in common with those which separate us from Protestantism.

Protestantism has tampered with and altered all our articles of

faith, demolished the Christian mysteries most sacred to belief and

dear to affection. It has retained neither the intercession of the

saints, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, the sacraments of penance

and the Holy Eucharist, nor the veneration of holy images. In fine,

apart from the belief in the merits of our Saviour, of which every

manifestation is severely restrained, there is nothing in common

between Protestants and ourselves.[9] On the contrary, we may say,

in respect to the Greeks, that for the simple faithful the

difference between them and ourselves is invisible, because they

have retained so many things which assimilate their religion to

ours, as affecting the mind, the heart, and even the senses.

Therefore, for many among them, the barrier does not become sensible

until they find themselves disposed to pass over it in order to

satisfy the inward need which they experience of participating in

the riches of that other church, which seems so like their own, yet

differs from it in possessing really what the other offers in a vain

semblance.

Footnote 9:

Our Protestant readers will excuse, we trust, a want of precise

accuracy in some of these expressions, very easily accounted for

by the fact that Madame Craven is a Catholic Frenchwoman, to whom

all the various phases of Protestantism are confused in one vague

and indistinct form.

“What, then, must be the sentiments of a sincere, fervent, simple,

and upright soul, already bathed in the light which radiates from

the great mysteries of the faith, and touched by the infinite love

of Jesus Christ revealed in them, when it discovers the nature of

the obstacles which lie in her path?

“She finds all the articles of her faith more solemnly affirmed; all

the practices which her piety demands more numerous and accessible;

confession, absolution, communion—all is there; and must she refrain

from satisfying her thirst for them?

“Is it credible that a soul thus thirsty for truth, faith, and love

should be much disposed to recoil from the difficulty of accepting

one word more in the confession of faith,[10] or of recognizing the

head of the _universal_ church as the head of the church in the East

as well as of that in the West? Again, is it credible that she will

shrink back from the political obstacle, the greatest and most

formidable of all—the only one, in fact, which she will find pain in

overcoming and need courage to surmount?

Footnote 10:

Filioque.

“Such were the thoughts which importuned the mind of Natalie when

she left Brussels, at the end of February, 1843, in order to return

with her sisters to Paris, having resolved to ask the consent of her

mother to her becoming a Catholic, and fully expecting that this

permission would not be withheld.“

Natalie’s father died when she was fifteen years old. Evidently he had

not felt any hostility to the Catholic Church, for he was a great

admirer of the Jesuits. Madame Narischkin was not prejudiced, as is

shown by the fact that she never at any time was averse to the perpetual

intercourse kept up by her family, and especially by Natalie, with the

most cultivated and devoted Catholics of Europe, such as the La

Ferronays family, and never hindered her daughters from attending all

kinds of services in Catholic churches. She undoubtedly looked on the

Greek and Catholic churches as essentially identical with each other,

and therefore could not see any reason for passing from the communion of

the one to that of the other. She supposed that her daughter’s reasons

were rather sentimental than conscientious. She naturally felt unwilling

to have her take a step which would prevent her from ever again

receiving communion at the same altar with the other members of the

family. And she was, moreover, decidedly opposed to any act which would

expose the family to the emperor’s displeasure. It is not to be wondered

at, then, that she positively refused permission to Natalie to be

received into the Catholic Church. Natalie was at this time twenty-three

years of age, perfectly well educated, and fully instructed in the

grounds of the distinctive, exclusive claim which is made by the Roman

Church upon the obedience and submission of all baptized Christians. She

was competent to decide for herself, and in possession of a complete

right to act according to her conscience. It was thought proper,

therefore, by the priest who was her spiritual director, and by her

friends of the La Ferronays family, that she should be privately

received into the church at Paris. An accident frustrated their plan,

and Natalie was obliged to leave Paris with her mother without having

accomplished her intention. The nuncio and other priests of high

position at Paris, when they were informed about the matter, disapproved

of the course which M. Aladel had advised, and reproved severely the

ladies who had been concerned in the unsuccessful attempt to put it in

execution.

Natalie accompanied her mother and sisters to Stuttgart, and a few

months afterward to Venice. At her mother’s desire she had several

conferences with a Greek priest, which served only to strengthen her in

her well-formed and solid convictions. Nevertheless, she delayed her

formal reception into the Catholic Church, waiting for a more favorable

opportunity to accomplish this great desire of her heart. This

opportunity came very soon, but in a way which was unexpected and, to

her affectionate heart, most painful. During the summer of 1844 her

mother was suddenly taken ill and died. The marriage of her two sisters,

Mary and Elizabeth—both of whom had been some time before betrothed, the

first to M. de Valois, the second to the Baron de Petz—was delayed for a

year on account of this sad event, and the whole family was invited by

M. Narischkin’s elder brother Alexis to return to Moscow and reside

during the year of mourning in his house. Under these circumstances,

Natalie resolved to act for herself, and she was accordingly received

into the Catholic Church on the 15th of August, although none of her

family were made acquainted with the fact. She accompanied her brother

and sisters to Moscow, where they met with the most affectionate

reception from their uncle and their other relatives. Nothing occurred

to make any disclosure on her part necessary, until the time came for

all the members of the family to make their Easter communion. In Russia

this religious act, and all the preparations for it, are performed with

so much publicity that it was impossible for Natalie to escape from it

without observation. All the members of the family received the

communion together at the same Mass, with the single exception of

Natalie, who was nevertheless, as usual, present with the others, and

observed the sad and serious look with which her uncle regarded her, as

she remained in her place while all the rest of his family approached

the altar to receive the sacrament. She now felt that the time had come

when concealment was no longer possible, and naturally feared that a

severe trial awaited her. It turned out, however, quite differently from

what she had expected.

After their return from Mass her uncle sent for her, and in a most kind

and paternal manner remonstrated with her on her omission of so grave

and sacred a duty as the fulfilment of the precept of Paschal communion,

which he attributed to indifference and tepidity, demanding of her, in a

most affectionate manner, the reason which had induced her to abstain

from communion. He added, at the same time, that he would much rather

see her a Roman Catholic than indifferent to the obligations of

religion. Natalie had listened to him with downcast eyes, in silence and

trepidation. At these last words—prompted, perhaps, by some secret

suspicion that her residence abroad had actually been the occasion of a

change in her religion, and spoken with evident emotion and sadness—she

opened her heart, and gave her venerable uncle a full and unreserved

account of her conversion and of all the motives which led her to leave

the communion of the Greek Church. When she looked up timidly, at the

close of her recital to await her uncle’s answer, she saw his eyes

filled with tears and fixed upon her with an expression of tenderness

which banished all fear from her heart, and left upon it an indelible

impression of love and gratitude. He opened his arms to embrace her

affectionately, and assured her of his protection and unalterable

kindness. Her maternal uncle, Count Strogonoff, a man whose religious

character was both ardent and severe, and who was a thorough Russian of

the old type in all his principles and sentiments, when he was informed

of the truth, acted towards her in precisely the same manner, and even

took pains to distinguish her from her sisters by special marks of

affection. All her nearest relatives were informed of what had occurred,

but the strictest secrecy was enjoined in respect to all others, for

reasons which are obvious without any explanation. The only great trial

which Natalie had to encounter, now that she was relieved of the pain

and anxiety of keeping her secret from her nearest relatives, was the

privation of all opportunity of going to Catholic churches and receiving

the sacraments. Under the circumstances this was a privation she was

compelled to endure patiently, and during the year she passed at Moscow

she was only able to make one short visit, in company with some young

friends, to the French chapel, on Holy Thursday, which was three days

after the memorable interview with her uncle.

At the expiration of the year of mourning the young Narischkins returned

to Italy for the nuptials of Mary and Elizabeth, and Natalie’s uncle

arranged for her permanent residence with the latter, in order that she

might be free to practise her religion without any embarrassment to

herself or her family. She accordingly bade a final farewell to Russia,

and with her temporary sojourn in her native country the great trial of

her life was also terminated. We can easily imagine with what joy she

again revisited Italy, which had been the home of her childhood; and on

the occasion of this return Madame Craven’s genius has inspired her to

write one of her happiest and most beautiful passages, which we cannot

refrain from translating, although without any hope of preserving the

delicate aroma of the original.

“We do not believe there is a person in the world who has once lived

in Italy who does not cherish in his inmost soul the desire of

returning there once more, or feel, when he again looks upon its

beautiful sky, that wherever his native land may be, he has really

come back to his own true country. For its beauty belongs to us as

much as to those whose eyes behold it from the day when they are

first opened to the light in infancy. It is no more their peculiar

possession than it is our own; for to both alike it is only an

irradiation from that supreme and essential beauty which is our

common heritage and assured patrimony. This is doubtless the reason

why we can never see the faintest reflection of this splendor of the

eternal beauty without experiencing a sensation which causes the

heart to dilate with joy and at the same time to repose in the

tranquil security of possession. It seems to us that attentive

reflection on what passes within us will show that, whatever degree

of admiration any object of this world may awaken in our minds, even

if it approaches to _ecstasy_, it is very rarely the case that we

feel a positive _surprise_. Even if one who had never seen the

glorious light and splendor of a happy clime were suddenly

transported from the icy regions of the polar circle to the charming

shores of the Bay of Naples, there is a latent image in the depths

of the human heart, the original of which external things are the

copy, whose presence makes one feel, even at the first glance on the

sublime spectacle of the outward world, that all belongs to him and

exists within his soul.

“This reflection suggests another. We shall doubtless experience

something similar to this when we escape from this sphere of shadows

and images and emerge into the region of eternal reality. Certainly

our hearts will then be opened to receive those unknown enjoyments

'which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into

the heart of man to conceive.’ Nevertheless, I think it is allowable

to suppose that, as we shall see the poor human form clothed in

Jesus Christ with all the glory of the divinity, so we shall also

find the reality of all those shadows which in this lower world

charm our eyes and fascinate our hearts. Happy will it then be for

those who have not suffered themselves to be captivated by these

shadows, when they are able to exclaim in a transport of ineffable

happiness: 'Behold at last those objects too beautiful and too

transitory to be loved on the earth by our souls, because they must

either suffer the loss of these or be lost themselves! Here they

are—real, substantial, enduring, transfigured, unfading! We have

found all those things which we desired and sought for, and amid all

these possessions is our eternal abode!’”

Natalie found a very pleasant home with her brother-in-law, the Baron de

Petz, during the next three years. It does not appear from the narrative

whether he was a Catholic or a Greek in religion. He was certainly a

most kind and affectionate brother, and her sisters were always loving

and considerate, so that no alienation ever separated the hearts of her

near relatives from her own so long as they lived. We shall see

presently how noble and tender was the conduct of her brother Alexander.

And we anticipate the regular order of events in order to mention in

this connection another near relative, Prince Demidoff, whose affection

for Natalie was extraordinary, and who acted with singular and admirable

generosity not only toward herself, after she had become a Sister of

Charity, but also to other members of the same congregation. While he

was residing in Italy he established a spacious hospital at his own

expense, which he confided to the care of these religious. At Paris he

authorized Sister Natalie to draw on him without limit, at her own

discretion, for charitable purposes. It is extremely delightful to

witness and record actions of this kind, so honorable to human nature,

and showing what a high degree of intellectual and moral refinement, as

well as how much of a truly Christian and Catholic spirit, is to be

found among a certain class of the ancient Russian nobility. And what a

contrast do they present to the ignoble persecutions, the mean and petty

defamations, to which so many even of those who attempt to assume the

guise of Catholics have descended in respect to converts in England and

the United States. We do not forget, however, that there are many

instances among ourselves of a similar conduct to that of the

Narischkins, as there are doubtless others of an opposite kind in

Russian families under similar circumstances.

Natalie Narischkin, in the midst of the splendors, gayeties, and most

refined enjoyments of the world, during the period of her peaceful,

happy youth, ere the severe trials of life had cast their shadow upon

her spirit, had been pious, reserved, pearl-like in her purity of

character, always aspiring after Christian perfection. After she had

begun to participate in all the spiritual advantages thrown open to her

by her Catholic profession, her distaste for the world and attraction

for the spiritual life increased rapidly, and an inclination toward the

religious state gradually matured into a certain and settled vocation.

Her friends made some opposition for a time, though not so much as is

frequently encountered in the bosom of pious Catholic families. Her

brother Alexander examined carefully her reasons and motives, and, being

convinced that she was acting with prudence and deliberation, gave his

free consent and the promise of his assistance in carrying out her

intention, accompanied by the singular request that she would leave the

choice of an order to his decision. She had made no choice herself, and

when her brother selected the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity

of St. Vincent de Paul, she was quite satisfied. In fact, she had a

predilection for the Convent of the Rue de Bac in Paris, which had been

one of her places of favorite resort in former years. Her brother

discussed the whole matter with M. Aladel, a Lazarist priest of Paris,

and Natalie conferred not only with him but with several other

experienced directors, who concurred in approving her vocation as a

Sister of Charity. Here, accordingly, she entered, in her twenty-eighth

year, and here she worked and suffered, as one saint among a thousand

others, in an institute where heroism is as common as the ordinary

virtues are elsewhere, and sanctity is the universal rule. During her

religious life, which had twenty-six years of duration, she was first

the secretary of the superior-general, and afterwards the superior of a

small community in the Faubourg St. Germain. She died in 1874.

The narrative of Natalie’s religious life, enriched as it is with

copious extracts from her letters and numerous personal anecdotes, is

interesting and edifying as it is presented in the pages of Madame

Craven’s biography. No doubt an English translation will soon place it

within the reach of all our readers; and as it is precisely just one of

those histories which is spoiled by condensation, we will not attempt to

give it in an abridged form. Leaving aside, therefore, all further

personal details, we shall confine our attention to that one aspect of

our subject which has the most general interest and importance—viz., the

position and attitude of the members of the national church of Russia in

reference to the Catholic Church. As an illustration of this topic we

have presented the history of the conversion of a Russian lady of high

birth and education—one specimen of a number of equally choice souls

whom the Russian Church has produced but has not been able to retain,

and who are, we trust, the precursors of all the people of their nation

in returning to the bosom of Catholic unity. Although Natalie Narischkin

had lived so very little in her own country, she was nevertheless an

ardent and patriotic Russian in her sentiments, and of course, as a

well-instructed and devout Catholic, had very much at heart the

religious welfare of her own nation. Among all the illustrious Russian

converts, Count Schouvaloff, who became a Barnabite monk, was the most

zealous in promoting the great work of the reconciliation of the Russian

Church to the Holy See. Madame Craven tells us how enthusiastic Natalie

was in her interest in the cause which this good man consecrated by the

oblation of his own life as a sacrifice for its success—a sacrifice

which he offered in obedience to the counsel of Pius IX., and which was

accepted by God.

“When Father Schouvaloff—who, like herself, was a Russian, a

convert, and devoted to the religious life—had given a definite form

to this desire, and had founded an association of prayers in aid of

this object which all Catholics were invited to join, there was not

a single person in the world who responded more fervently to this

appeal than Sister Natalie. The desire of propagating the truth,

natural in the case of all who have embraced it, is particularly

strong in those who have come from the Greek Church. To see the

fatal barrier which separates the Eastern from the Western Church

fall down, and to hear henceforth these two communions designated

only by one common name: _The Church!_—no one else can comprehend

the ardor of this desire in the hearts of those Russians who are

animated both by the love of the truth and the love of their

country.

“While we are on this topic we cannot help remarking how surprising

are the tentative advances toward union between the Greek Church and

Protestantism which we have recently witnessed. Such an alliance the

clear mind of Natalie, even before her conversion, rejected with

repugnance as impossible and absurd. Does not, in fact, the most

simple reflection suffice to demonstrate that by uniting herself to

the Catholic Church the Greek Church would preserve the traditions

of her venerable antiquity together with the august dogmas which she

holds, and would, at the same time, in ceasing to be local and

becoming universal, recover the power of expansion and

evangelization which she has lost by her schismatical isolation? In

this case she might be compared to a princess of high lineage

regaining, by a return to the bosom of the family to which she

belonged, the royal rank from which she had fallen. But, in truth,

to make a union with Protestantism would be for her the worst of

misalliances, for she would then resemble a princess marrying a

_parvenu_ and with the utmost levity renouncing all the rights of

her high birth and illustrious descent.”

Some of our readers may find it difficult to understand the anomalous

position in which the Russian Church stands, so completely different

from that of any of our Western sects, and requiring only the one act

necessary for its corporate reunion to the Catholic body for its

rectification, and yet so completely severed from the true church in its

actual state that it is not a branch, a limb, or any kind of part or

member of the same, but only a sect, completely outside of the universal

church. Some Catholics may suppose the Russian Church in a worse

condition than it is in reality. They may not understand that its

priesthood and sacraments are any better than those of the English or

Scandinavian churches, which have an outward form of episcopal

constitution. Or, if better informed on this head, they may ascribe to

it heresy, and regard some of its differences of rite and discipline as

vitiating essentially the Catholic order. On the other hand, these

misapprehensions being set aside, and the likeness of the Russian Church

to the Catholic Church clearly understood, they might find it difficult

to perceive that essential difference which, as Madame Craven remarks

with truth, is to most of the Russian laity invisible. Still more will a

Protestant having a tincture of Catholic opinions and sentiments fail to

see why a member of the Russian Church should be convinced of the

imperative obligation of abjuring the Greek schism and passing over to

the communion of the Roman Church.

The question of heresy is easily settled by the way of authority. We

have only to inquire, therefore, whether the Holy See has ever condemned

the adherents of the schism begun by Photius and renewed by Michael

Cerularius, of heresy as well as schism, and whether the standard

authors in theology consider them as heretics in view of their

ecclesiastical position and in virtue of general principles, although no

formal judgment has been pronounced by the Holy See. It is certain that

no such formal sentence has ever been pronounced by the Holy See. The

Nestorian and Monophysite sects of the East have been formally condemned

as heretical. But the _soi-disant_ Orthodox Church likewise condemns

these and all other heretical sects condemned by the Roman Church before

the time of the schism. At the Council of Florence the Greeks were not

judged to have professed any heresy, the Council of Trent was specially

careful to abstain from any such condemnation, and the Council of the

Vatican equally refrained from it. The same is true of all the official

pronouncements of the popes. In the exercise of practical discipline,

when it is a question of reconciling Greeks, whether they are in holy

orders or laymen, they are treated as schismatics, but not as heretics.

Theologians also, in treating of the doctrine of the several national

churches in communion with the schismatical patriarchate of

Constantinople, which they hold in common as their profession of faith,

regard it as orthodox, conformed to the doctrine of the Catholic Church,

and consequently free from any mixture of heresy. The only doctrines in

regard to which any one could suppose the Greek Church to be heretical

are the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, and the supreme,

infallible authority of the Pope. The Greek Church has never, by any

solemn, synodical act, denied the procession of the Holy Spirit from the

Son. The omission of the _Filio-que_ from the Creed is not in itself

equivalent to such a denial, and the Roman Church has never required the

Orientals to insert it as a condition of communion. Neither has the

Greek Church ever by any solemn act denied the supremacy and

infallibility of the Pope. The liturgical books, and specifically those

of the Russian Church, contain abundant testimonies to the Catholic

doctrine on this head. The heretical doctrines of individuals, whether

prelates, priests, or laymen, are therefore their own personal heresies,

and not the doctrine of the public formularies of faith, which remain

just what they were at the time of the separation. The only conciliar

decrees of a dogmatic character which have been enacted since that time

by a synod which could be regarded as representing the so-called

Orthodox Church are those of the Synod of Bethlehem, in which the

principal heresies of Protestantism are condemned. There is only one

essential vice, therefore, in the constitution of the Russo-Greek Church

which needs to be healed, and that is its state of rebellion against the

See of Peter. The one act of abjuring the schism implies and involves in

it the recognition of all the decrees of the Holy See and of œcumenical

councils during the period which has elapsed since the rebellion of

Photius, by virtue of the doctrine of the infallibility of the Catholic

Church which the Greek Church professes.

Any Catholic can understand from this explanation how completely

different is the position of the people of Russia who belong to their

national church from that of the Protestants of Western Europe and the

United States. They have the Catholic faith explicitly taught to them,

and believed as firmly as it is by ourselves in all those things which

relate to the great mysteries of religion and its practical duties and

devotions. They hold implicitly, so long as they are in good faith, all

that the Catholic Church believes and teaches, although they are

ignorant of the full and complete doctrine of the centre of unity and

chief source of authority in the church. They have bishops and priests

whose ordination is valid, the sacrifice of the Mass, the seven

sacraments, the fasts, feasts, ceremonies, and outward forms of worship

which they had before the schism. In fact, as Mrs. Craven remarks, the

difference between their church and the Catholic is invisible to the

eyes of the majority, and, if they were to-day to be restored to their

ancient union with the universal church, there would be no perceptible

change in their customs. There are differences in discipline and ritual

between the Latin and the various Oriental rites, but it is a fixed

maxim of the Roman Church not to require the Eastern Christians to adopt

the discipline and ritual of the Western church in matters which are not

essential, when they are received into her communion.

These things being as they are, it becomes naturally somewhat difficult

to those who have not carefully studied the question to understand why

it is a strict obligation, and necessary to salvation, for a member of

the Greek Church who discovers that it is in a state of schism to abjure

its communion. We can see, in the case of Anglicans believing in nearly

all Catholic doctrine so far as even to acknowledge the primacy of the

pope and desire a corporate reunion with the Catholic Church, that, so

long as they believe in the validity of their own orders and other

sacraments, it is very hard for them to realize that they are not in the

communion of the true church. They generally find their ground of

security give way under their feet by their loss of confidence in the

validity of their ordinations. But it is not easy to convince them that,

apart from this essential defect in their church, and apart even from

the question of its heretical doctrine, the mere fact of schism makes an

ecclesiastical society, no matter how much it resembles a church in

outward appearance, as really a mere sect as amputation makes the most

perfect and beautiful hand a mere piece of dead matter. A mere

collection of bishops, priests, and baptized persons, professing the

true faith, administering and receiving the true sacraments, is not a

portion of the Catholic Church, if the organic, constitutive principle

of lawful mission and jurisdiction is wanting, which gives pastoral

authority to the persons who possess the episcopal and sacerdotal

character, and thus makes the collection of people under their rule a

_lawful_ society, under _lawful_ pastors, and under the supreme rule of

the _Chief Pastor_, who is the Vicar of Christ. It is not enough,

therefore, for a person to profess the faith and receive the sacraments

in order to keep fully the law of Christ. It is necessary to profess the

faith in the external communion of the lawful pastors, and to receive

from them, or priests whom they have authorized to minister within their

jurisdiction, the sacraments. Bishops and priests who exercise their

functions in a manner contrary to the law sin by doing so, and those who

communicate in their unlawful acts also sin, and thus both parties

profane the sacraments and incur the censures of the church.

Nevertheless, if they act in invincible ignorance and good faith, they

are excused from sin and escape the censure. And, in case of necessity,

the church even dispenses from her ordinary laws. Any priest is

authorized to administer sacraments in any place, to any person not

manifestly unworthy, in case of necessity. So, also, one may receive the

sacraments in a similar case from any priest, if there is nothing in the

act which implies a direct or tacit participation in heresy, schism, or

manifest profanation of sacred things.

The Russian clergy and people, we must suppose, are generally in good

faith, and therefore innocent of any sin in respect to the schism of the

national church. There is, therefore, no reason why they should not

administer and receive the sacraments worthily, so as to receive their

full spiritual benefit, and thus sustain and increase the living

communion with the soul of the church and with Christ which was begun in

them by baptism. The external irregularity of their ecclesiastical

position cannot injure them spiritually when there is no sin in the

inward disposition or intention. Moreover, it is morally and physically

impossible for the Russian clergy and people, generally, to alter their

position. They are, therefore, really placed in a necessity of

administering and receiving the sacraments without any further and more

direct authority from the Holy See than that which is virtually conceded

to them on account of the necessities of their position. Since the

church always exercises her power, even in inflicting censures and

punishments, for edification and not for destruction, we may suppose

that she tolerates the irregular and disorderly state into which they

have been brought by the fault of their chief rulers, so long as it is

out of their power to escape from it, and are not even aware that the

irregularity exists.

It is plain, however, that every one who knows that the Russian

hierarchy is destitute of ordinary and legitimate authority, and has the

opportunity of resorting to the ministry of lawful Catholic pastors, is

bound, under pain of incurring mortal sin and excommunication, to comply

with this obligation. The excuse of ignorance and good faith is no more

available after the law is made known. The reason of necessity ceases as

soon as recourse is open to the authority which has a claim on

obedience. The censures pronounced on the authors and wilful adherents

of schism take effect as soon as one knowingly and wilfully participates

in and sustains or countenances rebellion against the supreme authority

of the Catholic Church.

The position of the Russian Church is utterly self-contradictory and

untenable. By a special mercy of divine Providence it has been kept from

coming to a general and clear consciousness of the fundamental heresy,

which lies latent in the Byzantine pretence of equality to the Roman

Church, from which the schism took its rise. The immobility which has

characterized it, and to which the privation of all authority

independent of the state has greatly contributed, has kept it from

committing itself to any formal heresy. It has broken its connection,

but it has not run off the track or fallen through a bridge. We cannot

suppose that it will long remain stationary on the great road along

which the march of events, the progress of history, is proceeding. It

seems to be awaiting the propitious moment when, reunited to the source

of spiritual power, it shall again move on in the line of true progress.

When this event takes place, we may safely predict that the name of

Natalie Narischkin will be honored in Russia together with that of

Alexander Newski, the special patron of the imperial family; and that

the empire will be filled with convents of the Daughters of Charity, the

countrywomen and imitators of her who, more illustrious by her virtue

than by her descent, was appropriately named “The Pearl of the Order.”

UP THE NILE.

III.

We had a letter of introduction to the Governor of Assouan from a person

we had never seen. It came about in this way: Ali Murad, our consul at

Thebes, sent by Ahmud a letter to his friend, the governor of Edfoo,

asking him to give us a letter to his excellency at Assouan. This

letter, worded in the usual extravagant style of the Orient, stated that

the dahabeeáh _Sitta Mariam_ contained a party of distinguished

travellers who were in high favor at Cairo, and should everywhere be

received with the greatest kindness and attention. His excellency was a

fine-looking negro, well dressed in European style, patent-leather

boots, fancy cane. I looked at first for eye-glasses, but on second

thought concluded that this was too much to expect from him. He came on

board to visit us, accompanied by his secretaries and servants, very

pompous and haughty in his bearing towards the crew, polite—nay, almost

obsequious—to us. Head sheik of the cataracts is on board; a deal of

talking by every one at the same time; no one listening; a lull;

governor lights a fresh cigar; secretaries, servants, and crew roll

cigarettes; Reis Mohammed appears with the certificate of tonnage. There

is no fear of obliteration or erasure in this; no danger of wearing out

or the characters fading by lapse of time. It might have belonged to the

pleasure barge of antiquity-hidden Menes or one of the corn-boats of the

Hyksos. It was a bar of solid iron three inches wide, four long, and

half an inch in thickness. Deeply-cut figures showed the boat to be of

380 ardebs burden. An agreement was finally entered into: Ahmud was to

pay the sheik nine pounds and ten shillings to take the boat up and down

the cataracts, exclusive of backsheesh. Out of this the governor

received two pounds and ten shillings as his commission. This making

arrangements for ascending the cataracts is the most serious drawback to

the pleasure of a Nile voyage. True, the dragoman undertakes this, but

the howadjii are present and witnesses of the altercations, the loud

talking, and the great noise and confusion attendant upon it. We being

such distinguished travellers on paper, and the governor being impressed

with that fact, our contract was entered into with less confusion than

is usually incident to this arrangement. Four sheiks or chiefs of the

cataract control the proceedings. This office is hereditary, and

formerly they were despotic in the exercise of their power. Twenty

English or American sailors could take a boat up the cataract in

one-third the time it took nearly two hundred natives to perform that

office for us. But no dragoman would dare incur the enmity of these

powerful sheiks by attempting the ascent without their permission. Their

power is somewhat curtailed now by orders from the viceroy, so that

instead of, as heretofore, extorting as much as possible from the

frightened dragoman, their prices are regulated by a fixed tariff—so

much for every hundred ardebs.

We are now fairly started on the ascent; it is early in the morning, and

a light breeze is blowing from the north. The head sheik is on board.

What an appropriate name he has! Surely his father was a prophet and

foresaw the future life of his son—Mohammed Nogood! Not the slightest

particle of good did he do. He squatted on a mat, smoked his pipe, and

took no heed of what passed around him. Old Nogood, as we called him,

was with us for three days, and during that time he never opened his

mouth unless to grumble, and never raised his hand except to remove the

pipe from his mouth, being too lazy even to light it; a sailor performed

that onerous duty for him.

We sailed through narrow, tortuous channels against a rapid stream to

the island of Sheyál at the foot of the first bab or gate. The first

cataract, as it is termed, is a series of five short rapids on the

eastern shore, where the ascent is made, and one long and one short one

on the western shore. These rapids are called gates. We stopped at the

foot of the first. Three finely-built Nubians, _in puris naturalibus_,

save turbans on their heads, came sailing down the turbulent and surging

waters astride of logs. Borne on with great velocity, they seize hold of

our boat as they reach it, in a moment are on deck, their heads bare,

the turbans girded around their loins. “Backsheesh, howadjii!” They

deserve it for this feat. It made the howadjii shudder to see them in

these raging waters. An impromptu row now springs up between our pilot

and old Nogood. The boat is aground, and more help is needed to push it

off. Here is the dialogue, as translated by Ahmud:

Pilot (old man with gray whiskers, costume soiled and tattered

coffee-bag): “O Mohammed Nogood! send some of your people to move the

boat.”

Old Nogood: “O pilot, you jack-ass! why do you not attend to the helm

and mind your business?”