Minds are much occupied respecting the _plébiscite_. My politics are not
of this world; I hear what others say, and that is all. Sister, what is
earth? I fear and pity it.
Berthe is at Paris, somewhat preoccupied by present agitations. My poor
soul passes through the most varying states: nameless anguish,
indescribable discouragement, sweet and pure joys; one thing comes as a
repose to the other, and life slips away.... Amélie came to me
yesterday; she talked long of _her crosses_, glad to be understood,
compassionated, and loved; she would willingly have remained with us for
the night. Her home, where she was formerly so happy, appears to her now
an insupportable place of abode, and her life, with all its struggles
and contradictions, is a real martyrdom.
I read her, from the _Pilgrimages of Switzerland_, a beautiful page on
Christian resignation. Oh! how I would wish to console others—I, who
cannot be consoled, alas!
APRIL 30.
Kate, I have been dreaming of you. Why did you go away so soon, sweet
sister, so beloved?
A cousin of Amélie’s died the day before yesterday, after two years of
marriage. See how short a time human felicity lasts! Every terrestrial
happiness reunited on this charming head for so short a time! Her poor
mother had buried all her other treasures one by one, and concentrated
her affections and her hopes on this idolized daughter, the only one
spared to her, and who was to be stricken down after two years of so
happy a union! Were these two souls truly religious? I know not. Ah! who
will comfort the mother, if God is not her comforter? Alas! these rapid
destinies, these human fragilities, these futures broken, these deaths,
this mourning—will they not open the eyes of those who persist in not
seeing? Amélie is always breathlessly eager to attain her object, and
distressed at the hindrances which hold her back. How pitiful that
difficulties so contemptible and vulgar should be raised in order to
turn aside the flight of this poor soul from the heavenly Bridegroom! I
can only conceive a mother with an absolute devotion, a complete
self-forgetfulness, a perpetual _sursum corda_. But these miserable
obstacles, these calculated delays, to enchain this dear Amélie in spite
of her tears and ardent longings—how they make me suffer! It appears
that for three years she has been soliciting her mother’s consent. My
God, where are the hearts which see but thee in all things? Mme. de
Vals[35] is overwhelmed by this catastrophe. All the family is in a
state that breaks one’s heart. Oh! if these distressing scenes had only
shown Mme. de Vals the vanity of earthly illusions; if she had only
understood that we must cling to God above all!
Footnote 35:
The mother of the young wife who died.
Kate, my sister in heaven, pray for this friend of your Georgina, and
pray also for me, who cannot live without my sister!
MAY 5.
The month of flowers, the month of songs, the month of the ever-blessed
Virgin, comes to me with bright memories. My own Ireland, mother,
sister, where are you? What cowardice is mine!
Brittany is smiling, rosy under a beautiful sun; the sea is calm and
magnificent. I have just been leaning over my balcony and looking long
at this grand spectacle: the blue sky, the green sea, in the grand and
majestic silence of immensity. Was there not a Christian meaning in the
words of the philosopher of antiquity who said: “God does all in
silence”? How fine is this expression!
Dear Kate, bless me! I go out, move about, wish to be useful; I work
with Gertrude, with my mother, with René. But I drag heavily the cross
of your absence. I complain to God without ceasing. Love makes
everything sweet and light: I have, then, no love?
From this month of May will date for your Georgina the adoption of a
prayer, sweet among all others—the Office of the Blessed Virgin. Oh!
these psalms, these hymns, these harmonious supplications—how sweet they
are to my poor soul! I love especially the _Lætatus_. Lucy and René sing
it with an expression which charms me. You, dearest Kate, have entered
there, into the house of the Lord!
MAY 12.
I am reading the _Interior of Jesus and Mary_, by the Père Grou, the
_Conferences_ of Père de Ravignan, and our dear _Review_. The letters on
the Council interest me particularly. I try to imagine that I am reading
them with you; that your dear head is resting on my shoulder.... Oh! the
fair and happy times which return to my memory. We so loved the
_Chansons de Gestes_, those pretty French ballads which my mother
translated with so peculiar a charm! M. Léon Gautier has published a
thoughtful and exquisite study on France under Philip Augustus; he
brings on the scene the fair Aude, the _fiancée_ of Roland, who died on
hearing of the death of her Paladin—I can understand love like this!—and
the charming little Aelis, and Sibylle de Lusignan, and the Duchess
Parise, and Aye d’Avignon, and the courageous Ameline, and Berthe, the
wife of Duke Girart, and Guiboure, that magnificent type of the
Christian woman! Do you remember, sister, Count Robert of Flanders
refusing a crown because he was in haste to see his son again? the
little Garnier nursing his father, stricken with leprosy? the mother of
the sons of Aimon—Belissende and Heustace? How we had learnt to love
those middle ages!
Pray for Amélie, dear Kate; she is so unhappy! O inestimable favor,
priceless benefit, incomparable fidelity of the religious vocation! how
little are you understood in this world.
It seems as if I heard you saying to me: _Speranza! Pazienza! Coraggio!_
MAY 16.
My soul is fallen again into an abyss of desolation. It is strange, and
at the same time painful, these struggles between myself and myself;
between nature which revolts and grace which submits. On this day four
years ago where were we? Kate, help me!
MAY 28.
I have been travelling a little, and my moments have all been employed.
René wants to give me change and distraction; but I cannot drag my
thoughts away from these images of death. Hélène has written me a
letter, saintly and sweet. Alas! who does not suffer here below?
JUNE 5.
I have just quitted Amélie, who is keeping her room from indisposition.
Her mother is kind, I believe, but how severe in aspect! Berthe and
Raoul arrived yesterday. Kate, I dreaded this meeting again, our hearts
were all so sad! Berthe is more tranquil than I had expected; she has
seen Mary and Ellen, the dear exiles! who showed her that they greatly
desire to see us. Inspire me, dear Kate. Lucy is going away again; the
house without children is like a heaven without angels. Johanna will not
return for two months.
JUNE 12.
René would like to bring the two orphans himself. My mother approves.
They will occupy the apartments of the twins. Kate, who will replace
you?
More funereal letters: two friends of our dear ones who have flown away
have also been summoned to their Father’s house. Happy souls! if they
were prepared; but poor mothers whose joy they were!
JUNE 17.
Dear Kate, I thought I saw you yesterday evening.... A young and amiable
religious, collecting for her poor, caused me a thrill. I calmed myself
and conversed with her. Her life is admirable. But what emotion
afterwards, and poignant grief!
Sister dearest, let me hope that you read these lines; that there exists
a means of communication between heaven and earth; that you have not
wholly quitted me! It was so sweet to write to you, to confide
everything to you. I should like to write your life; to relate to myself
the story of our childhood—that golden morn when so many smiles and joys
surrounded us; but these souvenirs are so distressing!
JUNE 24.
Mary and Ellen are sleeping beneath those curtains of gauze which I have
so often parted.
They are grown, and prettier than ever. With what grace they presented
themselves yesterday! And already I am anxious; have they not been taken
sufficient care of? I know not, but their almost constant cough
oppresses me like a remorse; and to replace their mother....
JUNE 29.
Berthe loves our orphans, who rarely quit her. Gertrude draws me with
her in her walks, in her life of devotedness and labor, and I let it be
so. I am no more _myself_; my better part is wanting. Oh! you were my
strength, my counsel, my happiness.
Feast of SS. Peter and Paul—a glad festival for the Christian. Louis
Veuillot, who has the happiness of being at Rome, writes there charming,
sublime incomparable pages; he counted on the _desired dogma_ being
proclaimed to-day, but all is not so easy, even in the things of God.
Anniversary of the death of _Albert_.
JULY 1.
Mary and Ellen are very attractive. Decidedly we shall keep them with
us. Berthe sees in them a resemblance to her doves; my mother likes
their smiles for the poor, for flowers, for every living thing, their
precocious reason, and their already remarkable piety. Lucy is gone.
What voids! and how different to '67, the happy year, at least during
its first months! Trial, you used to tell me, is a grace; that those
favored with the good things of this world ought to expiate their
enjoyments. Kate, I submit!
JULY 4.
The letters of Marcella and Margaret are frequent. My friend beyond seas
speaks of returning soon; she knows what a balm the sight, the beloved
sight, of her brings. Marcella quits Naples and its blue sky no more;
Anna writes to me of her joys, without suspecting what a price the
health of which she is so proud cost us.
The _abbé_ takes in the _Univers_, rendered so attractive by the truly
magic pen of the author of the _Parfum de Rome_. Finished _La Marquise
de Montagu_, an interesting book, the style of a great lady of the
seventeenth century. Reading is worth less than prayer, but both
ameliorate exile.
René is carving an altar for the parish church. He and Adrien are making
curious studies in the precious MSS. of the _Saint of the Sea-shore_.
What splendid gifts God has bestowed upon this friend of my soul!
JULY 8.
The pious and learned editor of _Eugénie de Guérin_, who also revealed
to the world the treasures of Cayla—M. Trebutien—is just dead. René
assures us that _Eugénie_ must have opened to him the gate of Eden. Oh!
I love to believe this. Amélie is at the height of her wishes: her
mother has suffered herself to be vanquished by our united entreaties,
and her entry into Carmel is fixed for the 6th of August. Another
separation. God wills it thus.
JULY 14.
Marie Jenna, the sweet poetess, has written some noble pages on the
regretted M. Trebutien. “It is the hand of a friend still trembling with
emotion that has written this”; it is the first cry of affection and of
grief, but of pure and holy affection, and of grief resigned and
Christian in the highest acceptation of the word. “If this were a
learned man, an antiquary, an artist, above all he was a soul—a soul,
that masterpiece of God, that thing so fair that he himself delights in
it, that he has profoundly loved, even when, having lost the attraction
of innocence, she had no other attraction than misfortune. He was an
ardent Catholic, he prayed, he loved God. He, who so hungered after
justice, love, and beauty, could not but love God! The gifts of the
understanding exercised over him an irresistible magic; but if he lived
by intelligence, he lived still more by the heart. His friendship was
full of strength and tenderness; he gave himself without measure.”
Ah! dearest Kate, I forget that you are no longer here. Ellen is
extremely sympathetic towards me; she listens to me, speaking of you,
for hours together. This morning, after a long account, in which her
mother’s name and yours recurred a hundred times, she said to me with
feeling: “I am going to pray God to put me soon where they are.”
O Blessed Virgin! may she stay with us.
JULY 18.
Arthur is ill. Johanna writes agitated and sorrowful pages. My saintly
Kate, pray for us!
The rumors of war which have for some days been circulating are taking
consistency. What is about to become of this poor country? Will the hour
of vengeance strike, or will mercy again carry the day? Epidemic
maladies and drought have already spread desolation everywhere.
Kate, I would fain penetrate into the future. O folly! What would it be,
when I cannot even support my present grief?
René has had three attacks of fever. O this dear invalid, this son of
liberty and space, restless as a lion! in repose. Dear, good friend!
Come, then, and see him, dear Kate, when three times a day he attends to
an unfortunate child whose wounds horrify everybody. “The hand of M.
René passes over my sores like the wing of an angel!” What charming
praise, and especially in Breton, in the mouth of this frightful little
lad, who is distressed at his own ugliness! Gertrude is teaching him the
catechism; Mary and Ellen prepare his meals with their little white
hands. Ellen has lovely eyes of sea-blue, very dark.
JULY 24.
The _Univers_ of Wednesday, the 20th, is splendid: “The Infallibility is
proclaimed! _Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia!_ The times are hard; war,
pestilence, famine; but the year 1870 will be none the less immortal.
This will be called the Century of Pius IX., the Pope of the Immaculate
Conception and of the Infallibility.” Great joy in the Catholic world.
Here is war with Prussia—that power which, whatever may be said, is
truly redoubtable. Happy the people whose history is wearisome!
Misfortune to those who depart from the path traced for them by
Providence! What a magnificent page might France have added to her
history had she so willed! “Archimedes asked but a lever and a fulcrum
to move the world,” said the Père Lacordaire at Notre Dame; “but in his
time this lever and this fulcrum were unknown. They are known now: faith
is the lever; and the point of support, the Breast of the Lord Jesus.”
Who, then, will lift this lever? My God! may they who seek thee find
gladness and joy in thee. _Tristis es, anima mea!_
Arthur is better; our dear Parisians are returning to us; the horizon is
so dark to those who see things rightly! Berthe is gone to the town for
the funeral of a friend of her childhood who passed through the greatest
trials in the world. She made a most edifying death, preserving the
fulness of her faculties to the last, blessing her children, and putting
all her soul into her last directions. And when she had said all, and
was asked if she desired nothing, she answered with her failing voice:
“I desire nothing but God!” The long agony of her heart, the suffering
which has killed her, this painful martyrdom—all is over, and the
Blessed Virgin, whom she so loved, must have welcomed her into glory.
_Amen!_ The two little children, alarmingly pale, followed the coffin.
How one would pity them, if God were not the Father of orphans!
Spain in a state of revolution. Queen Isabella has abdicated in favor of
Prince Alphonso. Poor Spain! Where is Isabella the Great, the Catholic?
Adrien is reading to us the tenth volume of the _Histoire du Monde_, by
De Riancey. The illustrious and lamented author wrote from Rome, after
receiving from the Pope and the Comte de Chambord precious tokens of
affection: “Now I am almost ready to sing my _Nunc Dimittis_, and there
remain only the joys of heaven to be added.“ Dearest Kate, I said
something like this when I still possessed you....
[TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.]
UP THE NILE.
CONCLUSION.
The dignity of some of these half-clad Nubians is almost beyond
conception. As we walked through the town of Korosko we saw numbers of
elephants’ tusks, ostrich feathers and eggs, and great piles of
gum-arabic. We told Ali to pick up a handful of the gum, and then
demanded the price. With a shrug of the shoulders, the owner answered in
the most indifferent manner: “Whatever you please.” Ali offered him one
piastre. The merchant took out his purse and coolly handed a piece of
the same value, saying: “If you cannot pay more than that for the gum,
you must be very poor; take this for backsheesh.” “Well,” broke in Mr.
S——, unable to restrain his indignation, “would you like us to give you
two pounds for that handful of gum?” “Oh! no,” he replied quietly;
“whatever you please.” He was finally satisfied with the amount first
offered.
This Korosko is an important town; for from here the direct road lies
across the desert to Aboo-Hamed, Shendy, Sennaar, and Khartoom. The bend
in the river between this place and Derr is so great that the river
flows south-southeast. Going up, we were detained some time. The north
wind, which carried us up thus far, was now almost dead ahead, and we
were obliged to wait till it died out. The temple at Wady Sabooah a few
miles below is of the time of Rameses II. His favorite amusement, to
judge from the figures on the temple walls, was to catch hold of a few
score of his enemies by the hair of the head, all at once, and in one
hand too, while with the other he knocked them about with a club. The
old temple was afterwards used as a Christian church. In the time of the
great temple-builder a figure of some god stood in the adytum; the
Christians covered it with plaster (it was a bas-relief), and then
painted on it a picture of St. Peter. The other figures are not altered,
and the result is that the great Rameses is now making offerings to a
Christian saint.
I was anxious to obtain a dress—a full dress—of a Nubian young lady. I
did not propose to introduce this style at home—it would scarcely be
suited to our winters, although it might answer in summer—but it would
be a pleasant thing to show it, and, when some fair one should ask what
it was, to reply: “Oh! that is a dress that belonged to a lady friend of
mine in Nubia; she gave it to me to remember her by.” Just think how
jealous all the men would be! Frank carefully treasures up a ribbon, and
Charley considers priceless a lock of hair which his fair one has
worn—small trinkets compared with mine, even if I cannot put mine in a
locket. So I am bound to have one by fair means or foul.
The reader will probably be anxious to know what this dress is. Well, he
must not be shocked; he must remember the climate is warm, and the
immediate descendants of Eve set the fashion here. The full costume
consists of a leather girdle, from which hangs fringe of the same
material, about six inches long, ornamented with shells. I have one. It
belonged to a very pretty, dark-eyed young lady of thirteen, from whom I
purchased it as a curiosity. The girl’s wardrobe being unusually well
stocked, she sold me her best for the small sum of six piastres.
The people are very much afraid of the evil eye, more dangerous on this
account: that no one can tell who possesses it. Even some of the
innocent howadjii may have it; if they look at any one who is near, he
or she is instantly possessed by some spirit and becomes sick. But they
have medicine; for they immediately send to some priest and inform him
in what way the sufferer is afflicted. For a small fee he writes out a
portion of the Koran which will cure the disease. This is enclosed in a
leather bag and worn on the arm or around the neck. The disease is not
only cured, if the extract be the right one, but all future danger from
the evil eye is averted.
We have been visiting temples and tombs almost every day for the past
week, and have been very much annoyed by the crowds that followed us and
in many cases prevented us from properly inspecting. On Feb. 6 we
visited the little temple of Baybel Welly. I put into operation a plan I
had thought out last night. I wanted to try the effect of sarcasm on
these half-civilized Nubians. The temple was very small and the crowd
pushed in after us. We withdrew, and I then spoke in a quiet, dignified
manner to the one who appeared to be the leader. “This temple is not
large enough for both of us to visit at the same time. We will wait
outside until you and your friends finish your examination, and then we
will look at it. If you find anything particularly interesting, you will
be kind enough to inform us.” At first he did not take the point; after
a time a light broke upon him, and he replied: “You go in; I will keep
these walluds out.” And he did so.
I have told of the presents we gave the crew. They made a common pool, a
sort of joint-stock company on the mutual-benefit plan. Reis Mohammed
was treasurer. They held a meeting and resolved to declare a dividend,
after the manner of many modern railway dividends—for it was paid out of
the capital. A very noisy confab prevailed for an hour or more; then
votes were cast, and it was resolved “that the treasurer be instructed
and empowered to purchase a calf at a price not exceeding seven dollars,
said calf to be served up immediately for the use of the stockholders.”
This should furnish a hint to antiquarians; perhaps they may be able to
trace back the origin of our modern corporations to the old Egyptians.
The similarity of management should afford some clue.
On the 10th of February we reached Philæ. On the mainland opposite is
the small town of Belal. Here is an old mosque; from its minaret the
first Moslem call to prayer in Nubia was made. It is February 12, and we
are still lying at Mahatta, waiting for the Shellallee, to take us down
the cataract. They will not come to-day, so we go to visit the quarries
of syenite granite from which the obelisks were taken. Two of the party
mount the diminutive donkeys; I want to oversee them, so I climb on a
camel. He kneels for me to mount, and then rises at command. The camel
rises with three distinct motions. I have said that he kneels for one to
mount; this will hardly convey the proper idea. His legs are doubled
underneath and his belly touches the ground. With the first motion he
raises himself on his fore-knees, then straightens up his hind-legs, and
then his fore-legs. The effect of this motion upon the rider is very
curious. He is first pitched violently backwards, but before he has time
to fall off is thrown forwards again; and just as he feels certain that
he is about to dive into the sand, he regains his equilibrium, and off
goes the camel. When he walks, the rider sways back and forth; his run
is not unlike the trot of a horse.
An unfinished obelisk—one that has never been entirely detached from the
rock—shows us the means employed by the Pharaos for cutting out these
immense masses. Holes were cut along the whole line of the block a few
feet apart. Into these wooden wedges, saturated with water, were firmly
driven. The swelling of the wood, causing an equal pressure, split the
rock in a straight line. Just above where we are moored is the body of a
man lying in the water. His hands are tied behind his back—probably a
slave from away up country, beaten to insensibility and then thrown into
the river. Perhaps he stole a few piastres, or was not sufficiently
quick in obeying his master’s commands. It is a sickening sight, this
putrid, bloated corpse, so we ask Ahmud to have it taken out and buried.
It was carried by the current into this little cove some four days ago;
hundreds of people pass it daily, yet no one will remove it. Ahmud says
it is the duty of the governor to bury it, and, unless he does so, the
natives will let it remain until the fish and vultures eat it up. “If I
see the governor,” continues Ahmud in the most unconcerned way, “I will
speak to him about it.”
Early next morning the Shellallee assembled and preparations were begun.
To make the descent it is requisite that the water should be smooth and
not a breath of wind stir the air. The day was all that could be
desired; so at six A.M. began the charge of the black brigade. On they
come from every quarter; every rock sends forth two or three. We have
sixty or seventy on board. Ali says that most of them come to get a
place to sit down and smoke their chibouks. There is the usual amount of
talking, and at a quarter to seven we cast loose from our moorings and
stood out into the stream. God’s flag was tied to a post on the port
side of the quarter-deck—a red flag with two yellow stars and a diamond,
the latter representing the sword of Mohammed, and over all the sacred
name “Allah.” This was placing the dahabeeáh under the divine protection
to ensure a prosperous descent. Our old friend Nogood was with us,
seated by the flag, smoking a long pipe and reading the Koran. Another
sheik was seated on the opposite side telling his beads. Four men stood
at the helm, and two at each oar. To judge from the noise and
excitement, you would be led to think that no boat had ever descended
the cataracts before. Ahmud was so nervous that tears came into his
eyes. The balance of the Shellallee squatted on the deck, lit their
chibouks, and never moved until we hustled them off at Assouan. The
current carried us swiftly on to the west bank, and we neared the great
gate. A piece of wood was thrown overboard; it was a guide to the
steersmen. Now all was quiet; not a word was uttered on board. The
rowers stopped, the howadjii held their breath; a moment more we rounded
the corner almost at a right angle, and shot into the great rapid. The
boat grazed the rocks on the port side. The waves dashed over the bow.
Directly ahead the rocks rise perpendicularly to the height of twenty
feet. The howadjii shudder; surely we will be dashed to pieces. Before
we have scarce time to think, before we are at the bottom of the rapid,
the rudder is jammed hard to starboard, the boat swings round at a right
angle; we are in smooth water—we have descended the cataract in safety.
This rapid is two hundred feet long between the rocks, about seventy
feet broad, and falls from six to seven feet. Old Nogood springs up now
with astonishing activity, and snatches the turban from Reis Mohammed’s
head. This is his perquisite. It is the custom for the head sheik to
take both tarbosh and turban from the captain’s head when the descent is
safely accomplished. This was all very well when these descents were
first made, there being then some doubt as to their safe accomplishment.
Now numbers of boats are taken down every year and an accident rarely
happens. This custom should be done away with—at least, so thought Reis
Mohammed; for he put on the oldest tarbosh he had, and it was so bad
that Nogood would not take it. Every one shook hands all around. One of
the Shellallee cut his foot very badly; I put court-plaster upon it, and
then bound it up with my own handkerchief. He smiled and asked for
backsheesh.
About nine we reached Assouan. Every one wanted backsheesh, even those I
told about who sat on the decks smoking chibouks, and had never raised a
finger to help us. Finally we got rid of them all. What a relief it was
to be alone again with our little family!—for we are coming to love our
sailors; they have been with us so long, and, in spite of their few
faults, they are a good set and we have had no serious trouble with
them. There is a modern temple at Kom Ombos, about thirty miles below
Assouan, built by one of the Ptolemies about one hundred and fifty years
before Christ. It is interesting, and, notwithstanding its recent
construction, we examined it with care. There is another of these
Ptolemaic temples at Edfoo, one of the most interesting temples on the
Nile. True, it is far younger than Karnak, but then it is the
best-preserved temple in Egypt. As a perfect specimen of an Egyptian
temple, complete in all its parts, it stands unrivalled. Let me go into
details here and describe this temple. It will give an idea of all the
others; for the temples of ancient Egypt were all constructed on the
same plan, except rock-hewn Ipsamboul, which has been described before.
The Egyptian temple was not a place of public worship, like a Greek or
Roman temple, or a Christian church. It was an edifice erected by a king
in honor of some triad of divinities to whom he wished to pay special
homage in return for benefits conferred or in hope of future favors. A
rude brick wall surrounded the whole enclosure and shut out from the
vulgar gaze all that took place inside. This wall is almost entire at
Edfoo, but a small portion of it having been destroyed. A gateway admits
us into the enclosure, and we pass through an avenue of sphinxes to a
second gateway with its propyla, or immense pyramidal tower, on either
side. Over the gateway is a winged scarabæus in high relief. The
pyramidal towers are covered with intaglio sculptures representing the
king holding a brace of his enemies by the hair, and about to knock off
their heads with a club. Flag-staffs were attached to the outside of
these towers, rising many feet above their summit. Entering a large
hypæthral hall through this second gateway, we see before us the portico
of the temple itself. We enter this between two columns; from these to
the side walls are screens reaching about half-way to the roof. A little
further on we reach the sanctum sanctorum—a magnificent monolithic
chamber of polished gray granite, in which was kept the hawk, the emblem
of the god Horhat, who was the principal divinity of this temple. The
rest of the naos, or portion of the temple behind the portico, and in
which this sanctuary was placed, was cut up into a number of small
chambers used for religious purposes. Within the enclosure was the
temenos, or grove, thickly planted with trees, and near at hand was a
lake. The whole length of this temple, including the gateway and wall of
circuit, is four hundred and fifty feet. The breadth of the propylon—the
inner gateway with its pyramidal towers—is two hundred and fifty feet
and its height one hundred and fifteen feet. The sculptures all over the
walls are extremely interesting. Some give the names of the several
chambers of the temple, and their dimensions in cubits and parts of
cubits, so that the modern measurements can be compared with the ancient
ones. Others give valuable information respecting the ancient geography
of Egypt.
During the reign of Psammenitus, son of Amasis, a most remarkable
prodigy befell the Egyptians, says Herodotus; for rain fell at Egyptian
Thebes, which had never happened before nor since, to my time, as the
Thebans themselves affirm. For no rain ever falls in the upper regions
of Egypt, but at that time rain fell in drops at Thebes. In the year of
grace one thousand eight hundred and seventy-four the same remarkable
prodigy befell the Egyptians, say I; for rain fell at Egyptian Thebes.
If we did not know the dignity and sober character of that ancient
traveller, we might suppose a sarcastic witticism lay hid in the closing
part of the above story. See how cautious he is: the rain fell in drops.
Well, that is precisely the way it fell when we were there. And the
drops could be counted. There was no shower. The dust was not even laid.
But it rained. I saw it—perhaps the first time in three thousand years.
It is no small affair for a man to be able to say to his grandchildren
in years to come: “It rained when I was at Egyptian Thebes—in drops, you
know.”
Ten days tied up at Luxor, measuring the columns of Karnak, looking at
the endless procession of gods and warriors, and going far into the
mountain-side to search for the sarcophagi of Egypt’s long-departed
rulers. The ruins of Thebes are familiar—at least to every one who has
read any of the numerous works on Egypt; so I will not describe them.
There is one place, however, not mentioned in the guide-books about
which I will say something. Behind the temple of Dayr el Medeeneh, on
the western shore, there are several mummy-pits. Mr. S—— and I
determined to visit them. We descended a well about ten feet deep, at
the bottom of which we found a narrow passage, so low that we were
obliged to crawl. This led into a large chamber filled with bodies. Ali
begged to accompany us, but, when he caught sight of the first body, he
beat a hasty retreat to the upper air. Truly, it was a solemn, ghastly
sight. The mummies were piled up to what depth no one knows; as they
then were they had filled up the room to a level with the narrow
passage, forming a floor over which we walked. The Arabs had been there
hunting for scarabæi and other antiques to sell to travellers, and in so
doing had handled the corpses without care or ceremony. Here was a man
standing on his head with his feet resting against the wall; there a
woman broken in two, the legs placed astride the neck; corpses all
around in every conceivable position—grinning, staring corpses, enough
to give one the nightmare for weeks to come. Beneath this top row they
were placed in layers. I found the body of a young woman well preserved,
and with hair banged across the forehead, like the French style of a few
years ago. I carried the body out to show it to the rest of the party,
thinking somewhat of bringing it home. “Desecrating graves,” “robbing
sepulchres,” and words of like import met my ears, and, feeling somewhat
abashed, I took the body back, but detached the hair and brought it with
me. In this pit we found numbers of the small clay figures of Osiris.
They were rudely made—for these were the fellaheen, or lower class, who
were thrown into a common pit. They were embalmed in the cheapest way,
which was done, according to Herodotus, by thoroughly rinsing the
abdomen in syrmæa, and then steeping it with natron for seventy days.
The boy who owned my donkey was sick, so Fatma, his little black-eyed
sister, attended for him. She was a pretty, bewitching little creature,
yet of a marriageable age—thirteen, I think. Day after day she ran
behind my donkey, urging it on, and occasionally coming up alongside to
make some pleasant remark and disclose teeth like Oriental pearls. When
we were parting I gave her a small present and asked her if she would go
with me to America. “Certainly.” And the little one jumped and clapped
her hands with joy. “Do you know where America is situated?” I asked.
“Not exactly, but down the river, somewhere near Alexandria, is it not?”
Here we are at Keneh, and when we see a fine large house, in appearance
not unlike a provincial theatre, we naturally ask who inhabits it. The
consuls of France and Prussia—the lion and the lamb lying down together.
Here they live together in the same house on the best of terms, just as
if King William had never marched into Paris or Napoleon III. had not
surrendered at Sedan. We did not meet them, but very probably they were
like Ali Murad—natives, with a faint idea that there had been some
misunderstanding between France and Prussia; but then they were not
concerned with that, so they smoke their pipes together and let the
outside world take care of itself. Passing Sheik Selim’s place on March
9, we stopped and sent some of the sailors with presents. We arrived at
Bellianeh, whence we proposed to visit the interesting temple of Abydos.
We rode for six miles through rich fields of grain, principally wheat,
and reached the modern village of Arabat, called by the Arabs Madfuné
(the buried), from the ancient buildings that until recently lay all
around covered with desert sand. On entering the town we saw a gang of
men working at excavations under the charge of an overseer, who
quickened their movements with a bamboo. We saw pictures of this on the
tombs four thousand years old. A fine-looking man, with an immense red
turban on his head, broke from the gang, rushed up to us, threw himself
on the ground, embraced our feet, and piteously implored us to take him
away. He was a sheik of a neighboring village, he said, and had been
torn from his family and pressed into service. In proof of this he
produced a long document, about as intelligible to us as the
hieroglyphics on the temple wall. It was done by order of the viceroy,
so we could not interfere, and he went reluctantly back to his work. His
appeal to us angered the overseer, who struck him a fearful blow with
the bamboo that felled him to the ground. Said—good-hearted Said—took
the man’s part, and for a time it looked as though we were going to have
a lively row. But it all evaporated in talk; the overseer promised not
to beat him any more, and then he and Said became the best of friends.
These workmen are not paid very much—five cents a day; but their work is
not very heavy—at least, as they do it. One man fills a small basket
with earth, then sits down and smokes a cigarette. The basket is dragged
about twenty feet, emptied out, then he has a little talk with some of
his friends. We were looking for the celebrated tablet of Abydos, but
the passage-way was so filled up with sand that we could not approach
it. This tablet is called the new one, although M. Mariette supposes it
to be the original of the fragmentary one found in the temple of Rameses
II. at this place and now in the British Museum. It contains figures of
Sethi and Rameses offering homage to seventy-six kings, their
predecessors, beginning with Menes and ending with Sethi I., and has
been of incalculable benefit to the historian. But we are going farther
back than Menes, for there is the Kóm es Sultan, the Holy Sepulchre of
the ancient Egyptians—the tomb of Osiris. It is not a natural tumulus,
but is formed by the heaping up of tombs during many ages one upon
another. Are they not the tombs of those rich Egyptians that Plutarch
tells of who came from all parts of the country to Abydos to be buried
near Osiris?
A few days after we were strolling along the east bank when we came upon
a Coptic church. Entering, we saw a novel rendering of the legend of St.
George and the dragon. I have said before that St. George is the patron
saint of the Copts, and here they turn the dragon into a Turk,
substituting a real enemy for a mythical one. St. George, on a spirited
steed, is frantically endeavoring to pin a Turk to the earth. He has his
lance run through the neck, but the Turk is a tough fellow and is
fighting so hard, while the horse is balancing himself in the most
incredible manner on one leg, that it is a question which will get the
upper hand.
As we run close to the bank scores of urchins salute us with that now
familiar cry, “Backsheesh, howadji”—“Alms, O shopkeeper”—not that they
took us for shopkeepers, but then these were the first to travel for
purposes of trade; and when others, travelling for pleasure alone,
came after them, no distinction was made by the natives, but all were
classed in the same category. Everywhere in the East, from the poorest
beggar to the sultan himself, is heard the same demand, “Backsheesh,
howadji”—from the great ones couched in hidden terms and well-set
phrases, but as well understood as the outspoken clamor of the rabble.
After careful study and deliberation I have classified the different
uses of this phrase. I have divided them into eleven different
demands, expressing the following ideas: First, the distant or dubious
demand. This is made by small urchins from the bank as we sail by. The
tone of voice indicates that they doubt very much whether they will
receive anything, but deem it worth while to make the attempt,
although sometimes a quarter of a mile of water separates us from
them. Second, the salutative demand from older ones. As we ride or
walk through the country we meet an Arab. “Naharak Saiid” (May the day
be good to you), say we. “Backsheesh, howadji,” he replies in the same
salutative tone, and moves on. Surely he cannot expect anything; he
does not even stop. Third, the imperative demand, growled out in a
fierce tone by half-grown boys—your-money-or-your-life demand of
highwaymen. This is always unsuccessful. Fourth, the curtailed demand
from over-lazy ones, as this: “Backshee, howadj”—a very indifferent
one. Fifth, the plaintive demand—the fourteen-children and
seven-year-widow story listened to by tender-hearted people. Sixth,
the non-expective demand, a mere matter of form, and surprise
exhibited if complied with. Seventh, the interrogative demand—to wit:
“Did it ever occur to you, O howadji! that a small present would be
acceptable to your petitioner?” An idea similar to this frequently
crossed the howadji’s mind. Eighth, the confidential demand from the
donkey-boy when near the end of a trip. In a low whisper, and with a
knowing look: “Howadji and I understand one another; it is all right;
about two piastres will do.” Ninth, the future demand: the praises of
the donkey are sounded when starting out; professions of fidelity and
attachment on the part of the attendant are loud and constant; he will
show you everything, and—“Backsheesh kabeér dahabeeáh” (Much
backsheesh on the return to boat), in a matter-of-course tone. Tenth,
the infantile demand, from imps scarce able to talk: “Backtheeth,
howath”—most successful of any. Eleventh, the fraudulent demand,
practised principally in Nubia. A mother holding an infant in her
arms: “Backsheesh for the baby, O howadji!” and when the kind-hearted
traveller places a coin in the little dimpled hand held out to receive
it, the mother takes possession of it for her own use. When the
traveller approaches a town, every child is snatched up into some
one’s arms—it is immaterial whether the mother gets her own child or
some one belonging to another—and presented to him.
Little Saida, our gazelle, broke her leg at Thebes; we sent for the
barber, who is doctor also, to bind it up. He performed the operation in
a bungling way, and mortification set in a few days after. She had
become a great pet, and was beginning to know us and eat from our hands.
So we concluded it was best to kill her, as she was suffering very much.
Wishing to preserve the skin, she was hit on the head with an axe, so as
not to injure it. After the skin had been removed we offered the body to
the crew for a meal. Reis Mohammed threw it overboard, saying that it
was not killed in the proper way for them to eat: it should have been
shot, or else the throat cut, after repeating certain passages from the
Koran. It is strange to see how obedient these Arabs are to the sacred
writ. They are fond of meat, but do not have it very often. On one
occasion we were lunching in a temple. When we had finished, some fine
slices of ham were left. I gave them to Ali for himself and the two
sailors who were with us, and whose lunch had consisted of dry bread.
Without a moment’s hesitation he threw them to a dog who was near us,
saying that it was good food for dogs and Christians, but not for Arabs.
On the summit of the rocks of Gebel Aboofayda, near their southern end,
are the caverns of Moabdeh, commonly called the crocodile mummy pits. We
stopped and procured some fine specimens—small crocodiles which had been
treated as gods five thousand years ago. Every one in this country seems
to know every one else. It seemed to me that, when our crew wanted to
see any one, they simply called out the name—Ali, Mohammed, or whatever
it was—and he soon appeared. When purchasing goods it makes no
difference whom you pay, whether owner or not, provided you pay some
one. Many people marvel how the old Egyptians transported their obelisks
and colossi from the quarries at Syene to their destination several
hundred miles down the river. Back of the Christian village called Ed
Dayr en Nakhl, on the east bank nearly opposite Rhoda, are a number of
grottoes cut into the mountain-side. In one of them is one of the most
interesting paintings found in any of the Egyptian tombs, which will
enable us to understand how these immense masses of stone were conveyed
from one place to another. We had great difficulty in finding this
grotto; for, although it is mentioned in the guide-book, the natives
seemed unaware of its existence. At last we found it, away up on the
mountain-top, the entrance so filled up with débris that we were obliged
to crawl in. But we were well paid; for we saw the famous painting of “A
Colossus on a Sledge,” which, as far as I am informed, is the only one
of the kind in Egypt. The person represented by the colossus was called
Thoth-ôtp, and was of high distinction in the military caste. He is
styled the king’s friend, and one of his children was named Ositarsens,
after the king. This grotto was his tomb. The figure is seated and
placed upon a sledge, being firmly secured to it by ropes. One hundred
and seventy-two men, in four rows of forty-three each, pull the ropes,
attached to a ring in front of the sledge, and a liquid—most probably
oil—is poured from a vase by a person standing on the pedestal of the
statue, in order to facilitate its progress as it slides on the
ground—or more probably on a tramway made for the occasion, though that
is not indicated in the picture. Some of the persons engaged in this
laborious duty appear to be Egyptians; others are foreign slaves who are
clad in the costume of their country. Behind the statue are four rows of
men, three in a row, representing either the architects and masons or
those who had employment about the place where the statue was to be
conveyed. Below are others carrying vases filled with water, and some
rude machinery connected with the transportation of the colossi,
followed by taskmasters with their wands of office. On the knee of the
figure stands a man, who claps his hands to the measured cadence of a
song to mark the time, and to ensure a long pull, a strong pull, and a
pull all together. Before the statue a priest is presenting incense in
honor of the person it represents. At the top are seven companies of
men—a guard of honor, or perhaps reliefs for dragging the sledge. Beyond
are men slaying an ox and bringing the joints of meat to the door of the
building to which the statue was to be transported. From this we may
judge with tolerable certainty how the great obelisks were conveyed to
the temples before which they were set up, and how the great stones of
the Pyramids were transported from their mountain-beds.
We are now rapidly sailing down stream and nearing civilization. In a
few days we reached the lofty cliffs of Gebel et Tayr, which rise
abruptly from the river to a height of several hundred feet. On its
summit stands the Coptic convent of Sitta Mariam el Adra (Our Lady Mary
the Virgin). As we approached several of the monks jumped into the
stream—not from the top of the cliff, however—and swam out towards us.
They seized hold, jumped aboard, entirely naked, and saluted us with
“Ana Christian, ya howadjii” (I am a Christian, O howadjii!) Of course
we could not resist this appeal, but a few paras satisfied them, and,
putting the coins in their mouths, they swam back to shore, to sit like
birds of prey waiting for their next victims—for they never miss a
dahabeeáh that passes. This Gebel et Tayr—“The Mountain of the Bird”—has
a strange legend attached to it. It is said that all the birds of the
country assemble annually on this mountain, and, having selected one of
their number to remain there till the following year, they fly away into
Africa, and only return the next year to release their comrade and
substitute another in his place.
A funny accident happened to Reis Ahmud. We had grounded on a sand-bank,
where we remained sixteen hours, and the usual means were being employed
to pull the boat off. An anchor was thrown out some seventy feet ahead
in the direction of the channel. A rope was attached to this, and the
other end carried through a pulley on the deck. The entire crew pulled
upon this rope, when it became entangled in a block on the starboard
side. Reis Ahmud went forward to release it, and, without slackening the
rope, he began to pry it with a long pole. The strain on the rope was of
course very severe. He succeeded in raising it over the block, but it
acted like the string of a bow, and Ahmud, being in the place where the
arrow usually is, was struck by it. He was shot directly over the top of
the kitchen, and plunged headlong into the water on the other side of
the boat as though he had been shot out of a catapult. The expression of
fear, terror, and uncertainty as to what struck him, shown plainly in
his face as he went flying over the boat, pole in hand, was most
ludicrous. Fortunately, he was not hurt. A bad fright and thorough
ducking will teach him to avoid strained ropes in future. Some statues,
a few fragments of granite, and some substructions are all that can be
seen of the ruins of a city which, if there is any truth in the
descriptions given of it, must have exceeded any modern city as much as
the Pyramids exceed any mausoleum which has been erected since those
days (Curzon). So one day was enough at Memphis, and still on to the
south we sailed. Now the great Pyramids loom up in the distance, and at
ten of the morning of March 30 we reach the iron bridge at Cairo, our
long Nile journey over. That night we left our dahabeeáh, and bade
farewell to our crew. I have travelled far and wide throughout this
world of ours, but I know of no trip that has afforded me more real
satisfaction and pleasure than these four months on the Nile. The
expense is not very great; a party of four can contract with a good
dragoman to supply boat, crew, provisions, and everything necessary for
the voyage for from five to six pounds sterling a day. The winter of
1873-'74 was cold for Egypt. The superintendent of the viceroy’s
sugar-works at Rhoda informed us that it was the coldest winter known in
Egypt for seventeen years. See what a cold winter is in the Orient—for
these observations I took myself: Average thermometer from December 20,
1873, to March 28, 1874, sixty-nine degrees. Highest thermometer during
same period, eighty-two degrees on February 21, 1874; lowest, February
8, 1874, sixty degrees. The observations were taken in the cabin—in the
shade, of course—at noon of each day.
MAY.
The month of Maia—Cybele’s Roman name[36]—
Ere Rome was Christ’s. And ’twas for Vulcan’s priest
To kindle at her shrine the rosy flame
On sweet May-day. Womb’d in the fruitful East,
Not vainly Westward, as the myths increased,
This purer rite, nor unprophetic, came:
A flower that should be gather’d for the feast
Of Truth—with more that erst deck’d Pagan shame.
Not now the mother of vain gods[37] we pray,
But Her, the God-Man’s Mother, ever a maid:
And still to her this fairest month of May
Assign—our hearts upon her altar laid,
That her chaste love, descending with its fire,
May purge them from the dross of base desire
B. D. H.
Footnote 36:
Maia, or Majesta: not to be confounded with Maia, the mother of
Hercules.
Footnote 37:
Cybele was the “Mater Deûm” of the Greeks and Romans.
THE FRENCH CLERGY DURING THE LATE WAR IN FRANCE.
The war of 1870 between France and Germany has taken the place, in the
minds of the French, of those other, not more glorious, but more
successful, wars with which the very word “war” was formerly associated.
They were used to think of nothing but triumphs; individual losses were
swallowed up in national exultation; and they connected with the
memories of the two Napoleons the peculiarly French axiom that there
existed no such word in their language as “impossible.” _That_ is still
true to-day, notwithstanding the reverses through which they have
passed; for moral heroism stands upright on a lost battle-field as well
as on a triumphant one, and the nation can say with its chivalrous
monarch of old: “All is lost, save honor.” If the discipline was faulty,
if the management was indiscreet, if the government was weak, if
circumstances were contrary, there was still individual courage, and not
only among the soldiers, but among all classes. The very misfortunes of
the country roused the spirit of women, priests, students, exiles, of
the weak and the poor, the secluded and the helpless; never was there
such spontaneous truce to all differences, such generous sacrifice of
personal comforts and, what is more, of personal antipathies; all good
men and true shook hands across the barriers of politics, religion, and
caste, and, with one mind and heart, did each his best in his own way
for his suffering country. Of course there were cowards, time-servers,
and place-seekers, making profit out of their fatherland’s necessities,
getting into safe, so-called official, berths, and generally skulking;
but they were not the majority, and it is superfluous to ask here if
every nation has not its scum.
The part which the French clergy took in the war of 1870 exceeds that
taken by them in any previous war, when some few members of their body
acted as salaried chaplains to the troops. Even during the “wars of
religion” under Henry IV. of France few priests accompanied the troops;
the _abbés_ of Turenne and Condé’s times were officers and gentlemen
rather than pastors and nurses; during the wars of the great Napoleon
public opinion would have frowned down their services; and the
successful wars of the Crimea and of Italy under the late emperor,
though they stirred the clergy more, were yet _too_ successful to vie as
a field of action with the ever-present needs of city and country
parishes. But the last disastrous conflict was emphatically a _home_
war; each family in the quiet hamlet where his cure of souls lay came to
the parish priest, asking blessings for its departing members and
prayers for its dead ones; each wife and mother claimed his comforting
words and poured her sorrows and fears into his ears; soldiers on the
march made his presbytery their natural home, slept and ate there, asked
him for common little necessaries, and made sure of getting no denial
had they asked for anything he possessed; boys whom he had christened
came home to die, and it was he who gave them the last sacraments and
read the burial service over their graves; in a word, he lived on the
battle-field even while still cooped up in his village. It was not
strange, then, that he should easily take one step further, and go
himself to share abroad the same danger whose face was so familiar to
him at home. A German historian, writing of the late war, says that
there was more patriotism found among the French clergy as a class than
in any other class in the whole nation. General Ambert, a soldier and a
civil servant, has gathered together[38] many interesting episodes of
the war relating to the heroic behavior of the priests, who from the
beginning came eagerly to ask leave to act as chaplains for the love of
God and their neighbor only; for when war was declared there were but
forty-six accredited chaplains in the whole army. Not only parish
priests presented themselves, but also hundreds of monks, brothers, and
confraternity-men; every order was represented—Jesuits, Capuchins,
Dominicans, Benedictines, Carmelites (the most distinguished of whom was
Père Hermann, who died at Spandau), Trappists (of whom one convent alone
furnished thirty-five), Cistercians, Oratorians, Lazarists,
Redemptorists, Christian Brothers (of whom nineteen died during the war,
besides those who were the victims of the Commune), and other
brotherhoods, old orders and new, their members drawn from all classes,
from the Legitimist nobleman to the peasant and the artisan, from the
doctor of laws or of theology to the brother-scullerer or porter. One
day in mid-winter, during the armistice, the Christian Brothers had been
for more than twelve hours unceasingly at work digging in the snow for
the bodies of the French dead of Petit-Bry, Champigny, and Croisy. Two
Prussian officers, at the head of a detachment of their men, were doing
the same for the bodies of the Germans. It was a bitterly cold night,
the wind blew the flames of the torches about, and nothing was heard but
short, business-like sentences, the sound of pickaxes breaking the ice,
and that of the carriers’ feet as they bore the dead away on rough
litters. The Prussian officers looked admiringly at the silent brothers,
and one said to the other: “We have seen nothing so fine as this in
France.” “Except the Sisters of Charity,” answered the other.
Footnote 38:
_L’Héroïsme en Soutane._ By General Ambert. Paris: E. Dentu, Palais
Royal. 1876.
One day Brother Nethelmus, of St. Nicholas’ School, Paris, was wounded
by a ball, which proved his death-blow two days later, and hardly was he
buried before a young man asked to see the superior, and said to him
very simply: “I am the younger brother of Nethelmus, and have come to
take his place.” “Have you your parents’ consent?” asked the superior.
“My father and mother blessed me before I left, and bade me come,” said
the youth, as if nothing was more commonplace.
The service of the wounded was the priests’ favorite field of work, and
it was in this that they most frequently met death themselves. The Abbé
Géraud, after the defeat of Mans, being chaplain of the Vendean
_francs-tireurs_, was seeking out the most dangerously placed among the
wounded. The latter had in many cases been abandoned by the drivers of
their ambulances, who, in the general rout and panic, had unharnessed
the horses and run away. On one of these carts were two soldiers and two
officers of “Mobiles”—one of whom tells the story—all badly wounded and
trembling with cold and ague. Many a man ran past them, intent on his
own safety and heedless of their piteous appeals, and the men despaired
of help, when they saw a priest running quickly towards them with cheery
looks and words, telling them he was looking for them. The first thing
he did was to take off all his available clothing to cover the men and
warm them a little; then, stopping some of the runaways, he begged,
promised, and reproached so effectually as to induce several to help
him. “Push the wheels, my fine fellows,” he cried, as he harnessed
himself to the shafts, and from the battle-field he drew the cart to a
village, where he never rested till he had begged for his charges food,
coverings, and straw, and at last a horse, with which he drove them to
the nearest hospital. He continued his labors throughout the war. The
Abbé de Beuvron, who has lived with the soldiers for fifteen years in
various times and climates, tells us of the priests at Fröschwiller,
who, after confessing and anointing the dying placed in the village
church, saved the wounded while the building was in flames, and
persuaded the Prussians who guarded the wells to let them have a few
drops of water for the sick; this blockade lasted for four days, after
which fifteen Alsatian peasants were condemned to be shot for having
mutilated the bodies of some Prussian soldiers. This system of shooting
the first-comer for a crime committed by an unknown person was one of
the most cruel features of the late war. These poor wretches, taken at
random—some mere boys, some old, infirm men—were tied with their hands
behind their backs to one thick rope which kept them all on a level. The
Protestant clergyman, who had himself gone to the general and asked the
lives of these men, came to beg M. de Beuvron to intercede for them; he
was equally unsuccessful, and, when he begged as a Catholic priest to be
allowed to see the condemned, the general smiled and said: “You are
welcome; I will give you an escort.” But on addressing the poor men the
priest found that they understood no French, and he could not speak
German. He pointed to heaven, and spread his hands while he gave them
absolution, and they, with one accord, fell on their knees, sobbed and
prayed, and bowed their heads. This solemn, silent service seems to us
as noble as the most magnificent of triumphant processions, with chants
and rejoicings, and imperial _cortége_ following—this, the last moment
between time and eternity, between faith and vision.
It is M. de Beuvron who has said with truth: “It is the country parish
priest who makes Catholic France.” And Prince Frederick Charles of
Prussia echoed this sentiment when he said at an official dinner in
1872, at the table of the Bavarian ambassador: “There is in France but
one class that is noble and patriotic, earnest, courageous, worthy of
respect, and really influential, and that is the clergy. Impossible not
to admire it as it appeared on the recent battle-fields.” Some of these
heroic men preserved their incognito; one is mentioned by the London
_Times’_ correspondent who followed the Saxon regiments. “There is a
man,” he writes, “whom I have noticed, since Sedan until the struggles
before the walls of Paris, constantly following the wounded. He has
neither horse nor conveyance, but, stick in hand, he follows the track
of the army, and, with the consummate finish of the man of the world and
the tenderness of a woman, he attends and comforts the dying. He is a
French priest, a Benedictine.... The other day I met him suddenly on a
field of battle, and he asked me to direct him to where the wounded
were. He had walked twenty miles that day. No government pays him; he is
a volunteer in the best sense of the word.... He is in the prime of
manhood, of handsome build, distinguished-looking, and with no less than
courtly manners.” Another unknown volunteer, but a layman, was found
dead at Forbach. No one had seen him till the day of the battle, and he
wore a dark dress and cap and a fancy rifle. At the moment when the
battle began he suddenly joined a brigade and fought like a hero. His
purse held a large sum of money in gold, and his linen, unmarked, was
remarkably fine, while round his neck was a medal hanging by a silken
ribbon. There was nothing to identify him.
But to return to our parish priests, of whom many refused rich rewards
and promotion after the war, as M. du Marhallach, who, though he
accepted the Legion of Honor, declined the bishopric of Quimper, and,
when his townsmen forced him to represent them in the National Assembly,
managed to resign before long and return to humbler scenes of usefulness
in his country parish. If a book were to be filled with incidents of the
devotedness of the country priests, there would yet be ten times as many
unknown and unrecorded. As the Prussians entered the village of Verrey,
slaying all in their way—men, women, and children—the _curé_, M. Frérot,
was almost ubiquitous among the dying. He was wounded twice with
bayonets, and, as he retreated into his garden, the soldiers fired and
wounded him twice more. He dragged himself to the doctor’s, where some
wounded were being attended to, and got his wounds dressed, when the
doctor, taking the flag of the Geneva Association with him, undertook to
get him safe into his own (the doctor’s) house, where some of the
wounded had been carried for safety. The enemy, heedless of the flag,
fell upon him again with ball, bayonet, and gun-stocks till he fell down
insensible. He died a few days after, glad, as he said, if his death
could be in any way useful to his country. Useful! Yes, as an example;
but how many precious lives are lost thus, while vile, worthless ones
preserve themselves! One can only compare the pouring out of such blood
to the “waste” of the precious ointment which our Lord so highly
commended.
The Abbé Miroy, of Cuchery, near Rheims, died another kind of death: he
was judicially murdered for having allowed arms to be hidden in the barn
of his house. When asked for this permission, he was in the first agony
of grief at the news of the death of his parents at a hamlet burnt by
the Prussians. However, whether responsible or not—and probably as a
Frenchman he saw no harm in passively helping in the defence of his
country—he was shot at Rheims, at daybreak, on a bleak February morning
and a Sunday. It was during the armistice. His people put this
inscription on his tomb-cross: “Here lies the Abbé Charles Miroy, who
died a victim to his love of country.”
M. Muller, parish priest of Sarreguemines, when asked for the keys of
his church, flatly refused to give them up, and, on being threatened,
answered:
“How many shots do you fire on a condemned man?”
“Eight and the '_coup-de-grâce_.’”
“Very well, then, before you cross the threshold of my church to
desecrate it fire these eight shots and the _coup-de-grâce_ at me; for
you shall only step in over my dead body.” There were many like
instances; for the priests knew well that the enemy delighted in
wantonly outraging the most sacred feelings of the people by profaning
and robbing their churches. A barbarous story is told (General Ambert
vouches for it) of the treatment undergone by the aged Abbé Cor, of
Neuville in the Ardennes, who had considerably delayed the march of the
Prussians by certain information given to the French, and who,
notwithstanding his age (he was more than eighty), was tied to a horse’s
tail and dragged along for a good distance, with another rope tied to
his leg, with which a soldier pulled him up whenever he fell. At last
the soldiers got tired, and threw him into a ditch, and, marvellous to
relate, he recovered. One of his parishioners cried out in pity: “O
father! what a state you are in.”
“Oh!” he answered cheerfully, with a twinkle in his eye, “it is only my
_old_ cassock!”
The parish priest of Gunstatt was brought before an improvised council
of war just after the battle of Forbach; what was requested of him the
book does not say, but his answer just before he was shot points to
something evidently against his country’s interests: “I prefer death to
the crime of betraying France.”
If these facts, which speak for themselves, allow us to make any
commentary, we can think of none so appropriate as this: how does this
France contrast with the feverish, theatrical, rationalistic, immoral
France presented to us by a certain wide-spread form of French
literature? No country is so libelled by its own writers as France.
Granted that many novels represent “life as it is,” yet it is not the
undercurrent of life, not the life of the majority. It is the
artificial, sensational, exceptional life of large cities and of
reckless cliques; and, besides this, novels have a trick of magnifying
this diseased life into illusive dimensions. It fills the eye of the
foreigner, it shapes his judgment, it draws his curiosity, till the
sober, prosaic, quiet, respectable, and vital life of the country fades
out of his memory. He forgets the _vie de province_, the impoverished
gentlemen living in dignified retirement, like Lamartine and his mother
at Milly, like the family in one part of a _Sister’s Story_, like
Eugénie de Guérin with her homely, housekeeping cares; the cosey homes
of the middle classes, their precise, thrifty, cheerful ways; the family
bond that enables different families to live patriarchally in a
fellowship which few Anglo-Saxons would or could imitate; the
peasant-proprietors with their gardens and little farms; the healthy
rural, natural life that is everywhere, and even _in_ cities; the
kindliness, the simplicity, and the innate refinement which ought to
make many a traveller of the Anglo-Saxon race blush for his surliness
and brutal, superficial, haughty way of setting down every foreigner as
a monkey or a barbarian.
Among the country priests there were not only heroes, but strategists.
Towards the beginning of the war a French column was on its way to join
the main body, and had to retreat through a hilly, wooded, and unknown
tract to avoid being surprised by the enemy. No one knew just what to do
or advise, and the little maps were very unsatisfactory. The general
stopped at a Lorraine village and sent for the authorities. The mayor
and most of the inhabitants had fled in anticipation of danger; only the
_curé_ was left, with a few sick and old people. He was over seventy
himself, tall and large, his hands and face swollen and his feet
protected by huge wooden shoes. The general did not hope for much advice
from him, but the old man sat down and explained that he was gouty and
unable to get about, but knew the country. When the general had joked
about this impromptu council of war, and the priest in return had
reminded him how often the church had had occasion to help the army
before, they examined the map together, and the _curé_ took a pencil and
quickly drew certain lines in a most business-like manner, calculating
how long such a road would take to traverse, how much headway would be
gained over the enemy, what points would be a safe resting-place for a
few hours for the tired troops, the route which, believing the bridge to
be destroyed, the Prussians would probably follow, the houses where the
general would find willing and able contributors to the necessities of
his men—in a word, every chance and every detail that an accomplished
commander would have thought of. Then he asked for four soldiers, two to
be placed in the steeple to look out for the Prussians and toll the bell
the moment they came in sight, and thus give the understood signal to
the column at its masked resting-place; and two to watch with him at the
entrance of the village.
“_Monsieur le curé_,” cried the general, “you are a hero!”
The old man sneezed violently—he took snuff—and laughed as well, as he
said: “_Mon général_, the seminaries are full of such heroes as _I_ am.
It is no heroism to love one’s country. Now, when you have given your
orders, I shall carry you off to the presbytery and give you a roast
chicken and some good omelet; and I think Turenne would have been glad
sometimes to barter a few of his laurel branches for an omelet.”
The priest and the two soldiers had a long and cold watch through the
night. At three o’clock in the morning the latter were getting tired,
but the old man said: “Hist! do you see something over there?” The men
peered through the dark and saw nothing; there was a wide circle of old
trees and a road across—a well-known spot, the Fontaine wood. But the
priest both saw and heard, or else he guessed by instinct. “See, they
are creeping nearly on all fours behind the trees; now they stop to
listen, they are gathering together. There is an officer speaking to
them in whispers. It is time to ring the bell. Go now, children.”
“But how can we leave you alone?” said the soldiers.
“Never mind me; God will take care of me. Your general’s orders were to
leave the moment the bell rang.” And as his companions withdrew he rang
his little bell and the church tocsin immediately answered. Its sound
was nearly drowned by the discharge of the Prussian rifles. The old man
knelt down and began the Lord’s Prayer; he had not said the second line
before a ball hit him and he fell. The French column escaped without the
loss of one man; and when the general reported to his superior in
command, the latter, lighting a cigar, said: “That priest was a brave
fellow.” But the general was to meet him once more. The _curé_ was not
killed, but was afterwards condemned to be shot, which sentence was
commuted to exile on account of his great age; and when he met his old
friend, who believed him dead, he greeted him with the cheerful
question: “Well, how did you like my omelet?” The other caught him in
his arms and repeated with as much tenderness as admiration: “You are a
hero!”
The next story we choose from the many related by Ambert is one of pure
Christian self-sacrifice, and one that has its daily counterpart in
hospitals and plague-stricken cities, even in peaceful times. Small-pox
in an aggravated form had broken out among the French troops, and, on
the approach of an infected battalion of Mobiles to a village not far
from Beaune, a _gendarme_ was sent on to bid the inhabitants lock their
doors and keep out of the way, while the sick were taken through to an
isolated camp-hospital at some distance. There were hardly any
able-bodied men left in the village, as they were off harassing the
Prussians and watching their movements, and the women, in their
loneliness, felt a double fear. The patients came. A death-like silence
prevailed; no face was seen at door or window. The sick men dragged
themselves slowly and painfully along, asking for nothing, touchingly
resigned to their lot of lepers and outcasts, though many of them were
raw recruits of a few weeks only, whose homes were in just such villages
as the familiar-looking one they were crossing now. They had passed the
last houses, but at the door of one a little apart from the rest one
soldier fell, and, seeing how hopeless it was to urge him further, a
sergeant placed him on the doorstep and knocked at the door for help. No
answer; and the battalion resumed its march, while the sergeant went
back to tell the mayor. When he was out of sight a man and two women
came hastily and furtively out of the house, carried the unconscious
soldier some distance to the foot of a tree, and there left him. The
sergeant had found the parish priest on his way back from a sick-call,
and asked him to tell the mayor, as he was in a hurry to join his
regiment. They came to the house, and, not finding the sick man, asked
the owner where he was; the man half opened the shutter and pointed in
silence to the tree. Without even seeking help, the priest, finding the
soldier still alive, carried him home in his arms and laid him on his
own bed. The hubbub was great in the parish; the old housekeeper
indignantly remonstrated, but the priest gave her a few clear and severe
orders as to her own liberty of staying away, and the substitute whom he
had the means of sending for to replace him in church, also the manner
of bringing him his food once a day, and then went out to speak to his
excited parishioners. “There,” he said, pointing to a placard on the
wall of the mayoralty, “you read 'Liberty, fraternity, equality.’ Am _I_
to be deprived of the _liberty_ of helping my neighbor? Is he not our
_equal_, and does not _fraternity_ require that we should give him every
chance for his life? I cannot forget that the good shepherd lays down
his life for his sheep.”
“But he does not even belong to the parish!” murmured the crowd.
“In such times as these,” said M. Cloti with enthusiasm, “all France is
my parish, and every brave fellow who dies for you is my parishioner.”
And for sixty-five days and nights he watched the stranger, Jean
Dauphin, made his bed every night, cooked his food, mixed his medicines,
swept the rooms, and scarcely slept or ate himself. The doctor had
insisted on the utmost cleanliness, but said that, with all precautions
possible, only a miracle could save the soldier’s life. Charity wrought
the miracle, and by the fortieth day the patient was sitting up
listening to the priest reading to him. Only one person in the village
caught the disease—the daughter of the man who had spurned the soldier
from his door; and, though she did not die of it, she lost her beauty
for ever. Some months after the doctor asked the priest if he knew at
the time that he was risking his life, and that there was but the barest
chance of escape for him. “Yes,” said M. Cloti simply, “I knew it.”
A terrible barbarity was the occasional punishment of the _bastonnade_—a
kind of “running the gauntlet.” This occurred once at the village of
Saint-Calais, where the enemy found some guns hidden in the belfry, and
one hundred and forty-five male inhabitants, including the mayor, Baron
Jaubert, and the priest, were seized. They were compelled to walk slowly
between a double row of Prussian soldiers armed with clubs and sticks,
and received merciless blows on their bare heads, their shoulders, back,
arms, and legs. The number being odd, the priest was placed last and
alone, so that both rows were able to reach and torture him. He fainted,
and was given a glass of water, after which the torture began again; and
when he fell the second time, his head was found to be split in five
places, and his body was thrown aside for dead. He recovered, however,
after a long and severe illness, but the baron died of his wounds. One
priest, at Ardenay, was maltreated and imprisoned and finally carried
away to Germany for having kept on his steeple a tricolor flag which had
been there since 1830. Some priests whom one can forgive for their
patriotism, but who were perhaps too forward, as ministers of peace, to
foment war, used to go on the battle-fields and search the bodies of the
dead for cartridges for the living; but these instances of enthusiasm
were exceptional, and it should be remembered that some among the clergy
were old soldiers.
Among the prisoners of war the priests found ample room for their
ministry. Some of the clergy were themselves prisoners, while some left
their country and volunteered for this special service. There was much
to do. Besides saying Mass and administering the sacraments, there were
the ignorant to instruct, the scoffers to convert, the young to protect,
and the intemperate to reclaim. In that forced idleness many gave
themselves up to drunkenness and grew reckless and desperate. This sin,
which in our time seems to have sprung into new life and strength,
showed itself lamentably strong among the captives, and the priests, to
counteract it, had to attend not only to the spiritual needs of their
charges, but to invent amusements and occupations to wean the soldiers
from gross self-indulgence. Father Joseph, a missionary and military
chaplain, published an interesting work on the prisoners, their
behavior, pastimes, etc., the statistics of their captivity, their
treatment, and such little things. During the war, more than 400,000
were taken prisoners. Letters with contributions came constantly through
and from the country _curés_. Father Joseph, who was stationed at Ulm,
quotes many of these letters, of which the following is a specimen: “I
venture to recommend to your care one of my parishioners, made prisoner
at Strasbourg. I recommend his soul to you—for it is his most precious
possession—but also his bodily wants; I am afraid he is in need of
clothes. If your circumstances allow it, be kind enough to give him what
is needful; if not, set the whole to my account, and I will reimburse
you. Our country will bless you for your charity.... May our soldiers,
whom so many have labored to demoralize, be led to understand these
truths; for then only will they be worthy of victory.” This dignified
attitude of resignation to the hard lesson God allowed the unsuccessful
war to teach France specially characterized the clergy of all ranks, but
it did not take one jot from their eager and hot patriotism. Another
country priest, over eighty years of age and nearly blind, begins by
excusing himself on that score for his bad handwriting, and, mentioning
one of his flock among the prisoners, says: “The poor boy must suffer
terribly. Help him and comfort him; I shall look upon all that you do to
him as done to me. It is long ago since it has been dinned into the
people’s ears that we are their foes, while in truth they have no better
friends; we are accused of not loving our country, while, on the
contrary, we are her most devoted sons.... I fear that my age will
prevent me seeing the end of her troubles, but it will be a comfort to
me in death that to my latest breath I shall have labored in her
service.” Charitable committees abroad and at home, mostly under church
superintendence, sent food, money, and clothing, books, papers, games,
etc., to the prisoners. Mgr. Mermillod’s committee at Geneva, and those
of Lausanne and Bordeaux, chiefly distinguished themselves; but in this
work religious fellowship overcame national prejudice, and the clergy
and sisters of the Catholic Rhineland cordially helped their so-called
enemies. They vied with the French in ministering to the prisoners in
the several cities where the latter were confined; but not only they,
for there were numberless Germans, both civil and military, who behaved
generously, kindly, and delicately towards the prisoners.
We have already mentioned the terrible custom of choosing at random
hostages or victims in reprisal for the acts of some unknown men. This
took place once at Les Horties, a village where, despite the Prussian
sentries, two hot-headed youths succeeded in picking off three German
soldiers. The shots were returned, but the agile youths got away
unscathed. A detachment was sent forthwith into the village, with orders
to seize the first six men they happened to meet. This was done, the
hostages guarded by the Prussians, and the mayor given till eleven
o’clock the next morning to give up the real offenders, under penalty,
if it proved impossible, of seeing the six men shot. Those who had fired
on the Prussians were strangers, who hovered constantly on the outskirts
of the enemy, accomplishing, most likely, some vow of vengeance for a
wrong done by soldiers to some near and dear to them. There were many
such. Heaven forgive them! for they brought untold sorrow on the heads
of families like their own, whose death they were so blindly trying to
revenge. It was out of the mayor’s power to give up the culprits, and no
prayers or tears made any impression on the Prussian officer in command.
The women’s lamentations were terrible; the men’s despair appalling. One
of them, a widower of forty with five children, was all but out of his
mind, blaspheming horribly and crying out: “Yes, yes, it was my
three-year-old Bernard who fired on the wretches. Let them take me and
my five boys, and let the rest go!” The priest, M. Gerd, was unable to
comfort him, and slowly left the school-room where the poor victims
waited their fate. Going to the headquarters of the German captain, he
said: “I believe you only wish to shoot these men as an example;
therefore the more prominent the victim, the greater the lesson. It
cannot matter to you individually _who_ is shot; therefore I have come
to beg of you as a favor to be allowed to take the place of one of these
men, whose death will leave five young children fatherless and homeless.
Both he and I are innocent, but my death will be more profitable to you
than even his.” “Very well,” said the officer, and the _curé_ was bound
with the rest of the men, and the man he had saved left him in tears.
The night passed, and, like the martyrs of Sébaste, whose fortitude was
strengthened by the young heathen who joined them in the stead of one of
themselves who had faltered, these unhappy men were transformed by the
priest’s words and examples into unflinching heroes. The hour came, and
he walked at their head, saying aloud the Office of the Dead, the people
kneeling and sobbing as he passed, when the condemned met a Prussian
major who was passing by chance with some orders from the general. He
was struck by the sight of the priest—an unusual one, even during this
“feast of horrors”—and inquired into the matter, which seemed less a
thing of course to him than it had to the captain. He countermanded the
order and referred the whole thing to the general, who called the _curé_
before him. It ended in the former saying that he was unable to make an
exception in any one’s favor, but that for _his_ sake he would pardon
every one of the hostages, and, when the priest had left, he turned to
his officers and said energetically: “If all Frenchmen were like that
plain parish priest, we should not have long to stay on this side of the
Rhine.”
But here is another story, very like this one and more tragic, which has
not come within Ambert’s knowledge, and to which we are indebted to an
English novelist, who, vouching for its truth, has worked it into a
recent tale. Neither name nor place is given, but it runs thus: The same
thing happened as at Les Horties, and a certain number—I forget how
many—male inhabitants were condemned, all fathers of families. After
vain appeals for mercy from the priest, the mayor, the old men, and the
women, the former called all his people into the church, which had been
pillaged and half burnt some time before. He went into the pulpit and
held up a common black cross; it was the only ornament or symbol left of
the simple village church treasury.
“My children,” he said in a voice trembling with sobs, “you know what
has happened, and how many hearths are going to be left desolate. Here,
in God, in Christ, is our only comfort and our only strength. I have no
ties but such as bind me to each one of you equally. I have but one life
to give, but I will gladly take the place of one of these fathers of
families, and trust to God to protect you when I am gone. Now, if any of
you feel that God will give you grace to die in the stead of any other
of your brethren, say so, and God bless you!” He knelt and bent his head
on his clasped hands in prayer; silence, only broken by suppressed
sobbing, filled the church. The women were in agonies of weeping; the
men’s faces worked as if in some mighty struggle. Presently one young
man rose up and said: “Father, I will follow you; I have neither wife
nor children. I will take such a one’s place.” And then rose another
youth, giving up all his hopes of the future for the sake of another of
the victims; and the women crowded round them, blessing them, crying
over them, pressing their hands, and calling them heroes and deliverers.
Those for whom no substitutes had appeared caught the high spirit of the
occasion, and bore their fate like Christians and men. No Providence
interposed in this case, and the priest was allowed to consummate his
sacrifice. Such courage was more than human.
The part taken by the sisters of various orders in the scenes of the war
and the Commune was one which neither France nor Germany will ever
forget. They shared every danger to which the soldiers themselves were
liable, even that of being shot in cold blood, which was the fate of
four sisters at Soultz, near Colmar, on the Rhine. They were found
nursing the wounded, and the Prussians accused them of advising and
encouraging the inhabitants to resist. There was no inquiry, no form,
but a few of the scum of the invading army dragged the women away at
once, set them against a wall, and shot them. During the retreat after
the battle of Reischoffen a Sister of Charity made her way among the
disorganized troops, seeking some one to help. Balls and shells were
whizzing past, and frightened horses wildly galloping by. A cry was
heard as a man fell mortally wounded, and the sister stopped, knelt
down, and began her work; but hardly a minute after a ball struck her
and carried off both her legs. She fell in a swoon by the soldier’s
side. M. Blandeau, who tells the story, did not know her name; he only
says pointedly: “She was a Sister of Charity.” An officer of the French
Army of the Rhine gives an account of a Trinitarian nun, Sister Clara,
who the night of the 16th of August, 1870, after a bloody battle, was
tending the wounded in a barn; they were in such pain as not to be able
to bear being carried to a safer place, and all they cried for was
“Water, water!” Every five minutes the nun went quietly in and out,
under the fire of the enemy, to fetch as much water as her scanty number
of vessels would hold; you would have thought she was armor-plated, to
judge by her calm and smiling demeanor. The next day began the dreary
retreat towards Metz; the wounded were heaped on carts and wagons, and
there again was Sister Clara, comforting, helping, encouraging the men,
giving water to one, changing the position of another. She left on the
last cart, holding against her breast the head of the nearest wounded
man; but not half a mile further the column was made prisoner by a
detachment of Uhlans, the ambulances cut off, and in the _mêlée_ a shot
struck and killed the sister, who was probably buried by and among
strangers. At Forbach the superior of the Sisters of Providence, whose
house was a hospital and asylum at all times, was killed by a shell, and
at Metz no less than twenty-two Sisters of Charity died either from
wounds, disease, or exhaustion in the service of the soldiers. At
Bicêtre, during the siege of Paris, eleven died of small-pox in one day,
and a request having been made for the same number to supply their
place, thirty-two presented themselves at once. At Pau, at Orleans, at
Mans, at Nevers, and in numberless other cities, as well as in impromptu
hospitals, canvas towns, villages, and battle-fields, the Little Sisters
of the Poor, the Sisters of Charity, the Visitation Nuns, and other
orders too many to mention distinguished themselves. Many sisters were
forced later on to accept the Legion of Honor, but a far greater number
of those who deserved it did not live to have it offered. At the siege
of Paris their courage seemed absolutely superhuman. An officer once met
near Châlons, on the road to Paris, a blind and wounded soldier led by a
Sister of Charity. He was an old veteran from Africa, without relations,
of a terrible temper, and with not much religion. The Prussians had left
him on the road, finding him an encumbrance among the prisoners. The
sister found him and undertook to lead him to the _Invalides_, where,
she said, he had every right to claim a home. In all weathers this
strange couple plodded along. She begged food and shelter for him, and
always gave him the best; but he was fractious and not very grateful.
One day the weather was a little finer, and he heard a lark sing; he
seemed quite touched and happy. The sister asked him to kneel down and
repeat the “Our Father” after her, and he did not refuse. This was the
beginning of his conversion. But the Sister now grew ambitious, and
wanted to restore his physical sight to him as well as his spiritual; so
she said: “We will not go to the _Invalides_ after all, but I will take
you to the best surgeons and the most famous oculists in Paris, and beg
them, for the love of God and their country, to do their utmost to cure
you; and if God sees fit to let them succeed, you will promise me to be
a good Christian as long as you live, will you not?” Three months later
the soldier was as hearty as ever and had recovered his sight, while the
sister had long been at work in a country school; but at Notre Dame des
Victoires may be often seen a veteran praying on his knees before the
grated door of the shrine—praying for his deliverer.
The Pontifical Zouaves formed a volunteer regiment of their own during
the war, and fought like lions; most of their members were the
descendants of old French families whose sympathies are with the last of
the exiled Bourbons, and who, while they reject the empire and the
republic equally, and keep out of the way of office or active employment
of any kind, even to the prejudice of their career and to the point that
many of their young men are forced to make a life for themselves in
foreign service or by emigration, yet are full of real love of their
country. The virtues of such enthusiasts always come out in adversity,
while in prosperity their attitude of aloofness may seem rather
childish. In the last war they fought nobly. Plenty of Breton peasants
joined them; they have nearly the same traditions and fully the same
faith; in fact, they have long been natural allies.
The incidents of the Commune—a period so much more terrible and shameful
than that of the war—have been so often and fully described that we will
not add much to this sketch by going over the fearfully familiar
subject. Every one knows the phase of rabid feeling which came uppermost
among the Communists: the hatred of God, religion, and priests—even a
more rabid feeling than that entertained towards owners of property. The
clergy were thus forced to be prominent in that national delirium: the
chief victims were ecclesiastics. In Paris and other places it has been
noticed that a certain class of lazy, good-for-nothing men live from
hand to mouth around the barracks and the churches, living on the alms
of soldiers and priests, inventing excuses to account for their
indolence, cheating and lying and taking ravenously all they can get.
When a revolution comes, these men become denunciators, assassins, and
leaders. It is they who cry the loudest against the army and the
priesthood—the “butchers” of Versailles and the “hypocrites” in
cassocks. Raoul Rigault spoke their sentiments when he said to the
porter of M. Duguerry’s house (the famous parish priest of La Madeleine,
shot with Archbishop Darboy at La Roquette): “God! you fool!” (the man
had exclaimed, as is the custom, innocently meant, in France, '_O mon
Dieu!_') “Hold your tongue; how dare you speak of God! Our revolution is
against your God, your religion, and your priests. We will sweep all
that rubbish away!” And, by way of contrast to this plain confession of
faith, here are the words of M. Duguerry in prison to his biographer,
the Baron de Saint-Amand: “My dear friend, if I knew that my death would
be of any use to the cause of religion, I should kneel down and beg them
to shoot me.” But it is not necessary to multiply quotations to show the
intense hatred of the Commune towards religion and its ministers. Holy
Week in 1871 was indeed the _Passion_ Week of many of the latter. The
devilish conduct of many women recalled the worst excesses of the Reign
of Terror. A woman with a military cap on rode at the head of the escort
of the hostages, three of them Jesuit Fathers, who were taken from La
Roquette to Belleville to be shot. She swore and yelled and gave orders,
insulting the priests especially. On the Boulevards, as the condemned
passed, riots took place, and disorderly crowds nearly killed the
prisoners in their impatience. Women again were prominent, brandishing
guns, knives, and pistols, throwing bloody mud on the priests, and
blaspheming as badly as any man; it would have been safer to run the
gauntlet of a crowd of maniacs let loose from the asylum. Mgr. Surat was
killed in the streets on another occasion by a young girl of sixteen,
who deliberately put a pistol to his forehead. “Mercy, mademoiselle!”
cried the priest quickly; but with an untranslatable slang play on his
words[39]—equivalent, say, to “You shall have it hot and peppery,” or
some such phrase—she drew the trigger and stretched him dead at her
feet. The Abbé Perny, in his evidence before the council of war, says:
“I have lived among the savages for twenty-five years, but I never saw
among them anything to equal the hatred on those faces of men and women
as we passed them on our way from Mazas to La Roquette.”[40] Father
Anatole de Bengy, a Jesuit, was a remarkable man who had been military
chaplain in the Crimea, and was volunteer chaplain of the troops during
the last war till the siege, when he attached himself to the Eighth
Ambulance. He had a singular power of commanding the love, obedience,
and confidence of others; he was brave and good-tempered, and such a
thorough soldier that Marshal Bosquet said of him: “Upon my word, if
there are many Jesuits of that kind, _I_ say hurrah for the Jesuits!”
His letters are full of pleasantry and life. He tells his friends how he
helps “our poor soldiers,” and jokes about his tramps with “his bundle
on his back,” which phrase, he says, “always rouses a certain pity in
the listener; but indeed, my dear Aymard, the bundle (_le sac_) does not
deserve its bad name: it urges the body forward, and its inconveniences
are fully made up for by the advantages it gives rise to. Some thinker
should undertake the Praise of the Bundle, and rehabilitate it in the
eyes of pilgrims.” The words of this manly and brave priest at the
funeral of Commander de Dampierre would serve as his own eulogy: “The
fountain-head of duty is in the three world-famous words, _God wills
it_.” When his name was called at La Roquette, on the list of condemned,
the Communist official stumbled over it, and Père de Bengy stepped
briskly forward, saying: “I know my name is on the list—Bengy; here I
am.” M. Crépin, a shoe-maker, who was condemned, but saved by the
entrance of the troops, saw the butchery of Belleville, and in his
evidence said: “Let no one speak ill of the clergy before me again! I
have seen them at home now; I know them by experience; I have witnessed
their courage and been comforted by their words.”
Footnote 39:
_Tu l’auras maigre et non pas gras_ (_grasse—grâce_).
Footnote 40:
At Ménilmontant a woman named Lefêvre proposed, amid cheers and
bravos, to undermine the Cathedral of Notre Dame, fill it as full as
it would hold with priests and nuns, and blow it up. At a club-meeting
another woman—Leblanc—cried: “We must flay the priests alive and make
barricades with their carcasses”; and at Trinity Church a woman argued
thus on the existence of God: “Religion is a farce got up by men, and
there is no God; ... if there were, he would not let me speak so.
Therefore he is a coward, and no God....” And there were other and
even more revolting things said and done.
The Dominicans of Arcueil transformed their school into an ambulance
during the siege, and Père Bengy happened to be chosen chaplain. But the
Commune was to elicit greater sacrifices. The monks might have left, but
did not, and reopened their hospital for the wounded wild beasts, whose
curses sounded upon their watchers even from their sick-beds. The Geneva
flag was hoisted, and the Sisters of St. Martha acted as domestic
servants, besides many other women and girls. There were twenty wounded
in the hospital on the 19th of May, 1871, when the Commune arrested the
inmates of the house, thirty-eight persons—priests, lay brothers,
tradesmen and servants in their employment, some of them foreigners,
nuns, married women and widows, two young girls, and a child of eight
years old, daughter of the tailor, who was afterwards shot with the
priests. The latter were, with a devilish show of mercy, offered their
liberty if they would take arms against the Versailles troops, and, when
they refused, they were condemned. Their death took place a few days
later, and the shooting was not done with military precision, but
bunglingly, so that the victims were rather butchered than shot. After
the bodies had ceased to breathe they were savagely mutilated, the heads
and larger bones hacked with axes, and the flesh pierced with bayonets.
Some of the priests managed to escape in the crowd and smoke, all of
them wounded, however; and one was saved by a woman who hurriedly threw
her husband’s clothes to him. According to the saying of a National
Guard who escorted the Belleville victims to their death, and who, on
being asked by a passer-by, “Where are they taking those men to?”
answered gravely, “To heaven,” the road these priests walked was truly
the “narrow road that leadeth to salvation.”
Surely, if any class of French citizens did their duty in troublous
times and deserve well of their country, it is the clergy.
DE VERE’S “MARY TUDOR.”