PART II.

LE PARTI.

“_Au revoir, à demain soir!_” said Berthe, kissing a fair-haired

young girl, and conducting her to the door.

“What a sweet face! Whose is it?” inquired Madame de Beaucœur.

“Hélène de Karodel’s. Her character is sweeter still than her face.

I have fallen quite in love with her,” said Berthe. And she related

the story of their meeting at the _réunion de Monceau_, and the

acquaintance that had followed.

“It is a fine old Breton name, and used to be a very wealthy one.

How comes she to be earning her bread, poor child?”

“The old story,” said Berthe. “General de Karodel mismanaged his

property, took to speculation by way of mending matters, and of

course lost everything. He died, leaving a widow and three children

to do the best they could with his pension, about a thousand francs

a year. Hélène is the eldest, and what she earns pays for the

education of the second sister.”

“But the rest of the family are well off. Why don’t they do

something for them?” demanded Madame de Beaucœur.

“Rich relations are not given much to helping poor ones,” replied

Berthe; “besides, these Karodels are as proud as Lucifer, and

benefits are pills that a proud spirit finds it difficult to

swallow; it takes a good deal of love to gild them.”

“Very true!” And dismissing Hélène de Karodel with a sigh, “_Chère

amie_” said Madame de Beaucœur, “I am come to ask you to do me a

service.”

Her presence indeed at so early an hour (it was not much past

one) on Berthe’s “day” suggested something more important than an

ordinary visit. A “day” is a thing that deserves to be noticed

amongst the institutions of modern Paris life. Everybody has a day.

Women in society have one from necessity, for the convenience of

their visitors whose name is Legion. Women not in society have one

because they like to be included amongst those with whom it is a

necessity. The former speak of their day as “_mon jour_” and as

a rule hate it, because it ties them down to stay one day in the

week at home. The latter speak of it as “_mon jour de réception_,”

and glory in it. For the former it is a mere episode, an occasion

amongst many for toilette and gossip, mostly of the Grandhomme and

Folibel kind, but often of a more serious character, sometimes even

of conversation on such grave topics as politics, science, and

theology. For the latter, it is a grand opportunity for dress, and

dulness, and weary expectation. Madame, attired in state, sits on

her sofa like patience on a monument, smiling, not on grief, but on

hope--hope of visitors, who come like angels, few and far between.

Woe be unto the false or foolish friend who, under any pretence of

business, or kind inquiries, or lack of time, should pass by this

day of days, and call on some insignificant day, when neither

madame, nor the _salon_, nor the _valet-de-chambre_ is in toilette

to receive him!

But it is not into one of these dreary Saharas that we have

strayed. Berthe’s day is as busy as a fair. So great is the

concourse of visitors that, although the reception begins

officially at three, the rooms begin to fill soon after two, those

who really want to speak to her alleging, as an excuse for forcing

the _consigne_, that, when _la cour et la ville_ are there, it is a

sheer impossibility to get a word with her.

“A service!” repeated Berthe. “I hope it is not too good to be

true.”

“_Toujours charmante!_” Madame de Beaucœur took her hand and

pressed it. “But the favor I am going to ask does not directly

concern myself. You know Madame de Chassedot?”

“Slightly; I meet her here and there; we bow, but we don’t speak.”

“She has deputed me to speak for her to-day. Do you know her son at

all?”

“A fair youth, tall and good-looking?”

“Precisely.”

“I think I danced with him at the Marine, the other night,” said

Berthe reflectively.

“Then you know him at his best; he dances divinely; but I believe

that is the only thing he excels in,” observed Madame de Beaucœur.

“He is very stupid?” said Berthe interrogatively.

“Not very. Simply stupid. But he is, as you know, good-looking,

and, what is more to the purpose, of good family and very well off.

He is heir to his uncle, and so will one day have two of the finest

châteaux in France, each representing two millions of money. The

paternal millions have grown thin since the old gentleman’s death,

but the uncle’s will replenish them soon; he cannot last long, he

is in bad health and seventy-six years of age. So the marquis is

safe to be at the head of a very handsome fortune by the time he

has settled down.”

“Meanwhile?” said Berthe, pretending not to see the drift of these

preliminaries.

“Meanwhile, his mother is very anxious to marry him. She spoke

confidentially to me about it, and begged me to look out for a wife

for her. I promised I would do my best. Like all mothers-in-law,

she wants perfection. Sixteen quarterings _en règle_, that is

understood; equal fortune of course; but, although Edgar’s

present and future fortune is nominally four millions, as he has

compromised one million, she would count it as not existing,

and only exact three millions with his wife. This is carrying

on matters on a grand scale?” And Madame de Beaucœur waited for

Berthe’s approval.

“How did he compromise the odd million?” inquired Berthe evasively.

“_Mais, mon Dieu!_ One must not examine too closely!” replied

Madame de Beaucœur, smiling at the _naïveté_ of the question.

“And besides these?” said Berthe.

“The girl must be pretty, and well brought up. I must tell you,

my dear,” continued the lady, with a sort of diffidence as if

conscious that she was about to state some ludicrous or damaging

fact, “that the mother-in-law is very pious, and she holds very

much to having a daughter-in-law who is so also. Otherwise she is

the best woman in the world, very intelligent, and will do all in

her power to make her son’s wife happy.”

“And the son himself? You have not said much about him. How far

does he pledge himself to the same end?”

“Ah! there is the difficulty!” said Madame de Beaucœur.

“Unfortunately he won’t hear of being married at all. The moment

his mother speaks of it, he either turns it off in a joke, or, if

she insists, he gets into a tantrum, flies out of the house, and

she doesn’t see him for a week. You can fancy how this complicates

the matter for her, poor woman!”

“It certainly is a complication,” observed Berthe.

“And it makes it all the more incumbent on us to try and help her,”

resumed the envoy. “So I have come to enlist your offices in her

behalf. I promised her she might count on you, _chère amie_. Did I

promise too much?”

“If you promised her that I would marry her son for her, _nolens

volens_, you decidedly did,” answered Berthe, laughing ironically.

“Oh! I did not go that length,” protested Madame de Beaucœur,

nettled, but laughing heartily to hide her pique. “I only said that

you were more likely than any other woman in Paris to know the girl

who united all these conditions, and that, if you knew her, you

would give Madame de Chassedot an opportunity of meeting her.”

“And how about Madame Chassedot meeting her?” demanded Berthe

perversely. “After all, the contracting powers must look each

other in the face at least once before they are brought to swear

eternal love and duty before Monsieur le Maire, and if this

inconvenient young man flies out the room at the bare mention of

such a catastrophe--dear madame, I have the highest opinion of your

diplomatic powers, but, believe me, this enterprise is beyond their

compass.”

“Leave that to his mother,” said Madame de Beaucœur. “She is equal

to it. If you find the missing element, and give her a chance of

managing it, the issue is certain.”

Berthe was going to reply when the door opened, and the Princess

de M---- was announced. When the usual greeting had subsided, the

three ladies entered on the foremost questions of the day, viz.,

the _salon_, the cholera, and the new comedy called _La Beauté du

Diable_ that was setting all Paris by the ears.

The trio were not long alone. The rooms were filling rapidly, but

the new-comers, instead of checking the conversation, enlivened it,

every fresh arrival falling in with the current and propelling it.

“The Empress does not believe it to be contagious, and holds it of

primary importance that the popular belief to the contrary should

be practically repudiated,” said an old senator, who joined the

circle while the cholera was on the _tapis_, “This was the chief

motive of her visit to Amiens. I have just been to the Tuileries,

and heard the account of it.”

“Racontez, monsieur, racontez!” exclaimed Berthe, recognizing his

white hairs by making room for him on the sofa beside her.

“You honor me too highly, madame!” said the old courtier, bending

to his knees before he assumed the place of distinction. “I should

have at least run the gantlet with the plague to deserve to be so

favored. You are aware,” he continued in a more serious tone,

“that it was raging furiously at Amiens. The townspeople became

so panic-stricken that the victims were deserted the moment they

were seized. Every house was closed. No one walked abroad for

fear of rubbing against some infected thing or person. Except the

sisters of charity going in and out of the condemned houses and

hospitals, there was hardly a soul to be seen in the streets. In

fact, it threatened to be a second edition of the plague in Milan.

The Empress, hearing all this, suddenly announced her intention

of visiting the city. The Emperor strongly opposed the project,

and her ladies seconded him, being very loth to run the risk of

accompanying her majesty. The Empress, however, held her own

against them all, like a Spaniard and a woman, said she would have

no one run any risk on her account, and declared herself determined

to go alone. Two of her ladies, to save their credit, thereupon

volunteered to go with her. They started by the first train next

day, and returned the same evening, not at all the worse for the

journey.”

“I dare say,” remarked a young _crévé_, a furious Legitimist, who

always spoke of the Emperor as _ce gaillard là_, and who would have

as soon dined with his _concierge_ as at the Tuileries. “They made

a tour in a close carriage round the town, and took precious care

to keep clear of the dangerous quarters.”

“I have the word of her majesty to the contrary, monsieur. She

visited the wards, inquired minutely into their organization, and

spoke to several of the sufferers. The equerry who accompanied

her told me that she held the hand of one poor fellow who was

dying, and stooped down, putting her ear close to his lips to hear

something he had to say about his little children: there were three

of them, their mother had died that morning, and now they were

going to be quite destitute. The Empress sent for them, embraced

them in the presence of the father, and promised to take care of

them. He expired soon after blessing her, as you may imagine.”

“She has a noble heart!” murmured Berthe, while a tear stood in her

eye.

“Comédie, haute comédie!” sneered the _crévé de faubourg_.

“A stroke of policy, rather,” observed a Deputy du Centre, stroking

his beard.

“A comedian’s policy!” said a Deputy de la Gauche; “but it is time

and trouble lost, the people are no longer duped by that sort of

charlatanism.”

“Say, rather, the people are tired of peace and prosperity, and

want a change at any cost,” said the Princess de M----. “You are

the most unmanageable people under the sun. The wonder is, how any

one can be found willing to govern you.”

“That is quite true,” assented Berthe, whose politics, of no

absolute color, leaned towards Imperialism, partly because it was

the established order of things, and partly because the court was

pleasant and its hospitalities magnificent. “We are an unruly

nation; but whatever one thinks of the Empire, it is ungrateful and

unjust not to give the Empress credit at least for good intentions

in this visit to Amiens. It was an act of heroic charity and

courage, and that there was as much wisdom as charity in it is

proved by the fact that the pestilence has decreased sensibly from

the very day of her visit.”

“O madame, madame!” protested the _crévé_ and the two deputies in

chorus.

“The bulletins of the last week are there to prove it,” affirmed

Berthe.

“Where were they fabricated?” demanded the Deputy de la Gauche.

“Perhaps Monsieur de Taitout could tell us?” Monsieur de Taitout

was Chef de Cabinet at the Ministry of the Interior.

“They were issued at Amiens by the medical men of the hospitals

and by the Commission of Public Health, I presume,” replied the

ministerial functionary with repellent _hauteur_.

“They had at least a roll of red ribbon apiece in return for their

satisfactory bulletins!” pursued the Deputy de la Gauche, with

supercilious irony.

“You are evidently well informed, monsieur,” replied the Chef de

l’Intérieur, provoked by the persiflage; and darting a glance of

peculiar meaning at the deputy, “We may infer that you are in the

confidence of the Minister of Police?”

The deputy bit his lip and reddened, while a suppressed titter ran

through the company. This suspicion of complicity with the police,

which the established system of compression and its inevitable

consequence, espionage, engendered too readily, was apt to fall

sometimes on the most unlikely subjects; in the present instance,

however, it was all the more mortifying because public rumor had

paved the way for credulity by ascribing the violent antagonism of

the Deputy de la Gauche to the fact of his having been disappointed

in obtaining a prefecture under the existing government. But

Berthe, though she disliked and mistrusted him, was annoyed that

he should be made uncomfortable in her _salon_. She disapproved

of the turn the conversation was taking, and by way of diverting

it, without breaking off too precipitately from the subject under

discussion, she said, addressing an academician who had just joined

the circle:

“Is it not quite possible, admitting panic to be the first

condition of contagion, that the presence of the Empress in the

midst of the sick and the dying may have had such an effect on

the _morale_ of the people as could sufficiently explain the

immediate decrease in the number of deaths? Instruct us, Monsieur

le Philosophe!”

“Madame, I come here to learn rather than to teach,” replied the

man of science with the gallantry of his threescore years and

ten; “but, since you do me the honor to ask my opinion, I confess

that it has the good grace to agree with your own. The people were

imbued with the belief that to breathe the infected atmosphere was

to die. The Empress, of her own free impulse, came boldly into the

midst of it, stood among the dying and the dead, breathed long

draughts of contagion, and did not die. Therefore contagion is a

fallacy, and panic, instead of killing, is forthwith killed.”

“Your therefore, monsieur, is admirable,” said the Princess de

M----, tapping her parasol on the arm of her chair. “Now, let us

have a truce of the plague, and talk of something else.”

“Yes,” said Berthe, “or else talking may raise a panic, and we

shall all catch it. Have you been lately to the theatre, monsieur?”

“I went last night to see _La Beauté du Diable_,” replied the

philosopher.

“Ah! And what did you think of it?”

“I think, madame--_que la France est bien malade_,” said the old

man gravely.

“One need not be _un des quarante_ to find that out,” remarked the

Deputy de la Gauche with a sneer.

“Is it so very bad?” inquired Berthe, turning a deaf ear to the

uncivil commentary.

“It is so bad,” replied the academician, “that, if I had not seen

it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears, I could not have

believed that the French drama and the French public could have

fallen so low. I asked myself whether I was in Paris or in Sodom.

From first to last the piece is a tissue of license and blasphemy,

for which I could find no parallel, even approximately, in the most

ribald productions of ancient or modern literature.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed Berthe, “you quite horrify me. Why, we had

just arranged a _partie fine_ to go and see it!”

“Take an old man’s advice, madame--don’t go,” said the academician

impressively.

“It all depends,” said the Princess de M----, twirling her parasol,

and lolling back in the luxurious _fauteuil_, “if one is prepared

to risk it. I am for my part!”

The philosopher bowed to the lady, but offered no comment.

“Why does the Censure permit such bad comedies to be played?” asked

Madame de Beaucœur. “I thought the reason for its existence was the

protection of the public morals?”

“Political morals rather, madame,” corrected the Deputy de

la Gauche, with an air of mock solemnity, “and it is most

conscientious in the discharge of that duty. An irreverent

insinuation against the government suffices to bring down anathemas

on a comedy or a drama from which no amount of talent can redeem

it. My friend Henri ---- has just had a _chef-d’œuvre_, the result

of a whole year’s labor, rejected on the plea that some odd

passages, which cannot be removed without changing the whole plan,

might be construed by sensitive Imperialists into a hit at the

dynasty.”

“The judges would serve the dynasty better by exercising a little

wholesome restraint over what may prove more fatal to it in the

long run than even servile flattery,” observed the philosopher.

“What think you, M. le Sénateur?”

“Que voulez-vous?” The senator shrugged his shoulders. “One must

reckon with human nature; you cannot lock it in on every side. If

you don’t leave a safety-valve to let off the superfluous steam,

the ship will blow up.”

“Take care the valve does not turn out to be a leak, or the ship

may sink!” replied the academician. “Our press and our literature

are eating into the very marrow of the nation’s heart, and rotting

it. The people are taught to scoff at everything--to make a jest

of everything, human and divine. Nothing is sacred to the venal

scribes who pander to the base passions of humanity, and prey upon

its vices and its follies. When public morality has come to such a

pass that one of the first writers of the day publicly vindicates

the devil’s claim to our respect and pity as ‘an unsuccessful

revolutionist,’ and when one of the last writes and prints such a

sentence as, ‘I grant you the good God, but leave me the devil!’

and that the cynical blasphemy calls out no stronger comment than

a laugh or a shrug--when, I say, we have come to this pitch of

progress and civilization, it is time the ship’s hold were looked

to.”

“I grant you they are dangerous symptoms,” assented the senator,

shaking his head, and preparing a pinch from his enamelled

snuff-box.

“A much more ominous symptom, to my mind, is that the nation is

dreadfully _ennuyée_,” observed the Deputy du Centre, with a

weighty emphasis on the adverb. “When France _ennuies_ herself, it

is time to cry, Take care.”

“Who is to take care?” said the Princess de M----.

“The government, madame. We have had this one eighteen years now;

three years beyond the lease usually granted to governments in

France, and the people are thoroughly tired of it. Paris especially

is _ennuyée_ of late.”

“Paris is always _ennuyée_ unless she has a war, or an exhibition,

or some kind of a carnival, to keep her in good humor,” said

Berthe; “but Paris is not France.”

“Pardon, madame, Paris c’est le monde!” replied M. du Centre, in

melodramatic accent.

“Le monde, non,” retorted Madame de M----; “le demi-monde

peut-être.”

There was a general laugh at this sortie of the princess, and

before it subsided a group of new arrivals, amongst whom were

the Snow-Storm and her mother, were ushered in, and broke up the

controversy. Several of the company, some who had not spoken a word

to Berthe, but had merely made _acte de présence_ in the crowd,

withdrew. Madame de Beaucœur and the Princess de M---- remained on.

“_Quelle charmante jeune fille!_” said the former _sotto voce_ to

the princess, as Madame de Galliac and her daughter sat down near

them. “Who is she?”

“Mademoiselle de Galliac. She is the _partie_ of the season. _On

dit_ gives her four millions.”

“Indeed!” And Madame de Beaucœur, on marriageable maids intent,

pricked up her ears. “How odd I should not have met her before!”

“She has only lately arrived from Brittany. Our hostess patronizes

her very zealously. I suppose she is looking out for a husband for

her.”

Madame de Beaucœur made no reply, but committed the remark to her

mental note-book. Why had Berthe not suggested this girl to her for

Madame de Chassedot? It was the very thing she was looking for.

Old name, four millions--one too many, but the inequality was on

the right side--beauty, and of course good principles. Madame de

Galliac was known to be an excellent woman. How could Berthe have

been so disobliging or so thoughtless? Big with a mighty purpose,

and unable to resist the need of communicating her ideas, Madame

de Beaucœur turned to the Princess de M----, and in the strictest

confidence opened her heart to her.

But Madame de M---- was a foreigner, and did not fall in

sympathetically with French views on the subject of marriage, and

was, moreover, given to call things bluntly by their names.

“A girl with her beauty and money will find plenty of willing

purchasers,” she argued, “and I see no conceivable reason for

expecting that she will let herself be forced on an unwilling one.

There are husbands to be had at every price; she can bid for the

best, and the best are already bidding for her.”

“Ah!” said Madame de Beaucœur, alarm mingling with curiosity in the

interjection.

“Why, you don’t suppose a prize like that is likely to be

twenty-four hours in the Paris market without having scores of the

highest bidders fighting for it?”

“How mercenary men are! They are greatly changed since my young

day!” Madame de Beaucœur was somewhere between five-and-thirty

and forty; but she had been married from school at eighteen, and

had heard nothing of sundry interviews between _notaires_ and

mothers-in-law, etc., that had preceded the presentation of her

_fiancé_ ten days before her marriage.

“Very likely, but in this particular case it strikes me the woman

is the mercenary party. You say the young man won’t let himself be

married, big dower or little one?” said Madame de M----, laughing,

and speaking rather louder than was desirable in the presence of

the marketable _dower_.

“Introduce me to Madame de Galliac,” said her companion, striking a

_coup d’état_ on the spot.

The request was complied with, and the two ladies were soon

absorbed in each other.

“What shall we do to amuse ourselves this week, _chère madame_?

For Wednesday we have _La Beauté du Diable_ with a _diner fin au

cabaret_, and a _petit souper_ at Tortoni’s; but what shall we do

to kill the other three days?” demanded the princess, who had risen

to go, and now pounced upon Berthe, who stood taking leave of some

guests at the door.

“I haven’t an idea just at present; we will talk it over to-morrow

night at Madame de Beaucœur’s. But you must not count on me for

Wednesday,” said Berthe, “I have changed my mind about going.”

“What! You are going to play us false!” exclaimed the princess, her

ugly but expressive features lighting up with irresistible humor,

while her eyes shot out a cold, sardonic glance into Berthe’s.

“That old _perruque_ has put you out of conceit with it? But, no!

It’s too absurd, _ma chère_!”

“Absurd or not, I don’t intend to go,” said Berthe resolutely. “I’m

not so brave as you are. I do not want to risk myself.”

“But all Paris will laugh at you. They will say you have turned

_dévote_. For mercy’s sake, my child, do not make such a fool of

yourself!”

“Paris may say what it likes,” answered Berthe, bridling up, while

a blush of defiant pride suffused her cheek. “I despise its gossip,

and, in short, I don’t mean to go.”

“Seriously?”

“Quite seriously.”

The princess lifted her shoulders slowly, and as slowly let them

fall.

“Then there is no use in my proposing a little distraction that we

were planning, in the shape of an escapade to the _Bal de l’Opéra_

on Saturday night? In dominos and masks, of course?”

“Thank you, I do not want to run the risk,” said Berthe, smiling.

“Adieu!” And Madame de M---- heaved a long sigh. “You will make a

charming saint, but I fear I sha’n’t worship the saint as much as I

loved----”

“The sinner,” added Berthe, laughing good-humoredly. “Oh! well,

I’ve not donned the sackcloth and ashes, so you mustn’t denounce

me yet. But don’t suppose,” she continued, seeing Madame de

M----’s eyes fixed on her with a puzzled expression, “that I mean

to reproach you for amusing yourself. Our positions are widely

different. You have your husband to stand between you and evil

tongues, and, again, you are not amongst your own people here.

Honestly, would you go on at Berlin as you do in Paris?”

“Oh!” The princess threw up her parasol, caught it again, and,

laughing out, said, “But Paris is a _cabaret_, where one does as

one likes!” And with this exhaustive apology, she opened the door,

and passed out.

Berthe went into the second _salon_, where some of the earlier

visitors had gathered to leave room for new arrivals in the first,

but she was hardly seated when the door was again opened, and

François announced:

“Le Marquis de Chassedot!”

If he had announced Le Marquis de Carrabas, his mistress could not

have been more astonished. Was it a trap that Madame de Beaucœur

had laid for him? But, no, Mademoiselle de Galliac’s presence was

quite fortuitous, and, moreover, Madame de Beaucœur did not know

her, so she could not have had any scheme into which the heiress’

visit adjusted itself to-day.

“You were kind enough to permit me to pay my respects to you,

madame,” said the young man, walking up to Berthe, with his hat

in both hands, and blushing violently while he doubled himself in

two before her. “I hope I am not indiscreet in availing myself so

precipitately of the permission?”

Berthe smiled her gracious clemency on the indiscretion, and the

gentleman, backing a few steps, carried his hat toward a group

of politicians who were shaking hands in the window, and making

appointments before separating.

“How extraordinary!” muttered Berthe, laughing to herself at the

cool audacity of Monsieur de Chassedot. “I was kind enough to

permit him! Perhaps he is under delusion, and mistakes somebody

else’s permission for mine. Or perhaps it is a ruse of his mother’s

to put him unawares in the way of the three millions?”

But Berthe was wrong. M. de Chassedot really had said something

to her between the links of the “ladies’ chain” about placing

himself at her feet, and, as she looked very smiling and gracious,

he took the smiles for a permission. He had no view in asking it

beyond that of being received in the _salon_ of the fashionable

beauty, and he was encouraged in presenting himself there by the

knowledge that he was sure not to meet his mother. It would be a

free territory where he might flit about without being in perpetual

dread of falling into some net which the maternal solicitude was

constantly setting for him in the _salons_ of her devoted allies.

Madame de Beaucœur did not count amongst those redoubtable

beligerents. When she called during the day at his mother’s house,

he was never there, and, as the _habitués_ of the marquise’s

Tuesday evenings were recruited chiefly amongst the old fogies

and devotees of the faubourg, a class of her fellow-creatures

whom Madame de Beaucœur carefully avoided, there was no chance

of his meeting her there in the evening. It was this precisely

that made her mediation so precious to Madame de Chassedot. Edgar

was disarmed before her; he did not mistrust her, and when,

reconnoitring the company in the adjoining room through the broad

glass-panel that divided the _salon_, he spied her sitting near a

very pretty girl, the discovery gave him no shock, and, when Madame

de Beaucœur, catching his eye, nodded familiarly to him, he at once

made his way toward her, and took up a position behind her chair.

“I should like to go very much,” Madame de Beaucœur said,

continuing the conversation with Madame de Galliac, “but I have not

been this year since the garden opened. One cannot go without a

gentleman, and M. de Beaucœur is always so busy in the evening that

he can never accompany me.”

“There are hundreds who would cross swords for the honor of

replacing him, madame,” declared M. de Chassedot, stooping over

her chair, and throwing all the _empressement_ into his voice and

manner that her position as a married woman rendered legitimate.

“Then you shall have the honor without crossing swords for it,”

replied the lady. “Come and fetch me to-morrow evening at eight

o’clock; unless you are equal to undergoing a _diner de ménage_

with myself and M. de Beaucœur, and in that case come at half-past

six.”

“Madame! Such kindness overwhelms me!”

Madame de Beaucœur said _au revoir_ to the heiress and her mother,

kissed hand to Berthe in the inner _salon_, and, granting M. de

Chassedot’s request to be allowed to see her to her carriage, they

left the room together.

“Who is that young lady who was sitting beside you, madame?” he

asked with some curiosity, when they were out of ear-shot on the

staircase.

“Mademoiselle de Galliac. Did you never see her before?”

“Yes; but I did not know her name.”

“I ought to have presented you. How stupid of me! She is a nice

girl to talk to.”

“_A l’honneur, madame!_ to-morrow evening!”

And the carriage rolled off, leaving M. de Chassedot bowing on the

sidewalk.

Punctual to the minute, he presented himself in Madame de

Beaucœur’s drawing-room as the clock was chiming the half-hour.

Monsieur de Beaucœur had, of course, an appointment at the club,

which to his infinite regret prevented his accompanying his wife

to the Concert Musard, so he remained sipping his _café noir_, and

they set out alone.

The gardens, though only beginning to fill, presented a brilliant,

animated appearance. The central pavilion, its roof and pillars

girded with light, glowed like the starry temple of an Arabian

tale, while from within the orchestra sent forth its melodic

stream, now tender and plaintive as the zephyr wooing the rose at

midnight, now loud and valiant in the rhythmic dance; balls of

light came glistening through the foliage, making the trees stand

out in radiant illumination.

But, artistically mindful of the worth of contrast in scenic

effect, the light distributed itself so as to leave certain parts

of the garden in comparative shade. There, those who shrank from

the dazzling glare of the centre could walk and enjoy the scene and

the music without inconvenience.

“Why, there is Madame de Galliac, I declare! Let us go and meet

her!” said Madame de Beaucœur in delighted surprise, and they

walked on quickly. “What an unexpected pleasure, madame! I thought

you were going to the opera to-night?”

“So we intended; but there was some mistake about the box; we only

found it out at the last moment, and Henriette was so disappointed

that, to comfort her, I proposed coming here for an hour,”

exclaimed Madame de Galliac.

“Poor child! But I assure you the music here is no despicable

compensation. Let us go round by the left; the breeze is blowing

from that point,” said Madame Beaucœur, and, without taking the

slightest notice of Monsieur de Chassedot, she turned to walked on

with Madame de Galliac.

“Madame!” whispered the young man, touching her lightly on the arm,

and by a sign intimating that she had left him standing out in the

cold.

“Oh! how stupid I am! Allow me to introduce you: le Marquis de

Chassedot--la Baronne de Galliac.”

“My daughter, monsieur,” said the latter, pointing to Henriette.

Everybody having bowed to everybody, the party moved on, the young

people walking in front of the married women.

Monsieur de Chassedot, serenely unconscious of the cruel snare into

which he had fallen, and finding Henriette a lively, unaffected

girl, talked away pleasantly, confining himself of course to

authorized insipidities, such as the music, the decoration of the

gardens, the weather, etc., and making himself, as he could do when

he liked, very agreeable.

“Is not that Madame de P----’s voice?” said Henriette, stopping

abruptly, and bending her ear in the direction of the sound.

“I think it is. Let us walk on and see,” answered her mother, and

they quickened their steps.

Now, though Madame de Beaucœur liked Berthe, and as a rule was

delighted to meet her anywhere, on this particular occasion she was

the last person in Paris she cared to meet. She could not avoid

her, however, without awakening suspicions in the mind of Edgar de

Chassedot which might prove fatal to her own benevolent designs on

him. When Berthe saw the party, her surprise was great, and, though

she said nothing, her face expressed it so naïvely that Henriette,

being intelligent, noticed it, and bethought herself that there

must be some stronger reason for it than the ostensible one of

her mother’s meeting and walking round the garden with Madame de

Beaucœur.

Berthe had four gentlemen in attendance on her: a tall,

_distingué_-looking Austrian, who spoke to no one, but shot vinegar

out of his eyes at a handsome young Breton on whose arm Berthe

leant; a dark Englishman, who made up in vivacity what he lacked in

height; and another Englishman, whose notablest idiosyncrasy was an

eye-glass that seemed to be a fixture, so faithfully did it stick

in the right eye of the wearer, morning, noon, and night. Over

and above this guard of honor the beautiful widow was accompanied

by Hélène de Karodel. She introduced the two girls, who walked on

together, while the gentlemen and the three married women followed.

Hélène and Mademoiselle de Galliac had not proceeded far when

Monsieur de Chassedot broke away from the elders, and joined them.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, addressing Hélène, “I have just made a

discovery so agreeable that, before I venture to believe it, I must

have your corroboration.”

“Indeed!” said Hélène, puzzled at the singular apostrophe.

“_Couvrez-vous, monsieur_.” Edgar remained bare-headed awaiting her

answer--“and let us know what this wonderful discovery is.”

“You are the daughter, I am told, of that brave soldier and true

gentleman, Christian de Karodel?”

“You have been told the truth,” replied Hélène, her eye moistening

with grateful emotion at hearing her father so designated.

“He was my mother’s first cousin, consequently I claim close

friendship with you,” resumed the young man.

“And your name is--?”

“Edgar de Chassedot.”

“Ah! we are indeed cousins; but as your family seemed quite to have

forgotten the fact, we had almost forgotten it ourselves,” replied

Hélène coldly.

“It is not too late for us to remember it, I hope?” said Edgar,

imperceptibly emphasizing the us, and throwing a persuasive

deference into his tone that subdued Hélène.

“It is strange that you should care; but, since it is so, let us be

cousins!” And she held out her hand to him.

Six weeks after this promenade in the Jardin Musard there was a

_diner de contrat_ at Madame de Galliac’s. The _fiancé_ wore the

full-dress uniform of a _chasseur d’Afrique_. His bronzed features

attested long residence under Algerian skies, and the stars and

medals on his breast bore witness that his days had not been wasted

there in idle dalliance.

The plot against Monsieur de Chassedot’s liberty had collapsed,

to the inexpressible vexation of his mother, who, together with

the family lawyer and Madame de Galliac, had arranged all the

essentials for his marriage with Henriette’s four millions; but,

strange as it may seem, the consent of the young people themselves,

when demanded as a final condition, was actually found wanting.

It had come to the young lady’s ear that Monsieur de Chassedot was

no party to the business, and that, if he let himself be persuaded

into marrying her, it would be quite against his will. Mademoiselle

de Galliac there and then declared that she would be forced upon

no man, were he _Roi de France et de Navarre_. And so this most

eligible union, for want of a bride and a bridegroom, fell through.

Madame de Beaucœur then called to mind a nephew of her husband’s

who was serving in Africa. He was two millions short of the

requisite figure, but he had ‘_de grandes espérances_’ and was

moreover willing to be married, having positively written to his

family stating this fact, and requesting them to look out for a

wife for him. Photographs were exchanged, character and principles

inquired into, and vouched for satisfactorily--Henriette made

this a _sine quâ non_--and within one month from the day that his

aunt opened negotiations with Madame de Galliac, Alexandre de

Beaucœur arrived in Paris the affianced husband of Henriette de

Galliac. They were presented to each other at a morning reception,

and met next day at the _diner de contrat_. He took her in to

dinner, Madame de Galliac whispering to him with an arch smile, as

Henriette accepted his arm, “Now pay your addresses!”

The position was an embarrassing one. Monsieur de Beaucœur wished

to avail himself of the opportunity to win his bride’s affections,

but he was ill at ease, and, the more he strove to find something

agreeable to say, the less he succeeded. When dessert was served,

however, he took courage, and, bending over Henriette’s wineglass,

he murmured timidly in a low tone:

“Mademoiselle, what color will you have your carriage?”

“Blue, monsieur,” the young lady replied in the same low tone.

He bowed, and they relapsed into silence.

This was all that passed between them till they swore before God

and man to love each other until death did part them.

It may interest my readers, and it will no doubt surprise them, to

hear that this prosaic marriage turned out a singularly happy one.

The young man was a gentleman with a conscience and a heart. The

girl was sensible, high-principled, and affectionate. They were

both sound at heart, and they did their duty by each other. After

all, the most romantic union can hardly embark with surer or fairer

elements of happiness.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE LEGENDS OF OISIN, BARD OF ERIN.

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

V.

OISIN’S VISION.

As dim through snowy flakes the dawn

Peered o’er the moorlands frore,

The old, snow-headed Bard, Oisin,[57]

Sat by the convent door.

His chin he propp’d on that clenched hand

Of old in battles feared:

And like a silver flood, far-kenned,

To earth down streamed his beard.

That sun his eyes could see no more

Their thin lids loved to feel:

It rose; and on his cheek a tear

Began to uncongeal.

Then slowly thus he spake: “Three times

This thought has come to me,

Patrick, that I am older thrice

Than I am famed to be:

“For on the ruins of that house,

Once stately to behold,

Where feasted Fionn the King, there sighs

A wood of alders old.

“And on my Oscar’s grave three elms

Have risen; and mouldered three:

And on my Father’s grave, the oak

Is now a hollow tree.

“Patrick, of me they noised a tale,

That down beneath a lake

A hundred years I lived, unchanged,

For a Faery Lady’s sake:

“They said that, home when I returned,

The men I loved were dead;

And that the whiteness fell that hour

Like snow-storm on my head.

“A song of mine--a dream in youth,

That tale, misdeemed for true:

Far other dream was mine in age:

A dream that no man knew.

“For though I sang of things loved well,

I hid the things loved best:

Patrick, to thee that later dream

At last shall be confessed.

“On Gahbra’s field my Oscar fell:

Last died my Father, Fionn:

The wind went o’er their grassy mounds:

I heard it, and lived on.

“I loved no more the lark by Lee

Nor yet the battle-cry;

And therefore in a dell, one day,

I laid me down to die.

“The cold went on into my heart:

Methought that I was dead:

Yet I was ’ware that angels waved

Their wings above my head.

“They said, ‘This man, for Erin’s sake,

Shall tarry here an age,

Till Christ to Erin comes--shall sleep

In this still hermitage:

“‘That so, ere yet that great old time

Is wholly gone and past,

Her manlier with her saintlier day

May blend in bridal fast.

“‘And since of deadly deeds he sang

Above him we will sing

The Death that saved: and we from him

Will keep the gadfly’s wing.

“‘For him an age, for us an hour,

Here, like a cradled child,

Shall sleep the man whose hand was red,

Whose heart was undefiled.’

“Patrick! That vision, was it truth?

Or fancy’s mocking gleam?

That I should tarry till He came--

’Twas not, ’twas not a dream!

“And wondrous is mine age, I know;

For whiter than the thorn

Was this once-honored head before

The men now white were born:

“And on my Oscar’s grave three elms

Have risen: and mouldered three:

And on my father’s grave, the oak

Is now a hollow tree.”

Then said the monks, “His brain is hurt”:

But Patrick said, “They lie!

Thou God that lov’st thy gray-haired child,

Would I for him might die!”

And Patrick cried, “Oisin! the thirst

Of God is in thy breast!

He who has dealt thy heart the wound

Ere long will give it rest!”

FOOTNOTE:

[57] Pronounced _Oiseen_.

A JEWISH CONVERT: A REMINISCENCE OF VIENNA.

Among the pleasant capitals of Europe through which a long tour

carried the writer of this sketch, one of the most brilliant is

Vienna. It has many associations of genius to consecrate it;

Mozart and Beethoven, not to mention many lesser princes of music,

found there both home and appreciation; it has been the resort of

elegance, the _rendezvous_ of talent, the paradise of diplomacy,

even while graver ecclesiastical and historical events have centred

in it. It has its old cathedral, which, though disfigured by some

unfortunate internal bungling of the style of the Renaissance,

nevertheless has not lost its impression of religious solemnity,

heightened by the deep, narrow, and sombre choir with the wonderful

windows of old stained glass. Inimitable and unapproachable even

in its fragmentary state, this old glass is perhaps the most

interesting thing in the old church of St. Stephen, if we except

the stone pulpit, cunningly carved and placed in a recess of the

exterior wall of the building, the pulpit from which, so runs

Viennese tradition, the second Crusade was publicly preached.

There is among the records of the foundations at St. Stephen’s

one that sets forth the desire and prayer of the people, during a

pestilence in the middle ages, that a Mass should be daily offered

in that church for the cessation of the epidemic. Tradition says

that a great wind arose, and the pestilence was stopped. The

Mass, however, continues to be said daily, and it certainly is a

remarkable fact that there is not one day in the year, summer or

winter, wet or dry, when the wind does not blow in Vienna. The

Austrian capital, however, has yet more interesting associations

for us than are called up by the cathedral, and the many other

monuments and chapels by which it is historically distinguished.

In the Advent season of 1865, a young Jewish convert preached in

the _Schotten-Kirche_ a short course of the most eloquent sermons

it has ever been our privilege to hear in any language or any land

whatever.

His name is Marie-Bernard Bauer, and his family, of Hungarian

descent, is among the most influential and wealthy of those settled

in Vienna. The Jews of that city have indisputably as large a share

of the talent as of the riches of the country. The oldest brother

of young Bauer is one of the greatest bankers in Austria. At an

early age, the young Jew, fiery and enthusiastic, and already

gifted with singular eloquence, threw himself into the ranks of

the Revolution, and became one of its most ardent emissaries. At

eighteen, he was entrusted with important missions and considered

a rising Freemason. But during his travels he became acquainted

with a young Frenchman, a zealous Catholic, whose influence and

friendship laid the foundations of his conversion. He visited

his friend’s mother, also, who by her example more even than her

exhortations contributed to the work of grace begun in his soul by

her son’s solicitations. Bauer wore, at the request of these two,

a medal of the Immaculate Conception; and we need scarcely remind

our Catholic friends of the part this blessed badge fulfilled

in the conversion of another illustrious Jew, the Père Marie

Ratisbonne, the founder of the _Dames de Sion_, who has since

devoted his life to the instruction and conversion of Jewish girls

at Jerusalem. After being fully instructed in the faith, Bauer

required nothing but grace to believe. Being at Lyons with several

worldly acquaintances, he happened to be standing on a prominent

balcony, on the feast of Corpus Christi. The procession of the

Blessed Sacrament was to pass below, and they, with cigars in their

mouths and mockery in their hearts, were waiting for the pageant.

No change came to the young Jew until the canopy under which the

priest carried the Divine Host was close beneath the balcony.

The change at that moment was lightning-like. Faith entered his

heart, or rather--as he himself reluctantly admitted when pressed

by his superiors at a later time to lay aside false humility and

declare the works of God in his soul--a conviction so absolute

that it distanced faith made itself felt throughout his whole

being. The same _knowledge_, so to speak, returned to him many

times since while consecrating at Mass, and he said that he could

not _believe_ merely, in a matter of which he was so blissfully

and unerrably _certain_. As Jesus passed, Bauer threw himself on

his knees and professed himself a Christian. A very short time

elapsed before he entered the novitiate of the Carmelite Friars.

His mother, who was living in Paris, endeavored to see him, but

was refused access to him by his superiors. Later on, when he had

passed through the novitiate, he might have seen her, had it not

been for the machinations of his family. For five years every

friend and relation he had among his own race cruelly ignored

him, and he was kept away even from his mother’s death-bed by

their relentless sternness. His mother alone never ceased to love

him, and had a picture painted of him in his monastic cowl. This

portrait hung opposite her bed, and she died with her eyes fixed on

it and her hands lovingly stretched out towards it. When after her

death he was allowed by his family to visit her chamber, he saw a

curtained picture at the foot of the bed, and, drawing the curtain

aside, stood face to face with this touching proof of a mother’s

undying love. After some time, his fame as a preacher spreading

fast, his family received him once more into their circle, and,

with strange inconsistency, now made almost an idol of him. During

his novitiate, and according to a rule of his order, he used to

preach in turn with his fellow-novices in the refectory during

meals, at which time the generality of the young men in training

for a religious Demosthenes would receive but scant attention from

their companions. When Bauer’s turn came, the contrary, however,

was observed: the food was untouched, and the young audience sat

transfixed, hanging upon the words of their eloquent and gifted

companion. From the first his health was delicate; the effort of

preaching rendered it weaker day by day, till at length the zealous

and impassioned speaker, whom his friends prophesied to be the

future Lacordaire, was one day carried fainting from the pulpit,

having broken a blood-vessel. A year in Spain and complete rest of

mind and body did nothing more than just save his life, and the

Holy Father, who was very much interested in the young convert,

advised him to leave the Carmelite Order, for the austerity of

whose rule his shattered health now rendered him unfit. This

paternal advice--or, let us say, command--proved a great trial to

the enthusiastic religious; but, bowing to the will of God, he

accepted his altered life, and prepared to make it as fruitful in

good works as his short monastic career had proved. Although his

health precluded him from the exhausting work of preaching long

Lenten stations or continued missions, yet, as often as suitable

opportunities offered, he was to be found indefatigably working

in the pulpit; and we leave it to those who have had the good

fortune to hear him, to judge of the loss the Catholic world has

sustained in one whose eloquence and fervid enthusiasm rivalled

that of Lacordaire, and whose steadfast faith and unerring logic

far distanced that of the unhappy Hyacinthe.

In 1865, having already preached before the Emperor of the French

in Paris, and been greatly commended by the most distinguished

people there, both French and foreigners, he was called to Vienna,

where his family resides, and where all his former associates

and co-religionists awaited him with the greatest curiosity

and interest. The six lectures or discourses he gave in the

_Schotten-Kirche_, opposite his brother’s residence, at which he

was an honored and _fêted_ guest, were attended by crowds of his

own Jewish friends, besides all the _élite_ of Viennese and foreign

society. The impassioned tone of his voice, his closely knit

arguments, the air of apostleship about his slight figure and pale,

inspired face, the presence of his nearest and dearest relations,

and, above all, his own position toward them, in the very centre

of his youthful Revolutionary triumphs--all concurred in making

this short station of Advent one of thrilling interest. At the

end of each sermon, or _conférence_, as the French say (they

were delivered in French, which is like a second mother-tongue to

Marie-Bernard Bauer), he addressed a prayer to God, and, while

the language of each succeeding discourse increased in sublimity,

that of the concluding prayers seemed to take such flights of

unparalleled grandeur that the audience could only kneel in

motionless attention and unbroken silence for some minutes after

the preacher had ceased to speak--the highest tribute, perhaps

which an impressed people can offer to an orator. Marie-Bernard

Bauer has since received the Roman title of Monsignore, and been

appointed chaplain to the Emperor of the French. He accompanied the

Empress Eugénie to the opening of the Suez Canal, and preached a

magnificent sermon on the occasion, in presence of the assembled

potentates. But whatever else he has done, whatever else he may be

destined to do in the future, he will scarcely be able to surpass

his admirable achievements of the Advent station of 1865, when he

became, as it were, the champion and apologist of Christianity

before one of those representative Jewish assemblies which

contained within itself so much enlightenment, so much talent, and

so much successful individuality.

At the time when he preached these sermons, of which we will now

endeavor to give some idea, as far as a translation will allow,

he was only thirty-six years of age, and his frail, delicate body

made him seem even younger. The following is the third in order of

the _Conférences_, and was preached on the 17th of December, 1865.

The text is given entire, and the subject, as expressed in the

published edition of these sermons, was:

CHRISTIANITY AS A HISTORICAL FACT.

I would fain hope, my brethren, that the two last _conférences_

have contributed, in some degree, to revivify in believing hearts

both the energy of faith and the enthusiasm of virtue; that they

have cast doubts in doubting hearts, upon the very uncertainty

which creates doubt; that they have shed around hearts petrified,

so to speak, in the darkness of fleshly bondage, some rays of

the twilight which is the forerunner of the full light of God’s

grace, and which manifests itself in such hearts through this

question, solemnly and shrinkingly put: After all, might I not be

in error? Might there not be, despite all, another life, a real

responsibility, a moral law, supernatural duties, a judgment, a

judge, a God, and this God the God of Christianity?

No matter to what level the Sun of Truth may have attained on the

horizon of your inner life, you will allow me, nevertheless, to

retrace, in a few short words, the doctrinal substance of the two

previous discourses [_conférences_].

Man, such as we see him, is a fallen being; he is born with the

taint of original sin, and if to this, which is the form of evil,

he adds--and it is practically inevitable that he should--his own

individual sins, which are evil’s natural outgrowth, he does but

widen, at each moment of his existence, the abyss that parted

him from God since the very hour of his birth, and which, thus

ceaselessly widened, becomes such, at last, that nothing short of

a miracle will suffice to bridge it over. Death then, suddenly

intervening, cuts short all things here below, and hurls the man

whose whole life has been spent without God into the chasm of

the unknown. From a phase of being where all is transient, he is

hurried to another where all is abiding, and from that instant the

separation from God in which he has lived, and which before was

transient in its turn, becomes abiding, and from temporal changes

to eternal. Such are the conclusions of reason, which, leaning upon

faith, point out to us in this eternal separation the fitting seal

of an eternal woe.

It would not enter into my design toward the hearers which

Providence, having gathered together before me, seems to have

specially predestined to hear the words of eternal life from my

unworthy lips--it would not, I say, enter into my design to show

them these dark spiritual perspectives, without pointing out at

the same time some vista of supernatural light, some promise and

way of salvation, some hopes of life, nay, even life itself. No!

God forbid that I should become as the treacherous guide who

draws the lost wayfarer to the very edge of the precipice, and

there leaves him to himself and to the terrors of the ravenous

depths below. Yet, mark it well!--the mystery of life leads

towards death, through paths that skirt a giddy abyss where no

man’s self-possession is proof against danger; but there is,

nevertheless, an infallible road that leads to life through and in

spite of the manacles of death. It is called by a name with which

my lips cannot become familiar, as with a common word indifferently

bandied about in careless conversation--a name which I confess

myself unable even to pronounce without feeling my whole being

tremble with love and bow down in worship; a name which, when

spoken from this pulpit for the first time, only a few days ago,

produced an impression, or rather a mysterious shock, that neither

you nor I have yet forgotten--the name of _Jesus Christ_.

It is of him I come to speak to you to-day. My Father! my Friend!

my Master! abide with me, and, in order that I may be worthy to

speak of thee, speak thou thyself through these my lips!

Among all questions put by man to his own intellect, whether

they be historical, scientific, philosophical, social, or

religious, there is none of more gigantic importance than this:

Who and what is Jesus Christ? He and his works have been for two

thousand years the most notable reality of the universe; they

have been inextricably mingled with the course of history, with

the family and state relations of man to man, with literature,

with poetry, with politics; they have been the unseen link that

binds together all social problems; they have been the mainspring

of those mysteries that are convulsing the present century, and

which are fraught to some minds with terror and threatenings,

while to others they suggest hope and salvation. They have been,

without the slightest exaggeration, all things to all men, and it

follows, therefore, that according to the bent of man’s judgment

on Jesus Christ and his works, so will man’s whole nature lean,

his intellect with his thoughts, his heart with its feelings, his

life with its acts and its shortcomings, his soul with its eternal

aspirations.

This is indeed, and beyond all contradiction, the main question

of life--that question which, solve it which way you will, cannot

fail to produce two radically different types of men, and to open

up before us two paths, as far apart from each other through the

coming eternity as they are widely separated in the realms of time.

But why do I insist upon the awful importance of this problem? Do

you not understand it yourselves? Nay, do you not even bear witness

to it by your presence here at this moment? Why are you gathered

here--men of the most varied, perhaps the most contradictory,

beliefs? Why are you crowded around this pulpit in anxious silence,

breathless and motionless, perhaps vaguely troubled in mind? Why

but because there is not one amongst you to whom the sacred name of

Jesus is wholly indifferent or wholly meaningless! If to some this

holy name is the constant object of their highest adoration and

of their tenderest, I would fain say the most impassioned, love,

to others it is the object of their most agonizing doubts, the

spiritual sphinx whose riddle baffles and tortures all ages. And

further yet, while this name is to some the synonym of a smothered

curse or of a hatred as open as it is relentless, it contains for

all men a question of vital importance, I might even say a question

of life and death. My brethren, it is of _him_, who is both so

marvellously loved and so marvellously hated, of him whose figure

meets us at every turn of the past or the present, of him whom the

future cannot uncrown, that I purpose speaking to you to-day.

Every cause which has produced an effect may be considered either

in this effect or in itself. Hence, there exist two methods of

demonstration: the one beginning from the consideration of the

effect, and tracing it up to the cause; the other starting from

the study of the cause, and deducing its legitimate effect. We

are now about to apply to the great cause and the great effect

before us this twofold species of demonstration--this extrinsic

and intrinsic touchstone used by our intellect in acquiring its

noble treasure of proved facts and tried certainties in the domain

of philosophy, metaphysics, history, natural sciences, and, in

fact, of every branch of human knowledge. This cause is Christ,

this effect Christianity, of which he is the founder; and, since

it is natural to the human mind to consider first that which falls

more immediately under its own observation, I shall begin by

investigating the effect, namely, Christianity. This done, I shall

appeal simply to your reason to connect the effect with its cause,

and to discern through the beautiful proportions of the Christian

system the inimitable stamp of its divine founder.

I.

Every doctrine which has become a fact, every fact which has won

for itself a place in history, may be looked at in three ways:

first, with regard to its extent in material space; secondly, as

to its duration in time; thirdly, as to the depth to which it has

reached in human nature. This division is no invention of mine;

it is the same pointed out by the Apostle St. Paul when he wrote

to the Ephesians, and endeavored to explain to them the length

and breadth, the depth and divinity, of the Christian faith: _Ut

possitis comprehendere cum omnibus sanctis quæ sit latitudo et

longitudo, et sublimitas et profundum_ (Eph. iii. 18).

Now, as to its extent in material space, or, in other words, its

territorial sway:

Open the map of the world, and scan the globe with attentive eye:

a strange phenomenon will strike you. You will hardly discover one

corner of earth where Christianity--and I use the word in this

instance in its widest acceptation, excluding neither heresy nor

schism, which, though unhappily rebellious, are nevertheless, in

a certain sense, real members of the Christian household--where

Christianity, therefore, has not penetrated, either in undisputed

and irrevocable sway, as in Europe and America, or as a peaceful

conqueror, sealing its hardly-won victories not in the blood of

its enemies, but in its own. Following closely in the wake of new

discoveries, it is for ever landing on new shores, making a home

for itself among new populations, and winning new worshippers to

bend beneath the ancient sway of the never-aging cross.

You might rise in contradiction to my statement, and remind me that

the hour has not yet struck that will allow us, the soldiers of

Jesus Christ, to intone the triumphant hosanna of final victory,

since to this day there are many lands, many island-studded

archipelagoes, many vast and populous continents, beyond the pale

of our peaceful conquest, and since, after all, the standard of the

cross is not yet securely reared in every clime.

I admit it; but what does this prove? That our task is not yet

done? But who denies that? It is not done because time--which is

our only limit--is likewise unended, nay, is perhaps only just

beginning! For time is the array of all ages, and God alone, who

created them, has reckoned their mysterious number. Yes, we confess

it, our work is not done, and therefore we are ceaselessly and

everywhere laboring; and therefore I myself, a humble but zealous

worker, am laboring here at this moment. Those alone who will

see the end of time will see the task completed. That which we

have done during the twenty centuries that lie behind us is only

an earnest of what we will do in future ages, God’s holy grace

concurring.

What, my brethren! When we had no ships but frail canoes, and no

compass but our untutored eyes; when we had no roads but eternal

snows, virgin forests, and trackless deserts, vying with the wild

beasts of the wilderness in barring our further progress; when

we had no support but barefooted poverty and a pilgrim’s staff;

no provision save precarious charity, and no guide save faith,

hope undying, and--God; even then we succeeded in crossing rivers

and seas, deserts and forests, mountain gorges and Alpine snows,

that we might carry to the very confines of the world our living

faith and the Word of our God. This ineffable Word has reached

further than Alexander, who stopped at the Indus; further than

Crassus, whom the Euphrates arrested; further even than Varus, who

was stayed by the mighty Rhine--further than all conquerors, and

further than all conquests. And can we believe that we have now

set our foot on the fated threshold where the angel of evil would

be permitted to say to the angel of virtue, as erst the latter

was commanded to say it to his fallen brother, to Attila and the

barbarian hordes, at the very gates of the Eternal City: “Usque huc

venies, sed non ultra”--“Thus far shalt thou come, and no further”?

Do not believe it, my brethren; for, on the contrary, it is but now

that God’s reign is beginning, and as I believe, so I prophesy to

you, with an irresistible and invincible conviction.

Forward, then, O human enterprise! Cleave the mountains, cut

through the isthmuses, drain the morasses, and fill up the lakes;

cast bridges over the waters, carry roads over the trackless

country, build you mighty vessels, throw electric wires in the

air, and gird the world with an iron girdle! Let your treaties of

commerce and navigation be signed, and embassies sent to nations

and kings whose names till yesterday were unknown in the civilized

tongues of Europe! Know you what you are doing in thus knitting

humanity together, and in connecting, with an energy unexampled

in the whole history of the past, the orient and the occident,

the pole and the equator? In one mighty embrace their hands are

clasped, and they offer to each other, if we may so word it, that

gigantic kiss of peace which, day by day, re-echoes more loudly in

both hemispheres.

In all this, you are doing under the hand of God that which the

war-steed does under the hand that guides him and the spur that

urges him on. For, like unto the steed, who hardly knows whence he

came, far less where his rapid steps are leading him and what is

the burden that he bears--like unto him, thou Christ-blaspheming or

God-forgetting age, thou boundest forward with maddening strength,

carrying on thy broad shoulders with proud recklessness the rider

whom thou scarcely knowest to the goal thou wottest not of. Every

invention, every development of thy industry, far from cursing it,

I bless it from the depths of my heart! Go forward and prosper! In

a hundred years, thanks to thee, Truth will be sovereign of the

world!

Christianity is the greatest geographical and territorial fact

under the sun. It is so beyond all controversary, and if this

fact, which I simply call a miracle, seems to you natural and

easy of accomplishment, I only ask you this: try to spread and

propagate over the universe, not a whole complicated system of

metaphysics, but one single doctrine, whose mortal opponents, in

the first instance, shall number every human passion which repulses

it as treason against nature, and every heathen government which

denounces it as treason against authority. But I will not ask

even so much. Endeavor to persuade, not even one single nation,

one city, one family, but _one man_, of the truth of a doctrine

at once repulsive to his passions and hostile to his interests.

I speak to you as a man whose life is devoted to this sublime

and laborious mission of persuasion. And knowing as I do its

wonderful consolations as well as the superhuman and apparently

fruitless labor it often imposes, I tell you, my brethren, what

you yourselves will tell me when the school of reality shall have

taught it to you, that Christianity as it exists, spread over the

whole earth by the godlike contagion of faith, is simply a fact so

overwhelming that the language of men holds but one word fit to

express its being--that one word, _miracle_.

There is, however, one thing more marvellous yet than mere

propagation: it is duration, and a duration ever true to itself.

Condense the mystery of life into one short formula, capable at

once of holding and adequately expressing it, and you will find

none more comprehensive than this--_motion and change_. From the

mass of inanimate being which, in the bowels of the earth and in

the bosom of eternal night, is causing, by its agglomerations,

its cohesions, and its fusions, a species of constant internal

agitation, of blind and feverish restlessness as old as creation

itself, up to the most dazzling pinnacles of life, where man

figures under every name and in every relation conceivable among

mortals, there exists the same law, there reigns the same spirit.

In its name, by its authority, we see in private life one day

swallowed up by the next, dethroned by its breathless and equally

ephemeral successor, doomed beforehand to annihilation, while on

the stage of public life events crowd each other out of time and of

the memory of man, empires fall, dynasties grow up under the double

shield of God’s grace and man’s enthusiasm, frontiers are widened

and narrowed, whole nations migrate and spread, and even language

itself, though but an outward sign of immaterial substances and

metaphysical proportions in no way themselves subject to change,

puts on divers forms, as if carried away by an irresistible impulse

in the whirl of this universal frenzy. Yes, my brethren, motion is

everywhere, and, in order that even death should not be permitted

to fling its defiance permanently to life, this law penetrates

even to the night and silence of the tomb, pierces the coffin,

and installs between its four wooden walls the same unceasing

restlessness which torments the great world. Worms, created to

prey on man, riot with breathless agitation over the human corpse,

and proclaim, by their ghastly activity in the abode of final

destruction and in the very bosom of the crowning dread of earth,

that life triumphs yet over death, and that the universal law of

motion reigns in undisputed sway over that kingdom of darkness that

owns no other created sovereignty.

And what is the result of this ceaseless motion? Nothing less than

ceaseless change. Motion is a change of relations with the world

and with one’s self. There is no motion but causes change, no

change but presupposes motion. These terms are convertible, and so

it is that I justify what I told you a few moments ago--that the

concise formula of life is _motion and change_. It follows from

this demonstration that nothing is so difficult of attainment as

duration, and duration true to itself, which is to the sovereign

law of _motion and change_ a permanent defiance and a marvellous

contradiction.

Let us seek in the vast sepulchre of Time, where during so

many ages countless men and things, countless doctrines and

institutions, have lost themselves, and in which even the

shattered wrecks of once noble ruins, spectres of the past and

often unconscious prophets of the future, have been swallowed

up--let us seek one man or one created thing that has not succumbed

to this pitiless law. Let us seek diligently in the manuscripts

of old, in the caverns of forgotten magic, in the tombs of buried

sages! Or stay, my brethren, and seek not! For, like unto the

alchemist of mediæval ages, we should seek and not find, for that

which we seek is not.

But if you would see this tremendous miracle of a duration as

invulnerable as it is abiding, lifting up its solitary existence

in the midst of universal change and motion, do not gaze afar,

but turn your eyes to that tabernacle crowned with the cross, the

standard and badge of _Catholic_ Christianity. This, and this

alone, abides where all else has been swept away by the ruthless

and untiring breath which devours all that is, and ravenously

awaits all that, as yet, is not. Christianity, and it alone, has

lived true to itself, while all else around it was changing. Like

unto God, the impassible and unchangeable, Christianity stands

unmoved amidst the countless ruins with which you--men--strew the

world. Christianity, with its old principles and its youthful

aspect, leans on the rock of its own eternity, and gives the lie

to the universal law with unassailable and ineffable calm. Yes, it

defies you! It sees you pass, as the shore looks on the lapsing

river, as the cliff looks on the ocean, as heaven looks upon earth,

and as _God_ looks on _man_.

It is strange, is it not? It takes our breath away. But this is not

all: it is scarcely the beginning. Listen! To bespread over the

whole earth is much; to live where all decays is more; to abide

ever true to one’s self when all things change is more still. My

opponents, however--I will not say my enemies, for, thank God, I

know of none--are perhaps saying to themselves at this moment:

“But are there not other forms of religion bearing much the same

marks, at least in a certain degree? Islamism holds a considerable

territorial sway. The Buddhism of India has surely been in a

certain sense true to itself from time immemorial.” I do not deny

it, for truth needs no dissimulation. And it is precisely on this

account, and because error has been permitted to bear in some

respects a certain likeness to truth, that it was imperative, for

the sake of those men of good-will whom this likeness might have

deceived, that truth should possess, besides those notes which she

shares with error, other marks so utterly inimitable that on their

appearance there could not be but instant recognition of that truth

whose counterfeits are as legion, but whose equal does not exist.

The touchstone by which to gauge the worth of any doctrine is

neither this doctrine’s extent in space nor its duration in time,

nor even its impassibility amid universal transmutations; that is

much, but it is not all. What is of more importance than the limits

of its influence or the length of its spiritual reign, is _the work

it has done_. There is its secret proof, there its most personal

revelation. It can give but what it has, and it can have but what

it _is_; it can produce outwardly but what it inwardly possesses;

if it be falsehood, then falsehood; if it be error, then error; if

it be evil, then evil; if it be a half-truth, then half-truth; if

it be human and natural virtue, then human and natural virtue; but

if it be God, then _God himself_.

Christianity, considered from this point of view, to which we can

give but a passing glance, will vindicate itself in our eyes as

standing unrivalled on earth, even as God is unrivalled in heaven.

To make my meaning clear, let me present to your minds one

preliminary observation.

Man often lives amid the wonders of creation without feeling the

slightest curiosity in their regard, and this because a sublime

spectacle, from being too constantly before his sight, becomes only

a familiar part of the daily monotony of his life. We might almost

say of him that, to the abiding miracle of the material universe,

he opposes the miracle of abiding indifference. Now, the visible

creation contains another, both visible and invisible, and which,

though far more wonderful than the material one, yet draws from

you, on account of its abidingness, only the careless notice of

indifference. Inhabitants of a Christian land, members perhaps of a

Christian family, citizens of a Christian community, children, in a

word, of Christian civilization, you are living in the midst of a

world of miracles which has lost the power to interest you because

it fails to surprise you. It is my mission to-day to rouse you from

this indifference, to dispel this mist, to show you things as they

are.

Look at any Christian country, any Christian or civilized nation

of to-day; the country which harbors us at present, if you will.

Who were here eighteen, fifteen, fourteen centuries ago? Not even

barbarians; savages! Who was it that came and saved you from

yourselves? Who was it that drew you from the materialism in which

you were plunged in the person of your forefathers, and in which

numberless tribes are grovelling still to this day--nations whom

Christ has not yet gathered in, and who horrify the sight of the

boldest explorers? Who was it that drew you from your forests,

built your cities, founded your families, traced your boundaries,

inspired your laws, reared your churches, anointed your kings,

and created those two centres of light around which for eighteen

hundred years your history has grouped itself, and your private

sympathies, your public enthusiasm, has revolved--the altar and

the throne, fatherland and God? Who has reclaimed your fields, and

made fruitful by the labor of the plough the glorious conquests

of the sword? Who has preserved in the silence and solitude of

the cloisters the scattered remnants of classical learning, and

through the Scriptures and traditions has kept alive the plenitude

of sacred lore? Who was it that created that incomparable marvel,

of which I would fain speak with tears, rather than with words--the

Christian _Family_?--the father, the patriarch, priest, and pontiff

of home; the mother, the apostle of God; the Christian virgin,

that holy wonder which earth proudly points out to heaven, as if

defying even heaven’s angels to surpass it? Who is it that has

created virtues without number within sacrifices without name,

putting by the side of every woe the voluntary service which will

minister to it, giving to every misfortune some heart that will

beat for it, and to the most neglected grave a mourner to weep

over it? Who is it that has freed the slaves of man to create the

slaves of God--those slaves who can say with the humble exultation

of a supernatural sacrifice, in the words of the Jew of Tarsus, now

become the great Apostle St. Paul: “Ego vinctus pro Christo”--“I,

the slave of Christ.” Who is it that has created the ideal of duty

and honor which inspired the troubadour and the knight--the ideal

of fidelity to the pledged word, of horror at injustice, of the

sacred hatred of evil? Who is it that has given you all the goods

man prizes, and which you enjoy in ungrateful forgetfulness, while

cursing those who accumulated them for you during centuries of

untold and weary toil, and even him who won them for your sake on

the cross, in a sea of tears and of blood? Who gave you the great

gift which this age counts as the kingliest boon of all--the gift

whose magical name we fear, not because our lips were the first

to pronounce and to honor it here below: _freedom_--the deliverer

from sin and death, from the passions of hell, and from the hell

of human passions? Who made you what you are, or what you ought to

be--beings regenerated, civilized, free, glorious, sacred--in a

word, _Christians_?

Who, my brethren? Jesus Christ, he who is there present in his

tabernacle, he who listens to me, who sees you, and who will judge

one day between my word and your souls, between me and you.

And henceforward, when a blasphemy against his Godhead seeks

passage on your lips, be it in mockery or in malediction, remember

the Caribbean savage and the Red Indian, think of what he is and of

what you are, and do not forget that, were it not for Christ, you

would be even as that poor savage. If your soul is not yet open to

the fulness of faith, at least let it hold its peace if it respects

itself.

Christianity in its breadth, its length, and its depth is the

principal fact of the world. No sincere and deep intellect, when

glancing at this comprehensive whole, can contemplate it without

developing in itself a spontaneous doubt, without saying to itself,

if it be unhappily far from belief, “Might this not be really the

work of God?” But if the simple consideration of the effect, that

is, of Christianity, can create this inevitable doubt, what shall

we say of the cause which has produced it, and of the relations

of the one to the other? What, indeed, save this, that, face to

face with this cause, doubt is turned into certainty, and man is

irresistibly impelled to cry out, in the full conviction of his

soul, that _Jesus Christ is God indeed_.

II.

What, then, is the cause which has effected this mighty reality,

as great as earth, as old as time, as marvellous as heaven, and

whose name among us is Christianity? Nineteen hundred years ago, a

little Child was borne in an obscure village of a poor country. His

parents were poor and of no account; he himself lived a poor man,

unknown and unnoticed, save in one or two instances plying during

thirty years a lowly trade in a forgotten corner of the world. Of

a sudden, however, he breaks silence: he preaches, all untaught

as he seemed, a doctrine which earth had never before heard,

and confirming it by signs earth had never before seen. Public

attention is arrested: he becomes the hero of the hour, and parties

spring up for and against him. Two years and a half go by in uneasy

peace, but a day comes when his enemies get the upper hand, and

denounce him to the civil tribunals of the country, whose cowardly

justice, while declaring him to be innocent, yet allows popular

prejudice and the threat of imperial displeasure to wrest from it

an unwilling condemnation. The innovator is nailed to a gibbet, and

his brief history, hardly three years old, seems for ever ended,

and ended in what manner? By a sentence of capital punishment,

and a memory left stained with ignominy by the hand of the public

executioner.

Here, then, is the cause we seek: A Jew! a poor, unknown, untaught

Jew! a Jew condemned to a shameful death by the justice of his

country, and executed on the public road among other malefactors; a

Jew, and, if we dare to say the word, a _felon_!

Listen and weigh well that which you shall hear. You have seen the

cause, you have seen the effect. Between the two rises the great

question. How could such a cause produce such an effect? This we

purpose to examine in a few words:

There are three explanations from which your choice may be made,

and which pretend to connect a cause so radically powerless with

an effect so immeasurably disproportionate. They are these: Either

mankind has believed for two thousand years and actually believes

in Christianity without sufficient reason, without adequate proof.

In that case, humanity is mad, and for twenty centuries has been

so, and I myself, who am speaking to you, am out of my senses.

Or else mankind believes with fully adequate proof, perfectly

calculated to convince it, and yet what it believes is false.

In that case, God has deceived us during twenty, forty, sixty

centuries, since the beginning of the world. In that case,

Providence is a mockery, and its sway over the universe has been

from the very first hour of creation but one long mystification,

one scornful derision of our human reason. Or again, if you cannot

believe either that mankind has mistaken God, or that God has

deceived mankind, there is but one hypothesis left, namely, that

Jesus Christ is God!

In order that you may choose more deliberately between these

three possibilities, it will be necessary to afford them fuller

development. The first of these compels you to infer that mankind

for the last two thousand years has been bereft of reason, and

that at the present moment a considerable portion of it, myself

included, is in a hopeless state of insanity.

This may seem to you an exaggerated proposition, got up simply

to prop the weakness of an untenable argument, but it is nothing

if not an absolute truth, most easy of demonstration. Let us

suppose that to-morrow, the 18th of December of the year of grace

1865, there shall enter into this great capital, through one of

its numerous gates and towards the dusk of evening, a poor and

ragged beggar, the dust of his journey still upon him, and his

ignorance of the language of the country painfully conspicuous.

Let us suppose this man presenting himself before the populace,

the magistracy, the priesthood, the army, and before the Emperor

himself, and speaking to him thus: “Sire, a few years ago, your

majesty was pleased to order the public execution, in a remote

province of the Empire, of a Jew. This Jew was the Messiah, the

Saviour, God himself! Therefore, O Cæsar! come down from your

throne, bend your knee, be baptized, and confess your sins; for,

mark it well, this crucified Jew is none other than your God.”

What would you say, my brethren, to the man who should speak thus

to-day? You would fitly account him a madman, and madder yet the

people and the priesthood, the army and the monarch, who should

believe in his wild words.

Well, then, this strange tale is a true one, it is a historical

fact. One day, many ages ago, an old Jew, baptized by the name of

Peter, entered, a beggar, ragged, and dust-begrimed, through one

of the gates of the greatest capital of the mightiest empire of the

world--ancient Rome.

In Rome, he actually preached the unheard-of sermon I have just

quoted, and which, repeated in that form to-day, would cause

only a burst of derision. Why did Rome not mock him? Why did the

priesthood not hoot him? Why did Cæsar not scorn him? Why, on the

contrary, did this beggar, with his rough staff and scrip, with his

barbarous Latin sounding harshly on the ears of those who could yet

remember the voice of Cicero on the rostrum--why did he shake the

foundations of the mightiest empire of the world, and why, instead

of provoking laughter, did the people pale and tremble before him

in the Forum, the magistrates quail beneath their robes of office,

the priesthood shrink affrighted to their doomed temples, and Nero,

the emperor, forget to trust in his blood-stained purple? Why does

the deserted Palatine look to-day upon the opposite hill of the

Vatican, and behold there a dome whose summit may well be said

to seek to scale the heavens--a dome that crowns a tomb, that of

the beggar Peter, a tomb which, though but the fane of the dead,

is nevertheless the centre of Europe and the world? For this tomb

bears a throne at once the most ancient and the most sacred in

Europe, the only one which represents an empire whose boundaries

are the boundaries of the universe. And why all this? Only because

Peter proved by signs and wonders, by _miracles_ wrought both in

life and in death, that he spoke indeed in the name of him whom

heaven and earth obeyed, because he was their Maker. Because he

wrought these signs, his word was believed. And I am free to

confess that, had the men of his time believed in him without such

an irrefragable proof of his mission, they would have been madmen

indeed, and we, who are now the heirs of their faith, would have

been only the successors to their folly. For two thousand years,

I repeat it, the history of mankind would have been a long dream

of insanity, an act of stupendous folly, and, as a climax to this

incalculable confusion, there would have sprung from this folly the

most incomprehensible of contradictions--wisdom and glory, light

and virtue, civilization and progress--in a word, that great wonder

which holds all lesser marvels within itself, namely, Christianity.

If I mistake not, your common sense has already set aside this

hypothesis as untenable. We admit it, you may say to me; to make

mankind believe in the--humanly speaking--unbelievable, there

must have been proofs capable of proving and making certain, so

to speak, the very impossible itself. We must admit it, unless we

accuse the whole world of madness. But if Peter and the apostles,

and all the preachers of the Gospel, confirmed their teaching by

signs that were accounted miracles, might this not be explained

by a chain of fortuitious coincidences, happy accidents, seeming

miracles, which are every day elucidated by the progress of

investigation until they utterly disappear in the full light of

science? A discussion of the nature and essence of the Gospel

miracles would be utterly out of place at this moment. I will

therefore confine myself to this: if the miracles which, among

outward causes, are the principal explanation of the world’s

conversion to Christianity, are false, then it is no longer mankind

unconsciously duped and led away, but Heaven itself, the deceiver

and seducer, whom we must indignantly accuse.

There is no alternative, my brethren: either madness on the part

of earth, or crime on the part of heaven. Either man is bereft of

reason, or God is no longer just. Either man unknowingly deceives

himself, or God wilfully deceives him. Choose ye, therefore!

But in choosing, remember that he who accuses God of having

deceived the world, or even of having permitted what is called

chance to have so deceived it, blasphemes as much against mankind

as against God, and commits such treason against humanity as can

never be forgiven by it. To accuse God of having allowed evil to

triumph in the plausible likeness of good, and to become, behind

this mask, the goal, the light, the glory, the life, the very God

of mankind, involves nothing less than the negation of Providence,

and the abandonment of the world to the blind god of chance,

the savage god of fate, the shadowy god of nothingness. Such an

accusation confuses all creation, darkens the sun of understanding,

casts history back into chaos, the human intellect into doubt, the

human heart into despair. If Providence has betrayed mankind from

its cradle, why should it not have betrayed me, individually, from

my birth? At the slightest hint of such a doubt, what a fearful

horizon looms up before me!

I have believed in him who has numbered every hair of my head; and

I have been deceived.

I have believed in the prayer of the poor who ask for daily bread,

and in the answer of him who gives it, and in whose sight even

the sparrow is not forgotten; and I have been deceived! I have

believed in the eloquence of tears shed at the feet and the heart

of God; in the blessings of mothers registered in heaven; in the

fruitfulness of suffering; in the merit of unknown virtue, and

of virtue unknown to itself; in defeats that are glorious and

success that is shameful; I have believed in all that showed forth

God in man, and man in God! But--grief unspeakable!--I have been

deceived, since there is no Providence, since for ages and ages

an odious and inexplicable chance has ruled humanity, and forced

it, humbled, mystified, levelled with the brute, miserably plunged

in a stupid and inconceivable idolatry, to bend the knee to the

very dust--before what? before whom? Before a man, a Jew--before

a scourged and crucified Jew, whom it hearkens to as an oracle,

invokes as a master, and worships as a god.

I have reached a limit beyond which I cannot go, and I stop a

moment to ask you: Have we not seen enough of these impossibilities

jostling one another, enough of absurdities crowding on our

bewildered sight, and, as Scripture words it, of deep calling unto

deep?

And yet, if you tear from the brow of Jesus Christ the crowning

glory of the Godhead, you will be compelled to admit a thousand

times more than this, and not only to admit it, but even to believe

it fitting and most rational. You are therefore forced to choose

between the human madness that believed in and deified an impostor,

the guilty and merciless fraud practised by a God whose seal was

thus solemnly set to the most appalling scandal ever witnessed by

mankind, or the crowning dogma of the divinity of Jesus Christ, a

dogma which alone reconciles and explains all mysteries. When you

recross the threshold of this church, you must go forth believers,

either in a miracle of folly, a miracle of treachery, or a miracle

of mercy and love. Mankind must appear before you either as a

regenerated, a deceived, or an idolatrous creation.

What will be your choice? Would to God that at the solemn moment

of your decision I might come to each one of you, and on my knees

beseech you, through the merits of that Precious Blood which, if

you will not let it be your salvation, will most assuredly be your

eternal condemnation, and the sign that will doom you to doubt in

life, to agony in death, to despair in eternity--beseech you, I

repeat it ere you have raised your voice in final decision, to free

your soul from the interests that bind it, the human respect that

fetters it, the sophisms that lead it astray--in a word, from all

the passions of flesh and blood whose watchword is eternal hatred

to the truth of God.

Then, and only then, in that freedom from all bondage, in the

silence of your inmost hearts, make the choice that will lead you

to life or to death.

But what words are these, my brethren? There will be no need of

choosing then: the choice will be already made; for, as the sun

swiftly reaches the last recess of the deepest cavern the moment

the obstacle is removed which has hitherto resisted its light,

so does Jesus Christ, the sun of the mind, the incarnate truth,

flood with his radiance every soul whose own obstinate efforts

do not close it against this blessed transfiguration. Open wide

your hearts, my brethren, to this God of love and truth, who has

vouchsafed to show himself to you in the brightness of such light

and the majesty of such conviction.

And thou, Lord Jesus, who art the truth “_that enlighteneth every

man that cometh into the world_” (St. John i.), let it not come

to pass that one soul out of this great assemblage should return

this day from the foot of this pulpit to the common turmoil of

the world without bearing within itself the ineffable wound of a

dawning conviction. And if, O Lord! thou requirest unto this end

the sacrifice of a human life, let this day be my last on earth,

and this hour the last hour of my mortal pilgrimage.

AFFIRMATIONS.

“It is the child’s spirit that is to be loved and sympathized with,

not his body; the body must be pampered as little as possible.”

“Principle must unite with purpose before it becomes practical.”

“Human nature must do as nature does--cling to the sustainer, and

then it will be always producing new fruits.”

“We are none the better for reflecting upon our own ideas of heat,

but if we would cease reflecting and let the heat warm us, the heat

would itself realize what our reflected reflections never can.”

“There is a communion with God, with saints, and also with angels,

and then with each other, but this is not in space and time, or

with the space and time man.”

“That which Love requires for the everlasting food, the man of this

world expends in heaping up rubbish.”

FLEURANGE.

BY MRS. CRAVEN, AUTHOR OF “A SISTER’S STORY.”

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, WITH PERMISSION.

PART FIRST.

THE OLD MANSION.

XII.

Clement remained a moment thoughtful and undecided. Before obeying

his mother’s injunction, he felt the need of collecting his

thoughts and regaining his self-control. Whatever strength of mind

he might manifest, he was very young to experience such painful

emotions as he had endured the past day. He crossed the passage

of the stairs that led to Fleurange’s room, then passed on and

went directly into the garden. Hitherto he had only thought of his

parents. At least, he felt all that morning that, as soon as his

father and mother knew everything, a great weight would be removed

from his mind which would enable him to breathe quite freely. But

the terrible revelation was made, and yet he was not relieved. He

was still agitated, painfully agitated. Having passed the whole

evening shut up in Wilhelm’s office, reckoning up the sad accounts,

he felt the need of fresh air. It was the end of June. The weather

was cloudy, and somewhat showery. He walked swiftly to the end of

the garden, then returned slowly towards the house, and was about

to go in search of the children and his cousin when he heard his

name called close behind him:

“Clement!”

“Is it you, Gabrielle, here all alone?”

Fleurange was sitting on an obscure bench against the side of the

house.

“Yes, I have been here an hour. You are going to tell me everything

that has occurred, are you not, Clement? Remain here awhile and

tell me. Do not conceal things from me any longer.”

“I do not intend to, Gabrielle, but do not detain me now. Come in,

dear cousin. When the children are asleep, I will return and tell

you.”

“The children are asleep, Clement, and have been for a long time.

It is nearly ten o’clock. Poor little things, do you think they

could keep awake till this time? After dinner I took them to the

further end of the garden, that their lively prattle might not

disturb the house. By eight o’clock they were tired out. I made

them go up-stairs, and as soon as they fell asleep I came down to

wait for you.”

Had her account been still longer, Clement would not have thought

of interrupting her. He made no reply for a while, but at length

said:

“Thank you, Gabrielle. You are--” He stopped. He felt an iron

grasp at his throat, and feared he should sob like a child if

he attempted to speak. With all his manly energy and precocious

gravity, Clement’s young heart was passionately tender. And yet he

had not been wanting in firmness throughout the day. Why, then,

did it seem to abandon him so suddenly now? How happened it that,

after considering, without shrinking, all the consequences of the

resolution he was the first to make and propose--after manifesting

no hesitation at the sight of his parents, and his brother and

sister, he now felt terrified and almost overwhelmed at the thought

of the sacrifice that had been made, and the great change about

to occur in their lives? He hardly knew why himself, for he had

not examined very minutely what was passing in his dreams. Clement

was naturally inclined to reverie. He cared but little for the

amusements of his age. His mind sought relaxation in secretly

brooding over the inspirations of poetry. His friends knew he had

a good memory and was familiar with a great number of poems, but

they did not suspect he had a deep vein of poetry in his nature

which ranked next to the influences of religion. This interior life

was so completely veiled that the very eye of his mother scarcely

penetrated it. Clement’s aptitude for history and the sciences, his

turn for practical studies and a practical life, his skill in a

thousand things of a material nature, served to conceal still more

the other qualities of his mind. They depended on him to train a

horse, settle an account, give a lesson in mathematics or history,

plan an excursion, or make arrangements for a journey; but the

idea of his wandering in imaginary or poetic regions, absorbed and

lost in such waking dreams as are expressed in German by the word

_Schwärmen_, and silently passing a part of his life in an interior

world to which he never alluded, was little imagined, even by those

who knew him best. And perhaps he himself, as we have said, had

never thoroughly analyzed his own nature, for until to-day the

actual and the imaginary had never come in conflict. But now all at

once he felt there was in his ideal world a sanctuary, a palace, a

throne, he must resign himself to see crumble away like the rest,

and the courage he manifested at the material loss of wealth to its

fullest extent seemed to forsake him now in view of the imaginary

ruin of this enchanted domain!

Fleurange, seeing her cousin made no reply, waited quietly awhile,

but at length she said, somewhat impatiently:

“Come, Clement, I pray you, keep me no longer in suspense. What are

you afraid of? Am I a child? Am I not older than you? And did I not

learn long ago the sad meaning of sorrow, suffering, and trial?

Speak to me freely, then, and without fear. Nothing frightens me.”

Fleurange’s earnestness roused her cousin, and restored his

calmness and self-control. Without any further hesitation, he

seated himself beside her, and related the greater part of what

he had told his mother some hours before. She thus learned in her

turn the extent of the disaster which had befallen them--that all

due reparation would be made, that the honor of her uncle’s house

and name might remain intact, though his brother, Ludwig Dornthal,

would be ruined--for ever ruined.

“And your good father and mother have consented to this

renunciation of their rights?”

“Yes, and without any hesitation.”

“O dear and noble soul!” cried Fleurange, clasping her hands in her

transport. “And it was you who proposed it?”

“Yes.”

“O Clement, my dear Clement! truly, I love you as I never loved you

before!”

“Gabrielle,” said Clement in a low and trembling voice, “do not say

that.”

“Why not?” said Fleurange. “I think so, and it is the truth.”

“Because--because, if they are often to be blamed who are wanting

in honor and duty, there is nothing particularly praiseworthy in

those who are faithful.”

“Nevertheless, my dear cousin, if I love you better than before,

you must not be displeased, but I will not say so again if it

offends you.”

There was a moment’s silence. Fleurange was lost in profound

reverie. She soon resumed, in a grave tone: “Now I understand the

state of affairs, I see our life is to assume an entirely new

aspect.”

“Yes, entirely,” said Clement, with a dull anguish.

“This dear Old Mansion,” continued Fleurange, “must it be left?”

“Yes,” said Clement; “it will have to be sold, with all it

contains, for the produce of this sale is all my father will have

to begin life anew with.”

“Sell the house!” replied Fleurange thoughtfully. “Yes, I see it

must be so; and afterwards we shall be separated.”

“And why must that be so?” cried Clement with sudden impetuosity.

But he presently resumed in a different tone: “However, it would

be very selfish in us to wish to retain you, now we have no longer

anything to share with you but our poverty.”

“Clement,” said Fleurange hastily, “that is truly a rude and

unjust speech, which I hardly merit--” She stopped an instant,

then went on in a tone of emotion: “What! when poverty, misery,

and hunger--yes, Clement, hunger!--were staring me in the face,

your father bethought himself of me, he invited me here, received

me into his house, conferred on me--not a happiness I had already

experienced, but one hitherto unknown: he became my father, when

mine was no more, and gave me a mother, brothers, and sisters whom

I had never possessed. Life, youth, and joy had been meaningless

words to me. I only comprehended them after I came under his

roof, and now--now,” said she in broken accents, no longer able

to restrain her tears, “it is his son--Ludwig Dornthal’s son--who

tells me it is to escape the misfortunes of his family that I wish

to leave them!”

“Gabrielle! Gabrielle!” said Clement in an agitated manner,

“forgive me--have some pity on me. Stop, I beseech you; you will

drive me mad, if you utter such reproaches at this time.”

Fleurange by degrees grew calm, and, forcing a smile, while great

tears stood in her eyes, she soon resumed: “Poor Clement! I am,

then, neither allowed to praise you nor blame you, this evening.

Well, let us lay aside what relates merely to ourselves, or at

least speak of it in a different manner. What I meant just now was

that we could no longer remain idle. We must aid our dear parents

all we can,” she continued in a softened tone, “and labor for

them--”

“Labor!” said Clement. “_I_ must unquestionably; that is a matter

of course; but you, Gabrielle--you! There is no reason in what you

say.”