Of these, happily, that of Ramsgate is one. “The whole church,”

says our author, “is lined with stone of a warm color, the

woodwork of the screens, stalls, etc., being of dark oak. The

general _tone_ of the interior, lighted as it is by stained glass,

is most agreeable, and wonderfully suggestive of old work....

The church of St. Augustine may be regarded as one of Pugin’s

most successful achievements. Its plan is singularly ingenious

and unconventional in arrangement. The exterior is simple but

picturesque in outline. No student of old English architecture

can examine this interesting little church without perceiving

the thoughtful, earnest care with which it has been designed and

executed down to the minutest detail.”

Omitting the technical description, which would be unintelligible

to the non-professional reader, we will merely remark upon one

or two interesting circumstances which combine to make St.

Augustine’s Priory doubly dear to the Catholic and artist heart.

The founder lies buried in one of its side chapels, beneath a

lovely mediæval tomb, his figure carved in the monumental repose

which characterizes the shrines of former days. And truly before

these calm effigies of death, which modern taste calls _stiff_,

and for which it has substituted the nude and affected statues of

weeping nymphs and cupids, no Christian can fail to be reminded of

the solemnly triumphant question, “O grave, where is thy victory?

O death, where is thy sting?” The church that Pugin loved is now

served by the old monastic order, whose history is identified

in England with most of the wonderful productions of the art

he followed--the Benedictines. The plain chant, so intimately

associated with that ancient art, is alone used at all the services

of the church; and near the Pugin Chantry is an image of Our Lady,

before which, on an iron stand of exquisite design, are constantly

burned the tapers of the faithful. Were it not for the modern

dress of the worshippers, nothing in the church would indicate

the change between the fourteenth and the nineteenth century.

Close to it stands the architect’s own house, a gem of domestic

Gothic architecture, now occupied by Pugin’s widow and son, himself

an enthusiastic artist. It is impossible to describe the house,

save by a comprehensive expression. It has a _sympathetic_ and

_Catholic_ air: one is reminded of the days when artists loved

their faith and their art in themselves, without after-thoughts

and without interest; when they saw God in their work instead

of a patron or a human encourager; when they would no more sell

their principles and compromise their æsthetic beliefs, than they

would sell their soul to the Evil One. We have had the pleasure

of experiencing familiar intercourse with this truly Christian

household, and of partaking of its graceful hospitality. We have

seen the very dining-room etherealized into a fane of art, as

the table appeared laden with silver flagons of antique design,

and decked in the centre with the virginal blossoms of lily and

jessamine. This purity of taste and absence of vulgar redundancy

or vanity in ornament produced upon us a most indelible and quaint

impression. If it be true that the surroundings of home refine

the mind and open it to the most perfect sense of the beautiful,

these neighbors of St. Augustine’s Priory should consider

themselves among the most favored in this age of almost hopeless

utilitarianism.

St. George’s Catholic Cathedral at Southwark, London, is also one

of Pugin’s great works. The ceremonies of the church are performed

with more precision in this cathedral than in almost any modern

one in England, and the building wonderfully lends itself to their

performance. During Holy Week, all the Protestant world of art and

fashion crowd its aisles, and admire equally its architectural

solemnity and suggestiveness, and the impressive ritual to which

it forms so noble a frame. The Church of St. Michael’s Priory,

near Hereford, also a Benedictine foundation, is most beautiful

and most “Puginesque” (to quote the appropriate word-coin of our

author, Eastlake). The simplicity of its nave and aisles contrasts

well with the richness of its choir; the stone reredos, a true

“carven dream of angels,” represents the adoration of the Divine

Host by the winged inhabitants of heaven; the altar is rich with

marble columns and small sculptured capitals of most ingenious

workmanship; the stalls rival those in the old Flemish churches

(and Flanders was the birthland of perfect carving); and the

peculiar arrangement which leaves a free space between choir and

nave, separated from each by a vaulted arch, has a very happy

effect. There are fully thirty monks in the monastery, and the

plain chant is heard in all its glory at the prescribed hours of

the divine office.

We have lingered too long over these reminiscences, and will now

hasten on to the few other points of interest, which our limited

space has allowed us to make note of, in Mr. Eastlake’s book.

A few quotations that carry one from the consideration of the dry,

technical aspect of the Revival to that of its spirit and vitality

will not be unacceptable, we believe, to the general reader. Here

are two contrasting portraits of modern and mediæval life: “Seen

in their present state, some half-modernized, some damaged by time

and wilful neglect, others spoilt by injudicious restoration, many

of these ancient mansions are but dimly suggestive of their former

magnificence. It was Nash’s aim to represent them as they were in

the days when country life was enjoyed by their owners, not for a

brief interval in the year, but all the year round; in days when

there were feasting in the hall and tilting in the court-yard;

when the yule-log cracked on the hearth, and mummers beguiled the

dulness of a winter’s evening; when the bowling-green was filled

by lusty youths, and gentle dames sat spinning in their boudoirs;

when the deep window recesses were filled with family groups, and

gallant cavaliers rode a-hawking; when, in short, all the adjuncts

and incidents of social life, dress, pastimes, manners, and whatnot

formed part of a picturesque whole, of which we, in these prosaic

and lack-lustre days, except by the artist’s aid, can form no

conception.” On the other hand, here is what the shocked vision

of a modern artist has suggested to the author of the _Gothic

Revival_:

“Mr. Ruskin looked around him at the modern architecture of England

... and saw public buildings copied from those of a nobler age,

but starved and vulgarized in the copying. He saw private houses,

some modelled on what was supposed to be an Italian pattern, and

others modelled on what was supposed to be a mediæval pattern,

and he found too often neither grandeur in the one nor grace in

the other. He saw palaces which looked mean, and cottages which

looked tawdry. He saw masonry without interest, ornament without

beauty, and sculpture without life. He walked through the streets

of London, and found that they consisted for the most part of

flaunting shop-fronts, stuccoed porticoes, and plaster cornices. It

is true there were fine clubs and theatres and public institutions

scattered here and there; but, after making due allowance for their

size, for the beauty of materials used, and for the neatness (!) of

the workmanship, how far could they be considered as genuine works

of art?”

And here let us stop to point out how it has been invariably the

aim of the Revival to banish the false and the meretricious from

art; how it has waged relentless war against shams, against the

aping in perishable clay of that which the ancients, Greek as well

as mediæval, always carved in indestructible stone or marble.

Unfortunately, the only residue of mediævalism that has as yet

filtered its way down to the masses of the population is strongly

tinged with a taste for showiness at the expense of intrinsic

worth, and the flimsiness of “Gothic” sea-side lodges and Cockney

villas has become a by-word. Eastlake deplores the rigid adoption

in such hybrid edifices of the bands of colored brick (chiefly

red and yellow), which should be used with great discretion, but

which obtained a too quick popularity when Ruskin first pointed out

their prominent part in Italian decorative Gothic. In a foot-note,

he says: “In the suburbs this mode of decoration rose rapidly

into favor for Cockney villas and _public taverns_, and laid the

foundation of that peculiar order of Victorian architecture which

has since been distinguished by the familiar but not altogether

inappropriate name of the Streaky Bacon Style.”

With how many such buildings are we unhappily acquainted! In this

city, we have seen counterparts to the villas here mentioned--nay,

churches and public halls, with iron-work that calls itself Gothic,

and does not know that it is but modern “Franco-Assyrian!” But let

us not do injustice to the more enlightened disciples of Pugin and

of Ruskin, who are covering this new land with buildings which, if

they last two or three hundred years, will rival those of the lands

from whose cathedrals they were copied. A sister to the marble

cathedral of Milan will soon be finished for the Catholics of New

York, not so elaborate, perhaps, but purer in style and spirit.

Others are eagerly competing in this new race of art, and the city

of the Dutch emigrants will one day hold fanes that will remind

their children of Flanders and of Holland.

Although the Catholic Church can afford to dispense with outward

ceremonial, or adapt herself to a different arrangement of church

architecture, and yet remain, in custom, in doctrine, essentially

immutable, such is not the privilege of the dominant church in

England. Therefore it will not be surprising to any one to know

how much the revived taste for art contributed some time ago to

the revived sense of decorum in the services of the Episcopalian

denomination. Eastlake gives us a graphic description of spiritual

desolation in the ante-Gothic days in the country parishes of

England:

“In country districts, a bad road or a rainy day sufficed to

keep half the congregation away even from Sunday services. Of

those who attended, two-thirds left the responses to the parish

clerk.... Cracked fiddles and grunting violoncellos frequently

supplied the place of the church organ. The village choir--of

male and female performers--assembled in the western _gallery_

(!). When they began to sing, the whole congregation faced

about to look at them; but to turn towards the east during the

recitation of the creed, or to rise when the clergy entered

the church, would have been considered an instance of abject

superstition. No one thought of kneeling during the longer

prayers. Sometimes the Litany was interrupted by thwacks from

the beadle’s cane as it descended on the shoulders of parish

schoolboys, who devoted themselves to clandestine amusement

during that portion of the service. When the sermon began, all,

except the very devout, settled themselves comfortably to sleep.

The parson preached in a black gown, and not unfrequently read

the communion service from his pulpit.”

We have seen in a country church in Rutland--one of the midland

counties of England--some lingering tokens of this curious state

of things. Most of the other churches of that neighborhood have

been magnificently restored, and very much Catholicized, at least

in externals. This exception to the rule is in a small parish, and

is noticeable for a very curious ancient monument, half sunk in

the earth, and covered by a recess of the church wall itself. It

is supposed to be that of the founder, who chose this position as

typical of his having been a _support_ to the building: at least

this was the suggestion of a friend of ours, an architect of the

type of Pugin--a Christian artist in the true sense of the word.

The interior of the church was a sad contrast to its beautiful

outward proportions: high whitewashed pews filled it, hiding the

base of the columns, thrusting their wooden cornices into and

over the _piscinæ_, and covering from view the old brasses and

monumental slabs on the stone floor. A row of hat-pegs (will it be

believed?) ran round the whole church at a convenient height, and

rare must have been the decoration appended to them on a Sunday.

The “altar plate”--pewter pots hardly a stage better, and certainly

a degree duller, than those highly-polished vessels which were no

doubt in more constant use in the neighboring tavern--was kept in a

worm-eaten old oak chest at the bottom of the church. The communion

table _was_ a table; and indeed Cromwell himself might have walked

in and felt satisfied that there lurked no “Popery” there. By the

bye, why does ignorance always call beautiful art “Popery”? Is it

not through some higher and unconscious knowledge which forces

itself into expression, like the sibyl’s prophecies, upon reluctant

and unbelieving lips?

Eastlake speaks of Westminster Abbey as liable to many of the

abuses which he deplores in country churches. “Westminster,” he

says, “was not then (1826) as now guarded by circumspect vergers,

who are stimulated to additional vigilance by the sixpences of

the faithful. There was scarce a monument in the place which had

not suffered from ruthless violence, for at that time or not long

before, the choristers made a playground of the venerable abbey,

and the Westminster scholars played at hockey in the cloisters.”

It is time to mention a few of the architects of the more modern

phase of the Revival, and of some of their works, those especially

which find a place among the fine engravings of Eastlake’s valuable

book. Butterfield is selected as one of the foremost, and as the

only leader after Pugin whose influence is yet appreciably felt. He

is thus eulogized by our author. “It is especially characteristic

of Mr. Butterfield’s design that he aims at originality, not only

in form, but in the relative proportion of parts.... This indeed

is the secret of the striking and picturesque character which

distinguishes his works from others which are less daring in

conception and therefore less liable to mistakes. Mr. Butterfield

has been the leader of a school, and it is necessary for a leader

to be bold.” Of the church of All Saints, in London, built by the

same architect, Eastlake says: “The truth is that the design

was a bold and magnificent endeavor to shake off the trammels of

antiquarian precedent, which had long fettered the progress of the

Revival, to create not a new style, but a development of previous

styles; to carry the enrichment of ecclesiastical Gothic to an

extent which even in the middle ages had been rare in England;

to adorn the walls with surface ornament of a durable kind; to

spare, in short, neither skill, nor pains, nor cost in making this

church the model church of its day--such a building as should

take a notable position in the history of modern architecture.”

Further on he says of him that there is “a sober earnestness in his

work widely different from that of some designers, who seem to be

tossed about on the sea of popular taste.... He does not care to

produce showy buildings at a sacrifice of constructive strength.

To a pretty, superficial school of Gothic and fussy carving, he

never condescended.... His work gives one the idea of a man who

has designed it not so much to please his clients as to please

himself. In estimating the value of his skill, posterity may find

something to smile at as eccentric and much that will astonish as

daring, but they will find nothing to despise as commonplace or

mean.” Several engravings are given of details of his work on the

church of St. Alban’s (a high ritualistic stronghold in London)

and at All Saints’ and Balliol Chapel (Oxford). Of Carpenter, an

architect who died in his prime, we find the following flattering

notice: “No practitioner of his day (1840-50) understood so

thoroughly the _grammar_ of his art.... As a pupil he appears to

have given remarkable attention to the character and application

of mouldings.... A knowledge of the laws of proportion, of the

conditions of light and shade, and the effective employment of

decorative features are arrived at by most architects gradually

and after a series of tentative experiments. Carpenter seems to

have acquired this knowledge very early in his career, so that

even his first works possess an artistic quality far in advance of

their state, while those he executed in later years are regarded

even now with admiration by all who have endeavored to maintain

the integrity of our old national styles.” Mr. Beresford Hope was

a true and enthusiastic patron of Carpenter’s artistic career. Of

the many works of this talented man, whose life was unfortunately

so short, our author chooses a large college in Sussex as the

one most worthy of an engraving. Its proportions truly denote a

mediæval spirit. Eastlake places Goldie among the later revivalists

of note, and gives a fine engraving of his Abbey of St. Scholastica

at Teignmouth. The building certainly looks massive and extensive

enough for an ancient monastic structure, though the use of the

before-mentioned bands of colored brick seems too profuse for that

chasteness of design which is surely the highest standard of taste.

Goldie is the architect of St. Mary’s Cathedral at Kensington,

London, the Pro-Cathedral of the Archiepiscopal See of Westminster.

Although we have heard many criticisms passed upon this specimen

of his skill, we are by no means capable of giving any opinion,

especially as we have not had the opportunity of seeing it.

Eastlake gives a view of its western doorway, and goes on to say

that the “interior is remarkable for the height of its nave,” a

detail which receives but too little attention in many modern

buildings. “The roof,” he says, “is ceiled, and follows the outline

of a trefoil-headed arch--a form not often adopted, but here

peculiarly effective. There are many incidents in the design of

this church which are very ingenious and original.... Every detail

throughout the work, even to the novel gas-standard, bears evidence

of artistic care.”

We fear that, beyond naming these few artists, the richness of

our remaining material will not allow us to go deeper into their

merits. Yet there are many others, as well or less known, whose

conscientious, enthusiastic carrying out of their beautiful

principles lends powerful aid to their theory. Hanson and Hadfield,

among Catholic architects, and Street and Scott among Anglicans,

are well worthy of mention, and since Barry was the ostensible

restorer of the Houses of Parliament, we must of course give him

a place in this short review. But there is one name which from

intimate and pleasant acquaintance we would fain single out, and

which is honorably mentioned by Eastlake as belonging to one who

with several of his Catholic brethren “have done their best, each

in their several ways, to secure honest and substantial work, and

to keep clear of that tawdry, superficial style of design which

brings discredit on the Gothic cause.”

This is Charles Buckler, the son and successor of John Chessel

Buckler, a most finished artist and wonderful draughtsman, who, it

may be said with peculiar significance, has let his mantle fall on

the heir to his name and art. If any one would see in modern days

that oneness of being between faith and art, let him look for it

in the life and works of this gifted architect. The most rigorous

purist could find no fault in a man who takes for his model the

simplicity of the thirteenth century, and in whose manner and

address a corresponding simplicity and sweetness are ever manifest.

A priest by the vocation of art, as his two brothers are by the

vocation of faith and by union with one of the most art-loving

orders in the church, he works more willingly for churches and

other ecclesiastical buildings than for the houses of the great,

and finds his highest gratification in offering to each church

he designs some spontaneous gift of his genius, the carving of

a _piscina_ or the pedestal of a font. His little church of St.

Thomas à Becket, at Exton in the county of Rutland, is a specimen

of his design which we believe he himself would not be unwilling

to call a representative one. It is the only Catholic Church in

the county, and so may claim to interest those who otherwise

might not care to examine it. The foundress, as devoted a lover

and patroness of art as she was a holy and noble-minded Christian

matron, lies buried near the high altar. The church is built in the

traditional cross-shape, and has an absidal end pierced by several

beautiful windows, the stone tracery of which is in the style of

the thirteenth century. The rose-window at the west end is copied

from one in the (now Protestant) cathedral of Lausanne, where the

writer saw the sketch of it made at the foundress’ desire, by

the architect to whom the future building of the church was to

be entrusted. The beautiful and simple porch to the north of the

church, the little belfry where an old bell found among the ruins

of the old manor-house of Exton rings the daily Angelus of restored

Catholic belief, the spacious and massive vault, where a plain

stone altar is erected for Masses for the dead; the side chapel

of St. Ida, the patron saint of the foundress; the Lady chapel,

with its more elaborate yet chastely traceried window; the soft

surroundings of garden, plantation, and terrace, with the view on

the opposite hill of the old church, once Catholic, which three

hundred years of false belief have only surrounded with a more

touching pathos, as of a noble captive chained to a meaner rival’s

car--all this, and the knowledge that within the Tudor mansion

which has replaced the ruined manor dwell the family of the

foundress, and especially the one destined to finish her church and

enshrine her memory therein, makes this personal recollection of

St. Thomas’ fane and its charming architect very hallowed and sweet

to think on. Many pray in this church, of which the stone interior

with its carven and arched tribune, and its broad oak-panelled

western recess, is as lovely as its exterior with its high roof and

broken outline--many pray there to whom this recollection is as

dear and as holy. May those who have prayed with us remember us in

their prayers, both he who has borne the burden of the day and its

heat, and they to whom he has taught the way of taking up the same

cross and bearing it to the same fruitful and happy end!

John Chessel Buckler, the father of our friend, was the second of

the three designers chosen out of the hosts of competitors on the

occasion of the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament. Eastlake

says of him: “The especial merit of Buckler’s design--second

only to that of Barry _in the opinion of the judges_--was that

it avoided the multiplication of detail.... The plan in general

arrangement was considered picturesque.... Mr. Buckler obtained

credit for the purity of his ornamental details.” He also built

Cossey Hall for Lord Stafford, and his son is now continuing his

work. No wonder that the spirit of mediæval days should have

descended on this favored family, since their dwelling-place for a

long time was the matchless old city of Oxford. There is a magic in

that name that has a creative artistic suggestion in its very sound.

The late controversy as to Pugin’s part in the Houses of Parliament

must be too well known to be revived here. Suffice it to say

that the volume published by Barry’s sons as a vindication of

their father’s genius was of itself conclusive, and proved too

much for his reputation. Hardly a single engraving illustrative

of his unassisted efforts was such as could commend itself to

a purist in Gothic art, while the one part of the Houses of

Parliament which was entirely his own (the unbroken front on the

Thames River), though imposing at first sight, was the weakest

point of the work as regards the true principles of art. Still,

as Eastlake observes, it was a great victory for the Revivalists,

and an important fact in the history of the Revival, that such

a characteristically national work should have been confided to

Gothic architects. It gave the cause both weight and popularity,

and threw more in the way of the masses what before had been too

much of a luxury and fancy of privileged intellectual orders. And

yet, before the old style could be really popularized, it was

necessary that the taste for it should be carefully educated by

the firm hand of uncompromising art. Eastlake descants thus on

the liberty left in the architect’s hands: “He may make an art of

his calling, or he may make it a mere business; and in proportion

as he inclines to one or the other of these two extremes, he will

generally achieve present profit or posthumous renown.” Further

on he stigmatizes one of the earlier Gothic Revivalists in these

terms: “In instances where he ought to have led, or at least to

have tempered and corrected the vitiated taste of his day, he

simply pandered to it.” Let the reader pause to apply this to the

great majority of modern artists, and to deplore the interested

and debased motives which have robbed God of so much glory and the

moral world of so much support. And without travelling into the

region of other arts, we find among the adjuncts of architecture

sufficient proof of degeneracy. Eastlake very justly remarks that

the interior of houses is given up to upholsterers and decorators

who too frequently are allowed to execute their work independently

of the architect’s control. “We enter,” he says, “a Renaissance

palace or a Gothic mansion, and find them respectively fitted

up in the style of the nineteenth century, which is in point of

fact no style at all, but the embodiment of a taste as empirical,

as empty, and as fleeting as that which finds expression in a

milliner’s fashion-book.” And again: “There is perhaps no feature

in the interior of even an ordinary dwelling which is capable of

more artistic treatment than the fire-place of its most frequented

sitting-room, and yet how long it was neglected! The Englishman’s

sacred ‘hearth,’ the Scotchman’s ‘ain fireside,’ the grandsire’s

‘chimney-corner,’ have become mere verbal expressions, of which

it is difficult to recall the original significance as we stand

before those cold, formal slabs of gray or white marble enclosing

the sprucely polished but utterly heartless grate of a modern

drawing-room.”

Of course, like all arts, especially those of a more directly

spiritual tendency, architecture has suffered from caricatures,

sometimes hostile, sometimes blunderingly friendly. The ancient

Gregorian chant and the real “Pre-Raphaelite” school of Christian

painting have likewise suffered in this way. One might quote the

well-known saying, “Defend me from my friends!” Eastlake puts the

same thought into these words: “The barbarous and absurd specimens

of modern architecture which have been erected in this generation

under the general name of Gothic, have done more to damage the

cause of the Revival than all that has been said or written in

disparagement of the style.”

Of the many buildings of merit hidden away in poor and remote

localities, Eastlake makes cheering mention. He says:

“There are, perhaps, few professions, and certainly none within

the realm of art, exposed to such unequal chances of that

notoriety which should attend success, as the profession of

architecture.... One man’s practice may take him for years of

his life into remote rural parishes where, except by the squire

or parson, his work may long remain unappreciated.... There are

districts in London in which, if a new building is raised, it

stands no more chance of being visited by people of taste than

if it had been erected in Kamschatka. Yet those outlying regions

... contain some of the most remarkable and largest churches

which have been built during the Revival.... It was required to

make those structures the headquarters of mission-work in poor

and populous localities. Mr. James Brooks had no easy task before

him; there was but little money to spend on them, yet they were

to be of ample size, and, for obvious reasons, dignified and

impressive in their general effect.... It must be admitted that

the effect in each case is extremely fine. There is much in the

character of Mr. Brooks’ work which reminds one of Butterfield.

An utter absence of conventionality, ... a studied simplicity

of details, ... a tendency to quaint outlines and unusual

subdivisions of parts--such are the chief characteristics which

distinguish the design of both these architects, who manage to

attain originality without condescending to extravagance, and to

secure for their works a quiet grace, in which there is less of

elegance than of dignity.”

A view of the interior of St. Chad’s, in one of the London suburbs,

is given, in which one can trace even a certain richness of altar

decoration allied to the noble proportions of the massive pillars

and tall arches. This church seems to bear a monastic look about

it.

The church of St. Columba, in the same neighborhood, presents many

of the same characteristics, and Eastlake says of it that the

“real excellence of this work consists in grand masses of roof and

wall, planned and proportioned with true artistic ability.” It is

curious--and ridiculously realistic--to see in the engraving given

of this church the contrast of the grand abbey-like pile with the

wooden walls of an enclosed but unoccupied piece of ground, covered

with the obstreperous advertisements of popular London papers, of

Horniman’s “best black tea,” of theatres and bill-posters, and

contemplated by a few shabbily-dressed women, a mason carrying a

hod of mortar, and a very old cart-horse standing with his ungainly

vehicle at the door of the vestry.

These hidden churches have their touching meaning for Christian

minds--a twofold meaning indeed--and one which is often overlooked

in this utilitarian age. There they stand, beautiful and unvisited,

built for the glory of God more than for the admiration of men, and

no less solid, no less symbolical, no less perfect in proportion

and distribution because the silent God is their only visitor. How

much does this all-absorbing reference to the great Master of all

art govern the work of the success-hunting generations of our day?

Again, these beautiful churches stand as representatives of God’s

sacraments, God’s graces, God’s invitations, unheeded by those

to whom they are offered, unfelt even by many who live in their

very shadow, and coldly received at best by those who grudgingly

take advantage of them. Or, again, they are the symbol of the

hidden soul, beauties scattered in seemingly desert places in the

spiritual world, of the hearts that watch with God in the midst of

the turmoil of earth, of hearts whose unbroken hymn of love is

never silent, because of the babel of tongues that, to all but the

ear of God, seems so resolutely to drown it.

There are two more remarks to be made, with which we will close

this sketch, which we have perhaps prolonged beyond the bounds of

the kind reader’s patience. It has been said--we know not with what

technical truth, but certainly with a beautiful suggestiveness of

truth--that one of the great principles in Gothic architecture is

that every curve should be the perfect segment of a circle--that

is, that every curve, if continued, should inevitably describe a

perfect circle. If this be so--and we have always assumed that it

is--is not this meaning deducible from it, that it is the mission

of art to tend to the highest perfection, and the mission of

grace--the heavenly art--to fashion every single insignificant

action in such a mould that it should visibly be but a part in one

grand perfect whole of heroic sanctity?

And the second remark is this:

The Gothic revivalists have been accused of retrogression towards

so-called barbaric forms of art. Exactly the same reproach was

once made to an eminent convert--we believe a German. “My dear

friend,” said an anxious companion to him, “how could you abandon

the religion of your fathers?” “Simply, my dear fellow,” was the

quick and humorous response, “that I might embrace that of my

grandfathers.”

We leave the application to the public, pointing out to them

at the same time that to denounce the civil and ecclesiastical

architecture handed down to them by the founders of civic liberty

in Flanders and Germany, and the founders of Christian morality in

France and England, Spain and Lombardy, would be to lay themselves

open to the reproach of another witty convert, who said to his

father, when the latter was lamenting his son’s change of faith:

“Take care, or you will make out that three hundred years ago our

ancestors were nobodies.” The reply silenced the proud bearer of a

proud--and Catholic--name.

FOOTNOTE:

[103] _A History of the Gothic Revival in England._ By Charles L.

Eastlake, F.R.I.B.A., Architect. London: Longman & Green.

THE LAST DAYS BEFORE THE SIEGE.

PART I.

AWAKENING.

Berthe was holding a council about bonnets with her maid and Mme.

Augustine when I went in. The complexion of the sky, it would seem,

was a grave complication of the question at issue; it was of a

dull leaden color, for, though the heat was intense, the sun was

not shining outright, but sulking under a heavy veil of cloud that

looked as if it might explode in a thunder-storm before the day was

over.

“What a blunderer you are, Antoinette!” exclaimed Berthe

impatiently. “The idea of putting me into pearl-color under a sky

like that! Where are your eyes?”

Antoinette looked out of the window, saw the folly of her conduct,

and proposed a pink bonnet to relieve the unbecoming sky and the

gray costume. The amendment was approved of; so she left the room

to fetch the bonnet.

“She is a good creature, Antoinette; but she is wonderfully

absent-minded,” remarked Berthe.

Mme. Augustine sighed, smiled, and shrugged her shoulders.

“What will you, Madame la Comtesse? Every one is not born an

artist.”

“Every one who is born with eyes in their head can use them if they

have any sense,” said Berthe; and she took up the ivory puff on her

dressing-table, and began very deliberately shaking out delicate

white clouds of _poudre à la violette_ over her forehead and cheeks.

We were going together to a marriage at St. Roch, and we were to be

there at _midi précis_, the _faire-part_ said, so I had to remind

Berthe that, if the business of powdering and puffing proceeded at

this rate, we might save ourselves the trouble of the drive. With

the sudden impulse that carried her so swiftly from one object

to another, she dropped the puff, snatched her pink bonnet from

Antoinette, put it on, fastened it herself, seized her gloves and

prayer-book, and we hurried down-stairs and were off.

On turning into the Faubourg St. Honoré, we found a crowd collected

in front of the _mairie_. Berthe pulled the check-string.

“It’s news from the _frontière_!” she exclaimed eagerly. “If we

were to miss the wedding, we must know what it is!”

She sprang out of the brougham, and I after her. The crowd was so

deep that we could not get near enough to read the placards; but,

judging by the exclamations and commentaries that accompanied the

perusal by the foremost readers, the news was both exciting and

agreeable.

“_Fallait pas nous effrayer, mes petites dames_,” said a _blouse_,

who had seen us alight, and saw by our faces that we were alarmed.

“We’ve beaten one-half of the Prussians to a jelly, and driven the

rest across the Rhine.”

“The _canaille_! I always said they would run like rabbits the

first taste they got of our chassepots,” exclaimed a lad of

fourteen, who halted with arms akimbo and a basket of vegetables on

his head to hear the news.

“And these are the chaps that marched out of Berlin to the cry of

_Nach Paris! nach Paris!_ The beggars! They were glad enough to

clean our streets--aye, and would have cleaned our boots in their

moustachios, and thankful, just to turn a penny that they couldn’t

make at home,” cried the first speaker.

“_Nach Paris_ indeed!” cried the lad with the vegetables. “Let them

come; let them try it!”

“Let them!” echoed several voices. “We’ll give them a warm welcome.”

“Aye, that we will,” declared a pastry-cook from the other end of

the _trottoir_; “and we’ll treat them well; we’ll serve them up

_aspic à la bayonette et petits-pois à la mitrailleuse_.”

This keen joke was received with hilarity and immense applause, and

the pastry-cook, with his _bonnet de coton_ perched on one side,

strode off with an air of commanding insolence, like a man who has

done his duty and knows it.

The remarks of the crowd, if not very lucid, were sufficiently

conclusive as to the character of the placard that held them gaping

before the _mairie_. The news was clearly good news: so, satisfied

with this broad fact, Berthe and I jumped into the brougham and

continued our way to St. Roch.

But it seemed as if there was a conspiracy against our getting

there. Before we came to the Rue Royale, we were blocked in front

by a troop of recruits, marching down from the boulevards to the

Rue de Rivoli. Flags, and banners, and bunches of tricolored

ribbons hoisted on sticks floated at intervals above the moving

mass, and the stirring chant of the “Marseillaise” kept time to the

roll of drums and the broken tramp of undrilled feet. The shops

emptied themselves into the street; buyers and sellers rushed

out to see the recruits and greet them with cheers and embraces,

while many joined in the chorus, and shouted enthusiastically,

“_Marchons, marchons, pour la patrie!_” the recruits every now

and then, with an utter neglect of all choral harmony, relieving

their pent-up patriotism by hurrahing and _Vive-la-France_-ing with

frantic energy.

“Poor devils!” exclaimed a tradesman, who stood near us watching

the stream flow past. “How many among them will ever set eyes on

Paris again, I wonder!”

“Ah, indeed,” said his wife; “but, all the same, it’s a proud day

for them this, whatever may come of it. If our _gamin_ were but a

few years older, he would be stepping out with the best of them,

and, who knows? he might come home with a pair of gold epaulets to

his coat.”

“Tut, woman,” retorted the man sharply; “there is plenty of food

for powder without him.” And he went back to his shop.

“What a horrible thing war is when one comes to think of it!” said

Berthe, turning suddenly round with a flushed face. “Every man

going by there is the centre of another life--some, perhaps, of

many lives--that will never know happiness again if he is killed.

It is a dreadful scourge. Thank God, I have no brothers!”

The way was cleared at last, and the carriages were able to move

on. The noise and clamor that rose on all sides of us grew louder

and wilder as we proceeded. One would have fancied the entire

population had been seized with _delirium tremens_. The news of

a victory coming unexpectedly after the first disasters of the

campaign had elated the popular depression to frenzy, and, as usual

with Paris, there was but one bound from the depths of despair

to the wildest heights of exultation. Flags were thrust out of

windows and chimney-pots, an eruption of tricolor broke out on the

fronts of the houses, and the blank walls were variegated with

red, white, and blue, as if by magic. Innumerable _gamins_ cropped

up from those mysterious regions where _gamins_ dwell, and whence

they are ready to emerge and improve the opportunity at a moment’s

notice; the bright-faced ragged young vagabonds mustered in force

on the pavement, formed themselves into an impromptu procession,

and marched along the middle of the street, bawling out the

“Marseillaise” at the top of their voice; older _gamins_ caught

the infection, and bawled in response, and turned and marched

with them. At the corner of the Place Vendôme, a citizen, unable

to restrain the ardor of his patriotism, stopped a _fiacre_, and

jumped up beside the driver, and bade him stand while he poured

out his soul to the _patrie_. The cabman reined in his steed, and

stood while the patriot spouted his improvisation, stretching out

his arms to the column--the “immortal column”--and pointing his

periods with the talismanic words, “_Invincible! Enfans de la

France! Terreur de l’ennemi!_” and so forth. No speaker in the

forum of old Rome ever elicited more inspiriting response from his

hearers than the citizen patriot from the motley audience round his

cab. Again and again his voice was drowned in vociferous cheers and

bravos, and when he was done and about to descend from the rostrum,

the cabman, altogether carried away by the emotions of the hour,

flung his arms round the orator, and pressed him to his heart,

and then, addressing himself to the assembled citizens, defiantly

demanded if their fellow-citizen had not deserved well of them; if

there was any danger for the _patrie_ while she could boast such

sons as that! The appeal was rapturously responded to by all, but

most notably by a native of the Vosges, who tossed his cap into the

air, and caught it again, and cried vehemently: “_Prafo! prafo!

Fife le pourgeois! fife la padrie!_”

If the words had been a shell scattering death among the listeners,

their effect could not have been more startling. Like lightning the

spirit of the crowd was changed; its joy went out like the snuff of

a candle; for one second it swayed to and fro, hesitating, then a

yell, a hiss, and a scream shot up in quick succession.

“A spy! a traitor! a Prussian! _A l’eau! à la lanterne!_” And away

they flew in hot pursuit of the luckless Alsatian, whose German

accent had raised the devil in them. The orator stood by the column

alone in his glory, pelted by the jargon of cries that shot across

him on every side from the boulevards and the many streets running

out of the Place. “_Marchons! à l’eau! à Berlin! un espion!_” It

was like the clash of contending tongues from Babel.

This was our last adventure till we reached St. Roch. As might have

been expected, we were late. The wedding was over, and the bride

was undergoing the ceremony of congratulations in the sacristy.

We elbowed our way through the throng of guests, and were in due

time admitted to embrace the Marquise de Chassedot, _née_ Hélène de

Karodel, and to shake hands with the bridegroom, and sprinkle our

compliments in proper proportion over the friends and relatives on

both sides.

At the wedding breakfast, the conversation naturally turned, to the

exclusion of all other topics, on the happy event which had brought

us all together; but as soon as the bride left the table, to change

her bridal dress for a travelling one, everybody, as if by common

consent, burst out into talk about the war and the news that had

thrown the city into such commotion. The cautious incredulity with

which the bulletin was discussed contrasted strangely with the

tumult of enthusiasm which we had just witnessed outside. It was

quite clear no one believed in the “famous victory.” Some went

so far as to declare that it was only a blind to hide some more

shameful disaster that had yet befallen us; others, less perverse,

thought it might be only a highly colored statement of a slight

success. As to the authorities, it was who would throw most stones

at them. The government was a rotten machine that ought to have

been broken up long ago; it was like a ship that was no longer

seaworthy, and just held together while she lay at anchor in the

port, but must inevitably fall to pieces the first time she put

out to sea, and go down before the wind with all her crew. The

only exceptions to the rule were those government officials who

happened to be present, and these were, of course, the life-boats

that had been left behind by the stupidity of the captain. But this

had always been the way. In the downfall of every government,

we see the same short-sighted jealousy--the men who might have

saved it shoved aside by the selfish intriguers who sacrifice the

country to their own aims and interests. Some allusion was made

to the threatened siege of Paris; but it was cut short by the

irrepressible merriment of the company. The most sober among them

could not speak of such an absurdity without losing their gravity.

It was, in fact, a heavy joke worthy of those beer-drinking, German

braggarts, and no sane Frenchman could speak of it as anything else

without being laughed at. As a joke, however, it was discussed, and

gave rise to many minor pleasantries that provoked a good deal of

fun. An interesting young mother wished the city might be invested

and starved, because it would be so delightful to starve one’s

self to death for one’s baby; to store up one’s scanty food for

the innocent little darling, and see it grow fat on its mother’s

_dénouement_. A young girl declared she quite longed for the

opportunity of proving her love to her father. The Grecian daughter

would be a pale myth compared to her, and the daughter of Paris

would go down to posterity as a type of filial duty such as the

world had never seen before. The kind and quantity of provisions

to be laid in for the contingency gave rise to a vast deal of fun.

One young _crévé_ hoped his steward would provide a good stock

of cigars; he could live on smoke by itself, rather than without

smoke and with every other sort of nourishment; but it should

be unlimited smoke, and of the best quality. His sister thought

of buying a monster box of chocolate bonbons, and contemplated

herself, with great satisfaction, arrived at her last _praline_,

which she heroically insisted on her brother’s accepting, while

she embraced him and expired of inanition at his feet.

“Do you intend to stay for the tragedy, madame?” said the gentleman

who was to live on smoke, addressing himself to Berthe.

“If I believed in the tragedy, certainly not,” she replied; “but I

don’t. Paris is not going to be so obliging as to furnish us with

an opportunity for displaying our heroism.”

“Not of the melodramatic sort,” observed her Austrian friend, with

a touch of sarcasm in his habitually serene manner; “but those

who have any prosaic heroism to dispose of can take it to the

ambulances, and it will be accepted and gratefully acknowledged. I

went yesterday to see a poor fellow who is lying in great agony at

Beayon. His mother and sisters are watching him day and night. They

dare not move him to their own home, lest he should die on the way.

He lost both arms at Gravelotte.”

Berthe shuddered.

“Thank God, I have no brothers!” she murmured, under her breath.

“What is to be the end of it all?” I said. “Admitting that the

siege of Paris is an utter impossibility, half Europe must be

overhauled before peace is definitely re-established.”

“So it will be,” asserted the Austrian, coolly. “Wait a little, and

you will see all the powers trotted out. First, Russia will put her

finger in the _mêlée_, and then England’s turn will come.”

“I hope England will have the sense to keep out of it,” said

Berthe; “she would be sure to get the worst of it, fighting

single-handed, as she would do now.”

“That’s precisely why Russia will take care that she does not keep

out of it,” remarked the Austrian.

“And what would Russia gain by England’s being worsted?”

“She would gain the satisfaction of paying off old scores that have

rankled in her side these fifteen years. Do you fancy that she

has forgotten that little episode in the Crimea, or that she is

less bent on revenge because she doesn’t blast and blow and wake

her enemy’s suspicions by threatening to annihilate her and so

forth? Not a bit of it! Russia doesn’t boast and brag and put her

victim on the _qui vive_; but quietly holds her tongue, and keeps

her temper, and bides her time. When she is ready--and the day is

not, perhaps, very remote--she will pick a fight with England;

and the day the war is proclaimed, every pope and peasant in Holy

Russia will light a candle to his holy images; and when the news

comes in that England is thrashed, they will light as many as will

illuminate the whole of Europe.”

“_Après?_” I said.

“_Après_ what, madame?”

“When they have thrashed her, as you say, what will they do with

her?”

“Do with her? Annex her.”

He looked me straight in the face without a smile on his; but

I could not believe he was speaking seriously, and I burst out

laughing.

“The position of the conquered territory might offer some

difficulties in the way of annexation,” I said, presently; “but

we will assume that the obliging Providence of pious King William

interferes in behalf of his Muscovite brother, and overcomes all

obstacles by land or by sea, and that the doughty little island is

constituted a colony of the czar’s dominion: what would he do with

it? What earthly use would it be to him?”

“Use!” echoed the Austrian, elevating his eyebrows with a

supercilious smile. “In the first place, he might make it a little

_succursale_ of Siberia. There is a whole generation of those

unmanageable, half-mad Poles safely walking about this side of

Europe, plotting and dreaming and rhapsodizing. Only think what

a convenience it would be to their father, the czar, if he had a

centre of action so near to them! He could catch them like rabbits;

and then, instead of hawking them over the world to Nerchintz

and Irkoutsk, he could sentence them to perpetual sciatica, or

chronic lumbago, or a mild term of ten years’ rheumatism, in the

isle of fogs, _versus_ the mines, and the knout, and all the rest

of the paternal chastisements administered in Siberia. Then, over

and above this immense accommodation, he might have his docks in

England; he might make the naughty Poles learn of his English

subjects how to build ships, till by-and-by the navy of Holy Russia

would be the finest in the world, and big, top-heavy Prussia would

shake in her shoes, and hot-headed France would keep still on her

knees, and all Europe would bow down before the empire of Peter

the Great. Use, indeed! Let Russia catch England, and she’ll find

plenty of use for her.”

“Yes,” I said; “just so; let her catch her.”

It was near three when the wedding-party broke up and Berthe and

I drove away. We found the excitement abroad still unabated. At

many street corners, patriots were perorating to animated crowds;

tongues innumerable were running up and down the gamut of noise

with the most extraordinary variations. There is always something

stirring in the sight of great popular emotion; but this present

instance of it was more threatening than exhilarating. You felt

that it was dangerous, that there were terrible elements of

destruction boiling up under the surface-foam, and that the

chattering and shouting and good fellowship might, in a flash

of lightning, be changed to murderous hate and a madness beyond

control. It was madness already; but it was a harmless madness so

far. Was it nothing more? was there no method in it? I wondered,

as we beheld the people haranguing or being harangued, rushing and

gesticulating, and all showing, in their faces and gestures, the

same feverish excitement. Were they all no better than a cityful

of apes, chattering and screaming from mere impulse? Was it all

quackery and cant, without any redeeming note of sacrifice and

truth and valor; and would all this fiery twaddle die out presently

in smoke and dumbness?

We had turned down to the Rue de Richelieu, and were coming back,

when our attention was arrested by a body of volunteers marching

past the Place de la Bourse. They were in spruce new uniforms, and

they were singing something that was not the “Marseillaise,” or “La

Casquette au Père Bugeaud,” or any other of the many chants we had

been listening to; altogether, their appearance and voices roused

our curiosity, and Berthe desired the man to follow in their wake,

that we might find out what kind of troops they were, and what they

were singing. They turned up the Rue de la Baupe to the Place des

Petits Pères, and there they entered the church of Notre Dame des

Victoires, as many of them as could find room, for they numbered

several thousand, and nearly half had to remain outside. The great

front doors were thrown up, and remained open, so that those who

were in the Place could see all that went on within. The soldiers

were upon their knees, bare-headed, and a venerable old priest

was speaking to them; but his voice was so feeble that what he

said was only audible to those close to the altar-steps where he

stood. There was no need to ask now who these men were, or whence

they came. None but the men of Brittany, the sons of the men who

went out to death against the ruthless soldiers of Robespierre,

to the cry of _Dieu et le Roi!_ were likely to traverse Paris,

bearing the cross at their head, and make the ex-votos of Notre

Dame des Victoires shake on the walls to the stirring old Vendean

hymns. None but the descendants of the men “whose strength was as

the strength of ten, because their hearts were pure,” would dare

in these days of sneaking, shamefaced Christianity to commit such

a brazen act of faith. The volunteers were accompanied by a great

concourse of people, mostly relatives and friends, but they all

remained outside, leaving the church quite to the soldiers. It was

a strange and beautiful sight to see all these brave, proud Bretons

kneeling down with the simplicity of little children before the

shrine of the Virgin Mother, and singing their hymns to the God of

Hosts, and asking his blessing on themselves and their arms before

they went out to battle. When they came out of the church, with the

curé at their head, all the people of a common impulse fell upon

their knees in the Place to get his blessing; the men received it

with bare heads and in silence; the women weeping, most of them,

while some lifted up their hands with the old priest and prayed out

loud a blessing on the soldiers. Then he spoke a few words to them,

not to the soldiers only or chiefly, but to all, and especially

to the women. He bade them remember that they too had their part

in the national struggle, and that they might be a noble help or

a guilty hindrance, as they chose. Those who had husbands, or

sons, or brothers in the ranks would understand this without any

explanation from him. But there were very many amongst them who

had no near relatives in danger, and who fancied that this would

exempt them from sharing the common burthen, and that they could

stand aloof from the general anxiety and pain. It was a selfish,

pagan feeling, unworthy of a daughter of France, and still more

of a Christian. There could be no isolation at a time like this.

All should suffer, and all should serve. Those who happily had no

kindred of their own at the frontier should adopt in spirit the

brave fellows who had left none behind. They should care for them

from a distance like true sisters, helping them in the battle-field

with their prayers, and in the camp and the hospital by their

active and loving ministration; let such among them as were fit and

free to do it, go and learn of that other sisterhood of the diviner

sort how to serve as they do who serve with the strong, pure

love of charity; let those who could not do this give abundantly

wherewith the stricken soldier might be healed and comforted on

his bed of pain; if they could not give their hands, let them give

their hearts and their money; let them help by sacrifice--sacrifice

of some sort was within the reach of all. He blessed them again at

the close of his little exhortation, and then every one got up. The

Bretons fell into rank, and, rending the welkin with one loud cry

of _Dieu et la France!_ set out to the Northern Railway. Berthe and

I had been kneeling with the crowd.

“Let us follow and see the last of them,” she said, and we got into

the brougham and went on at a foot-pace.

The scene at the station was one that will never be forgotten by

those who witnessed it. The pathos of those rough farewells, the

lamentations of some of the women, the Machabean courage of others,

the shrill crying of little children, the tears of strong men, who

tore out their hearts, feeling it like men, but bearing it with

the courage of soldiers and the exulting hope of Christians: it

was a sight to make one’s heart glad to rapture or sad to despair.

Some of the volunteers were of the noblest families in Brittany,

others were workingmen, farmers, and peasants; there was the same

mixture of classes in the throng of people that accompanied them;

the pure accent of the most cultivated French, crossed here and

there with the coarser tones of the Vendean patois; side by side

with the suppressed agony of the chatelaine, who strove to hide

her tenderness and tears from the gaze of bystanders, you saw the

wretched sorrow of the peasant wife, who sobbed on her husband’s

neck and clung to him in a last embrace. There was something more

heart-rending in these humbler farewells, because one felt the

sacrifice was more complete. If this was a last parting, there was

nothing for either to fall back upon.

I lost sight of Berthe as soon as we alighted, and indeed I forgot

her. My whole thoughts were absorbed in the scene going on around

me. It was only when the bell rang, and the soldiers passed out

to the platform, leaving the space comparatively empty, that I

looked about for her, and saw her in the middle of the sidewalk

with her arms round a young girl, who was sobbing as if her heart

would break. It appeared that she was just a fortnight married to

a Breton lad of her own age, nineteen; they had worked hard and

saved all their little earnings these five years past in order to

get married; and now, just as they were so happy, he had gone away

from her, and she would never see him again; he was certain to

be killed, because he was so good and loving and clever. Berthe

pressed the poor child to her heart, and committed herself to the

wildest pledges for the safe return of the young hero, and finally,

after evoking a burst of passionate gratitude from the girl, who

half-believed her to be a beneficial fairy sent to comfort her,

Berthe exacted a promise that she was to come and see her the next

day, and we set our faces towards home.

We drove on for a little while in silence, looking each out of our

separate window, our hearts too full for conversation. I saw by

Berthe’s eyes that she had been crying. I felt instinctively that

there was a great struggle going on within her, but, though my

whole heart was vibrating in sympathy with it, I could not say so.

Presently she turned towards me, and exclaimed:

“And I was thanking God that I had no brothers! Blind, selfish fool

that I was!”

She burst into tears, sobbing passionately, and hid her face in

her hands. The change in her bright and volatile spirit seemed to

make a change in all the world. I could not accuse the people, as I

had done an hour ago, of being mere puppets, dancing to a tune and

throwing themselves into attitudes that meant no more than a sick

man’s raving. It seemed to me as if the aspect of the city and the

sound of its voice had quite altered, and I all at once began to

hope wonders of and for the Parisians. One could not but believe

that they were striving to be in earnest, that the mother-pulse

of patriotism, so long gagged and still, was now waking up, and

beating with strong, hot throbs in the hearts of the people, and

that, once alive and working, it would break out like a fire

and burn away the unreality and the false glitter and the tragic

comedy of their lives, and serve to purify them for a free and

noble future. No; it was not all cant and tinkle and false echo.

There was substance under the symbolizing. There were men amongst

them who worshipped God, and were proud to proclaim it. There were

hearts that seemed dead, but were only sleeping. Paris was dancing

in mad mirth like a harlequin to-day, but to-morrow it would be

different--the smoke and the flame would go out, leaving behind

them the elements of a great nation burnt pure of the corroding

dross that had choked and held them captive so long.

On arriving at home, Berthe found a costume which had just come

from M. Grandhomme’s laid out on her bed. At any other moment, the

sight would have claimed her delighted attention, but she turned

from it with a feeling of indifference now, almost of disgust.

Antoinette, who had been puzzling over some new trick in the tunic,

took it up in a flurry and was for trying it on at once, to see

how it fitted and whether the novelty became her mistress, but

Berthe, with a movement of impatience, told her to put it away,

that she was in no mood for attending to _bétises_ just then. The

girl opened her eyes in astonishment. A costume of Grandhomme’s,

that cost eleven hundred francs, to be called a _bétise_! It was

flat profanity. She left the room with a painful presentiment that

something very serious was amiss with Madame la Comtesse.

A soon as Berthe was alone, she began to think. It was a new

experience in her life, this process of thinking, and she was

hard pressed by it, for it was no vacant reverie that she was

indulging in, but a sharp, compulsory review of her past and

present existence--and the result was anything but soothing. Her

life up to this day had been the life of a human butterfly, gay,

airy, amusing, very enjoyable as regarded herself, and harmless

enough as regarded her fellow-creatures. She had drunk her fill

of the good things of life, enjoying herself in every possible

way, but legitimately; she was incapable of wronging or hurting

any one; she was extravagant in her dress and other luxuries, but

her fortune allowed this, and she made no debts. So far, her life

was blameless, and indeed, if she compared it with that of many

of those around her, it was a very respectable one. But suddenly

all her theories had collapsed, and her comfortable standard

been upset. It turned out that she had a soul somewhere, though

she had forgotten all about it, and been living, as if happily

free from that incumbrance, in selfishness and folly, that were

counted by this newly revealed standard little short of guilt.

It was an unexpected discovery, and a most unpleasant one. That

exclamation which had escaped her twice, and the thought of the

great general sorrow, kept ringing in her ears like a warning and

a reproach--“Thank God, I have no brother!” Who, then, were these

men that she had just seen going forth in voluntary self-devotion

to fight for her, and those who, like her, could not depend on

themselves? Was there such a thing in Christendom as a woman or a

man who had no brothers? Yet Berthe had believed herself to be this

impossibility; she had been living up to it in utter forgetfulness

of her brethren, ignoring them as a heathen might, or using them

coldly for her own selfish purposes, to work for her and minister

to her interests or her pleasures. There were some people whom

she loved, but it was a love that narrowed to self; those who

were disagreeable, or stupid, or bad she disliked, and, unknown

to herself perhaps, despised. There were no wide sympathies in

this discarded soul of hers for the great family of mankind; for

the publicans and sinners and the lepers and the blind and the

lame; she was kind-hearted, but suffering, to touch her, must be

seen through some æsthetic coloring; the miseries and follies and

infirmities of a prosaic kind that abounded on all sides of her

she turned from in disgust, she avoided them like noisome things

that belonged to creatures of an inferior clay and had no kinship

with her more refined and privileged individuality. “Sacrifice is

within the reach of all of you; you must help by sacrifice,” that

old man had said. What a strange sound the words had! What did he

mean? Sacrifice! Was there any place in her life for such a thing?

She looked round at the azure hangings of her room, at the bright

mirrors that reflected her figure in a dozen varying aspects, at

the costly goods and trinkets that littered her dressing-table,

at the couches and chairs of every modern contrivance inviting

the body to luxurious repose, and she saw that her nest was fair

to look at, but too full for this unbidden guest called sacrifice

to find a place in it. Her eye wandered absently from one object

to another till it fell upon a pale ivory figure on a velvet

background, fastened to the wall, and half-shrouded by the curtains

of the bed.

“I am young; it is not too late; I will begin life afresh,” said

Berthe, rising and moving restlessly across the room; “I will begin

to-morrow, no, to-day--now.”

She went close up to the bed, and stood for a moment with clasped

hands, her lips moving in quick, low utterances, and then fell upon

her knees before the pale, thorn-crowned head looking down upon her.

They never knew it, but this conquest of a noble woman’s life was

perhaps the first victory won by the Breton soldiers who set out to

battle that day!

TO BE CONTINUED.

AFTER READING MR. TUPPER’S PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY.

On wisdom’s steed sit Solomon and Tupper,

The saddle one bestrides, and one the crupper.

AN ESSAY ON EPIGRAMS.

Who nowadays writes epigrams? The species _epigrammatist_ seems

to be well-nigh extinct. Now and then some Herr Professor, whose

learning is less ponderous than common, after due incubation

hatches what he calls a _Sinngedicht_. But his achievement is too

often a paraphrase, if not a literal translation, of some Latin

original. At intervals, too, Thorold Rogers, clergyman and social

reformer, flings into London journals some explosive squib couched

in verse, but the missile is tolerably harmless, and draws far

less attention than a telegram. No doubt before the invention of

the newspaper the epigram, so easy to remember and so incisive in

its effect, was no mean engine of cajolery, or calumny. But the

days are gone when such weapons were effective in the political

arena, and either conquered a pension or provoked a _lettre de

cachet_. Byron, who worshipped Pope, and deemed everything his

master had done worth doing, sometimes ventured into Martial’s

province, but rarely successfully, except in _Don Juan_. A score

of epigrams might be culled from that poem which would answer all

the conditions of a rigorous definition. Since Byron, no poet of

eminence has condescended to this form of art. Tennyson indeed is

terse and telling, as is proved by the facility with which we quote

him; yet he seems as incapable of epigrams as Morris, of whom most

of us, much as we like him, can with difficulty remember a line.

Browning might write them if he chose, but he does not choose, and

so it is that the old epigrammatist lingers only in some isolated

representative, as the dodo did in Madagascar, or like that

Tasmanian survivor whose present existence is clouded with a doubt.

Epigrammatists may perish from the face of the earth, but the

epigram is immortal. It well deserves to be so. What form of wit

imparts so much pleasure to so many persons? If the world could be

fairly polled, it might be found that some tiny epigram has yielded

more genuine delight than the most ambitious works of genius, as,

for instance, the _Paradise Lost_. If there is one Latin author who

is still read for hearty amusement, it is Martial, and even the

candid schoolboy who declines to be charmed by the _Iliad_ can see

some fun in the _Anthology_.

It would probably pose most persons to be suddenly called on to

define an epigram. And no wonder, for every great scholar since the

manuscripts of Martial were recovered in Western Europe has tried

his hand at a definition, and none except Lessing has grasped it.

The literal meaning is, of course, _inscription_, and the word

was originally applied to the writing on a monument or tomb. But

in later times the word obtained in Greek rhetoric and poetry the

peculiar significance which in English distinguishes the epigram

from an epitaph, and in German the _Sinngedicht_ from a mere

_Aufschrift_ or _Ueberschrift_. We shall at once lay our finger

on this peculiar significance by answering the question, why the

Greeks had but one word where the Germans have two?

We need hardly say that it could be neither a poverty of language

nor a contempt for precision which led the former to content

themselves with the original term. If there is anything notorious,

it is that the Athenian never suffered a new idea, or the finest

shade of deviation from an old idea, to shiver in the cold of

paraphrase, but straightway clothed it with a snug, warm word, cut

and fitted to the shape. We may be sure that a sense of some nice

propriety, the recognition, perhaps, of some just and suggestive

metaphor, induced him to attach the name of _epigram_ to a

particular class of little poems, without any direct reference to

their fitness for inscription on memorial stones.

The fact is, that every genuine epigram is divisible into two

distinct parts, of which the first answers precisely to the

monument or tomb on which the primitive _epigram_ was written,

and the second to the inscription proper which the monument bore.

To _surprise_, and thereupon to _explain_, to secure the twofold

delight which springs in curiosity and ripens in gratification, was

the purpose of the inscribed monument, and is still the aim of the

true epigram. Let us apply this to some faultless type, like that

stanza by Sir William Jones:

On parent knees, a naked new-born child,

Weeping thou sat’st, while all around thee smiled;

So live that, sinking to thy last long sleep,

Thou then may’st smile when all around thee weep.

It is plain that the first two lines awaken _curiosity_, excite

_interest_. They answer to the graceful shaft which arrests the

eye and allures the step. They win us to approach and investigate,

to look for some further revelation, to ponder on the lesson

which the last two lines convey. In a word, attention is first

secured, and then rewarded. Let the reader test this analysis in

other instances, and he will find it essential to the epigram

that both these feelings, the _longing_ of expectation and the

_satisfaction_ of it, should be evoked, and in this order. All

the other qualities which have been supposed to be peculiar to

the epigram, but are really common to many sorts of short and

witty poems, may be easily deduced from this definition. Thus,

the more terse and vigorous are the lines which introduce the

subject, the more potent will be their appeal to curiosity, and

the more tenacious their hold upon our interest. Architecturally,

the monument will be more impressive. On the other hand, the

more novel and delightful is the concluding thought, or the more

felicitous and pointed the expression of it, the more complete

is our satisfaction, the more amply do we feel repaid for our

pains in deciphering the inscription. It follows likewise that

the second half, or _thought_, of the epigram must interpret the

_fact_ embodied in the first, otherwise the inscription, instead of

explaining the particular monument which bears it, serves merely to

point us to another. So much for the veritable _Sinngedicht_. Of

the pseudo-epigram there are many varieties, but the two commonest

are those which awaken curiosity without appeasing it, or else

instruct without enlisting attention. Without stopping to point

out the flaws in many little poems, more or less witty, more or

less compact, which are falsely called epigrams, we shall perceive

the accuracy and value of the above definition by glancing at some

famous models of the true form. In all the examples we may cite, we

will give the originals, that they who do not like our version may

make a better for themselves.

Let us begin with a couplet from Wenicke, who has written so much

and so well in this way as to merit the name of the German Martial:

Du liebest Geld und Gut, noch so, dass dein Erbarmen

Der Armen fühlt. Du fliehst die Armuth, nicht die Armen.

We have not been able in this instance to preserve both the rhyme

and the metre, and prefer to keep the latter. The lines convey a

noble eulogy.

Thou lovest gold and goods, yet so that thy compassion

Feels for the needy still, shunning need, and not the needy.

Here are two more from German sources. We have forgotten who wrote

them, but our readers may remember. The turn of the thought in the

second is novel and rather pretty:

Ihr sagt, die Zeit vergeht!

Weil Ihr das falsch versteht.

Die Zeit ist ewig: Ihr vergeht!

We say. Time passes! Is it so?

Time waits! ’Tis only we who go.

* * * * *

Schon vier Mal kam ich, deine Diener sprachen

Du seist nicht da, man liess mich nicht herein.

Mein Kind! um eine Göttin mir zu sein

Brauchst du dich ja nicht unsichtbar zu machen.

Four times I called, the servant said,

“She’s out!”--I might not see my maid.

To seem a goddess, dear, to me,

Invisible thou needst not be!

The greatest of German poets are not ashamed to stoop to epigram,

and sometimes aim to reproduce the metre which Martial preferred.

Of the following essays in elegiacs the first three are by

Schiller, the others by Emanuel Geibel:

Glaubt mir, es ist kein Märchen, die Quelle von Jugend sie rinnet

Wirklich und immer! Ihr fragt, wo? In der dichtenden Kunst!

Trust me,’tis more than a fable; the Fountain of Youth springeth ever

Jocund and fresh as of old! Where? In the art of the bard!

* * * * *

Glücklicher Säuglung! Dir ist ein unendlicher Raum noch die Wiege!

Werde Mann, und dir wird eng die unendliche Welt.

Happy the soul of a babe, finding infinite room in the cradle!

Grown to be man, he will find narrow the infinite world.

* * * * *

Willst du dich selber erkennen, so sieh wie die Ander’n es treiben!

Willst du die Ander’n versteh’n, blick’ in dein eigenes Herz!

Man, wilt thou study thyself, scan keenly the conduct of others!

Aiming to know other men, turn the eye in on thy heart!

* * * * *

Doppelte Schwing hat die Zeit. Mit der Einen entführt sie die Freuden,

Doch mit der Anderen sanft kühite den thränenden Blick.

Time in a dream I beheld twi-winged, with one silently stealing

Joy, with the other he fanned kindly the tear-swollen eye.

* * * * *

Darin gleichet der Dichter dem Kind. Es erscheint das Bekannte

Ihm wie ein Wunder: Bekannt’ blickt das Geheimniss ihn an!

Dwells in a poet the child, who still with a feeling of wonder

Eyes the familiar; to him still looks familiar the strange.

* * * * *

The grand-master of epigrammatists, Martial, with the proud

humility of conscious power, confessed himself a pupil of Catullus.

But it was rather his purity of diction and naïve simplicity which

Martial borrowed from the elder poet, not the point and sparkle

of his epigrams, which are of right his own. The minor poems of

Catullus include few which are strictly epigrams, and of these only

two or three admit of distillation into a modern language. We give

one which is addressed, like most of his amatory verse, to Lesbia.

In this instance we abandon the attempt to reproduce the Latin

elegiacs.

Lesbia mi dicit semper male, nec tacet unquam

De me. Lesbia me, dispeream, nisi amat!

Quo signo? Quasi non totidem mox deprecor illi

Assiduē, verum dispeream, nisi amo.

Always my Lesbia treats me ill,

By this I’ll swear she loves me well!

How so? I’m rude to her, but still

I’ll swear I love my Lesbia well!

While we are on the subject of lover’s whims and inconsistencies,

we venture to give an experiment of our own. At least we may claim

the expression, although the thought, if we remember rightly,

belongs to Moore:

Love halts, you said, but will not stay,

And soon fares on his pilgrim’s way.

A pilgrim, yes! O’er wave and sand,

His eye still sought the Holy Land,

Welcomed each altar, as he passed,

Until he found the Shrine at last.

Before we come to Martial, let us pause a moment over the Greek

_Anthology_, of which some parts, no doubt, were written later

than his day, but others must share with Catullus the honor of

suggesting to the brilliant Spaniard the right conception of the

epigram, as well as the appropriate treatment. Unlike Horace,

however, Martial rarely condescended to borrow either thought or

expression from a foreign source. We may say of him, and more

truthfully, what Denham said of Cowley, that he “melted not the

ancient gold.” Perhaps the most famous epigram in the _Anthology_

is that on a picture of Pythagoras. It has been a dozen times

translated into Latin or expanded in Greek, but generally with

indifferent success:

Αὐτὸν Πυθαγόρην ὁ ζωγράφος ὃν μετὰ φωνῆς

Εἶδες ἂν εἴγε λαλεῖν ἤθελε Πυθαγόρης.

Most of the versions require four lines, and some eight, to project

the idea, and only two that we have seen matches the original in

compression; here is one of them, by Hugo Grotius:

Ipsum Pythagoram dat cernere pictor et ipsum

Audires sed enim non cupit ipse loqui.

The objection to this is--and it lies to the Greek as well--we are

asked to imagine that Pythagoras expressly desired to be depicted

silent, in other words, requested the painter _not_ to perform an

impossibility--which is very like an absurdity. The true idea, and

one that gives point and beauty to the compliment, is rather this,

that since a prime tenet of the Pythagoreans was the maintenance of

a thoughtful silence and a wise reserve, it would have been false

to the mental posture of the man, and therefore bad art (supposing

it to have been possible) to have represented him otherwise than in

speechless meditation. We have attempted to give some such turn to

the thought in English elegiacs.

There Pythagoras stands to the life! Be sure we should hear him

Speak--but Pythagoras taught wisdom in silence to muse.

It is no mean honor to be indisputably the first in any line of

art, and certainly within the field of the epigram Martial is

prince of poets. He conceived the form of poetry to which he

devoted his life to possess much more of dignity and importance

than we incline to allow it, and he did much to make good his

claim. He held towards previous epigrammatists the same commanding

position which Dante holds towards Sicilian and Provençal poets,

or Marot towards the Trouvères, and he wrought the epigram to that

climax of perfection from which progress means nothing but decline.

He filed and fitted his lines with a punctilious care which we

should expect to betray itself, yet his verse flows with a limpid

ease through which the eye seeks in vain the labor that smoothed

the channel. We may call him in simple justice what Bulwer called

Addison:

Exquisite genius, to whose chiselled line

The ivory’s polish lends the ivory’s shine!

To hope to reflect in a translation the gleam and edge of Martial

would be absurd. We shall merely aim in a general way, while

preserving the metre, to sketch the outlines of the central

thought. If our readers miss the bloom on the rose, we at least

cannot help them. They must seek the garden where it grew, and

pluck it for themselves.

In the course of a long residence in Rome, Martial seems to have

suffered the usual vicissitudes of authors, and sometimes in

moments of eclipse found his friends more willing to reproach than

to relieve him. He fancies he detects a reason for it:

Genus, Aucte, lucri divites habent iram.

Odisse quam donasse vilius constat.

Auctus, the rich count wrath a gain:

That to hate costs less than to give is plain.

In the time of Domitian a round portion was as essential to the

marriage of a Roman virgin as it is now with French ladies of

condition, who must either endow or derogate. The Latin prototype

of the Belgravian mother must have had grievous cause of complaint

when the state bestowed prizes on such as were at once husbands

and fathers. The following epigram, however, takes a more elevated

view, and strikes the key-note of Tennyson’s rhapsody in the

well-known lines of _The Princess_:

Uxorem quare locupletem ducere nolim

Quæritis. Uxori nubere nolo meæ!

Inferior matrona suo sit, Prisce, marito!

Non aliter fuerint femina virque pares.

Why so reluctant, you ask, to wed with a woman of fortune?

Friend, I would marry a wife, not have a wife marry me!

Trust me, the rule is sound, let the woman owe all to her husband,

Thus shall they, man and wife, each owe the other nothing.

Here is a playful innuendo which has often been copied. Marot’s

version is exceedingly neat, but somewhat coarse, so our readers

must take ours in place of it:

Nubere vis Prisco, non miror, Paula, sapisti!

Ducere te non vult Priscus, et ille sapit!

Jill fancies Jack for a husband--truly a sensible woman!

Jack has no fancy for Jill--truly a sensible man!

No epigram of Martial’s is more admired, and none seems to us

more admirable, than that which chronicles the magnanimous act of

Arria, who showed her husband the way to death. She lived in the

time of Messalina, but the deed was worthy of Lucrece. Perhaps the

traditional fortitude and fashionable stoicism of Rome might have

paused contented with the historical fact, but modern sentiment

cannot fail to welcome the touch of tenderness in the concluding

line. We place beside it _The Death of Portia_ because the two

poems are pitched in the same key. The latter, however, is a mere

_historiette_, told with rare force and fervor, but without the

point and turn which distinguish a true epigram. To recur to our

metaphor, the monument is a noble one, but the superscription is

wanting. Our readers will observe that Martial’s Portia follows her

husband to the grave, while she precedes him in Shakespeare’s play.

Casta suo gladium cum traderet Arria Paeto,

Quem de visceribus traxerat ipsa suis;

Si qua fides, vulnus quod feci non dolet, inquit.

Sed quod tu facies hoc mihi, Paete, dolet!

Paetus reluctant to die wavered; him Arria marking

Brued in her bosom the sword, which to her husband she gave;

Think not, she cried, that my wound bears with it aught that

is painful!

That which thou dealest thyself, _that_ will be painful to me!

* * * * *

Conjugis audisset fatum cum Porcia Bruti,

Et subtracta sibi quæreret arma dolor,

Nondum scitis, ait, mortem non posse negari

Credideram satis hoc vos docuisse patrem

Dixit et ardentes avido bibit ore favillas,

I nunc, et ferrum, turba molesta, nega!

Portia, thy Brutus is dead! they told her. She in her anguish

Silently sought for a sword--kindness had hid it from her.

Dream ye, officious, she cried, that death will admit of denial!

Truly I trusted my sire, Cato, had taught ye better!

Pausing she thrust in her mouth live coals, and eagerly swallowed;

Go, ye officious, refuse Portia a useless weapon!

In so far as the modern epigram is modelled upon Martial, we

should expect it to flourish with especial luxuriance in the

classic literature of France. Modern French, of all the daughters

of Latin, inherits the most terseness and precision, and adapts

herself with peculiar ease to a compact and pregnant style. The

burst of admiration for the ancients which deserved the name

of Renaissance, and rose in Ronsard and Du Bellay to a fervent

and naïve enthusiasm, was tempered by Malherbe and Boileau to

a cautious study of principles and the elaborate finish of

expression. It is a significant fact that Malherbe during the most

fruitful period of his life, from twenty to forty-five, composed on

the average but thirty-three lines a year. Waller had such examples

in his mind when he urged his countrymen to prune their style:

Our lines reformed and not composed in haste,

Like marble polished, would like marble last.

Malherbe himself made but few epigrams, and none comparable to the

familiar stanza in the elegy which he wrote to console a friend.

Translating it is like handling a butterfly:

She bloomed in a world where the sweetest that blows

Is the first to decay;

And rosebud, her life was the life of a rose,

The space of a day.

Of French epigrammatists, the most voluminous are Clement Marot and

Jean Baptiste Rousseau. The latter has left four books of epigrams

which are rarely deficient in point, but often diffuse and cold.

Here is one:

They burn my books, you say, they give

Death to the child who only asked to live:

Your own in peace will draw their breath,

They’re sure to die a natural death.

We have seen that French and German are rich in epigrams, but we

incline to think our own literature richer still. From Sir John

Harrington downwards the line of epigrammatists was unbroken, until

it succumbed to the contempt with which the Lake poets regarded a

style so repugnant to their own. It might be not uninteresting to

trace the growth of this modest flower in our English soil, but

we have already overrun the limit we had set ourselves, and the

English epigram must wait another opportunity. But one word more.

The initial lines of an epigram, which are addressed to curiosity,

whether from ignorance or a mistaken love of conciseness, are often

omitted, and a clumsy substitute is provided in the _lemma_, or

explanatory title. Should this happen to be changed or lost, the

poem becomes absurd or unintelligible. Take, for instance, this

from the German:

Prythee lend, little Lycon, thine eye to Agathē!

Blind, shalt thou then be Cupid, thy sister Venus be!

This would seem sheer nonsense if we did not know that it was

written on two children, who, otherwise lovely, had but one eye

apiece. The Greek quatrain from which this couplet was extracted is

a perfect epigram, and, needing no introduction, contains in itself

both the fact and the thought. Even in the case of an epitaph,

honestly designed to be graven on a tomb, the best models require

no lemma. It is so, for instance, with Ben Jonson’s lines on the

Countess of Pembroke:

Underneath this marble hearse

Lies the subject of all verse,

Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother:

Death, ere thou hast slain another

Half so good and fair as she,

Time will fling a dart at thee.

FLEURANGE.

BY MRS. CRAVEN, AUTHOR OF “A SISTER’S STORY.”

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, WITH PERMISSION.

PART SECOND.

THE TRIAL.

XX.

Notwithstanding the princess’ apparent indifference, she was not

so inexperienced as to imagine that Fleurange’s presence in the

same house could be wholly exempt from danger to her son at his

age and with his temperament. At the same time, anything that

would change the actual current of her life would have annoyed

her, and what was opposed to her wishes was seldom looked upon as

possible. Nevertheless, she carefully watched George for two or

three days, and soon felt reassured, and the more so because he was

seldom disposed to secrecy with her. Without allowing himself to be

directed by his mother, he did not try to conceal his opinions from

her, and, even at the risk of sometimes greatly displeasing her, he

suffered her to read the depths of his heart without any special

effort to baffle her penetration. But this time the result of the

princess’ observation was of a nature to reassure her completely.

George spoke to Fleurange without affectation, and with no

appearance of eagerness. He never showed her any attentions

excepting acts of politeness he would have shown any one else. He

never sought her society, and, if he looked at her and sometimes

spoke of her beauty, as every one else did, it was with more

reserve and coldness than others. Hence the princess concluded with

double satisfaction that George’s thoughts were otherwise absorbed,

and, as this accorded with her wishes, she allowed herself the

comfort of not doubting it, and returned to the repose of her

indolent life.

As to Fleurange, the effect of Count George’s manner was singular.

Naturally frank, honest, and courageous, she had an invincible

repugnance for all kinds of dissimulation, and for some days, by

the very fact of his manifesting two different aspects, he lost

in her eyes a part of his dangerous prestige. Which of these two

aspects was genuine? Was he acting a part now, or was he acting

on the day of his arrival? This very doubt brought pride to the

aid of reason, and helped her regain her customary self-control.

By degrees the impression of the first day grew fainter, and she

almost succeeded in effacing from her memory the scene Count George

himself seemed to have so completely forgotten.

Whether it was so or not, the princess, as we have said, ceased

following her with anxious eyes, and the young girl, freed from the

restraint she felt at first, ventured by degrees to take some part

in the general conversation, even when he was present. She soon

abandoned herself to the pleasure of intercourse with a mind which

inspired her with fresh interest on every subject--to which nothing

seemed indifferent or unknown. In this respect he resembled the

Marquis Adelardi, but he was more ardent and less sarcastic, and

could not, like him, leave an interesting subject to dwell on the

backbitings of a clique or the gossip of a salon. They were very

intimate, nevertheless, and, without actual similarity, they were

sufficiently in harmony to enjoy being always together and never to

clash.

They were, however, equally enthusiastic on one subject--that

of politics. Elsewhere this would probably have greatly wearied

Fleurange, but here it interested her in spite of herself. Count

George expressed his sentiments with a certain elevation of tone,

and, without always perfectly understanding all that was discussed,

she felt excited by the lofty independence of his opinions, his

love of liberty, and his tendency to take, everywhere and always,

the part of the weak and the oppressed. These are prominent

political features which women at once catch without difficulty,

and which win their sympathy in every cause or discussion into

which they enter. Therefore Fleurange, while listening with silent

interest, sometimes felt carried away by ardent sympathy with the

charm of his captivating eloquence, the effect of which was as

powerful as it was new.

The marquis was no less interested in contemporary history than

his friend, and discussed it quite as willingly, unless it was a

question concerning his own country. In that case he became silent,

and it was almost impossible to sustain the conversation.

Fleurange seldom took any part in the conversation, which in fact

was not often directed to her. From the time of Count George’s

arrival she had never found herself alone with him. But one evening

the princess’ salon was as usual filled with company. Fleurange,

seated at a table, was pouring out the tea. This was one of her

customary duties. Each one came to ask for a cup, and but few

occupied the seats around the table. Among these was the Marquis

Adelardi, who, on this occasion, began discoursing with the young

artist Livio and Dom Pomponio on ancient and modern art in Italy.

Count George drew near and listened for some time in silence, then

joined in the conversation. A chair near Fleurange was vacant.

He took it, and for some time the discussion was carried on with

animation. Fleurange was listening with her elbow on the table

and her eyes cast down. She did not say a word, nor did she lose

one that was uttered beside her. The conversation passed from

Italy to Germany, and they spoke of the school of art there, now

beginning to produce some great paintings. Count George suddenly

pronounced the name of Julian Steinberg, saying that this artist’s

most remarkable production was to be found in Professor Ludwig

Dornthal’s gallery at Frankfort.

Fleurange, of course, was aware he knew her friends, but there

had never been any occasion for speaking of them, and these names

suddenly mentioned before her gave her a thrill. She hastily looked

up, and with difficulty repressed the exclamation already on her

lips. This movement did not escape the notice of him who caused it.

He allowed the conversation to die away. After some moments the

others left the table. He alone remained an instant.

“Mademoiselle Gabrielle,” said he, “tell me if I involuntarily

vexed you or wounded your feelings just now.--It was by no means

intentional--”

Fleurange eagerly interrupted him: “Oh! no, assuredly not”; and

these words were followed by an explanation which the young girl

gave as fully as she did frankly. Count George thus learned for

the first time her relationship to the Dornthals. The subject once

commenced soon led to a new and more important revelation. Since

the first day, for more than one reason easy to understand, the

picture of Cordelia had not been recalled by either. Now, becoming

more confidential and rendered more expansive by the charm of

awakened remembrances, Fleurange ventured to tell him what an

influence on her life his becoming the owner of her father’s last

painting had had, and in a tone of emotion she thanked him for the

happiness of which he had been the involuntary cause.--

But she soon stopped suddenly: her heart, as on that first

day, beat with agitation mingled with alarm; for, while she

was speaking, Count George’s eyes, fixed on hers, resumed the

expression she had not seen since that day, and once more, as then,

she heard him pronounce her name in a tone she had striven to

forget.

“Fleurange!--Oh! is not what you have told me wonderful? What! this

Cordelia has transformed your life as it has mine? Tell me if this

is not a proof of the destiny we should not seek to avoid?”

Such were the words he articulated in a low tone; but he stopped in

his turn. Fleurange’s deep blush changed into a frightful paleness.

We have remarked that the word duty resounded in this young girl’s

soul in a tone singularly correct and powerful. The words she had

just heard caused rather the striking of a signal of alarm than the

dangerous emotion they were calculated to produce. She remained

silent an instant, during which George gazed at her motionless and

incapable of uttering a word.--At length she succeeded in calming

the involuntary agitation of her heart, and, raising her beautiful

eyes, calm and grave, she looked at him with an air of proud

dignity which would have suited a queen had the most obscure of her

subjects forgotten the distance that separated them.

“Monsieur le Comte,” said she, “I appeal to your better self: is

this the language you should address a poor orphan who is under

your mother’s protection and in her _service_?”

The profound respect in the eyes that lowered before hers was a

sufficient reparation for Fleurange. But the tenderness and sorrow

mingled with this respect made his mute response perhaps more

dangerous for her to whom it was addressed than the ardent words

that preceded it. She rose immediately, nevertheless, without

adding another word, and left the salon to appear no more that

evening.

XXI.

Count George remained longer than he was aware of in the place

where Fleurange left him. At last he felt a light touch on his

shoulder. It was Adelardi who thus disturbed his reverie.

“What are you thinking about, George?” said he. “You could not

be more absorbed in contemplating that tea-cup, if it were one of

the magic vases you told us about, the other day, from which your

countrymen turn out prophetic symbols.”[104]

The count looked up, smiling: “Your comparison is not

inapplicable,” said he, “for it was precisely of the future I was

thinking. Yes, I would like to know my fortune, and, if I had any

faith in the charm to which you allude, I would immediately have

recourse to it.”

He rose as he spoke and glanced around the room. The salon was

brilliant and full of company. His mother, even more elegantly

attired than usual, seemed to be regarding with satisfaction

the numerous groups of stylish ladies, men of all ages, and

notabilities from all lands gathered around her. Nothing justified

the wearied look of him who should have aided in doing the honors

of the evening, still less the following words:

“What an insupportable crowd! If you have had enough of it,

Adelardi, as I have, let us go to my room and smoke a cigar in

peace.”

“Agreed on the last point. As to the other, it is your humor for

divination that makes you regard things in such a light.--Come,” he

continued when they were established, one in an arm-chair and the

other on a _dormeuse_, in the apartment where we once accompanied

Fleurange--“come, George, without being a fortune-teller, shall I

try to predict the future you are seeking to know?”

George lighted his cigar, and, after smoking a few moments in

silence, he said: “You are no fortune-teller, Adelardi, I am

aware, but you would not be an Italian without a certain talent for

divination. Come, I am willing: try your skill. You know you have

long had the right of saying anything to me.”

“Well, to begin--but first allow me to ask why you have kept a

curtain over that picture since your return?”

“Do you remember what that painting represents?”

“Certainly, it represents Cordelia at the feet of King Lear, who is

asleep.”

“Did you ever examine it carefully?”

“Yes, George, very carefully, so that--here, I can spare you the

trouble of answering the question I just asked. I know now why you

conceal it.”

“Let us hear.”

“You cover it for fear people will be struck with the resemblance

of Cordelia to the original.”

George did not immediately reply. “If you have guessed aright,”

said he at length, “should I be obliged to acknowledge it?”

“Yes, in the game we are playing. There must be mutual frankness,

or we must give it up.”

“Well, Adelardi, let us go on, since we have commenced.”

“I am willing and, even at the risk of offending you, I shall now

go to the bottom of the subject. I acknowledge that till now you

have succeeded in concealing the feelings that for the time control

you. I think I am the only one who has discovered them, unless

perhaps the one who has inspired them.--But I am not certain on

this point. I cannot fully read that young girl’s character.”

“It is, in fact, a character which men like us, Adelardi, seldom

have an opportunity of studying.”

“I acknowledge it, and that is why your impressible nature has been

taken by surprise and received a lasting impression. Moreover, in

spite of the conclusions that might be drawn from that painting,

your meeting here was accidental. You had not the least idea in the

world of finding your Cordelia under your roof otherwise than on

canvas.”

“Now you are no longer divining, for you learned that from me.”

“Yes, but I believed you, which another of less experience perhaps

would not have done. And then, this unforeseen and surprising

meeting lent to your previous fascination somewhat of an aspect of

fatality.”

George blushed a little as he recalled what he had said to

Fleurange some minutes before, but did not interrupt him.

“Fatality,” pursued Adelardi, “signifies something irresistible;

irresistible means that, without hesitation, without scruple,

without remorse, you are going to abuse the ascendency you only

know too well how to exercise.”

“Go on,” said Count George.

“Well, George, sermons from me would be quite out of place, and I

would not venture on one to you; but, at the risk of your finding

it strange from my lips, I must tell you that, to ensnare a noble

creature like her, or even blemish by a word the halo of goodness

and purity that surrounds her, would be infamy in my eyes.”

“And you think me capable of such infamy, Adelardi? I have reason

to thank you.”

“Come, George, swear that you are not thinking of it.”

“Of what?”

“Of her.”

“Of her? I cannot swear that. But I am astonished that the

respect you feel for her in spite of yourself--an unusual thing,

indeed--you think me incapable of.”

“Then what are you thinking of, George?”

George made no reply, and, after a moment’s silence, the marquis

resumed in a graver tone:

“My dear friend, being forty years old--that is, nearly fifteen

years older than you--I think I may be allowed to say that, if in a

choice between infamy and folly, folly is preferable, it would be

well to reflect that the least follies are the shortest, and the

worst of all are those which are irreparable.”

“We are forgetting our _rôles_, Adelardi. I have no avowals or

revelations to make you. You undertook not to tell me what I ought

to do, but to predict what I shall do.”

“Well, here is my horoscope, dictated, I acknowledge, as much by

what I desire as by my penetration. You will escape from this

folly, and keep the promise you have made.”

George’s brow grew dark. “A promise my mother doubtless

commissioned you to remind me of?”

“No; I speak to you as a friend, and quite spontaneously. If

it were at your mother’s request, I should certainly have no

hesitation about acknowledging it.”

“She certainly reminds me often enough of it herself. This supposed

promise has long been a settled fact with her.”

“Supposed?”

“Yes, supposed, for it is a subject on which I never said anything

positive.”

“Nothing? Come, George, be honest, or let us stop.”

“No, let us go on. I sometimes feel the need of opening my heart.

Well, I acknowledge that, when I met Vera de Liningen for the first

time two years ago, I was struck with her beauty and still more

charmed with her wit, and had I then remained in her neighborhood

I might have found it difficult to give her up. In that case my

fate would doubtless have been decided by this time. I should

have submitted to the yoke, and not only be married, but perhaps

have the honor of a position at court, clothed in some of those

dignities to which the husband of a favorite maid of honor might

aspire.”

“Well, my dear friend, considering that this maid of honor is rich,

noble, and one of the fairest ladies at court, and that you were

then somewhat dazzled, and she made no secret of her preference for

you, I do not see that this result would have been a very fearful

one.”

“No, I acknowledge it. If I had never left St. Petersburg, perhaps

I should have found happiness there on these terms. Now, whether

fortunate or unfortunate, I do not know, but, having breathed a

different atmosphere, I could no longer live in that. A thousand

feelings, a thousand sympathies, a thousand opinions, which I

have insensibly acquired would make me regard the gilded chain

of a court life as the worst of slaveries. This alone would have

sufficed to check the words on my lips which Vera perhaps expected

to hear, but which she knows well I never uttered. As to the

conjectures of the world, what do I care for them?”

“You acknowledge, however, that that is not the only cause of the

rupture?”

“No, if there has been a rupture: that motive was not indeed, or is

not, the only one.”

“I really suspected it, and I could not tell you which of the two

motives I deplore the most.”

“Truly, Adelardi,” said George impatiently, “I cannot help

thinking your great solicitude very singular. You once told me the

manner of contracting marriage in Italy made you decide to remain

a bachelor, and now you are as scandalized at seeing me choose the

lady of my taste with some disregard of received notions, as the

Marquis Trombelli himself could be!”

Adelardi smiled.

“That is not all, and what I have to say is still stronger. I am

neither pleased nor satisfied with the political _régime_ under

which it has pleased Providence to give me birth, and it is you,

Adelardi, you! who are astonished at this and annoyed!--I might

ask you, in my turn, why you do not return to Milan, like a loyal

subject, to enjoy the paternal government under which you would be

permitted to live?”

The expression of sprightly good-humor that characterized the

marquis’ physiognomy suddenly changed to one grave and almost

sombre.

“Stop, George,” said he in an agitated voice.

“Pardon me, Adelardi, but truly there are subjects on which I

cannot conceive why we should not agree.”

Adelardi remained some minutes without speaking, then with an

apparent effort resumed:

“Listen, George. I have a most sincere friendship for you, and you

would not doubt it if you knew what it costs me to prolong the

subject to which our conversation has led, but perhaps it will not

be unprofitable for you to listen to me. Allow me to say a few

words on a subject you know I generally avoid, having sufficient

control over myself to be silent on certain points, but not enough

to speak of them with coolness. When I was young, younger than you

now are, I was carried away with an enthusiasm only known to those

whose country is enslaved. Yes,” he continued with an emotion quite

unusual with him, “a country, prosperous, glorious, honored, and

powerful, doubtless merits a devotion no noble heart can refuse;

but to feel this devotion transformed into a wild and painful

passion, one must see his country crushed and humiliated. It must

be trodden under foot in the dust, and its name effaced from every

memory--refused the very right of bearing a name, and even of

existence!”

“Ah! I easily comprehend such a sorrow, Adelardi,” cried George

with an accent of earnest sympathy.--“I understand it but too well.

But Italy is not the only down-trodden country in Europe, and

the chance which binds a man to such a land does not oblige him

to participate in its excesses, nor forbid him, I imagine, from

deploring them!”

“I will reply to that presently, George. But let me finish what

I was saying, for this conversation will never be renewed. Under

the influence of this passion, as well as others, alas! of my age,

rank, and country, I yielded to the folly of a culpable course, or

at least I gave reason for suspicion, and, like many others of more

worth than I, and a great many whom I surpass, I suffered, as you

know, imprisonment, confiscation, and exile, one after the other.

I do not regret these trials, for when we cannot serve our country

there is a certain pleasure in suffering for it, but what I regret

is having merited them.”

“Merited?”

“Yes, certainly, for I belonged for a time to one of those secret

societies which are our ruin. Like many others, I naturally

thought myself excusable--the impulse to which I yielded seemed

so powerful! the aim proposed, so noble! Well, George--” The

marquis stopped a moment, and then continued with evident pain, but

earnestly: “Well, I tell you there is neither courage, nor honor,

nor virtue, nor loyalty, nor probity, nor anything that can render

a man worthy of respect, or even of esteem--nothing, I say, that

can resist the empoisoned atmosphere of those accursed places. My

punishment was tardy, for my denunciation only took place after I

left, but I was justly punished for entering them!”

George, affected and surprised, made no attempt to interrupt him.

“The most satisfactory act of my life,” pursued Adelardi, “an act

that required more courage than to confront death in any other way,

was to leave openly, with contempt and horror, those with whom I

found myself for a moment thus connected!”

While he was talking, he traversed the room in an agitated manner.

“Since that time,” he continued more calmly, “I have incurred

several dangers unnecessary to mention, and suffered in various

ways you are aware of. Now, I live here away from my native city,

separated from my relatives, and convinced that the day which

will change the fate of Italy will never dawn in my time, though

I am certain the day will come, and especially certain its most

dangerous enemies are not its rulers--not even its most rigid

rulers--but those false and perfidious men who are called its

friends, its heroes, and sometimes its martyrs!”

The marquis now took his seat beside George, and, pressing his

hand, said: “This is quite enough concerning myself. Let us come

back to you, whose position, you will acknowledge, it would be

absurd to compare with mine.”

“I do acknowledge it; and yet, Adelardi, you would regenerate your

country, and I would transform mine.”

“Yes; but in spite of all the defects you say tarnish his reign,

history will represent your sovereign, you may be sure, as one of

the most noble and most sympathetic representatives of that supreme

power so difficult to wield.”

“Well, that is precisely what discourages me. To realize my dreams,

the successor of Alexander I. must have all his virtues and not one

of his defects. You will acknowledge this is not what the future

seems to promise.”

“Let us not begin to draw up his horoscope, but rather listen to

my final counsel. In spite of your dreams, your aspirations, your

opinions, and your lofty sympathies, I am persuaded nothing will

ever induce you to take part in any culpable enterprise in your

country. Yes, George, believe a reformed conspirator: avoid all

contact with those who, less scrupulous than you in their deeds,

make use of nearly the same language, and be sure that, when we

come to suffer condemnation, it is infinitely disagreeable to feel

it is merrited by foolish imprudence, and that we are the victims

of no one but ourselves.”

Their long conversation had widely digressed from the point they

started from. It was now too late to resume it. But the Marquis

Adelardi resolved to return to it another time, and obtain George’s

entire confidence. He fully comprehended his present danger, and

regarded it as a duty imposed by friendship to aid him in resisting

it. But, in spite of the acuteness of his discernment, he did not

foresee that she who was the source of this danger would know

better than any one else how to dispel it.

XXII.

While this conversation was taking place, Fleurange was in her

well-known seat at the top of the stone steps, looking out on

the moonlit court and the long shadows of the pillars under the

portico, listening to the murmur of the fountain, the only noise

that disturbed the silence of the night, and breathing the vague

odor of orange blossoms that embalmed the air.

Several months had elapsed since the day of George’s arrival--the

day when the vague dreams in the depths of her soul seemed for a

moment transformed into reality, but only to vanish, however, as

quickly as they appeared. Now she was agitated and troubled anew,

but differently and more profoundly than the first time.

What was she thinking of under the influence of this agitation and

trouble?--Why did her eyes wander so pensively around when the

night was so brilliant, and in her ears still vibrated the words

which, in spite of herself, made her heart beat with triumphant

joy?--Shall we tell what she was thinking of? And the place to

which, by one of the inexplicable caprices of the imagination not

under the control of the will, her thoughts had now flown? Was it

to the Cascine where, the evening before, Count George on horseback

lingered so long beside his mother’s _calèche_? Was it to one of

the galleries where more than once he had pointed out beauties

concealed from superficial observers, but so well understood by her

to whom they were revealed? Or was it to the very salon they had

just left, and was she now thinking of that last glance from which

she turned away her own? No; the place to which her memory now

reverted was the garden of the Old Mansion--the hour she recalled

was the last she passed there! The moonlight was as brilliant that

night, the air as mild, and the flowers as odorous, but the word

‘farewell’ seemed everywhere, written and changed the beauty of

the evening into sadness. Farewell, without hope and for ever!

echoed the transcendent splendor of this night in Italy in sadder

accents--Farewell!--once more, farewell! yes, farewell!

She must tear herself away from this spot only too dear! and break

the charm only too dangerous! This was clearly evident.

An instant, only an instant, she allowed her thoughts to dwell

on the happiness she must for ever renounce. She allowed her

imagination to depict it--such as it might be were it not

forbidden--and then, with a clearness and sincerity in which no

exultation mingled, she acknowledged she would purchase it at

the price of every sacrifice except that which her conscience

forbade her make. Yes, to live near George without remorse to

become his wife with the consent of his mother, seemingly so

impossible--to purchase such a destiny, she felt nothing would seem

formidable--she would joyfully welcome poverty, the severest labor,

even death itself!