PART XI.

I.

Let us return to Lourdes. Time had passed, and human industry had been

at work. The surroundings of the Grotto, where the Blessed Virgin had

appeared, had changed their former aspect. Without losing anything of

its grandeur, this savage spot had put on a pleasing aspect. Yet

unfinished, but fairly alive with workmen, a superb church, proudly

crowning the Massabielle rocks, was rising joyously to heaven. The

lofty heights, so abrupt and uncultivated, where formerly the feet of

the mountaineers could scarcely descend, were covered with a

greensward and planted with shrubs and flowers. Among dahlias and

roses, daisies and violets, beneath the shade of acacias and

cytisuses, a path, broad as the highway, wound in sinuous curves from

the church to the Grotto.

The Grotto was enclosed like a chancel by an iron railing. From the

roof a golden lamp had been suspended. On the rocks, which had been

pressed by Mary’s sacred feet, clusters of tapers burned day and

night. Outside the enclosure the miraculous spring fed three bronze

lavers. A canal, screened from sight by a little building, afforded a

chance for those invalids who wished to be bathed in this blessed

water. The mill-race of Savy had changed its bed, having been led into

the Gave, further up. The Gave itself had withdrawn somewhat, to give

room for a fine road which leads to the Massabielle Rocks. Below, on

the banks of the river, the ground had been levelled, and formed

an extensive lawn and walk, shaded by elms and poplars. 109

All these changes had been accomplished and were still going on amid

the incessant concourse of the faithful. The copper coin, thrown by

popular faith into the grotto--the _ex-votos_ of so many invalids

who had been cured, of so many hearts who had been consoled, of so

many souls reawakened to truth and life, alone defrayed the cost of

these gigantic labors, which approaches the sum of two million francs.

When God, in his bounty, vouchsafes to call men to co-operate in any

of his works, he does not employ soldiers, or tax-gatherers, or

constables to collect the impost--he accepts from his creatures only a

voluntary assistance. The Master of the universe repudiates

constraint, for he is the God of free souls; he does not consent to

receive anything which is not spontaneous and offered with a cheerful

heart.

Thus the church was gradually rising, thus the river and the

millstream gave way, hillsides were levelled, trees were planted, and

pathways traced around the now famous rocks where the Mother of Christ

had manifested her glory to the eyes of mortals.

II.

Encouraging the laborers, superintending everything, suggesting ideas,

sometimes putting his own hands to the work to set a misplaced stone

or straighten a badly-planted tree, recalling, by his ardor and holy

enthusiasm, the grand figures of Esdras and Nehemiah, occupied, by

God’s order, with the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, a tall

man, of marked features, seemed to make himself everywhere present.

His powerful stature and black cassock rendered him conspicuous to

all eyes. His name will be speedily guessed. It was the chief pastor

of the town of Lourdes, the Abbé Peyramale.

Every hour of the day he thought of the message which the Blessed

Virgin had addressed to him; every hour he thought of the miraculous

cures which had followed the apparition; he was a daily witness of

countless miracles. He had devoted his life to execute the orders of

his powerful Queen, and raise to her glory a splendid monument. All

idleness, all delay, every moment wasted, seemed to his eyes a token

of ingratitude, and his heart, devoured by zeal for the house of God,

often broke forth in warnings and admonitions. His faith was perfect,

and full of confidence. He had a horror of the wretched narrowness of

human prudence, and scouted it with the disdain of one who looks upon

all things from that holy mount whereon the Son of God preached the

nothingness of earth and the reality of heaven, when he said: “Be not

solicitous ... seek first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things

shall be added unto you.”

One day, while standing before the miraculous fountain amid a group of

ecclesiastics and laymen, the architect offered him a plan for a

pretty chapel which he proposed to build above the Grotto. The curé

looked at it, and a flush rose to his cheek. With a gesture of

impatience he tore the drawing into bits, and tossed it into the Gave.

“What are you doing?” cried the astonished architect.

“Look you,” answered the priest, “I am ashamed of what human meanness

would offer to the Mother of my God, and I have treated the wretched

plan as it deserved. We do not want a country chapel to commemorate 110

the great events which have taken place here. Go, give us a temple of

marble as large and as high as these rocks can sustain--as magnificent

as your soul can conceive! Go, and do not check your genius till you

have given us a _chef-d’œuvre_; and understand that, if you were

Michael Angelo himself, it would all be unworthy of her who has

appeared in this spot.”

“But, _monsieur le curé_,” observed everybody, “it will cost

millions to carry out your ideas!”

“She who has made this barren rock send forth its living stream--she

will know how to make faithful hearts generous,” answered the priest.

“Go, do what I tell you. Why are you afraid, O ye of little faith?”

The temple rose in the proportions designed by the man of God.

The good pastor, as he watched the progress of the various works,

often used to say:

“When will it be granted me to assist, with my priests and people, at

the first procession which goes to inaugurate in these hallowed

precincts the public worship of the Catholic Church? It seems to me

that then I could sing my _Nunc dimittis_, and die of joy.” His eyes

filled with tears at the thought. Never was there a deeper or warmer

desire than this innocent wish of a heart given wholly to God.

Sometimes, at hours when the crowd was thin at the Massabielle Rocks,

a little girl used to come and kneel before the place of the

apparition, and drink of the miraculous spring. She was a poor child,

and meanly clad--nothing marked out from the common people about. And

if the pilgrims were all strangers to the place, no one suspected that

it was Bernadette. This privileged soul had withdrawn into silence and

concealment. She went daily to the sisters’ school, where she was

the simplest, and strove to be the most unnoticed. The numerous

visitors whom she was called upon to receive never disturbed her peace

of mind, which ever retained the memory of its glimpse at heaven and

the incomparable Virgin. Bernadette kept all these things in her

heart. People came from all quarters, miracles were being worked, the

temple was rising. Bernadette and the holy pastor of Lourdes awaited,

as their crowning joy, the day which was to bring to their eyes the

sight of priests of the true God leading their people, with cross

advanced and flying banners, to the spot of the apparitions.

III.

In spite of the bishop’s decree, the church in fact had not yet taken

possession, by any public ceremony, of this spot, consecrated for

ever. It was not till the 4th of April, 1864, that this was done, by

the inauguration and blessing of the superb statue of the Blessed

Virgin, which was placed with all the pomp customary on such occasions

in the rustic niche, bordered with wild flowers, where the Mother of

God had appeared to the child of man.[39]

The weather was magnificent. The young spring sun had risen, and

advanced in a blue and cloudless sky.

The streets of Lourdes were adorned with flowers, banners, garlands,

and triumphal arches. The bells of the parish church, the chapels, and

the churches of the neighborhood, rang out joyous peals. Immense 111

numbers of people flocked together to this great festival of earth and

heaven. A procession, such as had never been seen by the oldest

inhabitant, moved from the church of Lourdes to the Grotto. Troops, in

all the splendor of military attire, led the way. Following them were

the confraternities of Lourdes, the societies for mutual aid, and

other associations, with their banners and crosses; the Congregation

of the Children of Mary, whose long robes were white as snow; the

Sisters of Nevers, with their long black veil; the Daughters of

Charity, with their great white hoods; the Sisters of St. Joseph, in

dark mantles; the religious orders of men, the Carmelites, the

Brothers of Instruction and of the Christian schools, and prodigious

numbers of pilgrims, men and women, young and old--fifty or sixty

thousand persons in all--wound along the flowery road leading to the

Massabielle rocks. Here and there, choirs and instrumental bands gave

a voice to the popular enthusiasm. Last, surrounded by four hundred

priests in choir dress, his vicars-general, and the dignitaries of his

cathedral chapter, came his lordship, Mgr. Bertrand-Sévère Laurence,

Bishop of Tarbes, in his mitre and pontifical robes, with one hand

blessing the people, and bearing his crosier in the other.

An indescribable emotion, an exaltation of feeling, such as only

Christian people assembled before God can know, filled every heart.

The day of solemn triumph had at last come, after so many

difficulties, struggles, and disasters. Tears of joy, enthusiasm, and

love ran down the cheeks of the people, moved by an impulse from God.

What indescribable joy must have filled the heart of Bernadette on

this day, as she led the Congregation of the Children of Mary! What

overwhelming happiness must have inundated the soul of the venerable

curé of Lourdes, who was no doubt at the side of the bishop, singing

the hosanna of the victory of God! Having both had to labor, the time

was certainly come for them to enter into their reward.

Alas! one would have sought in vain among the Children of Mary for

Bernadette: among the clergy surrounding the bishop, the Abbé

Peyramale would not have been found. There are joys too sweet for

earth, which are reserved for heaven. Here below, God refuses them to

his dearest children.

At this time of rejoicing, when the bright sun was shining on the

triumph of the faithful, the curé of Lourdes, laboring under a disease

which was expected to result fatally, was a victim to intense physical

sufferings. He was stretched on his bed of pain, at the head of which

two religious watched and prayed night and day. He wished to rise to

see the grand cortége pass, but his strength failed him, and he had

not even a momentary glimpse of its splendor. Through the closed

shutters of his room, the joyous sound of the silvery bells came to

him only as a funeral knell.

As for Bernadette, God showed her his predilection, as usual with his

elect, by giving her the bitter trial of pain. While Mgr. Laurence was

going, accompanied by countless numbers of his flock, to take

possession of the Massabielle rocks in the name of the church, and to

inaugurate solemnly the devotion to the Virgin who had appeared there,

Bernadette, like the eminent priest of whom we have just spoken, was

prostrated by illness; Providence, perhaps, fearing for this

well-beloved child a temptation to vainglory, deprived her of the 112

sight of this unprecedented festivity, where she would have heard her

name on the lips of thousands, and extolled from the pulpit by the

voice of enthusiastic preachers. Too poor to be taken care of in her

own home, where neither she nor her family would ever receive any

gift, Bernadette had been carried to the hospital, where she lay upon

the humble bed provided by public charity, in the midst of those poor

whom the world calls unfortunate, but whom Jesus Christ has blessed in

declaring them the possessors of his eternal kingdom.

IV.

Eleven years have now elapsed since the apparitions of the most Holy

Virgin. The great church is almost finished; it has only to be roofed,

and the holy sacrifice has long since been celebrated at all the

altars of the crypt below. Diocesan missionaries of the house of

Garaison have been stationed by the bishop near the grotto and the

church, to distribute to the pilgrims the apostolic word, the

sacraments, and the body of our Lord.

The pilgrimage has taken dimensions perhaps quite without precedent,

for before our day these vast movements of popular faith did not have

the assistance of the means of transportation invented by modern

science. The course of the Pyrenees Railroad, for which a straighter

and cheaper route had been previously marked out between Tarbes and

Pau, was changed so as to pass through Lourdes, and innumerable

travellers continually come from every quarter to invoke the Virgin

who has appeared at the Grotto, and to seek at the miraculous fountain

the healing of all their ills. They come not only from the different

provinces of France, but also from England, Belgium, Spain, Russia,

and Germany. Even from the midst of far America, pious Christians have

set out, and crossed the ocean to come to the Grotto of Lourdes, to

kneel before these sacred rocks, which the Mother of God has

sanctified by her touch. And often those who cannot come write to the

missionaries, and beg that a little of the miraculous water may be

sent to their homes. It is thus distributed throughout the world.

Although Lourdes is a small town, there is a continual passing to and

fro upon the road to the grotto, a stream of men, women, priests, and

carriages, as in the streets of a large city.

When the pleasant weather comes, and the sun, overcoming the cold of

winter, opens in the midst of flowers the gates of spring, the

faithful of the neighborhood begin to bestir themselves for the

pilgrimage to Massabielle, no longer one by one, but in large parties.

From ten, twelve, or fifteen leagues’ distance, these strong

mountaineers come on foot in bodies of one or two thousand. They set

out in the evening and walk all night by starlight, like the shepherds

of Judea, when they went to the crib of Bethlehem to adore the

new-born infant God. They descend from high peaks, they traverse deep

valleys, they cross foaming torrents, or follow their course, singing

the praises of God. And on their way the sleeping herds of cattle or

of sheep awake, and diffuse through these desert wilds the melancholy

sound of their sonorous bells. At daybreak, they arrive at Lourdes;

they spread their banners, and form in procession to go to the Grotto.

The men, with their blue caps and great shoes covered with dust from

their long night march, rest upon a knotty stick, and usually carry

upon their shoulders the provisions for their journey. The women wear 113

a white or red capulet. Some carry the precious burden of a child. And

they move on slowly, quiet and recollected, singing the litanies of

the Blessed Virgin.

At Massabielle they hear Mass, kneel at the holy table, and drink at

the miraculous spring. Then they distribute themselves, in groups

according to family or friendship, upon the grass around the Grotto,

and spreading out on the sod the provisions they have brought, they

sit down upon the green carpet of the fields. And, on the bank of the

Gave, in the shade of those hallowed rocks, they realize in their

frugal repast those fraternal agapes of which tradition tells us.

Then, having received a last blessing and said a parting prayer, they

set out with joyful hearts upon their homeward way.

Thus do the people of the Pyrenees visit the Grotto. But the greatest

numbers are not from there. From sixty or eighty leagues’ distance

come continually immense processions, brought from these great

distances upon the rapid wings of steam. They come from Bayonne, from

Peyrehorade, from La Teste, from Arcachon, from Bordeaux, and even

from Paris. At the request of the faithful, the Southern Railroad has

established special trains, trains of pilgrimage, intended exclusively

for this great and pious movement of Catholic faith. At the arrival of

these trains, the bells of Lourdes ring out their fullest peals. And

from these sombre carriages the pilgrims come out and form in

procession in the square by the station; young girls dressed in white,

married women, widows, children, full-grown men, the old people, and

the clergy in their sacred robes. Their banners are flung to the

breeze; the crucifix and the statues of the Blessed Virgin and the

saints are displayed. The praises of the Mother of God are upon every

lip. The innumerable procession passes through the town--which seems,

on such occasions, like a holy city, like Rome or Jerusalem. One’s

heart is elated at the sight; it rises toward God, and attains without

effort that elevation of feeling in which the eyes fill with tears and

the soul is overwhelmed by the sensible presence of our Lord. One

seems to enjoy for a moment a vision of paradise.

The hand of the Almighty does not weary in shedding all kinds of

graces at the spot where his Mother has appeared. Miracles are still

frequent. Not long ago Fr. Hermann recovered his sight there.

V.

God has accomplished his work.

He says to the flake of snow, resting hidden upon the lonely peak,

“Thou must come from Me to Me. Thou must pass from the inaccessible

heights of the mountain to the unfathomable caves of the deep.” And he

sends his servant the sun with its brilliant rays to collect and draw

along this shining dust, changing it first into limpid pearls. The

drops of water run through the snow, they roll down the side of the

mountain, they leap over the rocks, they break upon the pebbles, they

reunite, they collect in a mass, and run together, now gently, now

rapidly, toward the wonderful ocean, that striking image of eternal

movement in eternal rest--and thus they reach the valleys where the

race of Adam dwells.

“We will stop these drops of water,” says this race of man, as proud

now as in the days of Babel.

And they undertake to dam up this weak and quiet stream as it gently

crosses their fields. But the stream laughs at their dikes of wood, 114

earth, and pebbles.

“We will stop these drops of water,” the fools repeat in their

delirium.

And they heap up enormous rocks; they join them together with

impenetrable cement. And notwithstanding, the water does leak through

in a thousand places. But the men are numerous--they have a force

greater than the armies of Darius. They stop up the thousand fissures,

they fill up the cracks, they replace the fallen stones; and at last a

time comes when the stream cannot pass by. It has before it a barrier

higher than the pyramids, and thicker than the famous walls of

Babylon. Beyond this gigantic obstacle, the pebbles of its dry bed are

shining in the sun.

Human pride shouts its pæan of triumph.

Meanwhile the water continues to descend from those eternal heights

where it has heard the voice of God; and millions of drops, coming one

by one, stop before the barrier and rise silently against this granite

wall which millions of men have built.

“Look,” say the men, “at the immense power of our race. See this

enormous wall. Raise your eyes to its summit; admire its astonishing

height. We have for ever conquered this stream which comes from the

mountains.”

At this moment, a thin sheet of water passes over the cyclopean

barrier. They run up; but the sheet has thickened--it is a river which

is now falling, scattering on all sides the upper rocks of the wall.

“What is the matter?” they cry on all sides in the doomed city.

It is the drop of water to which God has spoken, and which proceeds

invincibly on its way.

What has your Babel-like wall accomplished? What have you done with

your herculean efforts? You have changed a quiet stream into a

formidable cataract. You tried to stop the drop of water; but it now

resumes its course with the violence of Niagara.

How humble was this drop of water, this word of a child to which God

had said, “Pursue thy course!” How insignificant was this drop of

water--this shepherdess burning a candle at the Grotto--this poor

woman praying and offering a bouquet to the Blessed Virgin--this old

peasant on his knees! And how strong, how apparent, impassable, and

invincible was this enormous wall, upon which all the force of a great

nation, from the policeman and the gendarme to the prefect and the

minister, had labored for eight months!

But the child, the poor woman, the old peasant, have resumed their

course. Only now it is not a stray candle or a poor bouquet that

testifies to the popular faith; it is a magnificent monument which the

faithful are erecting; they are spending millions upon this temple,

already celebrated throughout Christendom. Their opposers thought to

put down some scattered believers; but now they come in crowds, in

immense processions, displaying their banners and singing their hymns.

There is a pilgrimage without precedent; whole peoples now come, borne

upon their iron roads by chariots of fire and steam. It is not now a

little neighborhood which believes--it is Europe; it is the Christian

world which is coming from all directions. The drop of water which men

tried to stop has become a Niagara.

God has finished his work. And now, as on the seventh day, when he

entered into his rest, he has resigned to men the duty of profiting

by this work, and the formidable responsibility of developing or 115

compromising it. He has given them a germ of abundant grace, as of

other things; the burden remains on them of cultivating and maturing

it. They can multiply it a hundredfold by walking humbly and holily in

the order of his providence; they can make it unfruitful by refusing

to enter into this order. Every good thing from on high is entrusted

to human liberty, as the terrestrial paradise was at the outset, on

the condition of laboring for and keeping it--“_ut operaretur et

custodiret illum_.” Let us beseech God that men may not reject what

he has done for them, and that they may not by earthly ideas or

irreligious acts break in their guilty or awkward hands the sacred

vessel of divine grace which they have received in trust.

VI.

Most of the persons mentioned in the course of this long history are

still alive. The prefect, Baron Massy, Judge Duprat, Mayor Lacadé, and

Minister Fould are dead.

Some of them have made several steps in advance on the road to

fortune. M. Rouland has left the Ministry of Public Worship (for which

he does not seem to have been well fitted), to take care of the Bank

of France. M. Dutour, the procureur-imperial, has become counsellor of

the court; M. Jacomet is the chief commissary of police in one of the

largest cities of the empire.

Bourriette, Croisine Bouhohorts and her son, Mme. Rizan, Henri

Busquet, Mlle. Moreau de Sazenay, the widow Crozat, Jules Lacassagne,

and all those whose cures we have recorded, are still full of life,

and testify by their recovered health and strength to the powerful

mercy of the apparition at the Grotto.

Dr. Dozous continues to be the most eminent physician of Lourdes. Dr.

Vergez is at the spring of Barèges and attests to the visitors at this

celebrated resort the miracles which he formerly witnessed. M.

Estrade, whose impartial observations we have several times given, is

receiver of indirect contributions at Bordeaux. He lives at No. 14 Rue

Ducau.

Now, as formerly, Mgr. Laurence is Bishop of Tarbes. Age has not

diminished his faculties. He is to-day what we have represented him in

this work. He has near the Grotto a house to which he sometimes

retires, to meditate in this spot, beloved by the Virgin, on the great

duties and the grave responsibilities of a Christian bishop who has

received so wonderful a grace in his diocese.[40]

The Abbé Peyramale recovered from the severe illness of which we spoke

above. He is still the venerated pastor of this Christian town of

Lourdes, where his record is left in ineffaceable characters. Long

after he is gone, when he rests under the sod in the midst of the

generation which he has formed to the Lord; when the successors of his

successors live in his house and occupy the great wooden chair in his

church, his memory will be living in the minds of all; and when the

“Curé of Lourdes” is mentioned, every one will think of him.

Louise Soubirous, the mother of Bernadette, died on the 8th of

December, 1866, the very day of the feast of the Immaculate

Conception. In choosing this festival to take the mother from the

miseries of the world, she who had said to the child, “I am the

Immaculate Conception,” seems to have intended to temper the 116

bitterness of the loss to the heart of her survivors, and to show them

as a Certain pledge of hope and of a happy resurrection the sign of

her radiant appearance.

While thousands go to the Grotto to contribute to the splendid church,

Bernadette’s father has remained a poor miller, subsisting with

difficulty by manual labor. Mary, the daughter, who was with

Bernadette at the time of the first apparition, has married a good

peasant, who has become a miller and works with his father-in-law. The

other companion, Jane Abbadie, is a servant at Bordeaux.

VII.

Bernadette is no longer at Lourdes. We have seen how she had, on many

occasions, refused gifts freely offered, and repelled the good fortune

which was knocking at the door of her humble cottage. She was dreaming

of other riches. “We shall know some fine day,” the unbelievers had

said at the outset, “what her pay is going to be.” Bernadette had in

fact chosen her pay, and put her hand on her reward. She has become a

Sister of Charity. She has devoted herself to tend in the hospitals

the poor and the sick collected by public benevolence.

After having seen with her own eyes the resplendent face of the thrice

holy Mother of God, what could she do but become the compassionate

servant of those of whom the Virgin’s Son has said: “As long as you

did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.”

It is among the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction at Nevers

that Bernadette has taken the veil. She is called Sister

Marie-Bernard. We have lately seen her in her religious habit at the

mother-house of this congregation. Though she is now twenty-five,

her face has kept the character and the charm of childhood. In her

presence, the heart feels moved in its better part by an indescribable

religious sentiment, and one leaves it embalmed in the perfume of this

peaceful innocence. One understands that the Holy Virgin has specially

loved her. Otherwise, there is nothing extraordinary, nothing which

would make her conspicuous, or would make one suspect the important

part she has filled in this communication from heaven to earth. Her

simplicity has not been touched by the unexampled interest which has

been taken in her. The concourse and enthusiasm of the multitude have

no more troubled her soul than the turbid water of a torrent would

tarnish the imperishable purity of a diamond.

God visits her still, not now by bright visions, but by the sacred

trial of suffering. She is often ill, and suffers cruelly; but she

bears her pains with a sweet and almost playful patience. Sometimes

they have thought her dead. “I shall not die just yet,” she would say,

smiling.

She never speaks, unless questioned, of the favors which she has

received.

She was the Blessed Virgin’s messenger. Now that she has given her

message, she has retired into the shade of religious life, wishing to

be unnoticed among a number of companions.

It is a trouble to her when the world comes to seek her in the depth

of her retreat, and when some circumstance obliges her to appear

before it again. She fears the glory of this life. She lives in the

humility of the Lord, and is dead to the vanities of the earth. And

this book which we have written, and which speaks so much of

Bernadette, Sister Marie-Bernard will never read.

[39] This statue, made of fine Carrara marble, of

life-size, was presented to the Grotto of Lourdes by two

noble and pious sisters of the diocese of Lyons, Mesdames de

Lacour. It was executed according to Bernadette’s particular

instructions, by M. Fabish, the eminent Lyonnese sculptor.

The Blessed Virgin is represented as Bernadette described

her, with scrupulous regard to the smallest details, and

rare talent in execution.

[40] Mgr. Laurence died at the Vatican Council in the

winter of 1869-70.

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THE RIOT OF THE TWELFTH. 117

We are late in our comments on the riot of the 12th of July last in

this city, occasioned by the Orange procession in commemoration of the

Battle of the Boyne; but as what we have to say relates to general

principles rather than to particular facts, our remarks will have

suffered little from the delay, and will stand a chance of being more

carefully read and duly weighed than if made at an earlier day. The

tragic event is not likely to be soon forgotten.

The secular press of the city have, as far as we have observed, with

scarcely an exception, taken the ground that, however ill-advised

might be the Orange procession, it was a right of the Orangemen, and

the liberty of the citizen was infringed by the police order

prohibiting it. The order was also an act of cowardice, as dictated by

fear of a Catholic mob; and hence its revocation by the governor, and

his excellency’s resolution to sustain the majesty of the law, and to

protect the Orange procession by all the force, if necessary, at his

command, was a firm and manly interference in behalf of liberty and

law. The sectarian press of city and country see in the police order

prohibiting the procession--dictated, it is assumed, by the Catholic

clergy--only a proof of the hatred of the Catholic Church to liberty

and republican institutions, and in the action of the governor, and

the bravery of the military in firing on the crowd, and killing and

wounding a large number of citizens, for the most part innocent, except

of idle curiosity, an assurance much needed, that Protestants have as

yet even in this country some rights which Catholics are bound and can

be compelled to respect.

The view taken by the sectarian press is ridiculous, as well as

malicious. The Catholic Church was the victim of the riot, but her

only responsibility for it was in warning her children against it, and

bidding them to let the procession alone, and not to go near it. If

she had been heeded, there would have been no riot, no disturbance.

The question was not a Catholic question, and the church had nothing

to gain by preventing the procession, still less by a riot to break it

up. The pretence that the rights of Protestants are in danger from

Catholics in this country, where the Protestants outnumber the

Catholics as eight or ten to one, is too absurd to be even a passable

joke. Do the sectarian journals count one Catholic more than a match

for eight or ten Protestants? That were a greater compliment to us

than we deserve. We are afraid the sectarian leaders have bad

consciences, which make them cowards. Catholics cannot show the least

sign of vitality, or make the slightest move for the practical

possession of the equal rights guaranteed them by the constitution and

laws, but they take fright, tremble in their shoes, and cry out:

“Liberty is in danger!” the Pope is going to suppress American

republicanism, strip Protestants of their rights, cut their throats,

or reduce them to be “hewers of wood and drawers of water” to--the

Jesuits. They are dreadfully alarmed, or affect to be, and create a 118

panic throughout the whole country. But, dear frightened souls, there

is no occasion for your alarm, unless you suppose you cannot be free

if everybody else is not enslaved. Even if we were the majority of the

American people, as we are not, nor likely to be to-day, to-morrow, or

the day after, you would be in no danger, for we understand liberty as

well as you do, appreciate it more highly, love it better, and have

made greater sacrifices for it than you can imagine. Not a few of us

have fled hither from the tyranny and oppression of Protestant

governments, expatriated ourselves for the sake of liberty, and do you

believe us such fools as to destroy it the moment we have found it?

This talk about the hostility of the church to liberty and American

republicanism, when not malicious, is sheer nonsense. The acts

Protestants allege to prove that the church is hostile to liberty,

prove the contrary; for they were acts done against tyrants and

despots in defence of liberty, both civil and religious. What were her

long struggles against the Franconian and Suabian emperors, but

struggles on her part for the freedom of religion, the basis and

principle of all true liberty? Why did the popes deny to kings and

emperors in the middle ages the right of investiture by the cross and

ring, but because to have conceded it would have enslaved the church

to Cæsar, and destroyed the independence of religion and the freedom

of conscience? Know you not that it was under the fostering care and

protection of the church that grew up the freedom and independence of

all modern nations? What nation, state, or people has she ever

deprived of independence or liberty? If she has asserted the rights

of sovereigns, and condemned sedition, turbulence, conspiracies,

insurrections, rebellions, on the part of the people, she has been

equally prompt and determined in asserting the rights and franchises

of subjects, and in censuring, excommunicating, and even deposing,

when professing to be Catholic, the tyrant who despoiled and oppressed

them. The great principles of justice and equality on which American

republicanism is founded were taught by hooded friars in their

monasteries, and proclaimed from the Papal throne ages before the

landing at Plymouth of the Pilgrims from the _Mayflower_, or the

settlement of English colonists on the banks of the James. Do, dear

friends, read and try to understand a little of history, and dismiss

your idle fears, or, if fear you must, fear for the salvation of your

own souls hereafter.

The fact is, we are a little impatient when we hear Protestants

expressing in grave tones and with a serious face their apprehensions

that the spread of Catholicity will tend to the destruction of

American liberty. Considering what Protestantism is, and by what means

it was introduced and has been sustained, it is too much as if Satan

should express serious apprehensions that the spread of the Gospel may

tend to the destruction of Christian piety and humility. We find among

Protestants men, and not a few, who, when they speak of liberty, mean

liberty for all men, for Catholics as well as for non-Catholics; but

your true-blue Protestant, who is imbued with the original and genuine

spirit of Protestantism, would seem unable to understand by liberty

anything but his right to govern, or by religious liberty anything but

his right to reject the papacy, abuse the Pope, calumniate and despoil

the church, and exterminate or enslave Catholics. Who has not heard of 119

Tyburn, and who went there--of the infamous penal laws against

Catholics of England and Ireland, to say nothing of other countries?

And were not these same penal laws enacted and enforced in the colony

of Virginia, and was it not a capital offence in Massachusetts for a

priest to set his foot within the colony, or for an inhabitant to

harbor or give him even a meal of victuals? Did not Massachusetts fit

out and send from Boston an armed body of men, who shot down Father

Rasle, a missionary to the Norridgewock Indians, at the head of his

congregation as they came forth from Mass, and massacred them? Did not

an American Provincial Congress enumerate among their grave charges

against George III. the fact that he had granted freedom of worship to

Catholics in the neighboring province of Canada? Was not Guy Fawkes’

Day celebrated in Boston with the usual anti-popery demonstrations

down to the epoch of the Revolution, until protested against by some

French officers, who came with the army from France to aid us in

gaining our national independence? Yet Protestants do not blush to

call Protestantism the friend, and Catholicity the enemy, of liberty!

Protestants have very short memories if they have forgotten these

things, or else they suppose that Catholics have no memories at all if

they suppose that we can permit them to claim, unchallenged, to be and

always to have been the party of liberty. It is not, however, the

strangest delusion of Protestants, and is only of a piece with their

delusion that Protestantism is Christianity and sustained by the Holy

Scriptures. But let this pass. We yield to no one in our devotion to

liberty or in our readiness to defend the rights of the citizen. We

have no sympathy with the rioters of the Twelfth of July and not one

word to offer in their defence. They broke both the law of the church

and the law of the land, sinned against God, and committed a crime

against the state. But we venture to deny that the police order

forbidding the Orange procession infringed the liberty of any citizen

or deprived the Orangemen of any right they had or could have on

American soil. No men or class of men have the right, in the

performance of no civil or religious duty, but for their own pleasure

or gratification of their own passions, to do any act or make any

display in the judgment of the police certain or very likely to

provoke a riot or breach of the peace. This is common sense, and, we

presume, common law.

The Orangemen were required by no duty, civil or religious, to

celebrate the battle of the Boyne by a public procession in the

streets of our city, nor were they called to do it by any sentiment of

patriotism--not of Irish patriotism, for the battle of the Boyne

resulted in the subjugation, not the liberation, of Ireland--not

American patriotism, for the event was foreign to American

nationality. No foreign patriotism has any right on American soil. The

event commemorated is wholly foreign to our patriotism. It occurred in

a foreign country before our nationality was born, and has no relation

whatever to any American sentiment. No precession not in honor of

religion or some religious event, and wholly disconnected with

American interests or sentiments, has any right on American soil, and

can only take place by courtesy or sufferance, indifference or connivance.

The prohibition of the Orange procession by the police would have 120

deprived the Orangemen of no right which they had or could pretend to

have in this country; and if the procession was designed or even

likely to irritate a portion of our citizens, and to provoke a riot,

it was not only the right but the duty of the police, as conservators

of the peace, to prohibit it, and as far as possible to prevent it.

But the right and the duty of the police do not stop here. There is

another side to the question. Every peaceable citizen has the right to

walk the streets without being insulted or having his feelings

outraged. Processions, banners, songs, tunes offensive, and really

intended to be offensive, to any portion of the community, and in

commemoration of no American event, in satisfaction of no American

sentiment, or in the performance of no civil, military, or religious

duty incumbent on American citizens, are never allowable, for the

insult and outrage offered to the feelings and sentiments, no matter

of what class of the population, is purely wanton, malicious, and

wholly unjustifiable. Of this sort is manifestly the insult and

outrage offered by Orange processions, banners, songs, and tunes to

all of our Irish fellow-citizens not of the Orange party; and these

fellow-citizens of Irish birth or extraction, though they have no

right to take the law into their own hands, have undoubtedly the

right, on American soil, to be protected by the American authorities

from insult and outrage to their feelings and sentiments, just as much

as persons have the right to be protected from indecent sights in the

public streets, or the display of obscene pictures and images in the

shop-windows.

But these Orangemen--very few, if any, of whom, we are told, are

American citizens--outrage American as well as Irish manhood. Their

celebrations here are an insult to every true American, for they are

in honor of principles and deeds abhorrent to every American heart.

For them to bring their old quarrels hither from a foreign land would

be reprehensible, even if their quarrels were not utterly disgraceful

to them, but they become a gross outrage when the real character of

their quarrel with their loyal countrymen is considered. The deeds of

the party in Ireland they represent are such as are condemned by every

distinctive American principle, and a more infamous party it would be

difficult to find in any country on earth. They represent the party

that in Ireland fought for a foreign invader and a chief of rebels

against their own country, and were at once traitors to their king and

nation. They represent the party that enacted the infamous and

brutalizing penal laws which deprived the loyal Irish--who in the

battle of the Boyne fought for and at the command of their rightful

king against rebels, traitors, foreign invaders, and enemies--of every

vestige of civil and religious liberty, even making it a crime for a

father to teach his own child letters, and doomed their descendants,

till within our own memory, to the most cruel, heartless, and hopeless

oppression ever endured by any people in the world; they represent the

party that, after the Presbyterian and Jacobin movement of 1798, into

which some Catholics had been inveigled by the promise of freedom for

their religion, and left to do the fighting and to bear almost alone

the penalty of defeat, were the authors of the savage butcheries

inflicted by the Orange yeomanry on the Catholic peasantry, even on

those who had taken no part in the movement, and were innocent of all

offence except that of sighing to be delivered from bondage, and

treated as men made in God’s image, not as wild beasts, whom it is a 121

merit to hunt out and shoot down wherever they can be found. They

commemorate in their processions, their banners, their songs and

tunes, the triumph of treachery, baseness, bigotry, persecution,

oppression, murder, rapine, and wholesale massacres, unsurpassed in

the history of the most barbarous and heathenish nations.

Never was there a more cruel and bloodthirsty party, one redeemed by

fewer virtues or blackened by more or greater crimes, or more

deserving the execration of mankind, than that which these Orangemen

represent and delight to honor. Is it no insult to us free-born

Americans for them to come here and flaunt in our faces their banners

stained with the blood of the innocent and the good, branded by the

widow’s curse, and wet with the orphan’s tears--symbols of ages of

wrong, oppression, and religious intolerance and persecution? Is it

here, in free America, they dare come to boast in public of their

crimes, and glory in their infamy? Do not we Americans profess to

abhor persecution, tyranny, and oppression? Do we not, as a sovereign

people, proclaim to the world that we have opened an asylum to the

wronged, the oppressed, the downtrodden of every land and of every

belief? Where, then, is our manhood when we allow the tyrant, the

oppressor, the persecutor, to come here and insult and outrage his

victims in the very asylum we profess to have opened to them? What

greater insult to all that is noble and manly can be offered Americans

than to be even asked to protect those who will not respect even the

right of asylum?

No, no; the press has taken only a one-sided view in calling the

prohibition of the Orange procession a violation of freedom and a

cowardly yielding to Irish or Catholic dictation. It was no such

thing. The Orangemen had no right on their side, and were entitled to

no protection. Liberty was on the other side, and its vindication and

the right of asylum required us as Americans to protect the victims of

the Orange party who had sought refuge with us from Orange insult and

outrage on our own soil. His excellency the governor of the state also

took only a hasty and a very incorrect view of the case in revoking

the very proper order of the police. We are as far as he can be from

yielding to the dictation of the mob. When a mob has collected, it

must be admitted to no parley, and the only answer to be given to its

demands is the reading of the riot act, and a whiff of grape-shot or a

shower of musket-balls. But no threats of violence should ever deter

authority from doing what is right, and, in this case, right was not

on the side of the Orangemen. Authority must be just as well as firm.

The threats of violence were wrong, but they did not put the Orangemen

in the right. Authority was bound to protect the Orangemen from actual

violence, but it was not bound to protect them in the performance of

acts which they had no moral or legal right to perform, and which it

was foreseen, if permitted, would lead to violence. One wrong is not

redressed by permitting another that must provoke it.

His excellency’s revocation of the order of the police prohibiting the

Orange procession, and promise to protect the procession by all the

force at his command, cannot be defended on the ground that the party

opposed threatened violence in case the procession took place, unless

it be assumed that the Orangemen had a perfect moral or legal right to

march in procession through our streets in their regalia, and with 122

their insulting banners flying and bands playing offensive marches.

But they had no such right, as we have seen, and the party making the

threats, however wrong the threats were, had the right to be protected

from the insult and outrage offered to their feelings by such a

display. The vindication of liberty did not require the procession to

take place, for liberty is not infringed where no right is violated or

abridged; and the assertion of the majesty of the law never requires

protection of a wrong because they who would be aggrieved by it have

threatened, if permitted, they will attempt by violence to right

themselves. Neither American liberty nor law required the Orange

procession to be permitted, and if both liberty and law required a

mob, when collected, to be dispersed and the violence suppressed, they

both also required the protection of American citizens from public

insult and outrage. His excellency forgot the duty of protecting

American citizens from wrong, and thought only of protecting a foreign

and wholly un-American party in committing it.

Yet we have no doubt that the mistaken conduct of the governor--an

able man, a good lawyer, and for the most part a worthy chief

magistrate of the state--was chiefly prompted by the clamor against

Catholics, and the charge brought against his party by its opponents

of acting under the dictation of Catholics, who, of course, it is

assumed, act always under the dictation of their clergy, and was

intended to refute the charge by showing his readiness to protect even

Protestant Orangemen, and shoot down their hereditary enemies, though

Catholics. The charge, we know, was made against the party now in

power in this state; but his excellency should not have allowed it

to move him. It is no doubt true that, but for the votes of citizens

who happen to be Catholics, he would never have been governor of the

state, and his party would be, at least for the present, in a hopeless

minority; but we cannot allow that Catholics have presumed upon the

fact, or asked anything not their right as simple American citizens,

and we know that they have obtained less than their equal rights, even

in this city, where they can probably count not much less than

one-half of the population. But the charge is a mere party trick,

designed, through the sectarian prejudice against Catholicity, to

throw the party now in out of power. The governor seems to us to have

fallen into the trap his political enemies set for him, and has not

unlikely damaged the political prospects both of himself and of his

party.

The clamor against the party on account of its Catholic leaders and

supporters means only that the _outs_ are anxious to become the

_ins_. The party out of power in the State would as willingly

receive the votes of Catholic citizens as does the party in power, and

when in power it did, we believe, more for Catholics than the party

now in power has ever yet done, though it, doubtless, promised less.

Catholics have never had any reason for giving their votes to the

Democratic party but that, in doing so, they followed, very

disinterestedly, their honest political convictions.

The pretence of Protestants that Catholics in or out of office act

politically under the dictation of their clergy, and in reference to

Catholic interests as such, is too notoriously false to mislead

anybody. Those prominent politicians, in or out of office, who happen

to be Catholics, are the last men in the world to listen to the 123

dictation of the clergy or to act in obedience to the orders of their

church, and they take infinite pains to prove that their religion has

nothing to do with their politics, in order, we suppose, to escape the

suspicion of being influenced in their political conduct by regard for

Catholic interests. Their party standing is more to them than their

Catholic standing, and they consult rarely the wishes or interests of

their church, and usually only the wishes and interests of their party

and its leaders. All the offices in the state or nation might be

filled by Catholics, the constituencies remaining unchanged, without

any more advantage accruing to the church than if they were all filled

by Protestants. Catholics and Protestants alike, when in office,

consult their constituencies, and act in the way and manner they judge

most likely to secure votes to themselves or their party.

The fact is, Catholicity has never placed any man in city, state, or

nation in office, and never yet has any man in our country been

elected to office because he is Catholic. The Catholics who are in

office under the municipal, state, or federal government, in congress,

in the state senate, or the assembly, are there not because they are

Catholics, but because they are Democrats or Republicans, or because

they are of Irish, German, or some other foreign origin, and have or

are supposed to have influence in securing the so-called “Irish vote,”

the “German vote,” or the “foreign vote”--distinctions which should

have no place in American politics--not because they are Catholics,

and supposed to be devoted to Catholic interests. There is an “Irish

vote,” a “German vote,” a “foreign vote,” but no “Catholic vote,” and,

the constituencies remaining the same, Catholic interests would be

just as safe in the hands of American Protestants as in the hands of

Catholics elected to office, not for their Catholicity, but for their

real or supposed influence with our naturalized fellow-citizens; and

perhaps safer, because Protestants would be less likely to be

suspected of acting under Catholic influence, and therefore could act

more independently.

It is, we think, a mistake on the part of our politicians who are

Catholics, whether in or out of office, to be so anxious not to be

suspected of acting under Catholic influence and in view of Catholic

interests. The church asks only what is just, only to be protected in

the possession of the equal rights before the state, guaranteed to her

by the constitution of the state, and which are not always respected

by the popular sentiment of the country. The care which politicians

take to show themselves independent in their political action, if

Catholics, gains them no credit, and a frank, open, straightforward,

and manly course would gain much more respect for themselves and for

their religion. Indeed, their sensitiveness and over-caution on this

point tend to excite the very suspicion they would guard against, or

the suspicion that their conduct is diplomatic, and that they have

some ulterior purpose in reserve which they artfully and adroitly

conceal. The church is supposed by Protestants to be the very

embodiment of craftiness and dissimulation, always and everywhere

intriguing to get the control of the secular power, and to wield it in

her own interest regardless of all rights and interests of the citizen

who happens not to be Catholic. Hence, every Catholic politician is

suspected beforehand of craft, intrigue, of crooked and underhand

ways, lacking frankness, openness, and straightforward honesty. The 124

only way to repel this false and unjust suspicion is for such

Catholics as are politicians to show in an open and manly manner that

neither they nor their church have any sinister purpose, and that in

being devoted to her interests and acting under influence as good

Catholics, they have nothing to conceal, and no ends to gain for her

incompatible with their plain duty as American citizens, or which they

fear or hesitate to avow in the face of all men. The best way to quell

a wild beast is to look him steadily in the eye, and show that you do

not fear him.

But to return to the question more immediately before us. If the press

and the executive had looked at the subject from the point of view of

common sense, as a simple question of right and wrong, without

prejudice against Catholics or in favor of Protestants, and without

any wish to charge or acquit any party of being under Catholic

influence, they could not, it seems to us, have failed to see that

liberty was violated in permitting, not in prohibiting, the Orange

procession. Party or sectarian prejudices obscured the judgment, and

many lives of innocent persons were lost in consequence.

It is contended by some that if a procession of Catholic Irish in

honor of St. Patrick is allowed, the Orange procession of the

Protestant Irish should also be allowed; either permit both, or

prohibit both. The celebration of St. Patrick’s Day as a festival of

the Catholic Church, which it is, even by a public procession through

our streets, if peaceable and orderly, is a right guaranteed in the

freedom of the Catholic religion under our constitution and laws, and

so far differs totally from the Orange procession. As a purely Irish

national festival, it can be celebrated here only by courtesy, as is

St. George’s Day by the English, St. Nicholas’s Day by the Dutch, or

St. Andrew’s Day by the Scotch; for no foreign nationality has any

right on American soil; otherwise, American nationality would not be

independent and supreme on American territory. No foreign national

festivals in commemoration or honor of events and interests or

sentiments foreign to American nationality and interests and

sentiments, can be publicly celebrated here except by indifference,

courtesy, sufferance, connivance, national comity, or international

treaty.

This rule, however, does not apply to religious festivals and

celebrations, whether Catholic or Protestant, because in the eye of

the state all religion is catholic, and not national, and, therefore,

never a foreigner in any nation. Protestants cannot claim Orange

celebrations as a right, though the Orangemen are all good

Protestants, because the event celebrated is a foreign political, not

a religious event; yet they have the right to institute and celebrate

festivals in honor of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and other

Protestant reformers; for these being the founders of their religion

are as such not foreigners. Catholics may also celebrate here any of

the festivals of the church in the way and manner she prescribes,

because they are religious festivals, and the right to celebrate them

is included in the freedom of conscience; so may they celebrate

publicly the birthday of the Holy Father, his return to Rome from his

exile at Gaëta and Portici, the completion of the twenty-fifth year of

his pontificate, or his liberation, when effected, from his present

imprisonment, and the recovery for the Holy See of the possessions of

which she has been sacrilegiously despoiled--because, as the chief of

their religion, he is no foreigner in America.

The German peace celebration, as it was called, but really the 125

celebration of the German conquest and humiliation of France, our

ancient ally, was by sufferance, not by right. The Fenian

organizations, marches and countermarches, parades and processions in

honor of victories not won, are absolutely illegal, and take place

only by the connivance--we might say the culpable connivance--of the

government, if Great Britain, against whom they are directed, did not

herself allow demonstrations on her own soil against foreign

sovereigns. The celebrations of Italian unity, since effected by

fraud, violence, sacrilege, and robbery, the spoliation of the Holy

See, and the imprisonment of the Pope, perhaps should be regarded as

the celebrations of the successes of Protestant principles, and

therefore, by a right secured in the civil freedom of Protestantism,

and if peaceable and orderly, not prohibitable by the police. They may

be annoying to Catholics, but so is Protestantism itself; but

Protestants have, so far as the secular authorities go, the same right

to be Protestants that we have to be Catholics.

We have already shown that it is ridiculous to attempt to hold the

church responsible for the riot. The rioters may have been nominal

Catholics; but, if so, they were bad Catholics, for they acted

contrary to the principles of their church, and the advice and

direction of their pastors, and the church cannot be held responsible

for acts done contrary to her orders and in violation of her

principles. The rioters, themselves, knew and owned that they were

disobeying their church, and defended themselves on the ground that

the question was a national not a religious question, and, therefore,

not within the jurisdiction of the clergy. Their defence was a lame

one, and proved they were no true Catholics; for the church, without

assuming to decide the national, party, or political question, had

full jurisdiction of the morality of their acts, and was quite

competent to condemn the passions of anger and revenge that actuated

them and their riotous proceedings, as condemned by the law of God.

But there are Catholics in this city of fifteen or twenty different

nationalities, and yet the rioters were exclusively of Irish origin,

which is full proof that the riot was not Catholic, but Irish. Had it

been a Catholic riot, inspired by the church and for a Catholic

object, for which the church could be held responsible, Catholics,

irrespective of their nationality, would have been engaged in it, and

it would not have been confined to persons of one nationality alone.

It was, as everybody knows, an Irish riot, occasioned by an old Irish

feud between two Irish parties, not an American or a Catholic riot.

These hot-headed, disobedient Irishmen, even if Catholics, could not

commit the church to their disorderly and criminal proceedings.

It is only fair to add that this handful of Irish rioters could not

any more commit the great body of our Irish fellow-citizens. According

to the last census, there were 201,000 souls in this city who were

born in Ireland, to say nothing of their children and grandchildren

born here. There probably was not over five hundred, if so many,

actively engaged in the riot; but double the number, say there were a

thousand, and they are quite too few, even if they were of reputable

character, which they were not, to commit so large a body as that of

our Irish population, most of whom remained quietly engaged in their

ordinary avocations. That the Irish furnish their full quota of

rowdies, roughs, and disorderly persons in our large towns, nobody 126

denies; but we must remember that there are plenty of the same class

not of Irish origin, and there have been riots, and riots of a very

grave character, in which the Irish had no hand, though of some of

them they were the victims. We have seen more than one American mob in

which the chief actors were respectable, well-dressed Protestant

American citizens.

There are Irishmen who are wealthy and wear fine clothes that are no

credit to their race or their religion, but the Catholic Irish as a

body constitute a sober, quiet, peaceable, intelligent, religious,

industrious, and thriving portion of our population, and no

American-born citizen has any right to say a word in disparagement of

them. Indeed, we may say of the Catholic population of the city

generally, that it is that portion of the population that it can least

afford to spare. Were the city to lose them, it would lose the very

population that has contributed, and contributes, the most to its high

moral and religious character, to its industry and wealth, and on

which its prosperity chiefly depends. With all their faults, and they

are many, and many more in the eyes of the Catholic than of the

Protestant, they are, as they should be, decidedly the best people

going. Their vices are on the surface; their virtues lie deeper, and

are many, solid, and durable. We bless God that we are permitted to

call them brethren, and that we are with them in the unity of faith

and communion, though we happen to be an American of the seventh

generation, and it was our misfortune to be reared a Protestant.

We think the conduct of the Democratic party towards their Catholic

supporters is discreditable. Any party may feel itself honored that

secures the votes of the great body of our Catholic citizens, whether

naturalized or native-born citizens, and no party will suffer in the

end by insisting on justice to Catholics and to Catholic interests.

Any party, by frankly and fearlessly sustaining the equal rights of

Catholics with Protestants, and maintaining the freedom and

independence of religion, will not only serve truly their country, and

respond to the demands of American patriotism, but they will best

ensure its own permanent prosperity, power, and influence. They who

scorn and trample on the church may flourish for a time like the green

bay tree, but in the end they will wither and die, and their places be

sought, and not found. It is well for every political party to

remember that God reigns, and that they who scorn his church, whom he

hath purchased with his own blood, will in turn be scorned by the

“King of kings, and Lord of lords.”

----------

THE PLACE VENDOME AND LA ROQUETTE. 127

THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF THE COMMUNE.

FROM LE CORRESPONDANT.

It would be difficult to find in the history of human revolutions a

spectacle at once as burlesque and terrible as that just presented by

the too celebrated Commune of Paris. It began with a long trail of

blood at the entrance of the Place Vendôme, and signalized its

wretched end by the horrible massacre of La Roquette. A witness of

these two bloody scenes, I shall depict them with but few comments,

but with perfect exactness of detail. At the risk of being incomplete,

I shall only relate what I saw. In speaking of the confinement at

Mazas and the massacres at La Roquette, I shall barely add some

incidents, the truth of which was vouched for by the companions of my

cruel captivity. Comments would only weaken the impressiveness of

these facts. I leave my readers to draw their own conclusions from a

moral and social point of view, only remarking that the first account,

relating to the events that transpired in the Place Vendôme during the

latter half of March, was drawn up a few days after they occurred.

Though the first essays of the Commune were not marked by the nameless

horrors that drew upon its end the reprobation of all civilized

nations, I have thought it right not to alter my first account.

Perhaps some observations may not appear sufficiently severe, and

others not wholly justified by the events. I give them to the public

as they were noted down at the time. By comparing the account written

at the end of March with that of the end of May, an exact idea may be

formed--I was going to say a faithful photograph may be had--of the

revolutionary condition of Paris at the beginning and the end of the

Commune. We may thereby be enabled to judge of the development, during

this short interval, of a brutal revolution--the implacable enemy of

all institutions, human and divine.

In spite of the mingled emotions of horror and disgust I feel in

recalling the men and the deeds I speak of, I may be permitted to

manifest two feelings that prevail over all others in the depths of my

soul--a redoubling of constant sympathy for the unhappy city of Paris,

only rendered dearer by its misfortunes, and an ardent gratitude for

the infinite mercy of God, which preserved me, contrary to all human

expectation, from the bullets of a herd of assassins more shameless

and lower than their predecessors of 1793.

I.

THE PLACE VENDÔME ON THE NIGHT OF THE TWENTY-FIRST OF MARCH.

I passed a great part of Tuesday, the twenty-first of March, in

discussing with some political friends the intolerable situation of

things at Paris, effected by the triumphal mob of Saturday, the

eighteenth. We all deplored and denounced that unjustifiable attempt 128

at the national sovereignty which suddenly drew on us the danger of

Prussian occupation of the city and the horrors of civil war--perhaps

both of these scourges. Our indignation was profound. One blamed the

government for having too readily abandoned Paris to the danger of

insurrection; another maintained that by establishing itself at

Versailles with the national assembly, and defending the environs of

Paris, it saved France. Another declaimed with bitterness, sometimes

against the culpable indifference of the national guards, which left

everything to be done, and sometimes against the audacity and

wickedness of the leaders of the mob that, without any pretext, was

dragging France, all bleeding from the wounds incurred in war, into a

bottomless abyss. We all felt there was something beneath all this: it

was the shameful defection of a part of the troops of the line which

had rendered such cruel misfortunes possible. If the army were to

countenance the insurrection, that would decide the fate of

France--_Galliæ finis!_

It was easier to deplore the gravity of the evil than to point out a

practical means of remedying it. There was great diversity of opinion

respecting the latter. Should recourse be had to material force or to

a spirit of persuasion and conciliation? The use of material force

might inflame the rebellious party still more, and cover Paris with

blood and ruins. The success of moral influence was hardly possible

with insurgents who began by assassinating Generals Lecomte and

Clément Thomas, and deliberately advocated a social revolution.

At three o’clock, a well-known inhabitant of the Place Vendôme, who

had already distinguished himself by his courage in the insurrection

of June, 1848, in which he was one of the first wounded, came to

announce to me the formal intention of the national guards of his

battalion to retake the place from the insurgents come from the

faubourgs. He thought that by a bold stroke they might effect their

object without a shot. It is sure that the friends of order wished by

all means to avoid the shedding of blood. Some moments after, one of

my friends, who bears one of the great political names of France, and

is destined to render his country eminent service, after the example

of his family, because he is at once a man of superior intelligence

and disinterestedness, very liberal and very religious, announced to

me that the national guards of his arrondissement were animated with

the best intentions, and comprehended the urgent necessity of

maintaining order in the midst of the inextricable chaos into which we

had fallen. He was himself a powerful example of the resolution and

self-sacrifice inspired by an enlightened and generous patriotism. A

retired officer from the time of his marriage, he had organized, at

the beginning of the war, the national guards of that section of the

country in which his estate was. Later, when the army of General

Chanzy made his evolution from the Loire toward the Sarthe, he resumed

his military life, and took an active part as captain of the staff in

the operations and struggles of the army of the west. The very day he

returned to civil life, he took the cars to spend some days at Paris,

where several members of his family awaited him. He arrived there on

the eve of the eighteenth of March. Instead of returning to the

country, like so many other Parisians, he enrolled his name the

following day as a simple member of the national guards, resolved to

recede before no danger or fatigue, and to serve the cause of order at 129

Paris as he had been serving the cause of the national honor in his

province. We should not despair of the future prosperity of a country

in which there is still a great number of examples of similar

devotedness. He did not think of returning to the country till the day

after the mayors and deputies of Paris, doubtless unwittingly serving

the interests of demagogism much more than the demagogues themselves,

thought they were making a conciliatory move by yielding to their

wishes, inviting the Parisian electors to illegal elections,

disbanding the battalions of the national guard, wholly devoted to the

cause of order, and thus destroying the sole material and moral

support that still remained to the better portion of Paris. These

mayors and deputies, whose imprudence and want of foresight no human

tongue could express, declared they had saved everything, and they had

lost everything. They ascended to the Capitol as in triumph, and they

had led us to the Tarpeian Rock. They pretended to avoid the shedding

of blood, and chose the surest means of shedding it in torrents. My

friend agreed with me that next to the hideous stand of the battalions

of the line that had entered into a pact with the mob, nothing could

be more disastrous than the inexplicable compromise entered into by

these mayors and deputies. There was not a day on which I did not

apply to them the dilemma that I formerly applied to the government of

the emperor in the _guêt-à-pens_ of Castelfidardo: “Either dupes or

accomplices.”[41]

At five o’clock, an old deputy who had been brutally excluded from the

legislative body in the favorable time of official candidature,

because he would not renounce his opinions of freedom and control,

gave me some interesting details respecting the pacific manifestations

that had just met with an unhoped-for success. A great number of

citizens, of all ages and of every rank, had traversed the principal

quarters unarmed, crying, “_Vive l’Ordre! Vive la France! Vive

l’Assemblée Nationale!_” They everywhere meet with cordial sympathy.

The battalion that guarded the Bourse presented arms as they passed.

The battalions of the faubourgs, that held the Place Vendôme,

endeavored in vain to prevent their passing, and the person who from

the balcony of the staff wished to address them in order to justify

the insurrectionary movement, was interrupted by enthusiastic

acclamations in favor of order and the national assembly.

The central committee at the Hôtel de Ville understood so well the

bearing of this manifestation that they hastened to take energetic

measures to remain masters of the Place Vendôme, and not to allow in

it any new manifestations from the friends of order. They sent thither

several battalions. Travel was forbidden there and in the neighboring

streets; the approaches were rigorously guarded: four pieces of

cannon, with cannoneers ready to fire, were set up in the Rue de la

Paix and the Rue Castiglione.

At nine o’clock, the wife of one of the employees of the minister of 130

justice came to beg me to carry to her brother the final consolations

of religion. I had seen him some days previous, and his end seemed

near. It was with the greatest difficulty she had left the Ministère

and the Place Vendôme, and she feared it would be impossible for me to

return with her. But, unwilling her brother should die without the

sacraments of the church, she succeeded by her prayers and tears in

reaching me, and was willing to brave everything again in order to

enable me to go to him.

I assured her I would unite my efforts to hers, and, though conscious

that the ecclesiastical costume had, since the downfall of the empire,

been disagreeable to the Parisian revolutionists, I added that we

should succeed. I set out that very instant with one of the employees

of the church.

The Place and the Boulevard de la Madeleine were quiet and nearly

deserted. The Rue Neuve-des-Capucines was livelier. At the entrance of

the Place Vendôme, I found myself in presence of the national guards,

who did not much resemble those belonging to that quarter. They were

very numerous. Their language was in the main rather noisy than

threatening. The words “citizen” and “republic” were constantly on

their lips. They allowed no one to stop, and showed themselves

severely rigid towards the passers-by that wished to contemplate a

spectacle so new in this pacific and wealthy quarter.

I had not yet arrived at the angle of the Rue Neuve-des-Capucines and

the Place Vendôme, when an outpost of the national guards, arms in

hand, cried to me in somewhat rough tone: “Citizen, no one is allowed

to stop!” It was the very place and the time to stop to accomplish my

holy mission. I explained briefly, but politely, the motive that led

me to the Place Vendôme: it was a question of giving a dying person

the last succor of religion; and, to leave no doubt of the truth of my

statement, I pointed out the lady, bathed in tears, at my side, and

the employee of the Madeleine. “It is impossible, citizen,” was

uttered on all sides, “the _consigne_ has forbidden it.” I asked

to see one of the officers, for I saw plainly I should be obliged to

parley, but, in view of a duty so grave and urgent, I resolved to use

every means. A sergeant presented himself with that important and

somewhat ridiculous air which carries the conviction among the lower

ranks that public affairs could not be sustained without him. I

explained my wish. “You cannot pass.” I mildly insisted. “The

_consigne_ has forbidden it, and to-day he is very rigorous.” I

asked the reason of this exceptional severity. “It is, you see,

citizen, because the bourgeoisie of this quarter have been making a

racket to-day, and this must not be repeated.”

This observation, one of the most characteristic I ever heard in my

life, was made with a seriousness which would have dispelled mine at

another time less distressing to my heart as a priest and a Frenchman.

Convinced that nothing was to be effected with this sergeant, who was

more self-sufficient than wicked, I asked to see the captain. He came

to me with a dry and lofty air that the mildness of my language and

doubtless the sad motive also that led me to the Place Vendôme

speedily modified. After refusing me, and listening to renewed

entreaties, he gave me permission to enter the Place Vendôme, on

condition that I should remain all night. That was the extent of the

right allowed him by the _consigne_. Tired of constantly hearing of a 131

_consigne_ who, according to the graphic avowal of the sergeant, was

only influenced by his dissatisfaction at the racket that the

bourgeoisie of the quarter had been making that day, I replied that I

could not accept the condition, that I was very sorry not to be able

to understand a refusal which affected a dying person and a family in

affliction, and that I would leave the public to judge this fact,

since there was no other authority to appeal to.

These words, uttered with an emotion but little restrained, changed

the mind of the captain, who vainly sought plausible pretexts to

oppose me. He appeared, besides, to be greatly preoccupied with the

command he exercised: others were constantly coming to him for orders,

and it was evident from his embarrassed manner that he had been more

accustomed to receive than to give orders. He ordered one of the

national guards to accompany me to the house of the minister of

justice, not to lose sight of me for an instant, and to bring me back

to the entrance of the Rue Neuve-des-Capucines. Notwithstanding the

pacific character of my costume, I was treated like one of the

suspicious bourgeoisie of the quarter, who could not be pardoned for

having made a racket during the day. The insurgents had strengthened

their position in the Place Vendôme, to prevent henceforth the

manifestations of honest people. They appeared resolved to allow it to

be entered only with extreme circumspection, and by persons who

resided here.

I proceeded, accompanied by my national guardsman, who was armed.

The Place was poorly lighted. We had scarcely left behind us the group

of national guards that barricaded the entrance, than he addressed me

these words in a confused but very respectful tone: “How sad all this

is, monsieur l’abbé, and how wrong not to arrange everything so every

one can remain at home and quietly attend to his business!” I

evidently had with me one of the too numerous workmen of Paris who

love order and peace, but who dare not, or who do not know how to,

resist the bold ringleaders who take them from their work and lead

them astray. The fear of not speaking with sufficient calmness and

caution, while I was at once afflicted and exasperated, induced me to

be reserved. I merely replied that I shared his sentiments, and that

very probably reason would prevail in the end.

Every moment we met armed groups. As far as I could judge, from rapid

glances over the Place, some were discussing with vivacity the events

of the day: others, like mercenaries, without dignity and without

conscience, appeared to have no other care than to smoke and drink.

The insurgents I met did not conceal the suprise that the presence of

a priest in their midst during the night caused them. Those who

thought I had been arrested, and was on my way to the post of the

_état-major_, where I had seen more than one spy or Prussian led

during the siege, did not deprive themselves of the pleasure of aiming

a joke or an insult at me. Those who thought I was going to fulfil the

duties of the holy ministry saluted me with respect. They were far

from resembling in their equipments and deportment the national guards

of the quarter of St. Roch or the Madeleine, but when I compared them

with those I found the next day in the same place, after the criminal

and bloody fusillade upon citizens only guilty of calmly expressing

their love of order and their devotedness to the national assembly,

they were comparatively disciplined and civilized. 132

The ante-room of the minister of justice’s residence was guarded by

insurgents, who allowed no one to enter or go out without particular

scrutiny. I quickly made known to the leader the object of my mission.

He listened to me with evident curiosity and self-sufficiency, and,

after affecting to consider, he motioned me to proceed. The court was

occupied by another post that watched the entrance to the offices and

hôtel of the minister, and the avenue that led through the gardens to

the Rue de Luxembourg. No light was to be seen in the apartments. A

profound silence reigned everywhere. No other employee remained at the

minister’s than the brother-in-law of the young man to whom I was

carrying the last consolations of religion. He received them with more

calmness and serenity than might have been expected, humanly speaking,

of a young man of twenty-two years of age, when one looks forward to a

long life; but what a double grief for a family to find themselves at

once in the presence of death and a band of insurgents!

A quarter of an hour after, I left the _ministère_ with my national

guard, who treated me with a respect more and more deferential. The

lady who had gone to the Rue de la Ville-l’Evêque to find me was also

struck with his excellent appearance, and commissioned me to give him

a small sum of money. I begged him, as delicately as possible, to

accept it in aid of his family, who might be in need for want of

employment. He seemed very much touched by this generous attention,

and, as much to satisfy my curiosity as to prevent the difficulty of

expressing his gratitude at a time when he was officially charged with

guarding me, I concluded to address him some questions.

“From what quarter of Paris are you?”

“I am from Bercy, monsieur l’abbé. They sounded the rappel this

evening. I set out with my company. They told us we were appointed to

a very important patriotic mission. Arrived at the Place Vendôme, we

were ordered to guard it rigorously.”

“But why so rigorous a guard in a quarter where there are only very

excellent people, who love order and peace above all things?”

“Ma foi, monsieur l’abbé, I know nothing at all about it. Bercy is

perfectly quiet. This quarter is no less so. I do not understand it.

They ordered us to come, and we had to obey.”

“But did you not at Bercy have confidence in M. Thiers as well as we?

Do you prefer Assi, Flourens, Blanqui, and Felix Pyat to him?”

“Our employers have always spoken very highly of him. The good workmen

call him a great patriot, and not a mere pretender like so many

others. He promised us liberty and work, and would certainly have kept

his word. So we have committed a great piece of foolishness in

allowing him to go to Versailles. God grant it may not be for a long

time!”

“But what becomes of your work all this time? Do you think this state

of thing favorable to the interests of the workman?”

“Ah, monsieur l’abbé, work is a thing but little thought of now, and

yet the longer we delay resuming it, the more unfortunate we are.

There are among us so many sluggards and madcaps!...”

My excellent guard was explaining to me in his own way how the bad

workmen, who wished in 1848 to obtain the right to labor, had, since

the siege of Paris, wished to retain the right of doing nothing, when 133

I found myself at the spot whence we had set out. Immediately resuming

his most official and patronizing air--“Citizen,” said he to the

patrol that guarded the entrance to the Place Vendôme, “let this

citizen pass!”

I had promised the family of the poor sick man to visit him again in

two or three days. Complicated as the situation of Paris was, and in

particular that of the Place Vendôme, treated and occupied as a place

taken by storm, in defiance of all right and all decency, by the

national guards of the faubourgs in revolt against the laws, I was far

from anticipating that I should hasten the next day to the same place

in the midst of all the horrors of civil war, to carry the

consolations of religion to the honorable inhabitants of Paris,

smitten down without any provocation, without any motive, by the

bullets of their fellow-citizens.

II.

THE PLACE VENDÔME ON WEDNESDAY, THE TWENTY-SECOND OF MARCH.

The next day, the twenty-second of March--henceforth one of the

saddest dates in the history of Paris--I was on duty at the church of

the Madeleine--that is to say, appointed to receive, from six o’clock

in the morning till ten at night, those persons who sought the

religious or charitable ministry of the priest, and to afford them all

the satisfaction within the limits of possibility.