The only information we found it easy to gather related to everything

connected with material subjects. In a surprisingly short space of time,

we knew, from our guides, the names of all the peaks, and many, too, of

the smaller summits, and, above all, could speak in an authoritative tone

of the best hotels in different places, the price of _pension_ in each,

whether the Kellners were civil, the living better in one than another,

Cook’s tickets an advantage or not, where the carriage‐roads ended and the

riding or walking began—in fine, became very clever on all those points

which form the staple of conversation at all Swiss hotels and halting‐

places. Yet we conscientiously employed our eyes and ears, so as to come

to no wrong conclusion. The more one travels in Switzerland, the more

necessary this precaution seems. Whatever efforts we made, however,

brought about the same unfavorable result. The whole aspect of the country

we traversed justified our German acquaintance’s harsh criticisms. Even

the Protestant churches, which, if only from a pure spirit of opposition,

one might expect to show a flourishing exterior, are in Switzerland more

than usually bald and cheerless. Unlike English churches of the present

day, they are completely innocent of the slightest approach to decoration,

and very often without sign of communion‐table or anything even

representing it. Sometimes a bare slab of marble, without altar‐cloth or

covering, stands in the middle; but often this is brought out only at

stated periods for the administration of the Lord’s Supper, and, as a

rule, the seats are ranged round the pulpit—the only centre of attraction

in these buildings. Of all nations, the English show the most tangible

signs of life. They, at least, bring themselves more prominently forward;

for the first paper that strikes the eye on entering every Swiss inn is

the list of services and chaplains supplied to Switzerland for the season

by the English Church Colonial Society. Churches they do not possess,

except in a few favored spots; and many are the lamentations amongst the

wandering Britons at being obliged to content themselves with the drawing‐

room or billiard‐room of a large hotel, where probably the evening before

they had assembled amidst gaiety and laughter. It is an arrangement, too,

often complained of by the other inmates—one which led to a serious

dispute in one place, where the German visitors claimed their right to the

billiard‐table at the hour appointed by the English chaplain for his

service. Still, there they are, mindful, at least, of “Sabbath worship,”

when the majority of their co‐religionists see no necessity for

remembering it.

Crowds of Anglican clergymen were also found travelling, on their own

account, in the Protestant cantons. Five‐and‐twenty were together one day

at Mürren, of all shades and hues, too; from my Lord Bishop, with his wife

and daughters, to the young Ritualist curate, in his Roman collar and

otherwise Catholic dress, the highest ambition of whose heart is to be

taken—or rather _mistaken_—for a true Catholic priest. And very hard it is

to distinguish him, at first sight, from the genuine character, so exact

has he made the superficial copy. After a little conversation, however, it

is easy to know that such unmitigated abuse of the Episcopal dignitary who

sits at the other end of the room, and of the whole bench of bishops,

cannot belong to the true church, which not only enjoins but practises

submission to authority. Intellectual these High‐Churchmen always are, and

would make pleasant company but for the crookedness of their “opinions,”

and their unconcealed exultation, too, at the assumed progress of the so‐

called “Old‐Catholic” movement, which they represent as undermining the

whole of Switzerland. Catholic Switzerland they always meant; for even

they could not blind themselves to the fact that in the Protestant

districts there is little left to take away. One could only wonder how,

with their hankering after Catholic things, they could in any way feel

drawn towards those cantons; and it more than ever strengthened our

conviction (though nothing offends them more than such a suggestion) that

the sole binding link between these English High‐Churchmen and the

miscellaneous companies which assemble at the “Old‐Catholic” meetings is

their common ground of rebellion to mother church—which, as daily

experience infallibly proves, gathers together all grades of belief and

unbelief outside the Catholic fold, and induces them to ignore all their

important differences in the bond of a hatred which is truly preternatural

to the spouse of Christ!

Wet days at Swiss hotels are proverbially fruitful of talk and discussion;

and nowadays these religious subjects are certain to be started by some

new Ritualistic acquaintance, who evidently presumes on sympathy from

English‐speaking travellers. Above all, should he or she discover that you

are a “Romanist,” as they choose to call us children of the true church,

it is most curious to observe what an irresistible secret attraction

impels them to follow you, from morning to night, with their arguments and

spiritual “views.” Oh! what days of annoyance continued rain has cost us

on those mountain‐tops—days of true annoyance unmixed with good; for in no

single instance did we find any permanent impression made on these

Ritualists, who, of all Protestants, are the most hopelessly blinded and

obstinate. And most fully do we agree with a high ecclesiastical authority

who recently remarked to us that all other shades of churchmen, including

the evangelical or Low Church, respond to the call of grace more readily

than these men and women, whose stand‐point is that pride which obscures

their spiritual vision. After two or three such discussions, we foresaw

the point exactly when they would dogmatically assert that they, “too, are

Catholics,” and that an irreparable breach was to be the immediate

consequence of the solemn protest which it became our duty to make on each

similar occasion. Before we reached Mürren, therefore, we had learnt to

avoid them. By that time, too, we found that all their information about

“Old Catholics” was derived either from the English newspapers or those

foreign ones which, in rainy, stay‐at‐home weather, are studied in those

places with persevering assiduity.

We ourselves endeavored to gather from this source some of that

information unattainable elsewhere, but very soon indignantly threw aside

these tainted productions. Our German friend was right on this point,

certainly; for anything more shameful and less religious than the attacks

on the priesthood in general, the false statements put forward, and the

undisguised rationalism—not to give it a worse name—of most of these

foreign newspapers which flood the reading‐rooms of Switzerland, it would

be difficult to imagine. Not a single Catholic newspaper came under our

eye in the _pensions_ and hotels. If they were taken in, they were

certainly hidden away; and the tone of the German press, in particular,

perfectly justified the assertion which has been hazarded—namely, that it

has altogether fallen into the hands of the once‐despised Jews. Alas!

alas! the “Israelites” of the present day may well exult and lift up their

heads in the remarkable and daily‐increasing manner so noticeable all over

Europe, where the faith of Christians is so tepid and their sight so weak

as no longer to distinguish the true from the false in these proud and

“enlightened” days!

Disheartened by all we saw and heard, we frequently turned to the poor, in

the hope of better feelings; and although no outward token of man’s

habitual remembrance of his Maker met our observation, we tried to lead

the guides and peasants to speak, now and then, on these subjects. In

vain, however. They appeared to have no thoughts to communicate, no

familiarity with the supernatural, nor other answer but the dry, curt one

to give: _Wir sind alle Reformirten im Canton Berne_—“We are all Reformed

in the Canton of Berne.”

This hard, unsympathetic tone of mind jarred on our highest and tenderest

feelings; and the grander the surrounding scenery, the more painful its

impression. It had reached its climax a few days before we met Mrs. C—— at

Berne.

Having slept one night at Lauterbrunnen, and the next morning proving

lovely, we determined to go on at once to Grindelwald. There had been no

service of any kind at the village of Mürren; but here a bell rang early,

and we had thus begun the day by lamenting that it did not summon us to

Mass before starting on our journey. But this being a strictly “Reformed”

neighborhood, it was foolish to nourish any such hope. The sparkling rays

of sunlight on the Staabbart, however, the drive through the magnificent

valley, the rushing torrent, and opening views of our favorite mountains,

free from the veil of mist that had covered them on the previous day, the

exhilarating air, and general brightness of a grand nature, gradually

restored us to more contented dispositions. The day was splendid. The

Wetterhorn, Finsteraarhorn, Eiger, and Jungfrau stood erect before and

above us, as we drove up to the hotel, in all their grandeur, sternness,

and soft beauty withal; their spotless snows and blue glaciers running

down amongst and fringing the green, placid pastures below, whilst

Grindelwald itself, the pretty village of scattered _châlets_, lay bathed

in sunshine at their feet. It was the beginning of September; yet the

visitors were so few and imperceptible that we felt as if we alone had

possession of this wonderful scene. Nor was there a breath of wind or a

cloud in the sky, in an atmosphere of transparent brilliancy—one of those

rare days which seem lent to us from Paradise, when one’s only thought can

be that of thankfulness; one’s only sigh, “Lord! it is good for us to be

here.” We had been sitting for some time on a grassy slope, drinking in

all this ethereal beauty, and gazing silently on those “great apostles of

nature, those church‐towers of the mountains,” as Longfellow so

beautifully calls them, when our thoughts wandered on to the perils

peculiar to such a spot. Of the two glaciers right before us, one—the

smaller one, it is true—had all but disappeared within the last four

years. It had melted away gradually during an unusually hot summer, the

guide had told us, though fortunately without causing any considerable

damage in the valley underneath. Very different it would be if the larger

one were to vanish; and we naturally reverted to a description we had

recently read, by a well‐known dignitary of the English Church, of the

appalling catastrophe near Martigny, in 1818, when the whole district was

made desolate and villages swept away, in consequence of the breaking‐up

of a similar glacier under the Lake of Mauvoisin. We had just said that if

any people should “stand ready” it certainly was the Swiss, when suddenly,

as if in response to our meditations, the silvery sound of a church‐bell

came wafted to us through the balmy air. The building itself was out of

sight, hidden behind a small knoll; so we hastened at once on a voyage of

discovery in search of it. The day and hour were so unusual that a faint

hope arose of finding some out‐of‐the‐way Catholic convent, forgotten,

perhaps, by the old “Reformers.” It was only the small church of the

village, however. The bell was still ringing, and the door open, but no

one near; and, entering in, nothing was to be seen save an empty interior

with whitewashed walls, where a few benches alone indicated that it served

any purpose or ever emerged from its present forlorn and desolate

condition. Perplexed for an explanation, we appealed to some villagers in

the vicinity—old women who, had it been a Catholic church, were just the

sort of bodies one would have found telling their beads in some corner of

it at every hour of the day; but blank countenances were all we elicited

by our first question of why the bell was ringing or what service was

about to begin. “Service! What service?” they answered inquiringly.

“Divine service”—_Gottesdienst_—we replied, making the question more

explicit, the better to suit their capacities. “Divine service? Oh! that

is only on Sundays, of course,” was their answer; and it never seemed to

cross their minds that people ought also to pray on other days. In fact,

no single person in the place could give any reason for the tolling of

this bell (evidently the Vesper‐bell of old Catholic times), except that

it rung regularly on every afternoon at 3 o’clock. A poverty‐stricken,

unhealthy‐looking population they were, too—just the class that stand much

in need of spiritual comforts—of those aids from heaven which the poor

need more palpably even than the possessors of material wealth, in order

to bring them through the troubles of this weary world, and to sustain

their courage at every step. Both here and at Lauterbrunnen, despite all

police prohibitions, our carriage was followed by numbers of sickly and

deformed children, whose monotonous drone was unenlivened by one bright

look, by any petition “for the love of God,” or any of those touching

variations of the Catholic beggar in every part of the world, which, no

matter what one may say at the time, do appeal to a Christian heart more

than any one is aware of until made sensible of their impression by the

chilly effects of their absence on such occasions.

But our spirits revived, as we returned to Interlachen, at sight of the

old Franciscan convent standing embosomed in its stately trees. Hitherto

we had only passed through the place on our way to and from the mountain

excursions; but to‐morrow would be Sunday, and the Catholic service, we

had ascertained, was in the convent church. Away, therefore, with our

saddened hearts and dismal musings! The plain would evidently treat us

more charitably than the highland country had hitherto done! Beautiful,

lovely Interlachen! lying amidst its brown, flowery meadows, under its

stately walnut‐trees; the white‐robed Jungfrau rising opposite in all her

dignified beauty, unaccompanied by Monk or Eiger, or any of her snowy

compeers. The sun was setting as we drove up to the hotel Victoria just in

time to see its deep‐red, crimson farewell, thrown across the brow of the

grand mountain, melt gradually into the most tender violet, as if in

mourning for his departure. And as we sat on the balcony all that evening

in the stillness of the autumnal air, watching the full moon shining on

the “pale Virgin,” making her glitter like silver, and stand out, in all

her majesty, from the dark, enclosing line of intervening hills, we felt

once more how glorious is God’s creation in all its simple magnificence!

How grand, how awful it can be! And again, at dawn, we beheld the same

spotless peak receive with a tender, pink blush the first rays of the

returning sun, to dazzle us henceforward during all that day by her

transcendent loveliness through an ethereal veil of transparent delicacy,

and to draw our thoughts heavenward, pointing upwards like a faithful

angel guardian anxious to remind us that all this earthly beauty is as

naught compared to the bright visions which await us beyond!

It was nine o’clock that morning before the church‐bell sounded; but then

we sallied forth with full hearts, and made our way along the beautiful

avenue of walnut‐trees towards the old convent. With elastic gait we

ascended the ancient steps of the ivy‐mantled church, rejoicing in the

sign‐post which boastfully pointed “à l’Eglise Catholique”! But vain were

our illusions! How could we have been so sanguine! This fine old convent,

as perfect as at the time of its suppression in 1527, is far too valuable,

think the authorities, to be given up by an antagonistic government to the

successors of its original owners. A large part of the dwelling portion,

therefore, is used by the commune of Interlachen for its public offices,

whilst the remainder is divided between the different foreign

“persuasions” that visit Interlachen every summer. That high‐sounding

title, “l’Eglise Catholique,” belonged only to a small chapel constructed

out of one end of the church—the smaller end—and floored, moreover, up to

half its height. The other and larger portion was given up for the English

Church service, whilst the Free Kirk of Scotland and “l’Eglise Evangélique

de France,” were installed here and there amongst the cloisters. Most

correctly, then, did an old man, who was found sweeping out the passages,

describe himself as employed by _tous les cultes_.

Nor was the Catholic congregation more permanent than the others. It

appeared to consist chiefly of strangers, and the priest, a Frenchman, who

spoke in feeling accents of the persecution going on throughout the

country, announced that although the following day would be a holiday,

there could be no Mass; for he had to quit Interlachen on that same

evening.

As we came out from the convent, sad and gloomy, a pretty sight awaited

us: hundreds of boys and girls, of all sizes and ages, marching to the

strains of a band towards a large meadow hard by, where gymnastic and

other games were about to commence. Orderly and bright‐looking they all

were, accompanied by half the population of the town and neighborhood,

chiefly attired in the picturesque Bernese costume, and including,

evidently, the fathers and mothers of the young generation. It was a most

brilliant yet soothing picture, as we beheld them passing on under the

shade of the wide‐spreading, lofty walnut‐trees; the little maidens in

their fresh summer dresses, embroidered muslin aprons, and hats crowned

with masses of flowers, standing out against the green background of the

nearer mountains, whilst the lovely Jungfrau beyond shone out resplendent

beneath the rays of a dazzling sun. Long stood we watching them; for it

was a scene to enjoy and treasure up in one’s memory. What a pity that the

recollection should be darkened by the after‐knowledge that none of this

merry crowd had begun the day by divine worship! And noteworthy was this

fact, making all the difference between this and the Catholic practice in

such matters. Nor shall we fail to remember, if ever again taunted by

those Protestants who consider it a sin to be light‐hearted on the

Sabbath, that this mode of keeping Sunday is not sanctioned by a Catholic,

but by one of their own cherished “Reformed” cantons. Catholic the

proceedings truly were, in being orderly, innocent, healthful, and

rational; but most _un_catholic in not having even allowed the time

necessary for religion. No Catholic ecclesiastical authority sanctions

such amusements on Sundays without the whole population having had the

opportunity of hearing Mass first—a matter that is not left optional, but

made obligatory on every member of the church. Here, on the contrary,

there is only one service in the Protestant church, and that at 10 o’clock

A.M.; so that, even had they wished it, none of these merry‐makers could

have been present. Nor, during the whole of that day, did we hear any

neighboring village‐bells summoning their flocks to prayer. Indeed, many

of the villages are without any churches. There is none, for instance, at

Mürren, nor in many of the hamlets along the Lake of Brienz, nor in

various other spots which might easily be named. One hears a vast deal

about Swiss “pasteurs,” and pretty stories are written wherein they figure

largely; but it is only natural to conclude that if there are numberless

villages without churches, they are equally without “pasteurs”; and one

cannot help wondering how the sick and poor fare in these distant parts in

the ice‐bound winter weather, nor avoid fearing that there is much truth

in the dreary suggestions we often heard expressed, that they constantly

die and are buried without any spiritual ministrations whatsoever.

And yet the Swiss, and especially the people of this neighborhood, did not

always voluntarily abandon the ancient church, nor lapse of a sudden into

the indifferentism now so general. But no doubt the present apathy is the

inherited result of the mixed notions which actuated their forefathers,

and the absence amongst them of that pure attachment to their faith and

the unconquerable steadiness and manliness by which the adjoining cantons

of Unterwalden and Uri have so eminently distinguished themselves up to

the present hour.

Whilst meditating over all we had seen and heard, we accidentally opened

Zschokke’s _History of Switzerland_ at the page where he speaks of those

mixed feelings which were perceptible in all the religious divisions

between 1527 and 1528. The writer is a Protestant, and therefore his

version is all the more interesting, as admitting the coercion it was

necessary to use for the introduction of the new doctrines—doubly

interesting, too, as read here, at Interlachen, on the spot and by the

light of the similar system—for there is nothing new under the sun—at

present in full operation in so many of these same cantons.

After speaking of various disputes, he says: “For of those who raised

their voices against the new creed, thousands upon thousands were

actuated, not by piety or love of the good and true, but by interested

motives under pretence of religion. Amongst the country people, many

expected greater liberties and rights by the introduction of the recent

doctrines; and when these were not granted to them, they returned to the

Catholic faith. The moment the town council of Berne suppressed the

convent at Interlachen, and appointed preachers of the reformed church,

the peasants, highly pleased, thought and said: ‘No convent mesnes, no

taxes, no feudal service.’ But when the town only transferred the taxes

and service to itself, the peasants, through pure anger, became Catholic

again, drove away the Protestant preachers, and marched in armed bodies to

Thun. Berne hereupon appealed to its other subjects, offering to leave the

matter to their arbitration; for the town desired peace, knowing well that

neither quick nor efficient aid could be counted on by them from the

neighboring cantons, which were all Catholic. These subjects of Berne,

flattered by the confidence reposed in them by the authorities, decided in

their favor, saying: ‘The worldly rights of the convent go to the worldly

authorities, and are in no wise the property of the peasants.’ On hearing

this, the rebellious country‐folk of Grindelwald returned to their homes,

but in no contented mood, although the town had relieved them from many

burdens, in favor of their suffering poor.” And curious it was to note the

tight hold still retained on these same worldly goods by the commune of

Interlachen, and to see, after a lapse of three centuries, their _bureaux

administratifs_ still located in the cloisters; nor can it be supposed

that the “suffering poor” of Grindelwald have reaped much benefit from

their three centuries of secular masters, if we may judge by the

numberless beggars who now over‐run that whole district.

Having then related that much discontent at the state of affairs was felt

by the monks of Interlachen, the abbot of Engelberg, and the inhabitants

of Oberhasli—a district which, though under the protection of Berne, held

many rights and privileges independent of that town—Zschokke proceeds:

“When the commune of Oberhasli, encouraged by the monks of Engelberg and

their neighbors of Unterwalden, likewise drove away the Protestant

parsons, and sent to Uri and Unterwalden for Catholic priests, those of

Grindelwald did the same; Aeschi, Frutigen, Obersimmel, and other villages

followed their example, and the Unterwaldeners even sent them military

assistance across the Brunig. But Berne flew to arms at once, and her army

marched on rapidly, before the secession had time to increase. The timid

and discontented peasants fled in a panic, and even the Unterwaldeners

retreated over the mountain. Berne then punished Oberhasli severely—took

away its public seal and many other privileges for a long period; for ever

deprived the valley of the right to elect its own landamman; had the

ringleaders of the movement executed, and forced the others to plead for

pardon on their knees, surrounded by a circle of armed soldiers. Frutigen,

the Simmenthal, and others were also brought back by main force to the

Protestant faith”—if “faith” that can be called, we may add, which shows

no sign of life in all these places.

In no happy frame of mind we pushed on next day to Berne, half inclined to

abandon the remainder of our Swiss tour—an inclination which had ripened

to a determination by the time we met our friend in the hall of the Berner

Hof on the following morning.

In Berne, as in other of the large Swiss towns, Catholicity has made

itself both seen and felt of late years, and a handsome church has

recently been built there, in place of the one which was formerly shared

with the Lutherans in that extraordinary manner still in operation in one

or two Protestant parts of Germany. Some friends of ours, who had passed

through Berne about fifteen years ago, had been at Mass early one Sunday

morning, and, returning at a later hour, found the same church in

possession of the Protestants, the only difference observable being the

“communion‐table,” then placed at the end opposite to the Catholic altar,

and the chairs turned round in that direction. This anomalous state of

things has now ceased, and the new Catholic church is both pretty and well

served. But the week‐day congregation is very small, and the half‐past

seven o’clock Mass we found but thinly attended. Still, there it is, even

so, in striking contrast to the Protestant cathedral. In pleasing

contrast, were more truly said; for this beautiful pre‐Reformation

cathedral, with its splendid porch of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, its

elaborately‐carved choir, and its old stained‐glass History of the Blessed

Eucharist, is lifeless and colorless in its present aspect. Though we went

there at an early hour, every door was closed, except one at the side,

jealously guarded by a cross old woman, who hindered all entrance until we

had each paid thirty centimes. Then we were handed on to another

woman—between them they had charge of the church—who ran from one party of

sight‐seers to another, showing off the different points in a loud voice,

just as if it were a museum or any other secular building! Had it been an

English cathedral church even, there would probably have been a daily

service; but then such a pious practice seemed quite as unfamiliar as to

the peasants of Grindelwald. The old guardian stared at us in blank

surprise on our asking the question, and—seeming to imply that she

detected we were “Papists”—proudly answered, “Certainly not! Only on

Sundays, and then at nine o’clock.”

As usual, no communion‐table stood in the place of the high altar, but

here, as in many other Swiss churches, a large black marble table which

serves for this purpose stands right in front of the choir and pulpit, and

the stalls immediately near were assigned to the “Guardian of the Holy

Supper” and one or two other of the church functionaries. In the cathedral

square outside, the town has recently placed the beautiful statue of

Rudolf von Erlach, the great hero of Laupen, one of the starting‐points of

its history, in 1339. It was impossible, as we passed it, not to remember

that the most glorious victories of Berne were fought and won in those

olden days of the true faith, when her sons knew how to unite the love of

freedom with devotion to the church and obedience to her authority, and

that one of the prominent causes of that great and victorious battle was

their refusal to recognize the Emperor Louis of Germany, simply because

the pope had recently excommunicated him. Those golden days of Bernese

history! of which her Protestant historian, Zschokke, is constrained to

say that “the town, which was threatened with entire destruction, became

so victorious as henceforward to threaten destruction to all her enemies.

Her citizens had fought with one thousand iron arms against ten thousand;

all with one mind and one heart; no one for himself, but all for the good

of the town. In this manner alone can wonders be effected.”

Full of sad thoughts on the degeneracy of her present children, who strive

to use their powerful influence over the rest of their confederates for

the persecution and suppression of their former faith, we turned to seek

information at the railway station about the trains to Lyons or Mâcon,

persuaded that a further stay on Swiss ground would only increase our

discontent; and, truly, our wrath grew to fever heat when, passing by the

book‐stall, we found it filled with the most shocking caricatures—and

worse—of everything Catholic, nay, everything religious. Illustrated

_Lives of the Saints_, _Of the Pious Helen_, and such like titles, got up

in the most attractive form, first caught our eyes and rejoiced our hearts

with the hope of better things; but anything more scandalous than the

scenes there depicted, the low, disgraceful ideas put forward, in the

coarsest style, by both pen and pencil, we never before beheld exposed in

any civilized community. In England the police would at once have

interfered and seized the whole establishment. Here they covered the book‐

stall; and the woman who presided showed us undisguisedly that they were

written and printed in Germany, and sent here for sale. What hope is there

for populations who, in the name of religion, can countenance such

wickedness?

It was at this stage of our perambulations and in this condition of mind

that, on returning to the hotel, we had encountered Mrs. C——. She was no

Catholic, but, entering into all our feelings, she protested that we

should find everything quite different in the Catholic cantons, if we only

_would_ make the experiment. She had been there often, and knew that we

should be delighted with them. To every objection we made she had a ready

answer. Besides, what is more magical than the bright faces and kind looks

of friends—above all, of old friends, when met abroad? As a natural

consequence, therefore, it was not surprising to us to find ourselves,

after all, seated with this pleasant party in the train which that

afternoon was leaving for Lucerne. Our equanimity, it is true, was

disturbed at the junction at Olten—by the sight of that manufacturing town

full of the “free thought” and advanced liberals of modern society, the

head‐quarters of Old‐Catholic meetings, and the only place where, at that

date, the parish church had been given up to one of the few rebellious

priests, whilst its true pastor was obliged to live in a small private

house, where he still ministered to his old flock as in the days of early

Christian persecution. But we soon reached Lucerne and a Catholic

atmosphere, and what befell us in that quarter, what we saw and heard from

its people, shall be related in the following chapters to our kind and

indulgent readers.

Epigram on Abraham Lincoln.

Scivit in extremis statuum defendere fœdus:

Reddidit optatam collecto milite pacem.

Grapes And Thorns. Chapter XII. A Taper Lighted, And A Taper Blown Out.

By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”

Our two travellers did not know how far removed they were from the common

ways of life till they were again on land. The strangeness of a sea‐voyage

had made their own strangeness less apparent; but when they saw homes, and

all the daily interests of life moving on as once they had moved for them,

familiar things assumed in their eyes a certain grotesque appearance, and

they scarcely knew themselves or each other. How hollow sounded the

careless laugh they heard, how terrible the jest! How impossible they

found it to comprehend how business and pleasure could absorb men’s souls!

To them this gay and busy world was wandering recklessly on the brink of

an unseen precipice which they alone could see.

Annette Gerald had adopted her husband’s inner, as well as his outer,

life—had, as it were, stepped inside his guilt, and wrapped it round her,

and his world was henceforth her world. With his eyes she saw a leafless

and flowerless England sweep behind her as they sped onward to London; and

she shrank, even as he did, when the thick fog of the great city took them

in and shut them as if in walls of stone.

“We cannot stay here,” her husband said. “I should lose my senses in

twenty‐four hours. This fog makes me feel like a smoky house. Are you too

tired to go on? Do let us have sunshine, at least.”

No, she was never too tired to go on with him.

They had a compartment to themselves, and, weary as they were, started on

again, a little relieved in mind. No one had accosted them in either of

the great cities, and there seemed to be no immediate danger. Overcome

with fatigue and loss of sleep, they both leaned back in the soft

cushions, and slept soundly till some sound or a slackening of their speed

awakened them.

The London fog was far away, and they found themselves passing slowly and

smoothly through a cloud‐world of blue and silver. There was no land in

sight. The window at one side showed them a cliff that might be alabaster,

and might be an illuminated cloud. At the other side, a deep‐blue sea,

foam‐flecked, and a deep blue sky half‐veiled in silvery mists, were so

entangled with each other that only where the full moon rode could they be

sure that it was sky, and only where the wave ran up and curled over in

foam almost within their reach could they be sure that it was water.

“The fairies have taken possession of Dover,” Annette said. “I hope they

have not whisked the steamer away. No; here it is. We will stay on deck,

Lawrence. It is not cold.”

As they steamed out into the channel, another scene of enchantment took

the place of the ordinary view. As they withdrew from the town, it showed

only a crescent of lights; lights clustered all over the foamy water, and

stars clustered in openings of the fleecy clouds above, so that they moved

as if swimming through constellations.

“I hardly know which is up and which is down,” Lawrence said. “Is Europe

made of clay and rock, like America?”

His wife was leaning on his arm, and they stood looking over the rail of

the little steamer. “We might come this way a hundred times, and not see

such a sight,” she replied. “But there is land beyond. That is France—that

low, dark line. In a few hours we shall be in Paris. I shall be glad to

rest when we get there.”

But when they reached it, Paris was as much too light as London had been

too dark. In the one city a foe might stumble upon them at any moment; in

the other, he might see them from afar. They went to a dingy little hotel

in the old part of Paris, and stayed there one day, trying to find rest,

but in vain. Every sound made their hearts beat more quickly; every glance

and sudden step near them sent the blood to their faces. Besides, the

quiet of the place afforded them no distraction from their thoughts. The

noises in the narrow street on which the hotel was built were all shut out

by the heavy portal, and the quadrangle was as still as a forest solitude.

Ivy climbed about the windows, a tiny fountain overflowed and ran in a

stream across the pavement, and the only persons who appeared were the

clergymen who were the chief patrons of the house, and now and then the

universal waiter and servant of servants, François, who shuffled across

the view, a napkin over his arm, and his heavy head dropped forward, so

that only a great ball of frowzy dark hair was visible.

“We cannot stay here,” Annette said, as they stood by the window the first

evening after their arrival. “It is too much like a prison.” She felt her

husband start, and made haste to add: “It is stupid, and I fancy the air

is not good. Besides, Paris is too gay, if we go out into the city. We do

not want gaiety, Lawrence. We want some earnest employment for our time.”

“We will go to Rome,” he said.

“Rome!” she hesitated. “One meets everybody there,” she said; “and there

are so many idlers, too, who have nothing to do but talk of other people’s

affairs. Are you sure you wish to go to Rome, dear?”

“I must go! I have an object in going there,” he exclaimed, excited by the

first show of even slight opposition. “I stake all on Rome. Whatever

happens to me, let it happen there.”

“We will go, then,” she answered soothingly. “And we may as well set out

to‐night. Nothing is unpacked, and we have three hours before the train

starts.”

He walked to and fro over the stone floor of their little sitting‐room,

which allowed only half a dozen paces, so narrow was it. “Three hours!” he

muttered. “It is too much! Cannot we go out? There must be a church near.”

“Yes; in France and in Italy there is always a church near.”

They went into the fading sunset, and soon found themselves entering the

old church of S. Etienne du Mont. Inside, the pale gloaming was changed to

a richly‐tinted gloom that grew every moment deeper. Here and there a lamp

marked some picture or shrine held in special veneration, and far away in

the apse of the church, where the shadows stretched off till they seemed

reaching out to eternity, burned a single point of light, as small as a

star.

Annette clasped her hands over her husband’s arm, and leaned her cheek

close to his shoulder, as they stood near the door and looked at this

little beacon. “O Lawrence!” she whispered, “it is like the light the

mother sets in the window to guide her children home at night. O me! O

me!” she cried pitifully. “What is to become of us!”

A crown of tapers burned about the shrine where the body of S. Geneviève

had once lain, and an old woman sat near by with her prayer‐book,

presiding over a table piled with tapers of different lengths, her white

cap showing like a little heap of snow in the place.

“People buy tapers for a sou or two, and set them by the shrine to honor

S. Geneviève and remind her of their needs,” Annette said softly as they

approached this illuminated space. “Would you like to offer one?”

Lawrence Gerald had been wont to mock somewhat at such observances in the

old time before life had been shattered about him and shown eternity

between its gaps. Now he went eagerly forward, selected a taper, lighted

it, and placed it, whispering a prayer while his fingers lingered on it.

Annette followed his example, placing her offering beside his, and making

her request also.

As they were turning away, a sacristan approached them from the next

chapel, and asked if they had any article they would like to have touched

to the inside of the shrine. Annette immediately gave him her rosary,

which he laid an instant where the saint’s body had lain.

“Ask him if I can put my hands in,” Lawrence whispered.

“Certainly you can!” she answered with dignity, seeing the man look rather

curiously at him.

She held the lid open, and her husband put both his hands in, and

instantly drew them back, his eyes dilating and his color rising, as if he

had put them into fire.

They walked on past the grand altar, and knelt in a nook by a

confessional. The daylight faded, and the smouldering fires of the windows

went out in black and ashen gray. But when no outer brightness was left to

enter and show the glories of that house of God, the lamps and tapers

inside burned with a clearer flame. They shed a faint illumination through

the vast twilight; they spread a soft gilding up the height of the

clustered pillars, and made tender the gloom brooding in the roof that

arched over their capitals; they sparkled on the crowns of the saints, and

touched marble faces with such a holy radiance that a soul seemed to shine

through them.

A slight stir in the confessional near them showed that a priest was

there. “Lawrence,” said Annette suddenly, “may I go to confession?”

“Wait a minute,” he answered. “I will go first, and then you will only

need to say that you are my wife.”

His tone revealed a bitter pain; for unconsciously her question had shown

that there was no weight on her conscience save that which he had placed

there, and that she was more in need of consolation than of forgiveness.

She sank on to her knees again. “O my God!” she murmured, “has it come to

this, that I must enter thy house without being able to find comfort

there?”

It was nearly half an hour before Lawrence joined her, and they went out

together. “I have no wish to go now,” she said when he offered to wait

while she went to confession. “Besides, there is no time, if we are to

start to‐night.”

“Do you know, Annette, what I prayed for when I put the taper up in honor

of S. Geneviève?” her husband asked when they were again in the street. “I

asked that my mother may die in peace before the month is out. That will

be in less than two weeks.”

“My poor Lawrence!” she sighed.

“And can you guess the reason why I wish, above all things, to go to Rome,

and don’t much care what may happen after?” he went on. “Of course you

cannot. Well, I want to receive absolution from the Pope. I go to

confession, and pour out my story there, and I feel no better for it; or,

if I feel better than I should without confession, I am still not at

peace. I don’t feel absolved. Yet I want to go to confession every hour of

the day. I am like the Ancient Mariner, who had to tell his story to every

one he met. I want to tell mine to every priest in the world.”

“But, dear Lawrence,” she said, “that will not be so easy to compass.

Don’t expect such a privilege too confidently. You know we cannot have an

audience, because we cannot go to him under false names. If we could, his

blessing would satisfy you, would it not? But I see no way, dear, though I

would not discourage you.”

For once her objections did not irritate him. “I have been thinking of it

ever since we left America,” he said; “and in one way or another I shall

succeed. Yes, his blessing would be enough; and if there were no other

way, I could tell him my real name. Now, we must make haste. We have just

time to reach the station.”

How many hearts have quickened in their beating as they travelled that

road, drawing near to Italy! How many eyes have gazed eagerly at that

first cross, set aloft on the mountain side, at the first shrine of the

Virgin Mother! And then come the armies of poplars and solemn cypresses.

“They look as if the dead warriors, and prelates, and poets had risen from

their graves, and were staring out over Italy to see what their degenerate

sons were doing,” Annette said. “See how tightly they hold their cold

green robes about them!”

Our travellers slept a few hours at Turin, and, resuming their journey

before daylight, reached Florence in the evening. And here, having some

time to wait, they wandered out, hoping to find a church open; but all

were closed at this hour. Presently they found themselves standing on the

bridge of the Holy Trinity, listening to a burst of wild music from many

bugles, played by some unseen band. So loud and piercing was the strain,

the very stars appeared to tremble as it went up. Then, as suddenly as it

rose, it dropped again, and all was silent. The city was quiet, and the

Arno gleamed across it like a jewelled cestus across a sleeping breast.

Its waters seemed to have crystallized into a purple enamel about the

golden reflections of the lights along its banks, not a ripple showing

which way they flowed. Not far away, another bridge spanned the tide, its

soft and dreamlike arches set roundly over the answering arches in the

deeps below. A small boat, faintly seen, shot underneath this bridge, and

disappeared. It was a vision of Florence as one sees it in history and

poetry.

The two strangers leaned on the balustrade of the bridge, and, as they

gazed, felt the curse upon them grow less sharp, as though they were

ghosts, and their crime some old, old story, touched with a sad splendor

by poet and painter, and half washed away by the tears of pitying

generations.

Standing there, silent and half comforted, they became aware of a low,

murmurous sound of many feet and voices; and then a long line of white‐

robed figures appeared, carrying torches. A bier was borne aloft in their

midst, what it held covered with an embroidered pall that glistened with

gold. These men recited prayers together as they went, and the river and

bridge were for a moment bright with the glare of their torches. Then they

disappeared, and a star‐lighted quiet reigned again over the city of

flowers.

Annette touched her husband’s arm, and they reluctantly turned away from

that spot where first they had experienced a feeling of peace.

And then, all night they plunged deeper and deeper into Italy, till

morning and the Eternal City met their faces, and dazzled them.

“Thank God! I am in Rome at last,” exclaimed Lawrence. “Now nothing but

death shall tear me away from it.”

Yes, there it was! the crumbling, stately city of the past, looking as if

it had just risen from the bottom of the sea, after having been submerged

for centuries. It was all a faded gold color, like autumn leaves, and its

narrow streets were chilly, as though death had breathed through them. But

its heights were warm and sunny, and its dusky trees and hedges were

steeped in warmth, and over its magnificent decay the sky was fresh and

blue, and the morning sunshine flowed bountifully.

“Now,” said Mrs. Gerald, becoming business‐like at once, “we must first

engage an apartment, and get our luggage into it. I think I know Italian

enough for that, thanks to the songs I have learned.”

“Do you propose singing an aria to call a cab?” her husband asked. “And

will you engage an apartment to the tune of ‘Hear me, Norma’?”

He smiled, and for a breath looked like his old self. But the next instant

his face changed. The thought of his mother was enough to banish the smile

for ever.

That thought had taken full possession of him, filling him with a terror,

sorrow, and longing that burned in his heart like consuming fire. His

flight had been made with no feeling but fear for himself; but with the

first breath of the air of the city of saints, he inhaled a penitence

which was without taint of weakness.

While his wife, then, arranged their affairs, and attended to the

preparation of their little _ménage_, he took in hand the one work

possible for him—the study of his own soul. This anguish for his mother,

whom he loved deeply, much as he had wronged her, was like a sword that

cleft the selfish crust of his nature. His whole life came up before him

with merciless distinctness—all its ingratitude, its pettishness, its

littleness, its sinful waste, its many downward steps leading to the final

plunge to ruin. He saw, as if it were before him, his mother’s loving,

patient face; he heard, as if she were speaking at his side, her sad and

tremulous voice; and more pathetic even than her sorrow were the brief

moments of happiness he had given her, her smile of pride in him, her

delight when he showed her some mark of affection, her eager anticipation

of his wishes. As he went back over this past, the self‐pity, the

blindness, the false shame, were stripped away from him, and he saw

himself as he was.

“Nothing but utter ruin could have brought me to my senses,” he said to

his wife one day, when he had been sitting for a long while silent, gazing

out at a little fountain that sprang into air in a vain effort to reach

the laden orange‐tree that overshadowed it.

She made no reply, and he needed none. She had let him go his own ways,

keeping watch, but never interfering. She had nothing to do for him now

but wait and see what sort of call he would make on her.

He wandered from church to church, and knelt at every shrine in the city

of shrines. Wherever the signal lamp told that there some troubled soul

had found help, he sent up his petition. He glanced with indifferent eyes

past the rich marbles and gilding; but when a face looked from marble or

canvas with an expression that touched his heart, there he made his

appeal. The luxuries of life grew loathsome to him; fashion and gaiety

were to him like a taunt of the evil one, who had used them as lures for

his destruction. He hated the fineness of his own clothes, the daintiness

of his food. None of the people he saw seemed to him enviable, save the

poor monks in their coarse brown robes, with their bare feet thrust into

rough sandals. In his own house he lived like an ascetic.

Now and then he would rouse himself from this stern and prolonged examen

to think of his wife. She had claims on him which, perhaps, he was

forgetting.

“You poor child!” he said, “we are not in India, that you should immolate

yourself over my dead hopes. What can I do for you. I would free you, if I

could.”

“You are not to think of me,” she replied quietly. “It is God who now

commands you to think of yourself.”

“Yes!” he exclaimed, “I have made my own instruments of torture. Having

thought of myself when it was a sin, I am forced to think of myself when

it is a torment. And I escape that thought only to remember my victims.

Annette, but one day is left of the four weeks. O my mother! if space

could be annihilated, and I could be with you till it is over! If I could

but know what has happened, what will happen, to her!”

He had spent the whole day in a church near by, sometimes praying before

an altar, sometimes gazing at the pictures, in search of a divine meaning

that might be hidden in them; but oftener, withdrawn to a dusky nook where

only a single lamp burned before a head crowned with thorns, he gave

himself up to grief.

“It is useless to wish and repine,” his wife replied sadly. “That is one

of the weaknesses we must cure ourselves of. Since it is only a torment to

imagine what may be taking place at home, let us try to banish the

thought, leaving all in the hands of God. And now, Lawrence, do you know

that you have eaten nothing to‐day? When you stay so long again, I shall

go after you. In Rome, at this season, it is dangerous to allow the

strength to fail. You will soon be ill, if you go on fasting so.”

“And what matter if I should?” he asked.

The wife waited till the servant had placed the dinner on the table and

gone out before she spoke, and the moment of consideration had made her

resolve on a stern answer, however willingly she would have given a tender

one. She had long since discovered that her husband was one of those whom

the flatteries of affection enervate instead of stimulating, and she was

not sure enough of a radical change having taken place in him to yield to

her own impulse to soothe and persuade when reproof might be more

effectual.

“Of all the gifts which God has bestowed on you,” she said, “you have cast

away every one but life; but with that life you may yet atone, and become

a blessing to the world. It is your duty to watch over the only means left

you of making reparation.”

He did not show the slightest displeasure at her reproof. On the contrary,

there seemed to be something in it almost pleasant to him. Perhaps the

suggestion that he might yet be a blessing in the world, incredible as

that appeared, inspired him with an undefined hope. He dwelt thoughtfully

on her words in a way that was becoming habitual to him whenever she spoke

with peculiar seriousness, and Annette, seeing his humility, was half

sorry for having put it to the test. With a confused impulse to give him

at least some pitiful and perilous comfort, she poured a glass of wine,

and placed it by him, well aware that for weeks he had not drunk any.

He put it away decidedly. “I would as soon drink poison, Annette,” he said

reproachfully. “I did not think that you would offer it to me.”

She withdrew the glass immediately, ashamed of her weakness, and making a

hasty apology. “If I had known you had made any resolution on the subject,

I would not have offered it,” she said. “Forgive me! I never will again.”

“Oh! there was no resolution needed,” he said. “If you had been burned

almost to death once, would you need to resolve not to go into the fire

again? I fancy the sight of it would be enough. But I think I may promise

never again to take wine, unless I should be commanded to by some one who

knows better than I.”

His wife did not reply. This was a degree of asceticism which she had not

expected and was afraid to trust. She had expected him to refuse

indulgences, but not consolations. Indeed, she did not now understand her

husband, and her hope of his redemption was but a trembling one. This

self‐denial might be only another illustration of that instability which

rushes from one extreme to the other, only to return to its first excess.

We all know how to rely on that natural firmness, which the sad experience

of mankind has shown to be never so strong but it may fail at any hour;

but the supernatural strength of the naturally weak who have cast

themselves on God often finds no doubting. We miss the firm lips, the

steady eyes, the undaunted brow—those signs of a resolute soul which the

pagan shares with the Christian—and we forget that the tremulous mouth we

distrust has sighed out its prayer to Him who is mighty, the shrinking

eyes have looked upon the hills whence help cometh, the timid brow has

been hidden beneath the wing of an angel guardian, and that, faltering

though the soul may have been, and may be again, the shield of God is

before it, and it can be conquered by no human strength.

This soul had made such an advance as to be conscious of some such

fortitude infused into it. Lawrence Gerald had no fear of falling into his

former sins. He might have the misery of seeing the destruction he had

brought on others, might be himself destroyed by a sorrow and remorse too

great to bear; but he had an immovable conviction that he could never

again return to his old ways nor commit any grave transgression. It was

this conviction which had made him say that nothing but destruction could

have brought him to his senses.

“I like that church you took me to this morning,” he said, walking slowly

up and down the room. “The others, many of them, seem to me fit only for

the happy. They are all display and confusion and sight‐seers, with

scarcely a nook in them where a person in trouble can hide. They do not

give me any impression of sacredness. But this one is so quiet and sober,

and there are no people standing about with guide‐books, talking aloud

while you are praying or trying to pray. Then there is a little place,

half chapel, half vestibule, between the church and the sacristy, where a

side door enters the church, with an Ecce Homo in a little shrine; and

there you can be quite private, without any one staring at you. I shall go

to that church altogether.”

The church he spoke of was Santa Maria della Pace.

“It is Our Lady of Peace,” his wife said, “and was built to commemorate

the peace of Christendom. I thought it would please you. Surely some

special consolation and tranquillity should linger about a temple built

and cemented with such an intention. I like it, too, better than most

others we have visited, though it is not so splendid as many.”

She did not tell him that, after having left his side, when the early Mass

was over, she had lingered in the church till it was closed at noon, not

to watch him, but to be near him. Requesting the sacristan to withdraw the

curtain covering the Four Sibyls of Raphael, she had seated herself before

the chapel opposite, and divided her attention between that matchless

vision and the unquiet figure that moved about the church. Once he had

come near, but without seeming aware of her presence, and, standing at her

side, had gazed with her. And while he gazed, she had seen the trouble in

his face grow still for a moment. The noble serenity of that composition,

so soothing to eyes wearied by the sprawling magnificence of Michael

Angelo and the ever‐present, dishevelled, wind‐tossed figures of Bernini,

lifted his soul to a higher plane. Even when he sighed and turned away, as

if not willing to allow himself the pleasure of looking at so much beauty,

he carried something of that spirit of harmony with him.

“Lawrence,” his wife said presently, when she had borne his restless

promenade as long as she could, “I know that you did not sleep any last

night. I wish that you would take a powder that I will give you, and try

to sleep now. You look worn out. Lie down on the sofa here, and I will

keep everything quiet.”

He shook his head. “I would rather not take anything to make me sleep,

Ninon. And to‐night I would not sleep, if I could. But I will lie down

here a little while; for I am tired, now I think of it.”

He threw himself on the sofa, and she placed a screen before him, and

closed the window near his head, so that even the soft plashing of the

fountain was shut out, and the small notes of birds that twittered in the

great pine‐tree in the garden. And after a little while, finding him still

restless, she went to the piano, and sang how God sent Elias to reassure

and comfort a doubting and tempted soul. The notes flowed with a soothing

murmur from under her fingers, and her voice, no longer the brilliant,

ringing tones he had taken such pride in, was so low it might be a spirit

singing:

“Tell him that his very longing

Is itself an answering cry;

That his prayer, ‘Come, gracious Alla!’

Is my answer, ‘Here am I!’

Every inmost aspiration

Is God’s angel undefiled;

And in every ’O my Father!’

Slumbers deep a ‘Here, my child!’ ”

Ending, she listened a moment, then stole across the room, and looked

behind the screen. Lawrence was sleeping, with his head thrown back, his

beautiful profile and moist, dark curls thrown out strongly by the garnet

cushions and pillow.

She went to the window, and seated herself on a footstool near it,

wrapping the long red curtains about her, and leaning against the wall.

The sculptured marble of that stately _salon_ was cold against her cheek;

a flock of doves wheeling about over the garden caught some last rays of

the sun on their wings, and threw them down over her, so that little white

wings seemed to be fluttering all around the room; the casement slipped

open, and the sound of tossing waters and twittering birds again became

audible; but the watcher there took no note of these things. She was

looking at the figure stretched on the sofa, and thinking that in all Rome

there was no ruin so mournful and so terrible. He was like some fair

column stricken from out a temple and cast aside into the dust; not

touched by the hand of time, that, with its slow to‐and‐fro of days and

nights, and seasons and years, lulls all the pain of decay to sleep, but

broken and scathed, as if by lightning.

While she looked, he stirred, and opened his eyes; and the sympathetic

pain with which she saw how he came back to a consciousness of his

position almost drew an outcry from her. The first tranquil, half‐

wondering glance which saw, instead of the familiar surroundings of his

childhood and youth, that immense room, with its profuse hangings and

painted ceiling, and the long windows opening like doors; then the brief

flash of startled questioning; lastly, the anguish of full recollection.

“O my God! my God!” he exclaimed, and hid his face in the cushions again.

She was at his side in a moment.

“Let us go out for a long drive, Lawrence,” she said. “There will be a

bright moonlight to‐night, and we can see so many places by it. Come! I

will send for a carriage at once. There is nothing else for either of us

to do.”

Nothing could have shown more clearly the change in Lawrence Gerald than

his manner of receiving this proposal. Instead of expressing at once his

aversion, and reproaching his wife that she could believe it possible for

him to go sight‐seeing at such a time, he stopped to consider if what she

thought best might not be best, however it should seem to him.

“You must think for me now, Annette,” he said with a sort of despair. “You

know I do not wish to seek pleasure nor distraction; but I suppose I must

live.”

She sent for a carriage at once, and they went out under the full moon

that was beginning to replace, with its pearly southern lights and

northern shadows, the fading cross‐lights of the sun. They drove to the

Colosseum, not yet despoiled of its sacred emblems, and, kneeling there in

the dust, made the stations in their own way. Annette named each one as

they reached it, then left her husband to make his meditation, or to utter

the ejaculation that started up from his tormented heart, as sharp as a

blade from its sheath.

At last they stood together by the crucifix, with the moonlight falling on

them and through the great arches in a silvery rain.

Annette saw her husband wipe his forehead, though the night was cool. He

breathed heavily, and looked at the earth beneath his feet, as if he saw

through it, and beheld the martyr lying where he fell centuries before.

“O my dear!” she said, “I know that there is no lion like remorse. But is

it no comfort to you that you are not alone?”

“It is both a comfort and a pain,” he answered gently. “I should be

desolate without you, and I should have done something desperate, perhaps,

if I had been alone. You must understand my gratitude and my regret

without expecting me to express them. I cannot speak. I know I have

wronged you bitterly, and that you are an angel of goodness to me; but I

can say no more about it. If I were at my mother’s feet this moment, I

should be speechless. I cannot pray even. I acknowledge the justice of

God, and will endure whatever he sends. That is all I can say.”

He had forced himself to speak, she perceived, with a great effort. The

season of complaints and outcries had gone past, and he had entered on the

way of silence.

They went out, and left the ruin to its solemn tenants—the gliding

shadows, which might be the troubled ghosts of the slayers, and the

floating lights, which might be the glorified souls of the slain, visiting

the loved spot where they had seen the heavens open for them.

The streets were nearly deserted when the two returned to them, their

horses walking. They stopped at the fountain of Trevi, leaned awhile on

the stone rail, and watched the streams that burst in snowy foam all along

the front.

“What a heap of coals and ashes Rome would be without her fountains!”

Annette said. “It would be like a family of patriarchs where no children

are seen. And yet the waters do not always seem to me so childish. Theirs

is the youth and freshness of angels. See how triumphant they look! They

have been a long while in the dark, till they may have despaired of ever

seeing the sun again. It is the way of souls, Lawrence. They walk in

darkness and pain, they cannot see their way, and they sometimes doubt if

light any longer exists. And at last they burst from their prison, and

find themselves in the city of God.”

“Yes,” he said, “but they have not sinned; they have only suffered. I have

always thought, Annette, that the saints have the easier life. You know we

are told that the way of the transgressor is hard.”

“But the saints did not choose that life because it was the easier,” she

replied. “They gave no thought to such a reward, but it was bestowed on

them; and probably, when they chose, the other way seemed the easier, in

spite of what the preacher says. The person who chooses a good life

because it is the easier will never persevere in it; for the devil will

always persuade him that he has made a mistake, and, since he chose from a

selfish motive, God will owe him no help. The saints took what was hard,

and what seemed the hardest because it was right, and left the

consequences with God; and they had their reward. The sinner takes what

seems the easiest, and thinks only of himself; and he, too, has his

reward. Do not the waters look lovely? They are so fresh and new! How

beautiful an image it is to compare divine grace to a fountain!”

They drove on through the town, across the bridge of S. Angelo, and saw

the angel sheathing his sword—or was he unsheathing it?—against the sky,

and, leaving their carriage at the entrance of the piazza of S. Peter’s,

walked across it to that majestic temple, which, more than any other, and

at that hour more than ever, seemed worthy of the Spouse of the Spirit.

Golden and white, the mystical flood of moonlight veiled it, rippling

along its colonnades, glittering in its fountains, setting a pavement of

chalcedony across the piazza and up the wide ascent, and trembling round

the dome that swelled upward like a breast full with the divine milk and

honey with which the church nourishes her children.

Lawrence stopped near the obelisk.

“The first question the church asked of me when I was brought before her,

an infant,” he said, “was what I had come to ask of her, and my sponsors

answered for me, Faith. Now once again she asks the same question.”

He was silent a moment, looking up at the church, but with eyes that saw

only the sacred Mother. Tears rolled down his face, and his lips trembled;

but there was no sign of that desperate passion which had so worn him. “I

ask for forgiveness and perseverance,” he said.

She observed that he did not ask for peace.

He went forward to the steps, and knelt there; and as he wept and prayed,

his wife heard ever the same petition that God would have mercy on his

mother, that in some way he would spare her the blow that threatened to

fall upon her, and that she might know how he loved her and mourned his

ingratitude.

Annette withdrew from her husband, and paced to and fro not far away. She,

too, had a mother who was about to be stricken with grief on her account,

and whom she might never again see in life.

She had almost forgotten her husband and how time was flying, when she

heard his voice at her side.

“My poor Annette, I am killing you,” he said. “Come home. See! the day is

breaking.”

The east was, indeed, growing pale with the early dawn, and the western

colonnade was throwing long shadows as the moon declined. It was time for

them to return. Chilled and exhausted, they entered their carriage, and

were driven home.

The dawn of that same day, when in its course the sun rose from the

Atlantic, and brightened the New England shore, saw Mrs. Gerald and Honora

Pembroke go to early Mass together.

F. Chevreuse had visited them the morning before, and requested them to go

to communion that day, and pray for themselves, their friends, and for his

intention.

“I have a difficult duty to perform,” he said, “and I want all the help I

can get. So make yourselves as saintly as possible, my dear friends.

Confess and prepare yourselves for holy communion as if it were to be your

last, and pray with all your strength, and do not allow a single smallest

venial sin to touch you all day.”

F. Chevreuse often asked them to pray for his intention, and all they

observed in this was his unusual earnestness. It had the effect of making

them also unusually earnest in their devotion. Mrs. Gerald was, indeed, so

absorbed that she failed to notice that when Honora came from the priest’s

house, where she had been just before evening, she did not look quite

well. F. Chevreuse had requested her to come there from her school, before

going home, and she had been with him nearly an hour.

“So you have been to confession,” Mrs. Gerald said, arranging the tray for

their tea. “I thought we would go there together this evening.”

She spoke in a very gentle, almost absent way; for she had been saying, as

she went about, all the short prayers she could remember to the Blessed

Virgin, and would resume them presently.

“So we will go together,” Miss Pembroke replied. “But I wanted to see F.

Chevreuse this afternoon.”

She seated herself in a shady corner of the room, and opened her prayer‐

book; but it trembled so in her hand that she was forced to lay it aside,

and pretend to be occupied with her rosary instead. Now and then she stole

a glance at her companion, and saw with thankfulness that she was entirely

occupied with her devotions. As she went about, preparing with dainty care

their simple meal, her lips were moving; and sometimes she would pause a

moment to bless herself, or to kiss the crucifix suspended from her neck,

or to dwell on some sweet thought she had found hidden in a little prayer,

like a blossom under a leaf.

And later in the evening, when the two returned from the priest’s house,

there was nothing to attract attention in Miss Pembroke’s manner; for they

sat reading and meditating till it was bed‐time. It was their custom,

since they lived alone, to prepare thus strictly for the reception of the

Holy Eucharist.

Mrs. Gerald stood a minute before the embers of the dying fire, when they

were ready to go up‐stairs, the hand she had stretched for the bed‐candle

resting on the edge of the mantel‐piece near it. “How peaceful we are

here, Honora!” she said in her soft way, yet rather suddenly.

Miss Pembroke was bending to push the few remaining coals back, and her

reply was indistinct, yet sounded like an affirmative.

“We have so much to be grateful for,” Mrs. Gerald went on. “I do not think

that we could be more comfortable. I am sure that greater riches would

disturb me. Indeed, I never wanted riches, except for Lawrence; and now he

does not need them. I can truly say that I have all I desire.”

Miss Pembroke did not reply nor look up. She only stooped lower, and

stretched her hands out over the coals, as if to warm them. Yet the two

had always been so in harmony that her silence seemed to be assent.

“F. Chevreuse spoke beautifully to me to‐night,” Mrs. Gerald continued,

still lingering. “He kept me some time talking after I had made my

confession; and, what is unusual with him, he spoke of himself. He said

that all the favors he has to ask of God are for others; but that when he

comes to pray for himself, he can only say, ‘Amen.’ Now and then, he said,

he thinks to ask some special favor; but when he lifts his eyes to heaven,

only one word comes: ‘Amen! amen!’ I did not understand, while he spoke,

how much it meant; but I have been thinking it over since I came home, and

I see that the word may include all that a Christian need say.”

A murmured “Yes!” came from Honora, who turned her head aside that the

candle might not shine in her face. “And now, dear Mrs. Gerald, since we

are to rise early, we had better go to bed. Can I do anything for you? Is

there anything to do to‐night?”

“Nothing, thank you, dear!”

They went up‐stairs together, and, when they parted, Miss Pembroke

embraced her friend with unusual tenderness. “May you have a good night’s

sleep!” she said; and, in the anguish of her heart, could almost have

added, “And may you never wake!”

For F. Chevreuse had wisely judged it best to prepare her to sustain her

friend when the hour of trial should come; and Honora, better than any

other perhaps, understood what that shock would be.

“Go out in the morning and dismiss your school for the day,” the priest

had said to her. “Then return home immediately, and make some excuse for

it. You will easily be able to plead a headache, I fancy. Tell Mrs. Gerald

that F. O’Donovan is coming to see her, so that she may not go out. And

pray, my child, pray! What else is there for any of us to do in this

terrible world but pray?”

Honora was obliged to make her excuses before going to school, for Mrs.

Gerald at length noticed her altered looks, and almost insisted on

dismissing the school for her. But she would not allow that.

“I shall feel better to go out than to sit in the house waiting,” she

said, quite truly. “But I will come back at once. Pray do not be anxious

about me. You know I am strong and healthy.”

When she returned, she found that Mrs. Gerald had, with motherly

affection, made every preparation for her comfort. A deep sofa was pushed

into a shady corner of the sitting‐room, pillows and a shawl were laid

ready, and, as she entered the room, she perceived the pleasant odor of

pennyroyal, their favorite remedy for colds and headaches.

Mrs. Gerald set down the steaming cup she held, and began to remove her

young friend’s bonnet and shawl. “I thought you would rather lie down here

than go up stairs by yourself,” she said. “I will keep everything quiet.”

Honora submitted to be made an invalid of, since this tender soul could

have no greater pleasure than to relieve suffering; allowed herself to be

assisted to the sofa; let Mrs. Gerald arrange the pillows under her head

and cover her with the shawl; then drank obediently the remedy offered

her. But all the while her heart was sinking with an agony of

apprehension, and she listened breathlessly for a step which was to bring

doom to this unconscious victim.

“Now what else can I do for you, dear?” her nurse asked, looking vainly to

see what had not been done.

Honora answered, “Nothing”; but, recollecting that something might be

needed, if not for her, added, “You might place a glass of water and the

camphor‐bottle here where I can reach them.”

Mrs. Gerald brought them, from the mere pleasure of serving. “But you must

not drink the water, for you are to be kept warm,” she said. “Your hands

are quite cold now. And, you know, camphor never does you any good.”

She was about turning away when Honora took her hand, and detained her.

She dared not look up, but she held the hand close to her cheek on the

pillow. “Dear friend,” she said in a stifled voice, “it sometimes almost

hurts me to remember how good and kind you have always been to me. I hope

I have never seemed ungrateful; I have never felt so. But in future I want

to be more than ever to you. Let me be your daughter, and live with you

always. I do not want to go away with any one else.”

“My daughter!” said Mrs. Gerald, full of loving surprise and pleasure; and

stooped to leave a kiss on the girl’s forehead.

“And now, dear mother,” said Honora, “do not fancy that I am very sick. In

an hour, all will be over.”

Mrs. Gerald smiled at this promise of sudden cure.

“Then I will leave you quiet a little while, and go out to water my

plants. The seeds have come up which I sowed in the tracks my other two

children made; and in a day or two, when Lawrence and Annette come home,

their footprints will be quite green.”

She spoke with a gentle gaiety, for she was happy. So much affection had

been shown her, she seemed to be of such help and value to those she loved

best, that life assumed for her an aspect of spring and; youth, and a

gladness long unknown to her rose up in her heart.

As she left the room, Honora looked eagerly after her, raising herself on

her elbow, as soon as she was out of sight, and listening toward the door.

When she heard her step on the veranda, she started off the sofa, and ran

to look out through a blind into the garden. Mrs. Gerald was on her knees

by the precious tracks, which she had carefully enclosed with slender pegs

of wood, and was sprinkling with water the tiny blades of green that grew

thickly inside. A soft and tender smile played round her lips, and the

wrinkles that pain and anxiety sometimes drew in her face were all

smoothed away. The spring morning hung over her like a benediction, silent

and bright, not a breath of wind stirring; and in that secluded street,

with its cottages and embowering trees, she was as safe from public

observation as she would have been in the country.

Honora glanced at the clock. It wanted five minutes of ten.

“Five minutes more of happiness!” she murmured, and, from faintness, sank

on her knees before the window, looking out still with her eyes fixed on

that quiet, bending figure.

Mrs. Gerald stretched her hand and slowly made the sign of the cross over

each one of those precious footprints. “May all their steps be toward

heaven!” she whispered. “May angels guard them now and for ever, and may

the blessings of the poor and the suffering spring up wherever they go,

like these flowers, in their path.”

She rose and stood looking off into distance, tears of earnest feeling

glistening in her eyes.

“Two minutes longer!” murmured Honora, who felt as if the room were

swimming around her, so that she had to grasp the window‐ledge for

support. She could not see, but she heard a step on the sidewalk, and,

though it was more measured than usual, there was no possibility of

mistaking it. Only one step would come in that way and stop at their gate

this morning. She heard F. O’Donovan’s voice, and presently the two came

into the entry together.

“Perhaps you had better come into the parlor,” Mrs. Gerald was saying.

“Honora is lying down in there. She has a bad headache this morning.”

“Nevertheless, we will go in and see her,” was the reply.

Miss Pembroke started up, frightened at her own weakness. It would never

do to fail now, when all the strength she could show would be needed. She

had only time to seat herself on the sofa when they entered the room.

“My dear child! why did you not lie still?” Mrs. Gerald exclaimed. “I am

sure F. O’Donovan would excuse you.”

“I would rather sit up, if you will come and sit by me,” Honora answered;

and, taking Mrs. Gerald’s hands, drew her down to the sofa, and sat there

holding her in a half embrace.

The lady noticed with surprise that no greeting passed between the priest

and Honora, and that he had not uttered a word of sympathy for her

illness, nor, indeed, scarcely glanced at her. He went to the window, and

opened one of the blinds.

“Allow me to have a ray of sunshine in the room,” he said. “Why should we

shut it out? It is like divine love in a sorrowful world.”

Mrs. Gerald had hardly time to notice this somewhat unusual freedom of

manner on the part of F. O’Donovan, for, as he came and seated himself

near her, she was struck by the paleness and gravity of his face.

“Are you ill? Has anything happened?” she asked hastily; but he saw that

in her anxiety there was no thought of danger to herself. It was a

friendly solicitude for him; and she instantly glanced at Honora, as if

connecting her illness with his altered appearance. That her young friend

might have some cause of trouble seemed to her quite possible; for she had

never been able to disabuse her mind of the belief that Honora had become

more interested in Mr. Schöninger than she would own, and that she had

never recovered entirely from the shock of his disgrace.

“I have great news to tell you,” said F. O’Donovan. “Mr. Schöninger is

proved innocent, and will immediately be set at liberty.”

“How glad I am!” exclaimed Mrs. Gerald, who immediately believed that she

understood all. “But how is it known?”

“The real criminal has confessed,” the priest went on; “and the confession

and the circumstances are all of a sort to excite our deepest compassion.

For it was not a deliberate crime, but only one of those steps which a man

who has once consented to walk in the wrong path seems compelled to take.

The poor fellow was deceived, and led on as all sinners are. He was in

pecuniary difficulties, and yielded to a temptation to take F. Chevreuse’s

money, intending to repay it. The rest followed almost as a matter of

course. Mother Chevreuse defended her son’s property, and the poor sinner

had to secure what he had risked so much to obtain, and escape the

disgrace of detection. Others were approaching, and he was desperate. He

gave an unlucky push, with no intention but to free himself, and the devil

looked out for the result. But, if you could know how entirely that poor

soul has repented, not only the fatal step in which his errors ended, but

every smallest fault that led to it, you would have only pity for him.

Mother Chevreuse died a good and holy woman, full of years and good works,

and perhaps her death will be the cause of one man being a saint. He

promises everything for the future, and that with a fervor which no one

can doubt. He acknowledges the justice of any contumely and suffering and

loss which may befall him. The only thought too hard for him to bear is

that of the sorrow he has brought on his own family. If he could suffer

alone, he would not complain; he would suffer tenfold, if it were

possible, to spare those he loves.”

Mrs. Gerald had listened with intense interest to this story, and when it

was ended she drew a long breath. “Poor man!” she sighed. “Has he a wife?”

“Yes; he has a wife who is all devotion to him, and who will follow him to

the last. She will never be separated from him.”

“Will she go to prison with him? Will she be allowed to do that?” Mrs.

Gerald asked in surprise.

“Oh! it is not a question of imprisonment,” the priest replied. “He has

escaped, and will probably never be taken. His confession was written,

sealed, and entrusted to a priest, to be opened at a certain time. It was

opened this morning.”

The two watched Mrs. Gerald with trembling anxiety as she sat a moment

with downcast eyes, musing over this strange story. Honora did not dare to

breathe or stir, lest she should loosen the thunderbolt that hung

suspended over their heads, ready to drop, and the priest was inwardly

praying for wisdom to speak the right word.

“I hope he has no mother,” Mrs. Gerald said, without looking up.

“That is the hardest part of all,” said F. O’Donovan. “He has a mother. It

is that which renders his remorse so terrible. But fortunately she is a

Christian woman, who will know how to bend to the will of God, and leave

her afflictions at his feet. She will be comforted by the thought that her

son is a sincere penitent, and is by this awful lesson put for ever on his

guard against sins which might otherwise have seemed to him trivial.”

“Oh! but think of her responsibility!” exclaimed Mrs. Gerald, raising her

eyes quickly. “Think of her remorse and fear when she looks back on her

training of that child, and thinks that all his faults and crimes may be

laid at her door. I know a mother’s heart, F. O’Donovan, and I tell you

there will be no comfort for that mother. You cannot have seen her. Where

is she? I would like to go to her.”

“She does not yet know,” replied the priest, almost in a whisper, and

stopped there, though other words seemed about to follow.

She gazed at him in surprise, and her look began to grow strange. She only

looked intently, but said nothing; and in that dreadful silence Honora

Pembroke’s arm closed tightly about her waist, and her breath trembled on

the mother’s paling cheek.

“Cast yourself into the arms of God!” exclaimed F. O’Donovan. “Do not

think! Do not fear nor look abroad. Hide yourself in the bosom of God! Sin

and sorrow are but passing clouds, but heaven and hope and peace are

eternal!”

Those beautiful violet eyes that had wept so many tears, now dry and

dilating, were fixed upon him, and the face changed slowly. One wave of

deep red had flown over it and sunk, and from pale it had grown deathly

white, and over that whiteness had stolen a faint gray shade.

“Mother! mother! speak!” cried Honora Pembroke, weeping; but the form she

clasped was rigid, and the face was beginning to have a blank, unnatural

expression.

“Live for your son’s sake!” said F. O’Donovan, taking in his her cold

hands—“live to see his repentance, to see him win the forgiveness of the

world and of God.”

But that blankness overspread her face, and the light in her fixed eyes

grew more dim.

The priest stood up, still holding strongly one of her hands, and with his

other made the sign of the cross over her, giving with it the final

absolution. Then he seated himself beside her, and, while Honora fell at

her feet, put his arm around the rigid form, and touched the cheeks with

his warm, magnetic hand, and pleaded tenderly and with tears, as if she

had been his own mother, now a word of human love, now a word of divine

hope; and suddenly he stopped, and Honora, with her face hidden in Mrs.

Gerald’s lap, heard him exclaim, “Depart, Christian soul, out of the body,

in the name of the Father who created thee, in the name of the Son who

redeemed thee, and in the name of the Holy Ghost who has sanctified thee.”

She started up with a faint cry, and saw that Mrs. Gerald’s head had

dropped sideways on to her shoulder, her eyes were half‐closed, and her

relaxing form was sinking backward, supported by F. O’Donovan.

How it happened she did not know, but almost at the same instant Mrs.

Macon entered the room followed by a doctor, and to Honora’s confused

sense it seemed as though helpers were all about and she was separated

from her friend. She heard F. O’Donovan’s voice repeating the prayers for

the dead, and presently the weeping responses of the servant, but she was

powerless to join them.

She roused herself only when she heard the priest speak her name. “Did I

make any mistake? Did I do well, do you think?” he asked anxiously. “I did

not know any better way.”

Honora opened her eyes and looked about.

“There was no better way,” she said. “The result would have been the same

in any case, and she suffered only a minute.”

Tears were swimming in his fine eyes.

“She has, indeed, hidden herself in the bosom of God, where no harm can

reach her, and it is best so. We can see that it is most merciful for her.

But for that unhappy son....”

“Do not name him!” exclaimed Miss Pembroke, shuddering. “I cannot think of

him without abhorrence! See what ruin he has wrought wherever he has been.

What has escaped him? Nothing! Do you, can you, believe there is hope for

one whose soul is such an abyss of weakness and selfishness? He has

stripped from me my dearest friends; he has smitten those who loved him

best....”

She stopped, half from the bitter weeping that choked her words, half

because the priest had laid his checking hand on her arm.

“The silence of death is in the house,” he said gently. “Do not disturb it

by anger. Leave Lawrence Gerald to the lashes of his guilty conscience.

Believe me, it will be punishment enough. Forgive him, and pray for him.”

“Not yet! I cannot yet!” she protested. “He has been forgiven too much.

But I will say no more. I am sorry I should have spoken so in _her_ home.”

“Come out into the air of the garden a little while; it will refresh you,”

the priest urged. “I must go directly to F. Chevreuse, but I will return.

He went to Mrs. Ferrier more than an hour ago, and was to wait there for

me or come this way to learn the result. Poor F. Chevreuse! he is sorely

tried. Everything rests on him. Don’t sit here in the dark any longer.

Come!”

“You had better go, Miss Pembroke. You can do nothing here,” Mrs. Macon

said to her.

She went out and hid herself in a little arbor that had been a favorite

retreat of Mrs. Gerald’s on warm summer days, and sitting there, too

stunned for weeping, now that the first burst of tears was dried, tried to

recollect and realize what had happened.

As she sat there she heard presently the trampling of horses and the roll

of a carriage, and mechanically leaned forward to see who was passing, but

without in the least caring. The bright bays and the sparkling harness

were very familiar to her eyes, and she saw that Mrs. Ferrier herself was

in the carriage. The woman’s face was red and swollen with weeping and

excitement, and as she passed the cottage she put up her hand as if she

would have shut it from her sight. Evidently her interview with F.

Chevreuse had been a stormy one, and had left her in anything but a

charitable frame of mind.

Miss Pembroke looked indifferently at first, but a moment after she rose

and took a step forward to see better; for F. Chevreuse and F. O’Donovan

had appeared in the street in front of the carriage and stopped it, and

the elder priest was speaking sternly to Mrs. Ferrier.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“I am going to the prison to tell them to let Mr. Schöninger go free,” she

answered defiantly. “I am going to take him to my house.”

“You are going to do nothing of the sort,” said the priest. “You have no

right to, and will only do harm, and disgrace yourself.”

“I couldn’t be more disgraced than I am already, with that ...” she began

in a loud voice, but F. Chevreuse stopped her.

“Silence!” he said authoritatively. “You are insane.”

“John, drive on!” she called out of the window.

“John, you will not drive a step further,” said the priest in a low voice.

“You’d better do what he says, ma’am,” said John, leaning down from the

box. “And you’d better not talk so loud. People are beginning to notice.”

“I should like to know what you think of yourself for a priest, making my

own servants disobey me,” the poor woman cried, relapsing into tears. And

then, instantly recovering her spirit, she added, “If I cannot go to the

prison, I will know where my poor daughter is. I believe Mrs. Gerald could

tell. She must know where they are hid. I will have Annette back again.”

“You had better come in and ask Mrs. Gerald,” F. Chevreuse said calmly.

“Do not hesitate! It will, perhaps, be better for you to see her.”

She shrank a little, yet could not bear to remain inactive. To her mind,

she had been hushed, and imposed on, and silenced by everybody, in order

that this worthless criminal might ruin her daughter’s happiness, and

obtain possession of her money, and she was burning to pour her anger out

on some one. F. Chevreuse’s authoritative interference, while she yielded

to it, only exasperated her more. “I will go in and find where Annette

is,” she said resolutely, and stepped out of her carriage, too much

excited to stumble.

Honora Pembroke came forward and stood between her and the door, looking

in astonishment at the two priests who followed her.

“Let her go in!” F. O’Donovan said.

She was obliged to, indeed, for Mrs. Ferrier’s strong hand set her aside

as if she had been a feather.

The woman entered with a haughty step and a high head, her silks rustling

about her through the solemn silence, and walked straight to the sitting‐

room. Mrs. Macon met her at the door, but she put her aside, and took a

step into the room; only one step, and then she stopped short, and uttered

a cry.

“See how that mother heard the news!” said F. Chevreuse in a low voice at

her side. “Have you any questions to ask her?”

Mrs. Ferrier retreated a step, and leaned against the door‐frame. They all

drew back and left her a full view of the silent form stretched on the

sofa, and only Honora Pembroke’s weeping disturbed the silence.

“You don’t say that it killed her!” she exclaimed in a low, frightened

voice; then, before they could answer, she threw up her arms, and ran

across the room. “You poor dear!” she sobbed. “You poor, broken‐hearted

dear!”

She flung herself on her knees beside the sofa, and embraced and wept over

the motionless form there, all her anger, all thought of self, forgotten

in a generous and loving pity and grief.

F. Chevreuse glanced at his brother priest with a faint, sad smile. “Her

heart is right,” he said. “It is always right.”

To Be Continued.

Material Faith.

Give me a God whom I can prove

By certain academic rules,

Approved by all the learned schools;

And if he fitteth not our groove,

We’ll leave him for unscienced fools

To idolize.

But if his attributes should be

All classed within high Reason’s bound—

His origin and parts be found

With analytics to agree—

This God, whom we can solve and sound,

We’ll patronize.

But still our right we will reserve—

A sacred privilege of Science—

To herald forth our non‐compliance

With Scriptural accounts that swerve

From our grand basis; such defiance

We’ll not endure.

We’ll rule out the creation chapter;

’Tis so absurd! and lacks support

Of brilliant sages in our court

Whose own hypotheses are apter.

So exit Moses’ crude report

For something newer.

The Bible we will not reject

_In toto_; no, we’ll let it stand,

Lest our fair fame should bear a brand;

But when we’ve banished ev’ry sect,

Then forth we’ll drag from Lethe’s sand

Our fossil link!

Completing the material chain

By philosophic labor wrought,

And beaten out by mighty thought!

Eureka! what a motley train

Of dry bones, labelled to a jot,

Round Learning’s brink!

Such wondrous titles ne’er were heard

In all the mythologic lore!

We’ll drape in gloom of Stygian shore

All held as truth; and at our word

Darkness, in cloak of Light, shall soar

To Reason’s throne!

Then, when this wheeling globe is ours,

We’ll send God forth a wand’ring myth

Void, and bereft of son, or kith:

And stone‐eyed fossils, robed in flowers,

From sea of spice to frozen frith,

Shall teach alone.

A Glimpse of the Green Isle. I.

“What the lady wants, sir, is hair,” said Edward.

“Hair!” I repeated scornfully, at the same time glancing at the wealth of

dark‐brown hair which fell dishevelled over the shoulders of the Lady from

Idaho. “_Hair!_”

It was evident that no comb had touched that wonderful _chevelure_ for

several days.

“I shall never be able to comb it out again,” said the Lady from Idaho in

a weak, despairing voice. She lay on a sofa in a state‐room on board the

transatlantic steamer _Lima_, from New York to Liverpool, calling at

Queenstown. She had been terribly sea‐sick. During seven days she had not

eaten enough to keep a buffalo‐gnat alive.

“I don’t mean ‘air,’ sir,” said Edward, raising his nose to an altitude of

45°, with the lofty dignity of your true English waiter. “I means

_hair_—wentilation.”

“Ah! yes. I believe you are right, Hedward.”

_Hedward_ was a steward on board the _Lima_, to whose fostering care the

writer was entrusted.

The Lady from Idaho had reached that point of sea‐sickness when one does

not want the trouble even of getting better. We carried her on deck,

however, and laid her, well wrapped up, on one of the cushioned seats. The

circular horizon of many days was being broken by the Irish coast just

coming into view. The mere sight of land seemed to revive the fair Idaho

traveller. As we neared the coast, and the green of the fields and trees

could be seen, she said:

“Oh! what a goodly sight. What a beautiful country! I could chant its

praises with the most enthusiastic Irishman of them all!”

We feasted our eyes on the beautiful coast until darkness fell upon it and

its outline was marked for us only by the lights which traced the curves

of the shore.

We exchange rocket‐signals with the shore and with other steamers lying in

the bay. The land‐breeze has set the Lady from Idaho on her feet again.

The tug comes alongside to take the mails and those passengers who wish to

land at Queenstown. All is bustle and excitement. There are regretful

leave‐takings between fellow‐passengers whom the traditional “stand‐

offishness” of English‐speaking people prevented from enjoying each

other’s society until it was almost time to part. Among those who go on

shore at Queenstown are the Lady from Idaho—poor seasick soul! she would

have gone on shore days ago, if she could have found any shore to go on; a

young Irishman bringing his American bride home for inspection by his

friends in “the Black North”; some American ladies and gentlemen making

their first European tour, evidently determined to be pleased with

everything they see; some specimens of young and infant America, and the

writer.

There’s not much provision for the comfort of passengers on board the tug.

The night is rather moist, but the cabin is “stuffy” and ill‐ventilated,

and we prefer remaining on deck.

The “Cove of Cork” is certainly a beautiful place by day or night. But the

night effect is the finer, _me judice_. The rows of lights rising above

each other, tier on tier, on the heights, cast a magic glamour over the

scene.

The tug has reached her dock. The custom‐house officers have come on

board. Horrid moment! Worse, however, in anticipation than in reality,

everywhere except on the trans‐Atlantic docks of New York City.

“Have you any cigars or tobacco?”

“No.”

“Any firearms?”

“No, sir,” I answer, and inwardly bless my stars that my better and more

sensible half has left behind, for lack of room, the “six‐shooter” which I

carried for ten years in the free land of the West. What a piece of luck!

I have been assured by Irish friends that had I brought that unhappy “six‐

shooter” with me, I should most undoubtedly have been arrested for some

undefined bloody intentions with regard to that most susceptible animal,

the lion of Great Britain. The lion would have been very much mistaken;

for never were the Irish shores visited by any one whose heart was more

full of peace and good‐will.

Ireland is not a safe place for any one who has a trans‐Atlantic odor

about him during a Fenian paroxysm. The possession of a pocket _derringer_

is sufficient evidence of belligerent intentions. New‐York‐made boots are

objects of suspicion, and in times of excitement have been the cause of

trouble to the wearer. As harmless and commercial an article as a wooden

nutmeg, carried merely as a patriotic souvenir, may entail considerable

annoyance on its possessor, and perhaps necessitate the good offices of

his consul to enable him to pursue his tourist path of pleasure or

business in peace. In such periods as anti‐Fenian frenzy, English ports

are the safest and pleasantest; for in Ireland, then, the lion is rampant,

roaring and seeking whom he may devour. It is better to keep away from his

super‐serviceable retainers in Ireland.

But the political horizon is unclouded. The bloody‐minded revolutionists

of the pen and inkstand are quiescent for the nonce. We find the officials

kind and polite. They opened only one of our trunks. They gave its

contents merely a cursory inspection, and chalked cabalistic characters on

all our boxes, portmanteaus, satchels, etc. They fished for no fee, nor

was any offered them.

It is nearly midnight when we leave the tug. We step ashore. After a

quarter of a century of absence, my foot is upon my native heath. My name

is not MacGregor, dear reader, nor is it Micawber.

I do not think people feel much at the moment that anything happens to

them. It is either before or after; in anticipation or retrospection. In

describing their sensations, they tell us what they suppose they are going

to feel, or what they think they ought to have felt. I have stood bare‐

headed by the grave of Washington at Mount Vernon. I believe the man and

his work to be among the greatest that ever blest the world. What did I

feel? A kind of sorrowful, reverential, awe‐struck mental numbness; then a

sad yet selfish pity for my kind, who, however good and great they be,

e’en to this favor must they come at last. I could not have distinctly

shaped a thought or given expression to any of the ideas which a visit to

the grave of Washington might be supposed to suggest to a conventionally

susceptible imagination. Yet my eyes were full of tears. In the evening,

however, in a comfortable room at Willard’s, in an easy‐chair by a

cheerful fire, in the pleasant ease of slippers and cigars, with a quire

of thick, white, unglazed letter‐paper before me, any kind of steel pen (I

hate a gold pen for literary work; it has a counting‐house suggestiveness

that seems to disagree with the muses), with mayhap a modicum of _vin

chaud_ at my elbow, what pages of “Thoughts suggested by a visit to the

grave of Washington” I could have “knocked off”! But unluckily Jones

rushed in with the sad news that poor Thompson had been killed on the

other side of the river, and drove all the intended “Thoughts” out of my

head. There is no real present. We have only the past and the future.

The debarkation of a number of ladies, children, trunks, boxes, and

carpet‐bags is not generative of the softer emotions. The night is damp

and chilly. It has reached the wee sma’ hours. There is no omnibus or hack

to take us to the hotel. Some night‐birds, with low, flat caps and

Corkonian accents, offer to carry our luggage and show us the way to the

hotel. It is “only a step or two.” The cortége sets out for the hotel.

Corkonian youngsters—who ought to have been in their beds, if they had any

beds to go to—come suddenly out of the darkness, and ask, with wonderful

chromatic elocution, the privilege of carrying our satchels. It is useless

to tell them we do not need their assistance. They will not be denied.

They keep up their chromatics until we succumb. Well, it is sixpence each

for them—a treble, or American, gratuity. An American, native or adopted,

to whom, especially if he have lived in the West, “a quarter” seems the

lowest gratuity that he can offer to the negro who blacks his boots in a

sleeping‐car, feels an impulse of lavishness on touching Irish ground. He

“feels good,” and wishes to make all around him partake of the feeling.

Half a dollar seems the least that he can offer the waiter at the hotel

with justice to his own dignity and that of the country he has the honor

to represent. He is not always so generous when he returns at the end of

his tour, and the gratuity system of Britain has disgusted him and helped

to deplete his purse. Then he comes down to the smallest silver coin in

his _portemonnaie_. He cannot offer coppers, and never gets as low as the

Englishman’s “tuppence.”

The English and the Irish in Ireland inveigh bitterly against the American

propensity to give extravagant _douceurs_. They say that Americans are

spoiling their waiters, porters, servants, etc. They call this liberality

snobbishness, desire to display! The fact is, it is partly a matter of

habit, partly a want of knowledge of the comparative values of “tips” at

home and abroad. What American from the further side of the Mississippi

expects to get anything for a penny? Add to this, what I before remarked,

that the American in Ireland “feels good,” and wants to scatter around all

the good he can.

Well! here we are at the hotel. A somewhat stupefied porter receives us.

He has to see somebody before he can inform us as to the probability of

entertainment. He has not indicated any room where the ladies and children

can sit and take the night‐chill off while we await the result of his

conference with Mr. or Mrs. Boniface. We remain standing in the entry, our

carpet‐bags and wraps in our hands. At length the comatose porter returns,

and says that bed‐rooms are ready for us!

“Can we have any supper?”

“No, sir. The cook’s gone home, sir.”

“Not a cup of tea?”

“No, sir. It’s too late, sir.”

“At least, we can have some hot Irish whiskey‐punch?”

“No, sir. There’s no hot wather in the house, sir.”

“Is there any _cold_ water in the house?”

“Of coorse there is, sir,” replies our negative Amphitryon, slightly

roused by the question.

“Then bring me some Irish whiskey and _cold_ water.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll thry, sir. I’ll see if the bar‐maid isn’t asleep, sir, and

get the key from her, sir.”

We were then presented with one‐third of a tallow candle each, and

marshalled to our respective sleeping‐apartments. No chance of a little

pleasant chatter and some gentle exhilaration on our first night on Irish

soil.

We sleep pretty well, however, and pretty long into the forenoon of the

next day. Waiter comes to say that we can have breakfast in the coffee‐

room whenever we desire it. This is a delicate hint that we are not early

risers. He wants to know when we wish breakfast and of what we wish it

composed.

“Chops and tomato‐sauce, ham and eggs—”

“Yes, sir. _Rashers_ and eggs, sir.”

“Beefsteak, tea, and coffee, in half an hour.”

Raining! The view of the bay is rather cheerless. Everything looks

dankish, dingy, and dull.

“Can you realize that you are in I Ireland?” I inquire of the Lady from

Idaho.

“Not in the least,” responds the most amiable of her sex. “Can you?”

“No, indeed.”

It is not a good morning for the interchange of ideas. Misty mornings

never are. As for certain projected “Thoughts on touching Irish soil after

twenty‐five years’ absence,” their suggesting themselves under such a

murky sky is out of the question. They will have to wait for the bright,

creative sun. Perhaps, after a good warm breakfast, one may be able to

think some “Thoughts,” if the railway time‐tables will admit of it.

The “coffee‐room” of “the best hotel” is cold and cheerless. Smoke without

fire is obtained from some wet coal‐dust, economically caked, according to

the mode of thrifty housekeepers in the British Isles, in an infinitesimal

grate in a remote corner of the room. Impossible to think any “Thoughts”

here. Some solemn‐looking men, very particular about their chops—I mean

their mutton‐chops—are enjoying—or, more correctly, consuming, for there

is no evidence of enjoyment—their morning meal.

Our breakfast is not a bad one. The chops are excellent; the beefsteak,

so‐so. I have eaten better beef in New York. The bread is hard and heavy,

but white and not ill‐tasted. I wish the Irish and English waiters would

adopt the short alpaca jacket and long white apron of the waiters of Paris

and New York. It is a much neater and cleaner costume. The greasy full‐

dress coat and limp, whity‐brown neck‐cloth are not only absurd; they are

often disgusting.

Still raining! The sidewalks are hid from view by the thickly‐passing

umbrellas. Let us go and buy some umbrellas! Life seems to be impossible

without them here. In the three kingdoms, umbrellas are indispensable to

respectability.

“I hate respectability,” said the Lady from Idaho with a vicious emphasis.

I was rather astonished by this outburst, but I reflected that allowance

must be made for ladies’ tempers on draggle‐tail mornings.

“Such weather,” I remarked, “is enough to make one hate anything.”

“It is not that,” she retorted. “I hate respectability, rain or shine.”

“_Des goûts et des couleurs_—you know the old proverb.”

“There is nothing more selfish, more hypocritical, more cowardly, than

‘respectability.’ ”

“My dear madam, I did not take the trouble of coming from the other side

of the Rocky Mountains for the purpose of chopping logic. I must buy

umbrellas.”

I bought me an umbrella. Thenceforward I was only separated from it during

sleep and meals while I remained in the British Islands. It was almost

always necessary. The wretch who sold it to me, however, saw that I wore

overshoes, and charged me about three Irish prices. I feel certain that

the day will come when he will be fitly punished. He will emigrate to the

United States sooner or later, and the hackmen or _restaurateurs_ of New

York will avenge me!

Steam is a wonderful leveller. It is destroying national costume and

toning down national peculiarities. The same round hat which was worn in

New York when I left is worn in Queenstown; the same fashion of winter

overcoat. The up‐and‐down‐the‐gamut intonations of the Cork brogue,

however, bring you to a consciousness of your true latitude and longitude.

The long, hooded cloth cloaks of the peasant women have some suggestions

of nationality about them. Occasionally, too, a girl of seventeen or

eighteen with bare feet and short kirtle is seen. This is characteristic.

“Buy a bunch of Irish shamrocks from me, sir? Now, do, sir, if ye plase.”

We cannot refuse. We lay in a plentiful supply of the chosen leaf of bard

and chief.

“Long life to you, sir, and to the purty ladies and the beautiful childer,

and all the blessings in the world on ye. May ye never know what it is to

want anything for them!”

The shamrocks alone were not dear; but with such a prayer added, we felt

as if we were taking the poor woman’s stock in trade for nothing.

As a matter of course, I expected to find Ireland rather backward as

regards women’s rights and that sort of thing. I was somewhat surprised,

therefore, on entering the telegraph office, to find a telegraphist of the

gentler sex. She seemed to be quite a business young lady—quick,

intelligent, and polite. With the least possible display of conscious

superiority, she instructed me in the mode of filling those absurd British

blanks for my first British telegrams. With the condescending gentleness

of an amiable “school‐marm” instructing a good boy of unfortunately

limited knowledge and capacity, she “posted” me in the names and location

of streets in Dublin. She was industrious as well as intelligent. She had

brought her knitting. During our conversation, she doubly improved the

shining hour by rolling into a ball a skein of worsted which a most

serious and attentive young lady of eight or nine summers held distended

on her outstretched and uplifted hands.

The hotel at which we stopped was managed by women. I afterwards remarked,

in my trip through the island, that the internal economy of most of the

hotels in Ireland is under female direction. The post‐offices and postal‐

telegraph offices are very generally managed by women. There are numerous

institutions for the care of aged, sick, or destitute women, or for the

rescue and reformation of the poor erring sisters who have been led away

from the paths of purity and peace.

“I really believe, after all,” said the Lady from Idaho to me one day, in

conversation on this subject, “that they take better care of their women

than we do.”

We take the cars for Cork. We ride to the “beautiful city” through the

loveliest bit of landscape on which the sun ever shone, or, more

appositely, on which the gentle rain from heaven ever fell. It is indeed a

land of loveliness and song. The good‐natured guard, having remarked our

overshoes doubtless, puts his face to the car‐window, and enthusiastically

asks:

“Well, sir, an’ isn’t this a counthry worth fightin’ for?”