It was only for one instant. The next, he became aware of the eyes that

curiously observed him, and, by the exercise of that habit of self‐control

which had become to him a second nature, shut off from his face every

ripple of emotion.

“I thank you, sir!” he said in answer to the warden’s compliments. “And

perhaps you will be so good as to send those men away from the corridor,

and to let Mr. Benton know that I want to see him here immediately.”

The guard disappeared at once, one of them as messenger to Mr.

Schöninger’s lawyer; but the warden still lingered.

“You will want to change your clothes,” he said. “And after that, I shall

be happy to place a room in my house at your disposal, where you may

receive your friends and transact business till the time comes for you to

go free.”

Mr. Schöninger glanced down with loathing on his prison uniform,

remembering it for the first time since that day of horror and despair

when he had waked from a half‐swoon to find himself invested with it and

laid on the narrow bed in his cell.

Perhaps the officer, too, remembered that day when he had said that he

would rather resign his office than receive such a prisoner into his care,

when he had exhausted arguments and persuasions to induce him to submit to

prison rules, and how, when at last he had felt obliged to hint at the

employment of force, he had seen the strong man fall powerless before him.

“These clothes would hardly fit Mr. Lawrence Gerald,” Mr. Schöninger

remarked, smiling scornfully. “But perhaps there will be no question of

his wearing them.”

The warden uttered an exclamation. “Is it Lawrence Gerald? It cannot be!”

He had not been told the name.

“And why not, sir?” demanded the Jew haughtily.

The officer was silent, disconcerted by the question, which he did not

attempt to answer.

“Poor Mrs. Gerald!” he said, looking at F. Chevreuse.

Mrs. Gerald’s fondness for her son was almost a proverb in Crichton.

“Mrs. Gerald’s troubles are over,” said the priest briefly.

Mr. Schöninger went to the window, and stood there looking out, his back

to his companions. To his hidden tumult of passions, his fierce, half‐

formed resolutions, his swelling pride, his burning anger and impatience,

this news came with as sudden a check as if he had seen the cold form of

the dead woman brought into the cell and laid at his feet.

He had been thinking of the world of men, of the bigoted crowd which had

condemned him unheard, of the judge who had pronounced sentence, and the

jury who had found him guilty—of all the cold outside world which has to

be conquered by strength, or to be submitted to; and now rose up before

him another world of pitying women, whose tenderness reversed the

decisions pronounced by the intellects of men, or swept over them with an

imperious charity; who were ever at the side of the sufferer, even when

they knew him to be the sinner, and whose silent hearts felt the rebound

of every blow that was struck. He saw the priest’s mother, a sacrifice to

the interests of her son; the criminal’s wife, as he had seen her that

night in his cell, with the only half‐veiled splendor of her silks and

jewels mocking the pallid misery of her face; and now this last victim,

more pitiful than all! A sighing wind seemed to sweep around him, far‐

reaching and full of mingled voices, the infinite wail of innocent and

suffering hearts. How gross and demoniac in comparison were the bitter,

warring voices of hate and pride and revenge! To his startled mental

vision it was almost as though there appeared before him hideous and

brutal forms cowering away from faces full of a pure and piercing sorrow.

He perceived that he had been taking low ground, and, with a firm will,

caught himself back, setting his foot on the temptation that had been

making him a companion for demons. Wronged he had been in a way that he

could not help; but he could at least prevent their lowering him in mind.

They should not induce him to yield to passion or to meanness.

He turned proudly toward his two companions, who still waited for him to

speak. “If the arrest of Lawrence Gerald is not necessary for my release,

then I hope he may escape,” he said. “It is bad enough to be shut up in

this way when one has a clear conscience; but with such a conscience as he

must have, imprisonment could lead only to madness or suicide.”

“Or to penitence,” added F. Chevreuse with emphasis.

Mr. Schöninger did not reply; this alternative was beyond his

comprehension. But he glanced at the priest; and in doing so, his eyes

were attracted to the doorway, which was quite filled by the ample figure

of Mrs. Ferrier.

“I couldn’t help coming, father,” she said quite humbly. “And, besides,

Honora Pembroke said she thought it right that I should. I sha’n’t stay

long or say much. I only want to say that when Mr. Schöninger goes out of

this place, my house and all in it are at his disposal.”

The scene she had witnessed had quieted her completely, and there was even

a certain dignity in her submissive air. But when she turned to Mr.

Schöninger, her tears burst forth again, in spite of her efforts to

restrain them. “You’ll have to learn to forgive and forget,” she said in a

stifled voice, which she vainly strove to render calm. “I’m the only one

left to make amends to you.”

Mr. Schöninger came forward instantly, and extended his hands to her. “I

have nothing to forgive in you,” he said warmly; “and I would not wish to

forget your kindness. I thank you for your offer, but I cannot give any

answer to it now. If I decline, it will not be because I am ungrateful.

And now let me say good‐by to you till a more favorable time.”

She had had the discretion not to wait for this intimation, and had of

herself made the motion to go.

“Try to forgive and forget,” she whispered hoarsely; and, pulling her veil

over her tear‐swollen face, hurried away.

This was Mr. Schöninger’s first visitor, but not his last. Before an hour

had passed, the news had overspread the whole city, producing a strange

revulsion of feeling. There were, perhaps, those who were, at heart, sorry

to know that the Jew was innocent. They had from the first expressed their

belief in his guilt, and they had been loud in their opinion that he

should be sentenced to the full extent of the law. This class were not

only disappointed in their prejudices, but humbled in their own persons.

They could not but feel that they had rendered themselves at once odious

and ridiculous. But the majority of the people were disposed to render

full justice. All the Protestant clergymen called on him, though but few

of them had ever spoken to him. It was right, they said, that every man of

dignity and position in the city should pay some respect to the stranger

who had suffered in their midst such a cruel injustice, and the fact that

he was a Jew should make them all the more anxious in doing so; for the

public must see that they did not persecute any one for his religious

belief. Judges, lawyers, bankers, professors, men of wealth, who were

nothing but men of wealth—all came to express their regrets and to offer

their hospitality.

He saw none of them, though he sent courteous messages to some. He was too

much engaged in business that day to receive visitors. Only one received a

decided rebuff. “As for the judge who sentenced me to be hanged,” Mr.

Schöninger said, “no compliment which he can pay will ever render his

presence tolerable to me.”

All the young ladies took their walk in the direction of the prison that

day, and all the young gentlemen followed the young ladies; and, in

passing, they lingered and looked, or cast sidelong glances, at the

windows of the warden’s parlor, where it was understood Mr. Schöninger

was. People who did not like to be suspected of romance or of curiosity

had some excuse for going in that direction, and those who had business in

the prison were esteemed fortunate. Probably one‐half the town took

occasion that day to look at the windows of the warden’s house. But it

cannot be said that they were wiser for having done so, for not a glimpse

did one of them get of Mr. Schöninger.

But when the soft spring evening deepened, and all the curious crowd had

withdrawn, and the same full moon which Lawrence Gerald and his wife had

seen the night before, flooding with its radiance the melancholy splendors

of Rome, was veiling with a light scarcely less brilliant the beautiful

young city of Crichton, two men emerged from the warden’s house, and,

taking a quiet by‐street, where the trees made a delicate shadow with

their budding branches, climbed the hill to South Avenue. They walked

leisurely, and almost in silence, only exchanging now and then a quiet

word; but one who watched closely the taller of the two might have

perceived that his quiet signified anything but indifference to the scene

around him, and that he was full of a strong though controlled excitement.

He stepped as though curbed, and every moment glanced up at the sky or at

the branches over his head, and drew in deep breaths of the fresh spring

air. A fine delight ran bubbling through his veins. All the feverish mass

of humanity, with its petty hates and still more hateful loves, its

jealousies, its trivial fears and despicable hopes, was put aside, and he

was entering into a new and freshly‐blooming creation, where mankind, too,

might partake of the nobility of nature.

They passed Mrs. Ferrier’s house, with its broad front and long gardens,

looking very stately in that softening light, and, after a few minutes,

reached the summit of the hill, where only a single tree stood guard, and

all about them the world, of which they seemed to be the centre, lay

spread in tranquil beauty, its hills and dales, its towns and forests,

bound with a ring of mountains that showed with a soft richness against

the sky. The city lay white beneath them, and the Saranac wound like a

silver ribbon across the view. Where the hills dipped, one sparkling

point, audible with dashing foam, told where the Cocheco danced day and

night with white and blithesome feet.

F. Chevreuse, standing one silent moment to contemplate the scene, was

startled to see his companion break from his side, and, running to the

tree at a little distance, catch one of its branches, and swing himself

into the air by it. The priest’s first glance was one of dismay; his

second, a smiling one. He understood the abounding joy of which the act

was an outbreak, and was pleased with the boyishness of it, and that the

impulse should have been yielded to in his presence. Sad as he was, he

could not help feeling glad to see another possessed by a full and

unthinking happiness.

Mr. Schöninger laughed, as he returned to his companion.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said; “I am not a lunatic. I am free! Do you know

what a delight it is to be in a place where you can swing your arms

without hitting anything? I could run here half an hour, and neither turn

nor be obliged to stop; and I can stand upright without feeling as though

my head were going to strike.” While speaking, he was continually making

slight motions, as though trying if he had the free use of his limbs; and

when he stopped, he lifted his head to its full height, and drew in a long

breath.

“How delicious the air is!” he exclaimed. “How fresh and pure! It comes

here from the forests and the mountains and the sea. There is no smell of

lime or close dampness or human breaths in it. Pah! F. Chevreuse, when you

preach again, and tell your people what they have to be thankful for, in

spite of sorrow and poverty, remind them of the air they breathe, the sun

that shines on them, the sky above their heads, and the power to move

about as they will. If this sky were gray, and pouring down rain, I should

still think it beautiful; for it is the sky, and not a stone.”

He walked away again to a little distance.

“Instead of being obliged to give a reason for being happy, I think we

should be obliged to account for being unhappy,” he said, coming back.

“How many sources of delight we have which we overlook because we are

accustomed to them! Mere motion, walking, running, any natural and

unconstrained motion, is a pleasure; breathing is a pleasure; the eyes

have a thousand delights. It is a source of pleasure to exercise one’s

strength and overcome obstacles. I never went up a hill in the country or

climbed any height but I felt like singing. Swimming, skating, riding,

driving—how exhilarating they are! And for all these delights you do not

need the companionship of man. Yourself and nature—these are enough.”

“I did not know you were so fond of nature,” F. Chevreuse said, smiling.

“I do not think I ever mentioned it to any one before,” remarked the other

carelessly.

The priest was struck by this reply, and looked with astonishment on the

man who for thirty years had loved nature, yet never said a word in praise

of it. Could it be because of a reserved and unsocial disposition? Or was

it that he had been too much isolated? The priest was almost afraid to

speak, lest he should check a confidence at once so charming and so manly.

He quite understood that it was the unusual and deep agitation of Mr.

Schöninger’s mind which had brought this feeling to light, as the sea, in

its agitation, may toss up a pearl.

He said nothing, therefore, but waited for his companion to speak again,

not observing him, but looking up at the illuminated dome above.

“When one is free, and has the use of one’s limbs, and is happy, then one

believes in a good God, who is a father to his creatures,” Mr. Schöninger

resumed in a voice as gentle as he might have used when a child at his

mother’s knee. He had been holding his hat in his hand; but in speaking,

he covered his head. At the same instant, F. Chevreuse uncovered his, and

the Jew and the Christian, each after his manner, acknowledged the

presence of God in that thought, which was almost like a visible presence.

“To me,” said the priest, “the acknowledgment comes more surely when I am

in trouble. It seems to me that if I were in chains and torments, he would

be nearer to me than ever before.”

“That is because you have been taught to believe in a suffering God,” was

the calm reply. “I have been taught to see in God a being infinitely

glorious and strong, a mighty, shoreless ocean of deep joy. That he could

suffer pain, that his puny creatures could torment and kill him, has

always been to me a thought at once absurd and blasphemous. It is probably

for this reason that you see him best in sorrow, and I in joy.”

He stood a little while thinking, then added quietly, as if speaking to

himself: “Yet it is a sweet and comforting thought.”

F. Chevreuse blushed red with a sudden gladness, but said nothing. It was

no time for controversy; and, besides, he had the wisdom to leave souls to

God sometimes. That people are to be converted by a constant pelting of

argument and attack he did not believe. His experience had been that

converts of any great worth were not made in that way, and that the soul

that studied out its own way helped by God, and teased as little as

possible by man, was by far the most steadfast in the faith.

They went slowly down the hill together in the direction of the priest’s

house, and stopped a moment to lean on Mrs. Ferrier’s gate in passing.

That lady had just entered her house, having been all the day and evening

at Mrs. Gerald’s. She would gladly have stayed all night had Honora

allowed it.

The two men had, unseen or unrecognized, been near enough to hear the long

sigh the good creature gave as she mounted the steps to her door, and the

exclamation she made to the servant who followed her: “Little did I think

last night at this time what horrible things were going to happen within

twenty‐four hours.” Some persons have that way of dating backward from

startling events, and renewing thus the vividness of their sensations.

She did not know what kind thoughts were following her in at the door, or

she might have been comforted.

They went on, and soon came in sight of what had been Mrs. Gerald’s home.

The blinds were all closed, and not a ray of light was visible. Under the

vines and large, over‐hanging trees the cottage appeared to shrink and

hide itself.

“I would like to go in for one minute, if you do not object to waiting,”

F. Chevreuse said. “That poor girl means to sit up all night, and she is

likely to have no one else in the room. It is a gloomy watch, and she may

feel better, if I speak a word to her.”

“Pray do not think of me!” Mr. Schöninger exclaimed.

F. Chevreuse stepped into the yard, and, as he held the gate open for his

companion, Mr. Schöninger followed, though with some hesitation. There

were many reasons why he would not be willing to enter that house. Indeed,

the priest well knew that it was no time to take him there openly; but for

some reason he wished him to come near enough, at least, to feel the

sorrow and desolation which had fallen upon it. Perhaps he wished to

soften Mr. Schöninger still more toward the unhappy man the burden of

whose guilt he had borne; perhaps he wanted to remind him how entirely

that burden had been removed from him by showing how cruelly it had fallen

elsewhere.

The priest tried the door before ringing, and, finding it not locked,

stepped quietly into the entry, which was lighted through the open doors

of rooms at either side. In one of these rooms sat three or four persons.

He said a few words to them, and closed the door of their room before

going to the other.

Mr. Schöninger held back a moment, but could not resist longer the

temptation to approach. The outer door was still open, and a soft light

shone over the threshold of it from the parlor. Drawn step by step, he

went to the threshold, and stood just where the light and shadow met, and

the door framed a picture for him. The room seemed to be nearly all white

and flowers. White draperies covered the windows, the pictures, and the

cabinets and tables, the coldness changed to a tender purity by flowers

and green leaves, arranged, not profusely, but with good taste. On what

appeared to be a sofa covered with black lay a motionless, white‐draped

form lying easily, as one might sleep; but there needed not the covered

face to show that it was the sleep of death. Candles burned at the head of

the sofa, and a _prie‐dieu_ stood before it. All this Mr. Schöninger took

in at a glance; but his eyes rested on what was to him the principal

object in the room—Honora Pembroke, sitting near the head of the sofa,

with the light of the candles shining over her. She looked up, but did not

speak, as F. Chevreuse came in and knelt at the _prie‐dieu_. Her eyes

dropped again immediately to her folded hands, and she sat there

motionless, an image of calm and silent grief. Her face was pale and

utterly sad and languid with long weeping, her hands lay wearily in her

lap, and her plain black dress, and the hair all drawn back together and

fastened with a comb, showed how distant from her mind was the thought of

personal adornment. Yet never had she looked more lovely or shown how

little her beauty depended on ornament.

Mr. Schöninger, looking at her attentively, perceived that her face was

thinner than when he had seen it last; and though the sight gave him a

certain pain, it gave him, too, a certain pleasure. He would have thought

her cruel had she been quite prosperous and happy while he was in torment.

F. Chevreuse rose from his knees, and Miss Pembroke looked up and waited

for him to speak.

“Had you not better go to bed, and leave the others to watch?” he asked.

“You will be exhausted.”

“I do not want to leave her, father,” she replied. “If she had had a long

illness, it would have been different; but it is all so short, so sudden!”

She stopped a moment, for her voice begun to tremble a little; but

resumed: “She has no one left but me, and I want to stay by her till the

last.”

“You will not be lonely?” he asked, dropping further objections.

“Oh! no. The others will sit all night in there, with the doors open

between. At daybreak Mrs. Ferrier is coming down, and then I shall go to

rest. I am glad you came in.”

“I was passing by with Mr. Schöninger,” he said, “and I asked him to wait

for me a moment.”

Her eyes had dropped again while she spoke, seeming too heavy to be

lifted; but as the priest said this, she glanced into his face; then,

becoming aware that the street‐door was open, looked toward it.

Mr. Schöninger stood there motionless.

A change passed over her face, her sadness becoming distress. She rose

from her seat and went to him, her hands clasped.

“Mr. Schöninger,” she said, “she was the last person who would have

wronged you or any one.”

Then, seeing that he had not come as an accuser, she held out her hands to

him.

The night before he had been like one buried alive, and his hand had been

against all the world; to‐night life had crowded back upon him with its

honors, its friendships, its pathos, and this last scene of sorrow and

tenderness.

He bent, and kissed the hands she gave him, but did not utter a word, and

they parted instantly. Honora returned to the _prie‐dieu_, and, kneeling

there, hid her face and began to weep again, and Mr. Schöninger went out

to the gate without giving a backward glance.

F. Chevreuse joined him immediately.

“All these wretched doings have left Miss Pembroke very lonely,” he said.

“She has really no one left who is near to her, though she has a host of

friends. But what, after all, is a host of friends, as the world calls

them, worth? When a thunderbolt falls on you, people always gather round,

and a great deal of kind feeling is struck out; but, perhaps, you have

needed the kindness a great deal more in the long, dry days when there was

no thunder. It is the constant, daily, intimate friendship that gives

happiness. But there! it is of no use to abuse the world, especially when

one forms a part of it, and is thus abusing one’s self. All of us feel our

hearts warm towards people who are in great affliction, when we do not

think of them in their ordinary trials. It is only God who is constant to

all needs, who knows all. Mr. Schöninger, you are welcome.”

They had reached the house, and the priest turned on the threshold to

offer his hand to the man whom he had so long courted in vain, and who had

so many times refused his friendship. He knew that he had conquered when

his hospitality was accepted.

He had conquered, in so much as he had won the Jew’s friendship and

confidence; for, having renounced his distrust, Mr. Schöninger was, in an

undemonstrative way, generously confiding. Hard to win by one whose

circumstances were so alien to his own, when won, there was no reserve.

F. Chevreuse’s sitting‐room was never a very pleasant one, except for his

presence. It had too many doors, was too shut in from outside, and had

also the uncomfortable air of being the first of a _suite_. One never

feels at rest in the first room of a _suite_. He felt the unpleasantness

of the place, without in the least knowing the cause of it, and always

took his special visitors into his mother’s room.

Mother Chevreuse had, woman‐like, known precisely what her son’s apartment

lacked, and had given it a pleasant look by employing those little devices

which can introduce a fragment of beauty into the most desolate place; but

her mantle had not fallen on Jane, the housekeeper, and thus it chanced

that the priest had, without knowing it, lost more than his mother.

Her sitting‐room was cheerfully lighted when the two entered it, and the

table, prepared for supper, awaited them. It was the Thursday before Palm

Sunday, and F. Chevreuse had eaten nothing since taking a cup of coffee

and a crust of bread in the morning; and now, the work and excitement of

the day over, and nothing worse than he had anticipated having happened,

he felt like resting and refreshing himself. If Mrs. Gerald had been alive

and mourning, he would have been tormented by the thought of her; but she

was safe in the care of God, and he left her there in perfect trust.

Andrew, the man‐servant, sacristan, and factotum of the establishment, was

lurking somewhere about when the priest entered, and came forward to make

a crabbed salutation. If he ever felt in an amiable mood or was satisfied

with anything, this man took good care that no one should know it; and not

all the cheerfulness, patience, and amiability of F. Chevreuse could for a

moment chase away the cloud that brooded over his face, or make him

acknowledge that there was anything but tribulation in his life. The

priest bore more patiently the constant, petty trial of such a presence

about him because he believed that sorrow for the death of Mother

Chevreuse had changed the old man from bad to worse, when the truth was

that the lady had skilfully hidden much of their servant’s crabbedness, or

had so displayed the comical phase of it that it had ceased to be an

annoyance, and was often amusing.

“Tell Jane to give us our supper right away, Andrew,” the priest said.

“And bring up a bottle of wine with it.”

“Jane is gone to bed, sir,” Andrew announced, and stood stubbornly to be

questioned, his whole air saying plainly that all had not been told.

“Gone to bed!” echoed F. Chevreuse. “What is the matter with her?”

“She says she is sick.” The man suffered an acrid smile to show in the

corners of his mouth.

“Jane sick!” said the priest, much concerned. “Is there any one with her?

Has anything been done for her?”

In speaking, he took a step toward the door.

“Oh! don’t you trouble yourself, sir,” interposed Andrew quickly, finding

that he must deny himself the pleasure of a long cross‐examination. “She

says she doesn’t want anything or anybody. She’ll get well when she’s

ready. She’s got the supper, and I can manage to bring it up. All the

doctors and all the nurses in the world won’t make her well till she’s a

mind to be.”

“Well, well!” said F. Chevreuse, rather mortified at this exposition of

his domestic trials. “Bring up the supper.”

Jane had, in fact, one of those convenient illnesses sometimes indulged in

by some women, and now and then by men, when they are seized by a fit of

ungovernable ill‐humor which they dare not show in its true guise, or when

they desire to appear very much abused, or to escape blame for some ill‐

doing. F. Chevreuse had not been home since early morning, and dinner had

been prepared, had waited, and been put away—no small grievance to even a

good‐natured housekeeper. Secondly, about noon, when all the rest of the

city knew it, Andrew above all, the great news of the day had burst upon

Jane. It was too much; and when, toward evening, Andrew had come home with

an order that supper should be prepared for two that night, and a little

extra preparation made, and that, moreover, the priest’s visitor would

stay all night, the housekeeper’s cup ran over. News had started from the

priest’s house, and made the circuit of the city, electrifying everybody,

and she had been the last to hear it, and had heard it at last from

Andrew! She would not have dared to hint such a thing; but she thought

that F. Chevreuse should have told her before leaving the house, even if

he had commanded her silence. It would have saved her the mortification of

being taken entirely by surprise and displaying such utter ignorance.

While she mused, the fire burned. She would henceforth bear herself very

stiffly toward F. Chevreuse. Since he thought that she was not to be

trusted, that she was nothing but a servant, she would act like a servant.

All those things which she had done for his comfort without being asked

she would now wait to be asked to do. He should see the difference between

a housekeeper, who should, according to her opinion, be in some sort a

friend, and a mere hired servant. She would be very dignified, and

immensely respectful and reverential; would be astonished if he should ask

if anything was the matter; would do in great and anxious haste whatever

he should command, and no more than he commanded; and she would go to F.

O’Donovan for confession. In short, this woman, who knew that all the

comfort of the priest’s home depended on her, marked out for herself a

line of conduct which would have made that home a place of penance to him,

and herself a minister of torment; while at the same time she could not

only hold herself guiltless of fault, but even assume an air of unwonted

sanctity.

To be frankly and honestly disagreeable or wicked, one does not need to

study; but a pious hatefulness requires careful preparation.

Her plan of future conduct arranged, Jane perceived that a notable pivot

was needed where it should turn from her past behavior; and what so

suitable as a short illness? Besides, she did not feel equal to assuming

her new _rôle_ as yet. The temptation was too strong to give way to anger.

She bewailed Mrs. Gerald, therefore, with many tears; Mrs. Gerald’s death,

which might have happened from any other cause, being the only point in

the whole story which she would recognize or hear anything about. Weeping

brought on a headache, and the headache increased. At five o’clock in the

afternoon Jane bound her head up in a wet linen band, and began to feel

unable to stand or walk. Duty alone compelled her to keep about. What

would become of the house, if she were to give up? What could a poor woman

do who had no home or friends of her own, and was obliged to take care of

a priest’s house? She must work and watch early and late, sick or well.

Nobody but herself knew what a trial it was. And here the victim began to

weep over her own misfortunes.

Presently, at six o’clock, Jane began to feel a pain in her back; but

nothing would induce her to rest. F. Chevreuse had sent word that he would

have some one to sup and stay all night, and she must get the bed‐room

ready, and cook something extra. She didn’t see how she could do it, but

it must be done.

When her gossips had gone home, after vainly offering their assistance,

Andrew came in and found the housekeeper holding on to her head with one

hand, while with the other she did work which there was not the least need

of doing. He had been watching with great interest the progress of her

malady, and perceived that it was near the crisis.

The supper‐hour had been casually mentioned in the priest’s message as

about seven o’clock. At half‐past six Jane could not suppress an

occasional moan of pain; and at ten minutes before seven she consigned the

supper, which was all prepared, to the care of Andrew, and staggered into

her own room, holding on by chairs and tables as she went. She would not,

perhaps, have indulged in such violent symptoms had she seen the smiles

with which her fellow‐servant beheld her tottering progress across the

room. Fully persuaded that she had vanquished his scepticism, and half

convinced herself that she was suffering severely, Jane set herself to

listen for the priest’s coming.

Seven o’clock came, but not F. Chevreuse; half‐past seven, and still he

had not appeared.

Jane stole out into the kitchen, scarcely able to stand, and renewed the

spoiling dishes. She did not wish to leave anything to be complained of,

meaning to be herself the only one ill‐used. At length she heard a foot on

the door‐step, and, making haste to shut herself into her room, with only

a very little opening left, Jane became a prey to grief and pain.

All these movements Andrew had listened to with great edification; but

what Andrew did not know was that the invalid, skurrying out to stand at

the foot of the stairs when she heard talking in the room above, had had

the pleasure of listening to the whole conversation regarding her state of

health.

Ten minutes after, F. Chevreuse, without much surprise, it must be owned,

saw his housekeeper coming feebly into the room where he sat at table, her

face red and swollen with laborious weeping, and expressing chief among

its varied emotions and sentiments a saint‐like and anxious desire and

determination to sacrifice herself to the utmost rather than omit the

smallest possible duty.

It was an unwelcome vision. There was a point beyond which even he did not

want to have his sympathies drained. He felt that he was human, and would

like to rest both mind and body.

“I am afraid, F. Chevreuse,” she began, in a very sick voice, leaning

against the side of the door—“I am afraid that your toast is too dry. I

made it fresh three times....”

“Never mind, Jane,” he interrupted, rather impatiently. “It does very

well. You need not trouble yourself.”

Jane came into the room a few tottering steps, and rested on the back of a

chair.

“I don’t know how Andrew brought things up,” she said, very short of

breath, but not so much so but she could fire this little shot. “I suppose

they are all at sixes and sevens. But I wasn’t able to do any....”

“If you are not well, you had better go to bed,” said the priest quite

sharply. “Andrew will do all I want done.”

Taken unawares by this unusual severity, Jane lost her discretion. “It is

my place to look that things are properly done in the house, and I shall

do it,” she said, half defiant, half hysterical, and took a step nearer to

the table.

As she did so, her eyes fell on the pale and haggard face of their guest.

At that sight she paused, transfixed with a genuine astonishment, for she

had expected to see F. O’Donovan; and, after one wild glance, as if she

had seen a ghost, uttered a cry and covered her face with her hands.

“Jane!” exclaimed the priest in a voice that told her he was not to be

tried much further. “Have you lost your senses?”

“My heart is broken for Mrs. Gerald!” she cried, weeping loudly. “I

haven’t been able to stand hardly since I heard about her. Oh! such a

wicked world as this is. I shall be glad when the Lord takes me out of it.

To think that I shall never see her again, that....”

F. Chevreuse laid down his knife and fork, which he had made a pretence of

using. “You and Mrs. Gerald were by no means such intimate friends that

her death should plunge you in this great affliction,” he said. “Her

nearest friends bear their sorrow with fortitude. Your agitation is

therefore quite uncalled for. I have no further need of you to‐night. If

you want anything done for you, Andrew will go for some of your friends.”

There was no possibility of resisting this intimation, and the housekeeper

retired speechless with rage and mortification.

“Mr. Schöninger,” remarked the priest gravely, when they were alone,

“women are sometimes very troublesome.”

“F. Chevreuse,” returned his visitor with equal gravity, “men are

sometimes very troublesome.”

“That is very true,” the priest made haste to admit. “I didn’t mean to say

anything against women.”

And yet, at the woman’s first glance and cry of horror and aversion, Mr.

Schöninger’s face had darkened. “Was he always to have these vulgar

animosities intruded on him?” he asked himself.

It was one of those annoyances which a proud and fastidious person would

like to have the power to banish for ever with a gesture of the hand or a

word.

The two friends talked long together that night, and Mr. Schöninger told

the priest quite freely all his plans.

“I shall stay here and take up my life where I left it off, except that I

must now give up all contest for that disputed inheritance,” he said. “All

I had has been thrown away in the struggle. Whether there would, in any

case, have been a possible success for me I do not know. It is now too

late. This infernal persecution—I shall never call it anything else,

sir—has destroyed my last chance, and I have only to dismiss the subject

from my mind as far as possible. I received to‐day a letter signed by all

my former pupils, begging me to resume my instruction of them. They

expressed themselves very well, and I shall consent. The Unitarian

minister has invited me to play the organ in their church, but I have not

decided on that yet.”

“I would like to have you play in my church,” the priest said. “Our

organist is dead, and the singing is getting to be miserable. Our music

would, I am sure, be more pleasing to you; but, if doctrines make any

difference, you would find yourself more at home with the Unitarians. I

don’t see any difference between them and the reformed Jews.”

“Doctrines do not make any difference, especially as I am not obliged to

listen to them,” Mr. Schöninger replied with a dignity that verged on

coldness. “In music I do not find any doctrines; and it is not necessary

to believe in order to give the words their proper expression. Or rather,

I might say that the artist has a poetical faith, a faith of the

imagination, in all things grand, noble, or beautiful, and can utter with

fervor, in his art, sentiments which have no place in his daily life; or,

if they have a place, it is not such as would be assigned to them by the

theologian. In his mind a pagan goddess and a Christian priest may have

niches side by side, and it would be hard to say which he preferred. Your

Raphael painted with equal delight and success a Madonna and a Galatea.

Your Mozart wrote Masses and operas, and vastly preferred to write operas.

He says that he wrote church music when he could do nothing else.”

“So much the worse for them!” said F. Chevreuse rather hotly. “Raphael

would have painted better Madonnas—Madonnas which would have answered

their true purpose of inspiring holy thoughts—if he had devoted his gifts

entirely to God; and Mozart would have written better Masses, if he had

done the same. When you see a thorough Christian artist, it will be one

who will never lower himself to a subject contrary to, or disconnected

with, religion. The others have been false, and consequently have had only

glimpses where they might have had visions. Some of them were great, but

they might have been immeasurably greater. No, I repeat, do not imagine

that you are going to feel or play our music as you might if you were a

good Catholic. But excuse me!” he said, recalling himself. “I have given

you rather more of a lecture than I meant to. I still want you to take our

music in hand, if you will.”

“I will with pleasure, if you will be content with my interpretation of

it,” Mr. Schöninger said with a smile.

He was not in the least displeased with the priest’s lecture, and, on the

contrary, decidedly liked it. He was stirred by anything which consecrated

art as an embodiment of the divine rather than a mere expression of the

human.

Surprise is but a short‐lived emotion; and when Mr. Schöninger was left

alone that night, with the first opportunity in many months of thinking in

an unobserved solitude, he wondered more at his own calmness than at

anything which had happened to him. The hideous suffering from which he

had but just escaped looked far away, and so alien that he could

contemplate it almost with a cold inquisitiveness, as something in which

he had no part. It was scarcely more to him than the delirious dreams of a

fever which had passed away. Indignation and a desire to revenge himself

might rise again, would rise again; but for the present they slept. The

first joy of freedom, too, was over. Nothing remained but a feeling of

quiet and security. Doubtless he had, without knowing it, been soothed by

the many kind and regretful words that had been addressed to him that day,

and felt less disposed to dwell on his own wrongs when he knew that so

many others were thinking and speaking of them.

All round the room assigned to him hung the pictures that had belonged to

Mother Chevreuse—an old‐fashioned portrait of her husband in the uniform

of a French officer, a S. Ignatius of Loyola, a S. Antony preaching to the

fishes, a print, on a gold ground, of the miraculous Lady of Perpetual

Succor, and a Santa Prassede sleeping on her slab of granite.

Mr. Schöninger held his candle up to examine each of these, all but the

portrait familiar to him in their originals; and as he looked, the places

where he had first seen them, the stately palaces and the quiet churches,

enclosed his imagination within their walls. He saw again the lines of

sombre columns leading up to the glowing mosaics of the tribune, where the

vision of S. John hung petrified in air; the dim lamp in the mysterious

chapel of the _Colonna Santa_ shone out again inside its grating, and the

walls glittered dimly back. He saw the thickets of camellias mantled with

bloom under an April sky, a little forest of white at the right hand, and

a forest of rose‐red at the left, and ever the fountains sparkling

through.

How strange it was! He set down his candle, almost impatiently, as if a

beautiful vision were being melted in the light of it, and blew it out.

How strange it was! When he was in Rome, he had hated it while he admired

it; but now, as the thought of it came up, his heart yearned out towards

it, and grew tender and full with longing for it. How strange that his

dearest affections should cluster where his deepest hates had pierced, and

that, whenever an accusing thought arose, an excusing one immediately

answered it. The city of the Ghetto was becoming to him also the city of

the silvery‐haired old man who had opened its gates. To remember him was

like remembering a pure white star that had shone out one still evening

long ago.

Mr. Schöninger put aside the curtain that hardly barred the full moonlight

from the room, and leaned out into the night. Not many streets distant

Honora Pembroke sat wakeful and mourning, alone with her dead. By what

fatality was it that the silent woman lying there, and the weeping one

beside her, should have the power to stand, with their softness and their

pallor, between him and his remembrance of that gloomy mansion of hate and

crime, the shadow of whose portal had but just slipped from him? The cold

and trembling hands he had kissed that night had quenched for a time all

anger in his heart.

He sighed, thinking of that sad household, and his gaze turned tenderly

and steadily in its direction. He would have liked to call down a blessing

on the head he loved had it not been so much nearer the source of all

blessing than he was. She was right, no matter what she believed. All she

held good was good, at least as far as she was concerned, and no blame of

false doctrine could be imputed to her.

A ray of light stronger than that of the moon shining across his eyes

attracted his attention. It came from F. Chevreuse’s sitting‐room, the one

window of which was at right angles with the window where he leaned. A

small, displaced fold of the curtain showed him the priest on his knees

there before a crucifix, his hands clasped, his black‐robed form as

motionless as if it had been carved out of ebony. Here, too! Could he have

no other friend than a Christian priest for his hand and heart to cling

to?

Yet all was sweet and peaceful, and everything conspired to soothe him.

The air touched him with a breath too soft to be called a breeze, the city

was still about him, and only a foamy murmur told where the sleepless

river flowed.

Triumph, joy, and sweetness he had felt, and at last came gratitude to God

and forgiveness of man. One of his last thoughts that night was of pity

for Lawrence Gerald.

In that pity he was not alone; for nearly the whole of Crichton shared it.

They had known the young man from his childhood, had blamed and petted

him, had put every temptation in his way, and been ready to defend him

when he yielded. In spite of his haughtiness and assumption, there was not

a single person in the city, perhaps, who really disliked him. His

captivating beauty and wayward sweetness won more affection than the

highest virtues or the noblest gifts of mind would have won. When a

stranger and a Jew was accused, they could believe him to have been

actuated by the most cruel malignity; but it was impossible to impute such

feelings to Lawrence Gerald. He was weak and imprudent, and had become

involved, and so led on beyond his intention. Each one could imagine, even

before the confession was made public, just how it had happened; and when

they read the confession, the feeling was almost universal in favor of his

escape. Only a few, sternly just, insisted on hoping that he would be

brought to suffer the full penalty of the law. Fathers and mothers whose

boys, scarcely more governable than he, had played and grown up with him,

looked with terror on their own children; and young men who secretly knew

themselves to have been preserved only by what they would have called

chance from crimes as bad as his, shuddered at the thought of his being

brought back among them to be tried for his life. A sort of panic seized

upon all when they saw what horrors could grow out of that which had

seemed to be mere youthful errors, and how criminal had been the leniency

of public opinion and of the law. Mr. Schöninger’s case had held no moral

for them, for he was an alien; but what Lawrence Gerald was some of their

own might be. They were conspicuously generous, these people, in that

charity which stays at home and makes excuses for its own little circle;

and for this time, at least, they regretted that their charity had not

gone beyond that boundary, and extended to the stranger within their

gates.

“I confess before Almighty God, to the man who has been so wronged on my

account, and to my friends and neighbors, whom I have deceived”—so

Lawrence Gerald’s confession began—“that I am guilty in deed, though not

in intention, of the death of Madame Chevreuse, for which Mr. Schöninger

is now unjustly condemned. I had gambled, and was in debt to a man who

threatened to expose me if I did not pay him at once. I knew that the

exposure would ruin me. I should have lost my situation, my marriage would

have been prevented, and my mother’s heart would have been broken. The

debt was not a new one. I had not gambled for a good while, and had

resolved never to do so again; and I have kept that resolution. If I would

have broken it, and increased my debt, the man would have waited. I was

tempted to, but I resisted. It seemed to me better to take the money—I did

not call it stealing—when I could get it, and repay it privately after my

marriage. I knew that I could have it then, a little at a time. I had

known many men to be excused for such things—men who had used money that

belonged to others, meaning to repay it some time, and the law had not

punished them severely. Yet there was not a case where the need seemed to

be as great as mine. I thought of it a long time before I felt as if I

could do it, and then I didn’t resolve that I would. I only felt that I

would take advantage of whatever chance occurred. I never arranged

anything. F. Chevreuse dropped his latch‐key into the furnace register one

day when he was at my mother’s. I got it out afterward, and kept it. I

knew already that the key of our street‐door would unlock his. Those two

helps I regarded as an intimation of what I was to do. I even thought them

providential; and I promised God that if I should succeed in getting the

money and paying my debts, I would lead a good life in future. I didn’t

know that I was blaspheming. Afterward I heard F. Chevreuse say just how

much money he had, and where he kept it. He was talking to my mother and

me. I took that as another intimation. I said, Such a good man as he would

not be permitted to help me along in this way, if I were not to do what I

am thinking of. Then I knew that for one night he would be away; but still

I did not resolve. I only followed wherever circumstances led me; and

every circumstance led me straight on to crime. We were at Mrs. Ferrier’s

that evening singing, and the night was dark. If it had been a bright

night, I should not have ventured to go to the priest’s door. I said to

myself that it was perhaps God who had made the night dark for me. I went

home from Mrs. Ferrier’s, and went to my own room, taking the key of the

street‐door with me. I stayed there till all were asleep; and I thought

that if my mother had left her chamber‐door open, I would not go out, for

she might hear me going down‐stairs. She usually left it open, but that

night it was shut. I went down the back stairs, and got out of a little

window at the back of the house; and even then I did not say surely to

myself what I was going to do.

“It was necessary that I should have some disguise, and I had none; but I

had seen Mr. Schöninger lay his shawl down in Mrs. Ferrier’s garden, and I

thought he had left it there. I took that for another sign. If the shawl

were not there, I would go home again. It was there, and I wrapped myself

in it, and walked toward the priest’s house, ready to turn back at the

least obstacle. The only person I saw was a policeman, and he was behind

me, so that I was forced to go forward. A thunder‐shower was coming up,

and the sound of it deadened my steps. When I reached the door, I stopped

again, and, for the first time, made a plan. If any one should find me

unlocking it, I would say that my mother was sick, and I had come for

Mother Chevreuse. If Andrew or Jane should meet and know me as I entered,

I would tell the same story, and would ask for Mother Chevreuse, and then

confess the whole truth to her. I knew she would pity, and perhaps she

would help, me. If Mother Chevreuse herself should come upon me, and

recognize me, I would confess to her, and beg her mercy. Nobody saw or

heard me till I had got the money into my hands, and was going away; and

then it was too late to confess. All my irresolution had gone away, and I

was desperate. It was no longer a question of confessing to one person,

but of being exposed before three, and, of course, before the world. All

the excuses I had made for myself before became as nothing, and I knew

that I was a thief. The money was in my hands, I had earned it, and I

meant to keep it. The rest is all like a flash of lightning. Why did she

cling so to me? I told her twice to let go, or I might hurt her. My blood

was all in my head. If those two servants had come and seen me there, I

should have killed myself before their faces. I heard their steps coming,

and I pushed her with all my strength. I did not stop to think where we

were. She let go then; but I have felt her soft hands clinging to me ever

since. It maddens a man to have a woman’s soft hands clinging to him when

he wants to get away. After that, I ran back to Mrs. Ferrier’s garden, and

left the shawl, and then I went home.

“When I was sick, and thought I was going to die, and couldn’t get another

priest, I confessed to F. Chevreuse, and he forgave me; but he told me

that I must consent to his telling all in order to clear Mr. Schöninger as

soon as I should be dead. I consented; but I did not die, and so he could

do nothing. I hereby give him leave to tell all that I then told him. I

have not been to confession since, because I didn’t want to give him a

chance to say anything to me. I forgot then to tell him that I had the

money still, but I shall give it back with this. Of course I did not dare

to use it. I told the man I owed to do his worst about it, and he did

nothing, only said he would wait till I could pay him. I found I had

gained nothing, and lost all.

“My wife found me out, I do not know how, and I never asked; and it is she

who writes this from my dictation. John, my mother’s footman, found me

out, and I have never asked him how. He will sign this, but without

reading it. I think he has no proof against me. F. Chevreuse knows nothing

except what he has learned in the confessional. This will be left with

him, to be opened four weeks from to‐day. With him, also, I leave a letter

to my dearest mother, whom I am not worthy to name, and a letter for Mr.

Schöninger.”

The letter to his mother was buried with her. No one ever read it, unless

those dead eyes could see. The letter to Mr. Schöninger was simply to beg

the forgiveness which, the writer added, he scarcely hoped to receive.

The confession was written in a clear, even hand, with evident

deliberation and painstaking on the part of the amanuensis; and if the

writer’s heart had trembled, not a line showed it. Only here and there a

large blister on the paper showed where a tear had fallen.

Mr. and Mrs. Grundy were shocked at the writer’s insensibility; but then

Annette Ferrier always was queer, they added.

Perhaps only one of the many who read that confession was aware of the

sting it contained for F. Chevreuse, or dreamed that those “soft, clinging

hands” would be felt by him also, as well as by the criminal, for many a

day. Mr. Schöninger shrank with a pang of sympathetic pain when he saw the

words, and almost wondered that Annette Gerald could, even in that moment

of supreme misery, have been unaware of their cruelty.

“I own to you,” F. Chevreuse confessed years afterward to F. O’Donovan,

“that when I first read those words, I realized for one moment how a man

might be willing to kill another. The image of him flinging off my

mother’s clinging hands—well, well! The time will never come when I can

speak calmly of it. Fortunately for me then, it was Holy Week, and I had

my crucified Lord before me, and plenty of work on my hands. Mr.

Schöninger helped me, too. I knew what he meant, though he made no

explanation. He only said, ‘Your Christ is strong, if he can keep your

hand from clinching.’ ”

Christ was strong, and the Jew was yet to feel his might.

Just at present, however, he had earthly things to think of, and a trial

to endure particularly disagreeable to one of his temperament. He had to

be a second time the lion of the hour, to be stared at, followed, observed

in all he did, listened to in all he said—in short, to be the temporary

victim of public curiosity.

Conquering his disgust and annoyance, he chose the best method of making

this trial a short one, by showing himself quite freely. He took rooms at

a quiet hotel frequented by business men, and very seldom visited by

ladies. If the mood should take him to pace his room at night, he did not

choose that any sympathizing heart should be counting his footsteps. He

called on his former pupils, and made appointments with them, and listened

with patience to their earnest, and often tearful, protestations of regret

and indignation in his regard. He gathered up into his hands, one by one,

the threads of ordinary life, and tried to interest himself in them again,

and to renew some of his old pleasures; but he could not unite them and

weave his heart in with them as before. A gulf, of which he only now

became aware, lay between him and the past. It was not the sense of wrong

and loss, it was not even that he had a greater distrust of mankind; it

was at once higher and deeper than anything merely personal: it was a

disgust and fear of life itself, as he had seen and felt it, a sense of

instability and of hollowness everywhere. His desires for wealth and power

and fame dropped into an abyss, and left no sound to tell that they were

substances or had encountered any substance in their descent. Like one

who, walking over a bridge, suddenly perceives that, instead of solid

arches of stone beneath, there is only a thin and trembling framework

between him and the torrent, he felt that he might at any moment fall

through into the unknown world, or into nothingness.

This man had called himself a Jew, partly from an inherited allegiance,

which ran in his blood, though it was no longer niched in his brain,

partly, also, from a generous unwillingness to desert the unfortunate. He

cherished the fragments of his ancient traditions as the poet and the

antiquary cherish the ruins of an antique temple, in which the vulgar see

only broken rocks and rubbish, but from which their imaginations can

rebuild portico and sculptured frieze and painted ceiling. Their eyes can

discern the acanthus leaf where it lies half choked in dust, and the dying

glimmer of what once was gold, and, faintly burning through its encrusting

soil, the imperishable color of that rare stone, blue as the vault of a

midnight sky. In the ruin of his people Mr. Schöninger still beheld and

gloried in that sublime race which, in the early world, had borne the day‐

star on their foreheads.

But it was only a memory to him, and the present was all vanity.

While in prison, he had thought that liberty was, of all things, the most

precious. In his emptied heart it had been the one object of longing; and

in the first moments of freedom he had found it intoxicating. But the joy

it gave effervesced and died away like foam, and the emptiness remained.

Looking back on that prison life, he almost wondered at the agony it had

caused him, or even that the shameful death which had threatened him

should have had power to move him so, or that the opinions and the

enmities of men should have struck such bitterness from his soul. What was

it all but motes in the beam? “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.”

But life must be lived, and work must be done; and he took up the duties

that came to hand, and performed them almost as if he loved them.

One small pleasure, indeed, he gave himself. Escaping from the city, with

as much care as if he had been flying from justice, he took a long,

solitary walk in the pine‐woods where, nearly a year before, he had gone

with a May party, and, searching there, he brought back handfuls of pale,

nodding snow‐drops, and sent them by a trusty messenger to Honora

Pembroke.

“They are for her or for Mrs. Gerald, as she may choose,” he said.

She made no answer, but the messenger saw her lay the delicate blossoms in

the white hand of the dead, while her tears fell on them, drop by drop.

Mr. Schöninger’s generosity of feeling would have prompted him to attend

the funeral, but his good taste prevented. He would have been too much

observed there. He watched the procession as it passed by his window—an

old‐fashioned, solemn, genuine New‐England funeral; no mourning carriages

with laughing people inside, no hired bearers but a long line of friends

and neighbors, who knew and lamented the dead, walking after her with

downcast faces, to stand by her grave till the earth should have covered

her in.

In a town like Crichton such a death for such a cause would create a deep

impression; and crowds stood all about the cottage when the friends who

were admitted came out from its doors, and a grave silence prevailed in

all the streets as they passed through them.

It was Good Friday; and that evening, for the first time, the new organist

was to take charge of the choir in the Immaculate Conception. There was

but little to do, for the singers were not in training—only a hymn or two

to sing before the sermon, and nothing after.

Mr. Schöninger was glad that he should thus be able to leave the church

before the sermon without seeming disrespectful to F. Chevreuse, as he

would have seemed in going out and coming in again when the sermon was

over. He had not the least objection to hearing Catholic sermons, provided

they did not bore him—had, indeed, heard many of them; but he did not wish

to hear F. Chevreuse speak on the passion and death of Christ. To him,

that had always been the weakest point in the Christian theology. He could

reverence almost to the verge of adoration the sublime humility and

sweetness and patience of that life which they called divine; but he

shrank from the agony which crowned it as something weak and unfitting. A

life so perfect ending thus was to him incongruous; as though the eye,

travelling up a lofty and exquisite column, should see a rude block at the

top instead of a perfect capital.

“If it does not prove the falsehood of the whole,” Mr. Schöninger said to

himself, “it proves a great mistake somewhere; and I would rather not hear

such a man as F. Chevreuse try to make it seem reasonable.”

But he would not be in too great a hurry to go. He lingered a little,

arranged the music, and stopped at the door of the choir long enough to

hear the priest announce his text: _The Lord hath laid upon him the

iniquities of us all_.

“My Isaiah!” he thought. “I wonder what he meant in writing that?”

“Good Friday is, to my mind, not so much a day of sorrow as a day of

remorse,” the priest began. “The Jews were ungrateful, and we are

ungrateful.”

“That dear, just soul!” Mr. Schöninger muttered with a smile, as he went

slowly out.

Going down the stairs, he caught now and then a sentence. “We sin, and are

forgiven, and then we sin again; and we sin against a God whom we

acknowledge; they sinned against a God in whom they did not believe.”

And again: “Peter sinned once, but he never denied his Master a second

time; Magdalene was once a sinner, but never again.”

Mr. Schöninger stopped at a narrow pointed window near the foot of the

stairs, and looked out into the night. He had half a mind to go back and

listen to the sermon. There was something enchaining in the way F.

Chevreuse preached. His were no cut‐and‐dried orations where the form is

first laid out, and each part fitted in as exact as a mosaic, and where no

fault can be found, except that there is such an absence of faults. He

poured his heart out; he announced a truth, and then, in a few sentences,

he threw a picture before their eyes to illustrate it; he walked the

platform where he stood, and seemed at times so transported by his

feelings as to forget that he was not talking to himself alone.

Mr. Schöninger paused in the lower door, and listened again, hating to

stay, hating still more to go away, so empty did his soul feel.

The speaker gave a brief backward glance over what he had already said.

They had seen the agony in the garden, and now they were going to see what

it meant. They had seen the cup put aside by the hand of Christ, and now

they were going to see him drink it to the dregs. They had seen him bear

uncomplainingly the stripes and the thorns, now they were going to hear

him cry out in the agony of desolation.

With a rapid touch he sketched the scene—the surging, angry crowd, driving

and hurrying forward a man in the midst, who drags and stumbles under a

heavy cross.

The priest wrung his hands slowly, walking to and fro, with that sight

before him. “O my God!” he said, half to himself, “is it thus that I see

thee? Thy divinity is reduced so small—so small that it requires all the

fulness of my faith to discern it. This man is covered with dust and

blood. He hath fallen beneath his load, and the dust of the street is on

him, on his hands, and even his face, with the blood and the sweat. They

buffet him, they laugh at him”—the speaker faced his congregation

suddenly, stretching out his hands to them. “A God! a God!” he cried, and

was for a moment silent.

Mr. Schöninger turned away, shuddering at this image of Divinity in the

dust.

Yet he had not gone far when, in spite of him, his feet were drawn back.

F. Chevreuse stood beside the great black and white crucifix, to which he

did not seem to dare to lift his eyes.

“The cup is at his lips at last! _He has lost sight of the Father!_ The

Lord has laid upon him the iniquities of us all. All the murders, all the

adulteries of the world are on him; all the sacrileges are on him; all the

brutality, the foulness, the lies, the treacheries, the meannesses, the

cruelties—they are all heaped upon him. All iniquities, past, present, and

to come, overclouded and hid his divine innocence out of sight. And the

Father, seeing him so, relented not, spared him not, but poured on his

head the full measure of his hatred of our sins, as if he were the

criminal who was guilty of them all.”

Mr. Schöninger started back as if lightning had flashed in his face,

uttered a faint cry, and hurried from the church.

He knew why the veil of the temple was rent and the face of the sun

darkened; and he knew why the Son of God had bled at every pore.

He walked once rapidly round the square, baring his head to the tender

coolness of the air. When he reached the church again, F. Chevreuse had

finished speaking, and was just turning away. But he paused, as he saw Mr.

Schöninger walk up the aisle as unconscious of the astonished congregation

who gazed at him as if the church had been empty.

He knelt at the communion railing.

“F. Chevreuse,” he said in a voice that every one heard, so still were

all, “I have not yet kissed the cross on which my God was crucified.”

F. Chevreuse drew the small crucifix from his girdle, and presented it,

his hands trembling and tears rolling down his face; and all the

congregation fell on their knees while the Jew kissed the cross on which

his God was crucified.

To Be Continued.

The Jesuit Martyrs Of The Commune.(111)

In this little volume the Rev. F. de Ponlevoy has faithfully recorded the

_Acts_, as he well entitles them, of five brave men of our own time, who

went forth “rejoicing,” like the apostles of old, “that they were

accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus.”

The author has not attempted a biography or any detailed account of the

lives of these brave men previous to their arrest “in the name of the

Commune,” but simply an exact statement, far more impressive, of their

known words and acts from that moment which so plainly marked them as

chosen ones of God.

These Jesuit fathers suffered in most saintly companionship, and the world

will heartily echo the pious wish of our author that other societies may

do for their martyred brethren that which he has so lovingly accomplished

for his.

The Jesuits in Paris during the war of 1870 saw plainly the gathering

signs of darker days yet to come for France; but it is not in their

traditions to yield anything to fear, and so they were resolved, the

moment the armistice was concluded, to open their school of S. Geneviève

and College of Vaugirard. At the very beginning of the war with Prussia,

these two establishments had been freely passed over to the military

authorities for the use of the sick and wounded, hundreds of whom had been

there received and tenderly cared for, many of the fathers attaching

themselves to the ambulances and hospitals with the utmost devotion.

Consequently these buildings now needed many repairs and to be almost

entirely refurnished. The residence in the Rue Lafayette had fared better,

as the greater part of the community were Germans who had been obliged to

leave France at the beginning of the war, while the house fell under the

protection of the American minister, charged by Prussia to watch over the

interests of its people in Paris. Add to which this modest mission had the

deserved reputation of being very poor—not much of a bait for the blood‐

hounds of the Commune. At the house in the Rue de Sèvres such measures

were taken as prudence seemed to suggest, leaving the rest to Providence.

Thus at first it had seemed best to keep some members of the order in

Paris—men at once necessary and willing to stay. Some were sent to the

provinces, and others remained scattered throughout the ungrateful

capital. At the conclusion of the armistice the College of Vaugirard was

hastily prepared for pupils, and its reopening fixed for the 9th of March,

by which time nearly two hundred students had applied for admission. But

on the 18th the long‐threatened revolution burst forth, and the rector,

more anxious for the pupils than for the fathers, hurried both to the

country‐house of the college, at Moulineaux, between Issy and Meudon.

However, they were soon compelled to retreat precipitately, first to

Versailles, and finally to Saint Germain‐en‐Laye; for, placed exactly in

the narrow belt between the belligerent lines, they found themselves, upon

the breaking out of hostilities between Paris and Versailles, veritably

between two fires. The deserted College of Vaugirard was surrounded,

occupied, and pillaged, but no one was there to be arrested.

The school of S. Geneviève required more time for repairs, and was to be

opened on March 20; but the insurrection, coming in the interval,

necessitated new delays, and parents were notified to await further

announcements. The rector, F. Léon Ducoudray, born at Laval, May 6, 1827,

a man of great spirit and energy, was not one to lose time or to be

dismayed in the hour of trial. He at once sent out four of the fathers,

one to negotiate a loan in England or Belgium to meet the exigencies of

the moment, and the others to seek in the provinces an asylum for the

exiled school, which was finally removed to a country‐house at Athis‐Mons,

on the railway line to Orléans, not far from Paris. The pupils were

notified that the school would open on April 12; the rector, who had

remained in Paris to superintend the final arrangements, was to join his

community on Monday, the third.

On Sunday, the second, F. Ducoudray perceived that F. Paul Piquet, a sick

priest left at S. Geneviève, was rapidly sinking, and at a quarter‐past

eight in the evening this good father had the happiness of leaving this

world and its momentarily‐increasing trials. It was a great loss to the

house, and at this time a very painful embarrassment. The next morning

(Monday) the Commune issued a decree confiscating all the furniture and

property belonging to religious houses, and at S. Geneviève they every

instant expected a visit on the part of the new rulers of the city.

Nevertheless, F. Ducoudray sent for several of the fathers to come up from

Athis to attend the funeral ceremonies of the deceased priest, set for

Tuesday, April 4.

All at once, just after midnight on Tuesday, before these fathers had

returned to Athis, the buildings were encircled by a battalion of National

Guards, armed to the teeth. The Rue Lhomond, the Rue d’Ulm, the Passage

des Vignes, the very woodyard at the foot of the garden, all were guarded.

There were repeated blows at the door of No. 18. The brother porter went

at once to say that the keys, according to custom, were in the rector’s

room, and that he would go and get them. But at this simple and reasonable

answer the outsiders got into a rage; a summons was sounded three times at

rapid intervals; the whole neighborhood was startled by a general

discharge at all the windows of the Rue Lhomond; there were loud threats

of bringing cannons and _mitrailleuses_ from the Place de Panthéon near

by. Presently the doors were opened, and the rector himself appeared,

calmly requesting to be allowed to make some remarks in the name of common

justice and of individual liberty. But the day for these things had gone

by. For sole response the leader signified, revolver in hand, that he

constituted the rector his prisoner in the name of the Commune, and should

occupy and search the house for the arms and munitions of war therein

concealed. But in reality they were here, as everywhere else, on a hunt

for the cash‐box. “That which we most need,” said a member of the Commune,

“is money.”

Right away every one in the house was on his feet, and each one followed

his instinct; but first of all one priest hurried to the private chapel,

where, for precaution, the Blessed Sacrament had been previously placed,

and hastened to secure it against profanation.

The envoys of the Commune were in number and force enough to carry on

several operations at once. They arrested everybody they could lay their

hands on—priests, lay brothers, even the servants of the school—and, as

fast as they found them, seated them in the entrance hall, and kept them

there for several hours. They ransacked the entire house; the rector

himself led them everywhere. The search was very long and very minute,

without the desired result; for they found no arms and very little money.

F. Ducoudray, without falsifying himself in the slightest, replied with so

much unconcern, with such dignity and politeness, that they said to each

other in astonishment: “What a man this is! What energy of character!” At

last, after three painful hours, they took him to the hall; but even from

the first moment they separated him from his brethren, and put him in a

little vestibule of the chapel in front of the parlors. It is almost

superfluous to add that the pillage of the house commenced almost at once,

accelerated, and the next day completed, by bands of women and children.

At five in the morning the recall was sounded; it was the signal for

defiling and departing for the préfecture of the police. The prisoners

were ranged between two lines of National Guards. First came the rector, a

little ahead of the others; behind him the Rev. FF. Ferdinand Billot,

Emile Chauveau, Alexis Clerc, Anatole de Bengy, Jean Bellanger, Theodore

de Regnon, and Jean Tanguy, four lay brothers, and seven servants.

“Well,” said F. Ducoudray, with a radiant countenance, to F. Caubert, who

was nearest him. “_Ibant gaudentes_,(112) did they not?”

“What is he saying there?” asked the uneasy guards. F. Caubert repeated

the sentence; God knows what they understood by it!

At the préfecture a major exclaimed: “Why have you brought me these

rascals (_coquins_)? Why didn’t you shoot them on the spot?”

“Gently,” answered one of the guard; “it is necessary to proceed calmly,

or you yourself might get it before the rest.”

The same officer then asked, revolver in hand, for the director.

“I am here,” replied F. Ducoudray, advancing.

“I know that you have arms concealed in your house.”

“No, sir.”

“I have it on certain authority.”

“If there are any, it is without my knowledge.”

“You have an iron will. We are going to see about that, we two; and if we

do not find them, you do not get back here.”

Then followed a number of charges against the priests, such as poisoning

the sick and wounded in the hospitals and ambulances, perversion of youth,

and complicity with the government of Versailles. F. Ducoudray, following

the example of his divine Master, made no reply, and, after being loaded

with insults, was finally taken secretly and locked up in a cell of the

_Conciergerie_ prison. The others were confined in a common hall of the

depot prison, intended for vagrant women.

In the meantime, two priests and one brother, who had escaped detection in

the tumult, remained at S. Geneviève. The brother was an invalid confined

to his bed, and the two priests, one of whom had been concealed all night

in the garden, met in his room after the guards had left, and it remained

for nearly two months virtually their prison.

The saintly president of the house of the Rue de Sèvres, F. Pierre

Olivaint, had seen all his flock sheltered from the gathering storm, and

on that Monday was alone in the house with one reverend companion, F.

Alexis Lefebvre, and several devoted brothers, incapable of fear. All day

long warnings and entreaties poured in upon him to cause him to fly in

advance of the impending visit from the Commune. “But what would you

have?” he answered tranquilly. “I am like the captain of a vessel, who

must be the last to leave the ship. If we are taken to‐day, I shall have

but one regret: that it is Holy Tuesday, not Good Friday.”

“Why, now, my child,” he said again, at six o’clock, to one who implored

him to save himself while there was yet a moment, for it was certain there

was to be a visit on the part of the Commune that very evening—“why, now,

my child, why do you excite yourself? Is it not the best act of charity we

can perform to give our life for the love of Jesus Christ?” And then he

went to the lower floor, facing the hall door, and calmly went on with his

office. “I am waiting,” he said to a friend who passed by, pressing his

hand.

Just as they were assembling in the refectory for the evening collation,

at the usual hour of a quarter‐past seven, the brother porter was

summoned; a delegate of the Commune was at the door, behind him a company

of National Guards. The brother was instructed to detain them in the

vestibule or in the parlor until the superior himself should come. Brother

Francis did so, in spite of the impatience and threats of the visitors. In

anticipation of this visit, but two hosts had been left in the morning,

and now each father hurried to his room, and each had his _viaticum_

ready. F. Lefebvre returned the first, soon followed by F. Olivaint. The

delegate announced the object of his mission—to look for arms and

munitions kept in reserve by the Jesuits; but, being himself called away

on important business, deputed citizen Lagrange to take his place. This

man, well worthy of the deed, ordered every avenue of escape to be

guarded, and then, followed by nearly half his force, began the tour of

inspection, accompanied by F. Olivaint, and preceded by two brothers, one

with a light, the other carrying the keys; two other brothers were

stationed at the entrance with the guards, and, as each room was examined,

Lagrange left two of his men to guard it. To have any idea of the

shameless impiety and vulgar insolence of these functionaries of the

Commune, one must have seen and heard them; for three hours the search

continued, amid threats and mockery, through all which F. Olivaint

remained calm and reserved.

The critical moment came while in the procurator’s chamber, where the

cash‐box was discovered. “Hurry and open it,” they cried. “Where’s the

key?”

“I haven’t it; it is not even here,” answered F. Olivaint. “Our father

procurator, who is absent, has it with him.” Then came the tempest; one of

the brothers was sent off with three guards, arms in hand, to hunt up the

father procurator, and bring him back alive or dead. In the end, F.

Caubert really did arrive, and opened the box. It was empty. Naturally,

the siege had suppressed all receipts and increased all expenses; for a

long time the Jesuits had lived only by borrowing. “We are robbed,”

Lagrange exclaimed. “All right, the superior and the steward are my

prisoners, in the name of the Commune. Off to the préfecture of police!”

F. Lefebvre begged to be taken with his brethren. “No, no,” was the

answer. “You stay here and hold this house in the name of the Commune.”

And actually the sentence was prophetic; for the house guarded by F.

Lefebvre was spared with him.

At about half‐past eleven o’clock the two prisoners departed, never to

return; they sought in vain for a carriage, to make the long transit. As

they passed out, F. Olivaint saw, in the crowd in the street, a group of

compassionate friends; he saluted them with a smile, as if to say: “Weep

not for me.”

Lagrange and his company quartered themselves at the Place Vendôme, as

proud of their prowess that night as if they had captured Versailles; a

single _piquet_ of armed men took the prisoners to the préfecture, and

there, instead of being placed with the others in the common hall, they

were immediately and secretly locked up in the cells of the

_Conciergerie_.

“FF. Olivaint and Caubert are in prison,” F. Lefebvre wrote to our author

at Versailles. “They absolutely would not take me. I am alone at the

house, with Brother Bouillé, both fearless, thank God! The others are

dispersed, and come from time to time to see me. I have placed the Blessed

Sacrament in the gallery near my room, and, when they return, I shall

consume the sacred hosts. The church will be closed. They are arresting

the priests. Monseigneur himself is at the préfecture of police; they say

these are the hostages, I am told. Pray, pray for me, my father! Oh! how

happy I should be to give my life for our Lord!”

F. Ducoudray accepted his imprisonment without any surprise. “Before

long,” he had said, on March 19, to the Prince de Broglie—“before long our

churches will be closed, our houses devastated, our persons arrested, and

God knows who will regain his liberty. The things which are to be done

will have a particular character of hatred to God, and—that which is very

sad for a priest to say—there will prove to be no other argument for the

miserable ones who are to be masters of Paris than the cannon. I have

lived for seven months in the very midst of these men, and I have not met

with one heart or one honest mind among them.”

“For six months,” he wrote under date of Feb. 20, “I have seen only grief

and mourning.... My God! must I say to you that I can still hope? Paris

has lost the last fibre of moral and religious sense. Its population is

mad, delirious. Can we hope for the return of divine mercy when this

immense city thinks only of founding a society based on the absence of

religion and on the hatred of God? Only a miracle can help us out of the

abyss in which we are plunged. I hold my peace.... My heart is too heavy,

and my soul too gloomy.”

F. Olivaint, loving his country not less, was filled with joy from the

very moment of his arrest. “_Ibant gaudentes_,” he said with sparkling

eyes to the archbishop’s secretary, who passed his grating—“_Ibant

gaudentes_; it is for the same Master!” “France,” he said, “like the

world, requires to be ransomed by blood—not the blood of criminals, which

sinks into the ground, and remains mute and barren, but the blood of the

just, which cries to heaven, invoking justice and imploring mercy.”

“There must be victims,” said F. Caubert. “It is God who has chosen them.”

On the evening of Holy Thursday there came a change. The archbishop, the

president, Bonjeau, FF. Ducoudray, Clerc, and de Bengy, each in a separate

compartment of a prison carriage, were conveyed from the _Conciergerie_ to

the prison of Mazas. F. Olivaint and F. Caubert were left alone at the

_Conciergerie_, in separate cells, debarred from all possible

communication.

“And from this hour,” cries F. Ponlevoy, in tender remembrance,(113) “I

seem to myself to be really writing an episode of the Catacombs. The

church is ever fruitful in generous souls, but it is the hour of trial

that more than any lays bare the depths of the heart; and if, on one side,

there is in the martyrs a patience beyond all grief, there is in the

Christian a charity stronger than death itself.”

A system of correspondence was organized outside those now hallowed prison

walls, and continued to the very end, consoling and sustaining the

captives, and laying up treasures for the faithful far and wide through

the edifying little notes thus preserved. And finally, on Thursday, April

13, safe means were found to convey to the prisoners at the _Conciergerie_

not simply a consolation, but the Consoler himself. Only a few hours after

this was accomplished, FF. Olivaint and Caubert were removed to Mazas,

whither three of their order, as we have seen, had preceded them.

The prison of Mazas, on the boulevard of the same name, is constructed on

the system of cells. At its door all motion ceases; life itself fades out;

the isolation is complete; the unfortunate detained there are buried

alive. But the love and devotion of the faithful contrived to pierce even

these gloomy walls, and letters were again carried back and forth between

the imprisoned priests and their exiled brethren. These letters contained

few facts, but, put together, make a most exquisite journal of the

interior life of the saintly captives. F. Ducoudray opens this series of

letters by a formal one to his superior, giving an account of the

situation and of his own personal disposition. “You know our history and

its sadness,” he writes.

“Here I pass much time in prayer, and a little in suffering. Isolation,

separation, uncertainty, and, above all, the privation of not being able

to celebrate Mass—this is indeed cruel!

“No possible communication _cum concaptivis meis_. They are there, near to

me, in the same corridor; that is all I know.

“This is the part it is the will of God we should perform. For us, we have

only to follow the apostle’s counsel: ‘_In omnibus exhibeamus nosmetipsos,

sicut Dei ministros, in multa patientia, in tribulationibus,... in

carceribus, in seditionibus, ... per gloriam et ignobilitatem, per

infamiam et bonam faman_.’(114)

“Say to my friends,” F. Olivaint wrote to one of his brethren, “that I do

not find anything to complain of; health pretty good; not a moment of

_ennui_ in my retreat, which I continue up to the very neck.... I know

nothing of my companions.” “I thank you from the bottom of my heart,” to

another, “for your charity to the poor prisoners. Here is a work I did not

fully comprehend until I was in prison. How well you practise it—I might

almost say too well!... No, the time does not seem long to me.” ... “In

reality,” he writes again, “I do very well in body; and as for the spirit,

it seems to me that I am making a retreat of benediction, _Deo gratias_.”

... Later on: “I am at the twenty‐fourth day of my retreat. I had never

hoped that a retreat of a month would be granted me; and see, now I am

touching that term. Well, if we do not regain our liberty by the end of

the month, I shall not, I hope, lose anything in this way by the

prolongation of the trial. You will understand that here we have no news

to give. And those frightful cannon that never cease grumbling! But that,

too, reminds me to pray for our poor country. If it were required to give

my miserable life to put an end to its troubles, how quickly I would make

the sacrifice!”

Those cannon jarred on the ears of the other captives. “We hear day and

night the roar of cannon,” F. Clerc wrote to his brother. “I conclude that

the siege and my detention will not end to‐morrow.... People talk of the

cloister of religious houses; that of Mazas is not to be despised.... We

have neither Mass nor sacraments. Never, I well believe, did prisoners

more desire them. I pray to the good God, I study, I read, I write a

little, and I find time goes quickly, even at Mazas.... Do not take

further measures to see me; I fear further efforts would bring you

annoyance, and I have little hope of the result. These gates will be

opened by another hand than yours; and, if they open not, we know well

that we must be resigned.... I am proud and happy to suffer for the name I

bear. You know well the blow did not take me by surprise. I did not desire

to evade it, and I wish to support it. I do not hope for the deliverance

of which you speak.... The less I am master of myself, the more I am in

the hands of God; there will happen to me what he wills, and he will give

me to do that which he wishes I should do. _Omnia passum in eo qui me

confortat._”

F. Caubert writes in the same tone: “My health up to the present remains

good. For the rest, I have all that is necessary, and even over. Besides,

the moral serves to strengthen the physical in giving courage and

strength. Now, this comes to me because I am full of confidence in God,

and most happy to do his will in all that he really demands of me. For the

rest, the prison rule, in spite of its stern and austere side, is not in

itself injurious to the health. They have us take the air every day for an

hour, solitarily, and each in his turn. The delicate stomachs can obtain

the food they need. Twice a week they give us soup and a bit of beef. The

house is conducted with propriety, order, and regularity.... We can visit

the doctor or the apothecary daily. There is a library comprising a pretty

good number of books of great variety, and any one can ask for them to

pass the time. As for the details of the _ménage_, that which they bring

me is quite sufficient, and I need no more. It simplifies matters not to

have my cell encumbered, otherwise I should get things a little pell‐

mell.”

To hear these good fathers, everything was right, everybody good to them.

Undoubtedly they suffer, but, as they are patient, they suffer less than

others; as they have hope, they endure better than others; finally, as

they love Christ crucified, their joy is greater than their pain. A

Frenchman and a Jesuit conquered by hard treatment or most distressing

privation! Never! Starving, dying by inches, in stripes and in prison,

under the tomahawk, at the stake, in hunger and thirst, in burning India

or the snows of Canada, at the mercy of Western savages or Paris

revolutionists, it is ever the same thing—everything is right and nice and

fine; much better than could be expected. The story, fresh in our minds,

of our own early missionaries, exiles of the first Revolution, prepares us

to hear the sweet patience of the American forests echoing to‐day in the

prison of Mazas. God wills it. _Ad majorem Dei gloriam._

M. Ponlevoy, who had the tender curiosity to visit the prison of Mazas on

a holiday, when it could easily be inspected, says: “I saw those three

stories of long corridors, with double galleries, radiating around a

centre where lately there was a chapel—ah! if the Commune had but had at

least the humanity to leave to the captives the divine Prisoner of the

tabernacle—on both sides, on all the floors, the doors loaded with bolts

and provided with regular gratings, and those narrow cells, of which the

inventory could be made in a single glance! Facing the entrance, the

grated window, which measured the air and light; in one corner the

hammock; opposite, the little table, with just room enough for a straw

chair; behind the door a plank for a cupboard, a broom, and some pieces of

coarse crockery completed the furniture. As for the famous promenade so

often mentioned in their letters, it was a little triangular prison‐yard,

shut in by a grating in front, and walls on the sides, without shelter

anywhere, and no other seat than a stone in one corner. During their

solitary recreation the captives could absolutely see no one, unless the

guard under the arch who held them in surveillance.”

But the human heart is still human, however resigned the will. Say what

they would, the prison was still a prison, and Mazas certainly was more

like Calvary than paradise. After all, Christians are not stoics, and the

martyr himself feels the weakness of the flesh, that he may overcome it by

the vigor of the spirit.

“This poor heart!” writes brave F. Ducoudray. “It sometimes will be

tempted to escape and to bound. The imagination willingly takes its part.

Neither lets itself be ruled as much by reason as I would wish. Thence

come, at times, certain fits or impressions of weariness, the suffering of

the soul, throwing it into languor, discouragement, uneasiness, and

disgust. ‘_Magnum est et val de magnum, tam humano quant divino posse

carere solatio et pro honore Dei, libenter exilium cordis velle

sustinere._’(115) There is matter in that one comprehends only when one

feels it. I had the good thought, when leaving the house, to put into my

pocket a small volume containing the _New Testament_ and the _Imitation_.

I have read S. Paul much. What a great and admirable heart! It expands my

soul to read it, for it has been ‘_in laboribus plurimus, in

carceribusabundantius_,’(116) as he writes himself. And I, though I am yet

but a _carcere uno_, I boast of suffering somewhat. But if we are those of

whom it is written: ‘_Eritis odio omnibus propter nomen meum_,’(117) how

contemptible our tribulations in comparison with those of the great

apostle!” “I am still,” he wrote at another time, May 5, “more ill omened

than the greatest pessimist. You tell me they fix the 20th as the final

term of the civil war. I much fear it will be prolonged even to the 30th.

Military operations go slowly. The war beyond the ramparts offers

difficulties; the war of the streets has its difficulties also—most bloody

ones, alas!... We touch upon the week of great events, or, at least, the

beginning of great events.... What a punishment! It was expected. It is

here.”

Two or three human consolations were vouchsafed the prisoners, after a

time. On May 5 they were permitted to read several of the daily papers

approved by the Commune, and about the same time F. Ducoudray had the

inestimable privilege of twice seeing and saluting, at a short distance,

F. Clerc, and of once seeing far off F. Bengy, his beloved brethren and

fellow‐prisoners.

In May another favor was vouchsafed. F. Clerc’s brother had been incessant

in his attempts to obtain an interview with him, but without any success;

at last a dear friend, a lady, received permission to visit the prisoner,

and, as a French lady must needs have an escort, she took M. Clerc for

hers. This was an inexpressible happiness to the noble‐hearted priest, and

his thanks to God for the favor were boundless. F. Caubert, whose simple

and exquisite letters, full of golden thoughts, we would gladly linger

over if there were only space enough, received, May 11, a visit from the

Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States, which was very agreeable to

him. “It appears,” he said, “that I had been recommended to him by some

person of his acquaintance. He came to inquire most cordially, in true

American style, how I got along, and if I had need of anything.” Here, in

uncertainty, inaction, and shut out from all the world, these brave men

made light of all the trials and privations to which their bodies were so

long and painfully subjected. The Communists knew too much, however, to

think of breaking their spirit by bodily suffering; they had the means of

creating cruel anguish in the heart of every priest within those prison

walls, and well they knew how to use it. From every cell came a cry such

as no rack or stake could draw from them.

On Easter Sunday, fifth day of their confinement, F. Clerc wrote to his

brother: “To‐day is the feast of feasts, the Pasch of the Christians, the

day the Lord has made. For us there is no Mass to say or hear.” Just at

the hour of leaving the _Conciergerie_, FF. Olivaint and Caubert had the

happiness, so longed for and so unexpected, of receiving the “Consoler

himself.” Then came the long days at Mazas, and no such consolation

possible. “Oh! if we could but soon ascend the altar!” cries F. Ducoudray

in the early days at Mazas. “Here is a privation to which I can never

become accustomed.”

“Here,” F. Clerc wrote May 5—“here no confession, no Mass, not even on

Sunday. We are lodged, fed—it is enough for animals.”

“I pass my time,” F. Ducoudray again, “praying much, suffering some; for

the privation of the Holy Mass, the isolation, the separation, are cruel,

but I see not the end.”

On May 8 an order was promulgated which put an end to all visits; on that

very day F. Ducoudray had expected to receive our Lord himself. “What a

sacrifice!” he exclaims. “I have offered to our Lord this hard trial,

incomparably more painful yesterday than ever, on account of the precious

pledge of the love of the divine Master. I seek to make my poor heart the

altar on which I sacrifice. I shall add that of yesterday as new fuel to

the sacrifice.”

“Six Sundays passed in darkness,” writes F. Olivaint, May 14. “How many

days without ascending to the altar!” And the next day: “I am at the

forty‐first day of my retreat. After to‐day, I intend to meditate only on

the Eucharist. Is it not the best means of consoling myself that I cannot

ascend to the altar? If I were a little bird, I would go somewhere every

morning to hear Mass, and then I would willingly come back to my cage.”

The fathers outside the prison walls, understanding well the longing

indicated by these and similar expressions, had endeavored in every way to

find means to answer their desires. But it required infinite precautions

to secure the faithful and sure transmission through all the formalities

of surveillance. What is there prudence and love together may not

accomplish? At last the doors opened; the prisoners came not out, but the

Redeemer entered. Towards mid‐day of the 15th the Long‐Desired arrived.

That tells all. Only FF. Ducoudray, Olivaint, and Clerc could be reached

at first. Each of these was given four sacred hosts, and each preserved

and carried on his breast, as on a living altar, the _God of his heart and

his heritage for all eternity_.

“There is no more prison,” F. Clerc wrote to his brother, “no more

solitude; and I have confidence that if our Lord permits the wicked to

satisfy their malice, and for a few hours to prevail, he will profit by

them in that very moment to glorify his name by the feeblest and vilest of

his instruments.”

Once again, May 22, an opportunity was found to reach the captives. Two

feeble but intrepid women traversed the vast, deserted districts to Mazas.

This time all measures had been taken, and each prisoner received a

share—four sacred hosts wrapped in a corporal, as in a shroud, duly

enclosed in a little box with a silk case and a cord, in order that it

might be carried around the neck. Coming at that hour, the Saviour seemed

to say again: “I return, not to live with you, but to carry you with me.”

For the end was at hand.

We linger for a few moments over the last letters gathered here in a most

fragrant, fadeless wreath. On the 16th F. Clerc wrote his last letter,

truly his _nunc dimittis_:

“Ah! my God, how good thou art! How true it is that the mercy of thy heart

will never fail!... I had not dared conceive the hope of such a

blessing—to possess our Lord, to have him for companion of my captivity,

to carry him on my heart, and to rest on his, as he permitted to his

beloved John! Yes, it is too much for me, and my thought cannot compass

it. And still it is. But is it not true that all men and all the saints

together could not conceive the Eucharist? O the God of the Eucharist! how

good he is, how compassionate, how tender! Does it not seem as if he made

again the reproach: _You have asked nothing in my name; ask now, and you

shall receive?_ I have him now without having asked; I have him now, and I

will never leave him more, and my desire, fainting for want of hope, is

reanimated, and will only increase in the measure that possession lasts.

“Ah! prison, dear prison, thou whose walls I have kissed, saying, _Bona

crux_, what happiness thou hast won me! Thou art no longer a prison; thou

art a chapel. Thou art no longer even a solitude, because I am not alone;

but my Lord and my King, my Master and my God, lives here with me. It is

not only in thought that I approach him; it is not only by grace that he

approaches me; but he has really and corporally come to find and console

the poor prisoner. He wished to keep him company; and can he not do it,

all‐powerful as he is?... Oh! lost for ever, my prison, which wins for me

the honor to carry my Lord upon my heart, not as a sign, but the reality

of my union with him.

“In the first days I demanded with great earnestness that our Lord should

call me to a more excellent testimony to his name. The worst days are not

even yet passed; on the contrary, they are coming near, and they will be

so evil that the goodness of God will be obliged to shorten them; but, at

all events, we are now drawing near to them. I had from the first the hope

that God would give me the grace to die well; at present my hope has

become a true and solid confidence. It seems to me that I am prepared for

anything through Him who sustains me and will accompany me even unto

death. Will he do it? That which I know is, that if he will not, I shall

have a regret which nothing but submission to his will can calm.”

F. Ducoudray gives us his farewell letter also. It ends with alleluia in

the heart and the _fiat_ on the lips:

“I have received _all_. Tuesday what a surprise, what joy!... I am no more

alone. I have our Lord for guest in my little cell.... And it is true,

_credo_! On Wednesday I seemed to live over again the day of my first

communion, and I surprised myself by bursting into tears. For twenty‐five

days I had been deprived of the rich blessing—of my only treasure!

“I shut myself in the guest‐chamber,” he continued, referring to the room

in which the Last Supper was eaten, and that “upper chamber,” in which the

disciples remained concealed until the coming of the Holy Ghost, “and much

I wish, after these ten days which separate us from Pentecost are passed,

to see again the light of heaven. Between now and then what events may

arise! We are near the crisis; but if it is prolonged, we have reason to

fear that horrible events will take place. I cannot prevent myself at

times from being greatly impressed at finding myself connected with such

grave circumstances. But here we make a good retreat, which will

facilitate our entrance into eternity. I have held myself, from the first

day of my arrival here, ready for any sacrifice whatever; for I have the

strong, sweet confidence that if God permits hostages and victims to be

made of us priests and religious, it will truly be _in odium fidei, in

odium nominus Christi Jesu_.(118)

“We pray, pray much, disposed to live if God pleases, to die if God

pleases, as worthy children of our most happy father, S. Ignatius.”

Happy the pen that is broken after those last lines.

“It should be well understood,” wrote F. Caubert, “that it is really God

who gives us courage in our trials; otherwise the courage would very soon

exhaust itself. For me, I have to run often to prayer to renew mine, like

a poor clock that has to be wound up every little while. In a life so

isolated, sequestered and devoid of occupation, _ennui_ comes quickly. One

can easily make himself a rule, but we cannot always read or pray. I

should have experienced much of this in myself during this my three weeks’

retreat had I not been sustained by this very dose of prayer. You

understand that in this monotonous life, whenever the good God hides his

presence (and that is usual, in order to make the trial greater), one must

often feel the sinking of nature. But this feeling of weakness is

precisely the very thing that drives us constantly near to God. The good

God is most admirable in his manner of sustaining the soul through these

very depressions. Our feebleness is as a chain binding us to his strength,

and as an attraction drawing us to his infinite goodness.

“You say to me that it must be that I suffer. In a measure it is true; but

if one had nothing to endure, the good God would find nothing in his

account. He desires to show mercy to all, and, that he may do so, he wills

that we should offer him some sorrows borne for love of him. Alas! if one

were not a prisoner (I speak for myself), perhaps he would too easily

forget that charity requires that we should have compassion on poor

sinners, and offer something for their intention. And then is not the

priest the friend of God, and should he not, by this title, devote himself

to obtaining for his brothers reconciliation with God, the father of

all—the father so full of goodness and so ready for indulgence—especially

when he hears himself importuned by the voice of a friend?”

“I take little account of the time of my imprisonment,” he wrote later. “I

prefer to leave all that in the hands of God, and to give up to him the

care of all that concerns me. He knows better than I what is most useful

for my soul. I seek to remember often that one glorifies him so much more,

the more that one suffers for his love and to accomplish his holy will. In

reality, in submitting to the trial, we practise in an admirable manner

the annihilation of ourself.... Is it not also by the sacrifice of ourself

that we best imitate our Lord? It is true that my soul has not yet reached

to that perfection and to a love so pure and so detached. It is necessary

to pass through trials to reach this union with God. He sends them, in his

goodness, to purify the soul and to break down the obstacles which oppose

themselves to this union. Pray for me, that I may draw this profit from my

present trial.”

A few rapidly‐written words from F. Olivaint were the last greeting from

one of the tenderest hearts and sweetest souls in the world. “What

deplorable events!” he wrote, May 18, to F. Lefebvre. “How well I

understand the weary souls of other days who fled to the desert! But it is

worth much more to stay in the midst of perils and difficulties to save so

many unfortunates from shipwreck. My health is always good, and, after

forty‐six days, I am not tired of my retreat—just the contrary.” To F.

Chauveau: “Thanks from my heart. Yes, we are nearing the end, by the grace

of God. Let us seek to be ready for all that comes. Confidence and prayer!

How good our Lord is! If you but knew how, especially for several days

past, my little cell has become sweet to me! _Forsan et hæc olim meminisse

juvabit._ Who knows that I may not regret it some day? I think just as you

do—that Eugene [Count Eugene de Germiny] should not interfere; but in the

end, if, by the favor of M. Urbain and his associates, I have need of

help, I will ask for Eugene. In any case, thank him for me. Tenderest

remembrances to Armand; many thanks to all; benedictions to our friends

and benefactors. I believe that all of our own here are doing well. For

me, I am perfectly sustained. Once more our Lord is good! Yours from the

heart.... May 19, ’71.”

On Monday, the 22d, the order was given to proceed at once, and on the

spot, to the execution of all the hostages confined at Mazas. This was

kept concealed from the prisoners, but they could not help suspecting it,

from the additional gloom growing every moment heavier and more ominous

throughout that ever‐gloomy building. The guards came and went, exchanging

mysterious words among themselves, replying to the questions of the

condemned by threatening allusion, or by an affected silence even more

significant. However, the director of the prison, moved by a sentiment of

humanity, or perhaps of prudence, ventured to represent to the imperious

Commune that an execution in a simple house of detention would be contrary

to all forms and precedents; and consequently they were ordered to La

Roquette, the prison for those condemned to death. It was on this day that

the two pious women succeeded in reaching Mazas, and giving to each of the

Jesuit priests there four sacred hosts, with conveniences for carrying

them around the neck.

Nearly all were transferred to La Roquette late in the evening of May 22d;

but there were so many, the wagons were not large enough to hold all, and

some were left at Mazas until the next day. What a moment that must have

been when the prisoners, so long in solitude, not even knowing who were

their companions in misfortune, came from their cells, and, meeting in the

office, beheld and recognized one another! Priests, religious, laymen, all

surrounded the Archbishop of Paris.

The transit was long and painful. The prisoners, forty in number, were

crowded into baggage‐wagons belonging to the railway of Lyon, and exposed

to the gaze and the insults of all. They had to cross the populous

quarters of the Faubourg Saint Antoine and the Bastile, where the

insurrection was still mistress. The convoy went at a walk, between two

lines of armed men, followed by the grossest insults and by a maddened

multitude. “Alas! monseigneur,” said a priest, leaning towards the

archbishop, “look at your people now.”

When they reached La Roquette that night, they were assembled at once,

without any other formality, in the hall, called by name, and shown by a

person with a lantern to a long corridor on the lower floor; and as each

one passed on in the order named, a door opened and closed upon a captive.

The darkness was intense; but it is good to remember that in some of the

cells there was the Real Presence, shedding light and peace. The Commune

was in desperate straits, and it was at first intended to execute the

victims as soon as they should arrive at La Roquette; but a few hours were

gained through the jealousy of the director. In the cells was a bed, and

such a bed!—a pile of straw and a coverlet, and that was all; no tables,

not even a chair. Still, Roquette was better than Mazas, for the cells

were not vaults, and, though one was locked up, he was not entombed. And,

besides, they were permitted to see each other by means of a window

between every two cells, and at recreation, which they were allowed to

take in a corridor together, and even in some unoccupied cell opening into

the corridor. Food was scarce from the first; even bread was rare. F.

Olivaint shared some little things which remained to him with the

archbishop, and had the happiness, also, of giving him the Bread of the

Strong, for which the prelate was overcome with gratitude.

Every hour the Commune was losing ground. It had only strength left for

crime, and it hastened, with its dying breath, to order the execution _en

masse_ of the hostages of La Roquette. This was modified to sixty at

first. At any price the Commune demanded the head of the priests—those

hated men who had troubled the world for eighteen hundred years.

About eight o’clock in the evening of May 24, when the prisoners were in

their cells, there was heard a confused noise in the distance—the voices

of men and of children, a clamor and laughing that was still more

terrible, mixing with the clash of arms. It came nearer and nearer, and

some fifty rascals, Avengers of the Republic, Garibaldians, soldiers with

all kinds of arms, National Guards with all sorts of costumes, _gamins_ of

Paris, poured into the prison, hungry for the blood of six victims, their

share. They rushed the whole length of the corridor containing the cells

of our dear prisoners, and ranged themselves at the head of a small spiral

staircase which led to the _chemin de ronde_. As they passed, each

prisoner was pelted through the grating of his cell with a running fire of

insult and sentence of death.

Then some one, assuming the office of herald, summoned the prisoners to be

ready and to respond each one as his name was called. After that, as each

name was pronounced, a door opened, and a victim presented himself. M.

Bonjeau, FF. Duguerry, Clerc, Ducoudray, Allard, and Archbishop Darboy

were the six chosen. All were present, all were ready, and, in the order

named, the procession began. The archbishop and his companions, preceded

and followed by this frightful escort, descended the dark, narrow

staircase one by one. So unrestrained was the insolence of the captors

that their leader was obliged to interfere. “Comrades,” he cried, “we have

something better to do than to insult them—that is, to shoot them. It is

the command of the Commune.”

No place of execution had been fixed upon. They would have liked to have

had it on the spot, but that would give too many witnesses; the first

_chemin de ronde_ was in view of the prison windows, and the occupants of

the cells on every floor could see all, hear all. So they passed to the

second, where they would be sheltered by high ramparts. The victims were

ranged in a line at the extreme end of this path, at the foot of the great

outside wall.

Those left behind knelt, prayed, and held their breath. The fire of a

platoon was heard, followed by a few scattered shots, then cries of _Vive

la Commune!_ which told that all was over. There were martyrs now, not

victims.

Towards morning the bodies were thrown into a hand‐cart and carried to

Père la Chaise, where they were tossed into a ditch; no coffins, no

ceremony of any kind. “What matters it,” F. Olivaint had said and

proved—“what matters it to a Jesuit, who daily sacrifices his heart, once

to sacrifice his head?”

Two days passed, and Friday came, rainy, and the prisoners were confined

to their corridor. As they were taking their noon‐day recreation, a

delegate of the Commune appeared, and, standing in their midst, called off

fifteen names. F. Olivaint was the first. “Present,” he answered, crossing

the corridor. F. Caubert was second, and F. de Bengy third. This last name

was badly written, and worse pronounced. “If you mean to say _de Bengy_,”

he replied, “it is I, and I am here.”

The condemned men asked to be allowed to go for a moment to their cells,

as some had slippers on, and no hats. “No,” was the response, “for what

remains for you to do you are well enough as you are.” New victims were

added from other parts of the prison until there were fifty in all, the

number required by the Commune.

These were taken a long road to Belleville, a _faubourg_ at a great

distance, in order, probably, to excite the passions of the mob, and rouse

them once more.

The procession started at about four o’clock from La Roquette. First came

a guard bareheaded, who loudly announced that these were Versaillais, made

prisoners that morning. The escort consisted of five hundred armed men,

National Guards, to whom were added, for this genial occasion, the

_Enfants Perdus_ of Bergeret and rowdies under various names. Presently

the women, veritable furies, and the children joined in, howling,

shrieking, imprecating, blaspheming. The crowd increasing in numbers and

insolence, the guards were obliged to interfere to protect the prisoners,

not from insult, but from extreme violence. The fury of the mob constantly

demanded the moment of execution; a military band was added to the

procession to drown the clamor and make the crowd more willing to wait.

Finally they reached the entrance to the _Cité Vincennes_. The passage is

narrow, the crowd was enormous, and growing ever more furious as they

neared the end. An aged priest, who could not keep up, was shot and killed

by a woman, and dragged to the place of general execution. After a time,

they found some grounds laid out for country parties or picnics, and an

enclosure, uncovered, which was intended for a dancing‐hall. The fifty

prisoners were forced into this, jammed savagely against the walls, while

the crowd showered maledictions upon them. Then, at about six o’clock,

there took place a scene absolutely indescribable; not an execution, but a

slaughter. They were not shot, but massacred. One discharge followed

another; there was an attempt made to fire by platoons, but it was badly

managed. The heroines of the Commune climbed the walls, urging on the men

and insulting the priests. The tumult at its height lasted for about

fifteen minutes. At seven o’clock all was ended. The bodies were left

stretched upon the ground until the next day, when they were thrown into a

cellar or vault.

It was the death‐throe of the Commune. The blood of the just had cried to

heaven, and France lifted up her head. The next day was Pentecost; the

Commune was crushed, the doors of Roquette were opened, the bodies of the

martyrs were recovered, and on Wednesday, May 31, the Jesuit church, for

two months closed like the rest, was opened once more, and the funeral

ceremonies of the five of their order whose imprisonment we have so

hastily followed celebrated with the utmost solemnity. Their remains now

repose in the Jesuit chapel of the Rue de Sèvres.

“There must be victims; it is God who has chosen them.” They recognized

the divine call, and went forth rejoicing. _Ibaut gaudentes._

Antar And Zara; Or, “The Only True Lovers.” III.

An Eastern Romance Narrated In Songs.

By Aubrey De Vere.