She Sang.
I.
It came: it reached me from afar:
I kissed the seal, the cords unwove;
Came wafted from the fields of war
On all the odorous airs of love.
Close hid I sang; close hid I sighed
In places where no echoes were,
Where dashed the streams through gorges wide,
And sprays leaned back on moistened air.
I sang a song, half sighs, yet proud,
And smothered by those downward rills,
A music proud, and yet not loud,
As when her babe a mother stills.
II.
Behold! for thee, and for thy love
I fain would make my spirit fair:
For this I strive; for this I strove:
My toil, though late, shall blossom bear.
Before thy face the plant shall rise,
In thy fair presence bloom and flower:
O love me! Thou art great and wise:—
Heart‐greatness is the woman’s dower.
Thou mad’st me as a warrior young
That yearns to flesh a maiden sword,
That burns for battle with the strong,
That pants to crush some rebel horde.
Rebels I count all things in me
That bear no impress of my King!
“Fair is a great king’s jealousy;
His worth he knoweth”; thus I sing.
III.
I stood upon a rock what time
The moon rushed up above the plain:
The crags were white like frosty rime;
Her beams upon me fell like rain.
It was her harvest month of might:
The vales and villages were glad;
I cried—my palms against the light—
Like one with sudden pinions clad,
“Whom seek’st thou, O thou rising moon
That broad’nest like a warrior’s shield?
Whom seest thou? Thou shalt see him soon,
My Warrior ’mid the tented field!
“He reaches now some gorge’s mouth;
Upon his helmet thou shalt shine;—
Seest thou, O moon, from north to south,
Another loved one like to mine?”
IV.
No merchant from the isles of spice
Who stands in hushed hareem or hall
Who parts his goods, and names the price,
Was I, O friend! I gave thee all.
When from me I had all things cast
Except thy gifts, that hour I found
A gift I, too, might give at last—
The being thou had’st made and crowned!
I am not nothing since thy vow
Enriched my heart. _That_ wealth is mine:
“Nothing” I call myself, that thou
May’st hear, O love! and call me thine.
V.
High on the hills I sat at dawn
Where cedar caverns, branching, breathe
Their darkness o’er the dewy lawn,
While slowly bloomed in heaven a wreath
Of eastern lilies. Soon the sun
Ascended o’er the far sea‐tide
Smiting to glory billows dun
And clouds and trees; and loud I cried,
“Thou too shalt rise, _my_ sun—thou too—
O’er darkling hearts in power shalt rise,
And flame on souls, and flash on dew
Of tears that dim expectant eyes.”
And every wind from vale and glen
Sang loud, “He, too, shall rise and shine!
A warrior he, a chief of men,
A prince with might; and he is thine.”
VI.
Men praised my words. Thy spirit dwells
Within me, strangely linked with mine:
At times my mind’s remotest cells
Brighten with thoughts less mine than thine.
A gleam of thee on me they cast:
They wear thy look; they catch thy tone:
A kingdom in my breast thou hast:—
The words they praised were not mine own.
VII.
A chance was that—our meeting first?
At morn I read a quaint old book
That told of maiden palace‐nursed
Who met a prince beside a brook.
“Beside _our_ brook the lilies blow,”
I mused, “green‐girt, and silver‐tipped”;
And, dreaming of their bells of snow,
At eve adown the rocks I tripped.
Sudden I saw thee!—saw thee take
Toward me thy path! I turned, and fled:
So swiftly pushed I through the brake
My girdle dropped:—still on I sped.
Had I but guessed that past the dates
That hour the stranger youth made way,
I ne’er had left my maiden mates
Beside that brook, alone, to stray.
VIII.
Surely my thoughts, ere yet we met,
Even then were loyal to their lord;
The tides of all my being set
Towards thee with blind yet just accord.
When first I kenned, through showers aslant
The snowy Lebanonian line,
When first I heard the night‐bird’s chant,
Even then my beating heart was thine.
When minstrels sang the sacred strife,
And thus I wept, “The land made free
By warrior’s sword is as a wife
Whose head is on her husband’s knee,”
Then, too, I nursed this hope sublime:
My breast unconscious turned to thee:
Let no one say there lived a time
When thou wert nothing unto me!
IX.
How often, dimmed by grateful tears,
I see that convent near the snow
Wherein I lived those seven sweet years,
And seven times saw the lilies blow;
There sent to couch on pavements cold,
Fearless to suffer and to dare,
And reverence learn from nuns dark‐stoled
Who live in penance and in prayer.
There, too, of love they sang—there, too—
Ah! not this love of maid and youth!
To that first love oh! keep me true,
Thou Who art Love at once and Truth!
Have I not heard of hearts that nursed
This human love, yet wronged their troth?
That first, great love they outraged first:—
Falsehood to that was death to both!
X.
Now glorious grows my Warrior’s name:
The very babes his praises spread:
But late released, this morn they came
Around me, clamouring, “Give us bread!”
His light was on them! Freed by him,
A land redeemed I saw them tread!
I gazed on them with eyes tear‐dim:
I blessed them, and I gave them bread.
“What man is this?” our ancients sought:
“This chief we know not can we trust?”
Thou gav’st them back, unbribed, unbought,
Their towers far off, their state august.
Thou gav’st to warriors proved of yore
Victory, by carnage undisgraced;
To matrons hearts unpierced by war;
To maids their nuptials high and chaste.
To others, these:—but what to me?
I speak it not: I know it well:
The fawn whose head is on my knee
As well as I that gift might tell!
The Veil Withdrawn.
Translated, By Permission, From The French Of Madame Craven, Author Of “A
Sister’s Story,” “Fleurange,” Etc.
X.
Livia was the first to return to herself and put an end to my singular and
ill‐timed reverie.
“I hope, however, you do not imagine my resolution is to be attributed to
the _jettatura_,” she said.
These words immediately recalled me to a sense of all that had taken place
the previous hour. I reflected an instant, and then replied:
“No; I know too well what you yourself would think of a vocation that had
such an origin.”
“And yet I cannot deny,” she said, “that it has had a certain influence on
my destiny; for, thanks to the _jettatura_, I have had a heavy, mysterious
cross to bear. It is not to get rid of this cross I wish to leave the
world, but to embrace it more closely and experience more fully the
blessings it has revealed to me.”
“That is above my comprehension, Livia. I no longer understand you.”
“You know very well, however, do you not, that love is the chief element
of happiness?” said she slowly.
“Yes, I believe that. Happiness consists chiefly in loving and being
loved, I imagine. Everything else is merely accessory.”
“And you know what is accessory loses all importance when the whole heart
and soul are absorbed in some adored and adorable being?”
“Yes; ... but the difficulty is to love thus though I say this
hesitatingly, lest it seem ungrateful to Lorenzo.”
“You are right, Ginevra. It is very difficult, and even impossible, in
this world, as you will some day realize more fully than you do now.”
We were both silent for a few moments.
“And my father,” I at last resumed—“what will my poor father say to this
separation?”
“What would he say, I beg to know, if a noble, wealthy man—in fact, a
great lord like Lorenzo—should ask my hand on condition of carrying me
away, like you, beyond the mountains and the sea? Do you think he would
refuse? Well, neither will he refuse Him who demands my heart and life.
For, after all, is not he alone great—the only Lord?... But of course my
father will decide the matter. It will be when and as he wishes.”
This conversation gave me a glimpse of a world into which the hour had not
yet come for me to penetrate, and I was diverted from the thoughts it
awakened in my soul by the excitement and agitation that followed. But
every word of this last conversation remained fixed in my memory; whereas
the incidents and impressions of the following day only seem like a
dream—yes, like a dream when I recall the confusion of that last day, the
preparations both for my wedding and my journey (for I was to leave my
father’s house and my native land nearly at the same time), Ottavia’s
feverish excitement, and the quiet activity of Livia, who thought of
everything, and arranged everything calmly and in order. Then there was a
succession of calls from our young friends and relatives, who, according
to the custom in our country, could not be present at the wedding, and
therefore came to take leave of me on the eve, and admire at their leisure
the rich presents of the bridegroom, especially the jewels, which were
unusually splendid. Among these young girls I particularly remember my two
cousins, Mariuccia and Teresina, who, as well as their mother, Donna
Clelia, experienced many conflicting emotions on the occasion of their
young cousin’s brilliant marriage. But interest and curiosity finally
overcame the grain of ill‐humor which my aunt especially could not help
feeling at seeing me attain a rank and position which her most ambitious
flights could not hope for her daughters to obtain. Donna Clelia was my
father’s sister, but she did not resemble him in the least. She was
married to a wealthy man of an obscure family, and, as she was remarkable
for nothing but her ability as a manager and her kind heart, she had
passed her life in a different sphere from that my father had attained by
his talents and celebrity. This sometimes caused a temporary feeling of
spite, but she was in the main an excellent woman and a good mother.
At length the great day came and nearly passed away; for it was not till
night came on—that is, about nine o’clock in the evening—that the ceremony
took place. The large _salon_ was illuminated with all the lights in the
crystal chandelier, and at the farther end of the room an altar had been
placed, adorned with lights and flowers. Before it stood good old Don
Placido, awaiting those he was to unite. His long, white beard and
Capuchin habit formed a singular contrast to the elegant toilets around
him and the total lack of any religious aspect—as was proper at a wedding
in the midst of a brilliant assembly like this, and in a place better
fitted for worldly gayety than the celebration of a holy rite.
Don Fabrizio soon appeared, leading the pale, trembling bride clothed in
white, and wearing on her forehead a coronet of diamonds whose _fleurons_
indicated her new rank. Every eye was fastened on her, as she knelt beside
the bride‐groom at the feet of the venerable old priest who had baptized
her, and was now waiting to bless her marriage. I only remember that the
very moment when Don Placido was joining our hands Livia’s words occurred
to my mind: “You are going to pronounce the most fearful vow there is in
the world,” and my voice failed me. Lorenzo, on the contrary, spoke
unhesitatingly and with perfect distinctness. Don Placido then addressed
us a few words that affected me to tears, for he spoke of her who was not
here to accompany her child to the altar; and this sorrowful recollection,
alluded to in language so touching, made me forget everything else, and
for a few moments entirely absorbed me. I cannot recollect anything more
till, leaning on Lorenzo’s arm, I descended the grand staircase, in order
to go to the palace he owned at a short distance, and where he had lately
resided. The night was glorious, the air soft and balmy, and I took a seat
in the open carriage with nothing around me but my lace veil. My bridal
dress was becoming, notwithstanding my paleness, and the diamonds I was
covered with sparkled in the light of the torches borne by the attendants.
A murmur of admiration ran through the crowd at my appearance; and when
Lorenzo took a seat at my side, the air resounded with cheers and
enthusiastic exclamations. We at last set off amid cries of “_Evviva i
sposi!_” “_Evviva il duca!_” “_Evviva la duchessa!_”(137) ... We set off,
but not alone. According to our custom, we were preceded, accompanied, and
followed by a crowd of relatives and friends who thronged the house which
I now entered for the first time. I was obliged to receive them all,
listen to them, reply, and, above all, do the honors of a place more
familiar to every one there than to myself!
This old palace had been very magnificent once, but it was now in the
dilapidated condition into which all buildings for a long time uninhabited
generally fall. On this occasion the walls were covered with rich
hangings, and on every side there was a profusion of lights and flowers.
It was brilliantly illuminated without, and through the open windows of
the _salon_ came the sound of ravishing music in the garden. For this
evening, at least, they had succeeded in giving to this ancient habitation
not only a sumptuous and cheerful aspect, but one really fairy‐like.
It will not seem surprising that, agitated and excited as I had been, the
brilliancy of such a _soirée_ was repugnant to my feelings. It may not
even seem astonishing that, in spite of all that was apparently combined
to intoxicate me with joy and pride, a scene so brilliant, so little in
accordance with the solemn emotions of the day, should have produced an
entirely opposite effect on me. The transition had been too sudden and
abrupt. This was the first time but once I had ever been in the gay world,
and the recollections associated with that occasion were the most terrible
of my life, as well as the most deeply graven on my memory. It is not
strange, therefore, that I felt a painful depression of spirits, as well
as a fearful embarrassment and an irresistible desire to escape from them
all—even from Lorenzo himself, whose radiant look seemed so unable to
comprehend my feelings that I could not turn to him for the sympathy that
had heretofore inspired me with so much confidence in him. I looked around
in vain for a glimpse of my compassionate sister; but she had been made no
exception to the custom forbidding young girls to be present at nuptial
festivals. My father, after escorting me to the door of my new home, had
returned, not being able to overcome his repugnance to mingle in the
world. Mario that evening was cold and sarcastic. I felt, therefore, alone
and frightened, and quite overcome by emotion and fatigue. In addition to
this, I had a severe headache from the weight of the coronet I wore, and,
feeling nearly ready to faint, I went to one of the balconies, when,
perceiving some steps leading to a vast _loggia_, I hastily descended, and
almost ran to seat myself on a stone bench at the end of the terrace which
overlooked a part of the garden more retired and obscure than the rest.
There I felt I could breathe freely. Away from the crowd and the dazzling
lights, the sound of the music faintly heard at a distance, and looking up
with delight through the foliage at the tranquil heavens brilliant with
stars, I took off the rich diadem that burdened my head, and felt relieved
as the evening wind blew back my hair and cooled my brow. I leaned my head
against my clasped hands, and did what had hitherto seemed impossible—I
collected my thoughts a moment: I reflected and prayed.
I was married. My past life was at an end. A new and untried life had
begun. What had it in reserve for me? What lay in the future, seemingly so
brilliant, but in reality so dark? I could not tell, and at this moment I
felt a vague terror rather than joyful anticipations. For the second time
that evening Livia’s voice seemed to resound in my ears, and this time to
echo the words my mother had written. I seemed to make them some promise I
hardly comprehended myself, and I murmured the words: “Rather die!...”
Lorenzo’s voice recalled me to myself. His eyes, which had never lost
sight of me, immediately perceived my absence, and he was now at my side.
He was alarmed at first at the sight of my tears, my disordered hair, and
the coronet lying on the stone bench beside me, but was reassured when I
looked up with an appealing expression, and understood me without giving
me the trouble to speak.
“Poor Ginevra!” he softly said in a caressing tone of protection which he
so well knew how to assume. “Yes, you are right. This display is foolish,
this crowd is odious, and has been too much for your strength. And how
absurd,” he continued, “to hide this golden hair, and burden so young and
fair a brow with heavy jewels! You did not need them, my Ginevra. You were
certainly charming with the coronet on, but much more so as you are....
Ah! do not shake your head. You must allow me to say what I please now.
You no longer have the right to impose silence on me, and I am no longer
bound to obey you....”
So saying, he led me slowly back to the house, but, instead of returning
to the rooms still crowded with company, he took me another way leading to
a _boudoir_ of a circular form, which was ornamented with particular care.
The gilding, the mirrors, and the paintings did not seem to have suffered
from the effects of time like the rest of the house. Nothing was wanting
that could give this little room a comfortable and sumptuous aspect. The
soft light of a lamp suspended from the ceiling was diffused throughout
the room, and perfect silence reigned.
“This is your room, Ginevra,” said Lorenzo, carelessly throwing on one of
the tables the circlet of diamonds he held in his hands. “Here you can
quietly repose undisturbed by the crowd. There is absolutely nothing to
disturb you here; the music itself can scarcely be heard. I will leave
you, my Ginevra, to explain your absence and endure till the end of the
evening the fearful task it pleases them to impose on us, but from which,
at least, they must allow me to deliver you.”
XI.
The following day, as the breeze declined, I was standing beside Lorenzo
on the deck of the ship that was bearing us away. I had left behind me all
I had hitherto known and loved, and my eyes were yet tearful from my last
farewells. I stood looking at the receding shores of Sicily, and the
magnificent amphitheatre of Messina rising up before us, which presents so
imposing an appearance when seen from the sea. We soon passed between the
two famous whirlpools which often afford a comparison for those among us
_voyageurs_ over the sea of life who escape one only to fall into the
other—a comparison figuratively very apt, though in reality it is quite
doubtful if in our day any navigator ever falls either into Scylla or
Charybdis.
When nothing more was to be seen, and night came on with its serene and
starry heavens, revealing only the outline like a silvery vapor which
marked the coast of Italy, I consented at last to leave the place where I
had been standing motionless, and took a seat under an awning Lorenzo had
had put up for me on deck. During the hour of calm repose I enjoyed
there—my first and almost only hour of perfect happiness!—I was inspired
with renewed hope and confidence while listening to the penetrating
accents of the husband whose idol I was, as he depicted the future in
language whose magic charm seemed to open a whole life of pleasure before
me. After a few days’ rest at Naples, we were to take a delightful journey
through Italy and France. We should behold all the places and objects I
had so often seen in imagination, and whose names were so familiar to my
memory. The interest I was capable of feeling in every subject, the
curiosity so natural to the young, and the undeveloped sense of the
beautiful which Lorenzo knew so well how to draw out and gratify, the
taste for art with which he was gifted—all these chords, as yet nearly
untried, seemed to vibrate within me as I listened to him. I was like a
docile instrument from which a skilful hand knows how to draw forth sounds
hitherto unsuspected. As in certain compositions of the great masters, the
same musical idea is persistently reproduced in the most varied
modulations, so on all subjects and on all occasions he found means to
lead my heart back to the certain conviction of being loved—loved as much
as in my most ambitious dreams I had ever imagined it would be sweet to be
loved. At that moment the vow so “fearful” seemed easy to keep; and if
Livia’s words had occurred to me then, they would doubtless have excited a
smile!...
One false note, however, or at least a doubtful one, disturbed for an
instant the harmony that seemed to reign between us.
Every one who has crossed, on a beautiful summer night, the sea that
washes those enchanted shores, has doubtless experienced the undefinable
impression of mingled delight and peace, enthusiasm and dreaminess, that
sometimes comes over one while watching the stars becoming more intense in
their brilliancy, and the luminous sea like a widespread mirror reflecting
the immensity of the heavens. We grew silent, and after a time I rose and
went to the side of the ship to contemplate more fully the beauty of the
night, and there, with uplifted face and clasped hands, one of those
inarticulate prayers rose from my heart in which the happiness of the
present moment is confounded with admiration for the wonders of the divine
creation, and the soul truly feels itself greater than the entire
universe, because it alone has the power to render thanks to Him who not
only created it but the whole world.
Lorenzo had followed me, and taken a seat on the bench that ran along the
side of the ship, where, with his head leaning on one hand, and his back
to the sea, he sat intently gazing at me. Filled with devout thoughts, I
took his hand, and, pressing it in mine, I said: “O my dear husband! let
us offer up one short prayer together—a prayer of thanksgiving to God....”
His only reply was to seize both of my hands, and kiss them one after the
other, and then to laugh gently, as one would at the prattling of a
child!... A sudden sensation of pain darted through my heart like an
arrow; and if it had not been so dark, he might have seen how pale I at
once turned. But he did not notice or suspect my emotion, though his eyes
were fastened on my face. “_Beatrice in suso, ed io in lei
guardava_,”(138) he said in his most caressing tone. Then he continued:
“Your eyes are my heaven, Ginevra. I need not raise them any higher.”
The sentiment to which I had appealed was one so utterly unknown to him
that he unconsciously destroyed the emotion I felt.
“Ah! Lorenzo,” I exclaimed in my anguish, “Dante had a different meaning,
or Beatrice would not have allowed him to use such language.” Then I
stopped, obeying for the first time the instinctive feeling, so painful
but right, that checks every word on a woman’s lips which, as has been so
well expressed, would be profaned if not understood.
But this was rather instinctive than the result of thought with me. And
though the ray of truth that time was to reveal more fully was vivid, it
was only transient, ... and my momentary disappointment left no permanent
impression at the time, though I did not forget it, and the recollection
came back at a later day.
Coming from Sicily, the sight of the Bay of Naples does not, of course,
inspire the same degree of wonder and admiration felt by those who come
from the north; but it was with a feeling of delight my eyes wandered
around, after passing Capri, and beheld at the right the wonderful chain
of mountains at whose foot lies the charming shore of Sorrento; at the
left Posilippo and all the pleasant villas that crown its height; in front
the marked outline of Vesuvius standing out against the majestic Apennines
in the distance; and, finally, Naples, smiling and lovely, seated on the
inner shore of its beautiful bay! Whatever may be said as to the
possibility of finding anywhere else in the world a prospect as
magnificent as this, and even if it is true that there is one, it would be
impossible to remember it when the view I have just described is presented
to the eye for the first time.
While we were thus rapidly crossing the bay, and I was gazing on every
side with delight, Lorenzo pointed out the Villa Reale, beyond which stood
the house we were to live in, surrounded by a large garden—a charming
habitation which combined all the attractions of the country and all the
advantages of the city, and which, when I entered it for the first time,
seemed like a beautiful frame to the sunny picture of my future life.
On this occasion we only remained a fortnight at Naples; but this was
sufficient to make me appreciate my new home, and the prospect of
returning to it an additional pleasure in the journey before us. It is, in
fact, only pleasant to travel around the world when we can see in
imagination a place awaiting us where some day we are to find rest and
deposit the treasures we have accumulated.... Happily for me, I was then
far from foreseeing those I should have to bring back when I returned to
this spot!...
The day after our arrival Lorenzo took me for the first time into his
studio, where I was filled with astonishment at the exquisite perfection
of the productions I found there. I had often heard him called a great
artist, and I now realized it was no idle flattery. But I involuntarily
turned my eyes away from many of them, and stood gazing with admiration at
a statue which was incontestably the finest in the gallery. It represented
a young girl whose flowing drapery was marvellous in execution and grace.
Her face, though perfectly beautiful, had an expression of grief and
terror. A lamp stood at her feet, but the light had gone out.
Lorenzo’s pride as an artist had never been gratified with a more lively
or more _naïve_ admiration than mine.
“O Ginevra _mia_!” he exclaimed, “if I have hitherto been considered an
artist, what shall I be when I have you for my model and my judge?”
He then told me that this beautiful statue represented a vestal, but it
lacked a pendant which he had never been able to execute.
“But now,” he added, “I am sure of succeeding. I have long sought a model
for my second vestal, and at last I have found one.”
He put my hair back with one hand, and, examining me attentively with a
thoughtful air, continued, as if talking to himself: “Yes, ... these
faultless features, the noble, dignified air of the head, the profound
expression of the eyes, and the gravity of the mouth, constitute the very
type I want. I could not find a better combination of all I need for my
noble, mysterious vestal—the vigilant, faithful guardian of the sacred
fire. I will begin it to‐morrow.”
“Not here, will you?” said I, glancing uneasily at a Bacchante as unlike
as possible to the statue I had been admiring, and which I could hardly
believe came from the same hand. Lorenzo looked at me with astonishment,
and hardly seemed to comprehend me. He only regarded such things from an
artistic point of view—perhaps a valid excuse, but it was the second time
within two days his uncommon penetration had been at fault. He was really
skilful at reading a passing thought that had not been expressed, and in
penetrating somewhat below the surface, but he was incapable of looking
deeply into a soul, or of following it when it rose to certain heights.
When I clearly made known my wishes, however, he immediately assented to
them, and took me into an adjoining room that was smaller.
“Just as you please,” he said. “You shall come here to sit to me, and I
promise you, Ginevra, that there shall be nothing in this studio except
what you are willing to look at.”
XII.
During my first stay at Naples we made no visits, and our doors were
closed against every one. It was our honeymoon. Lorenzo chose to pass it
entirely alone with me, and I was far from wishing it otherwise. Every one
respected our solitude. Nevertheless, as soon as my arrival was known,
Lorenzo’s friends and acquaintances, with the proverbial courtesy of
Neapolitan society, sent me their cards as a sign of welcome. We looked
them over together in the evening, and I thus learned the names of the
acquaintances I should soon have to make. Lorenzo sometimes laughingly
made comments on them which were more or less flattering and diffuse. One
evening, however, he excited a feeling of surprise and uneasiness. I had,
as usual, taken up the cards that had been left that day, when I saw him
change color at the sight of one, which he snatched hastily from my hand,
and tore into a thousand pieces. The extreme suddenness of the act checked
the question I was on the point of asking. I remained silent, but the name
I had read on the card was graven ineffaceably on my memory in consequence
of the occurrence. I shall never forget it. Lorenzo quickly recovered
himself at seeing my surprise, and told me it was the card of a foreign
lady who had left Naples, and whose call I never need trouble myself to
return. Then taking up the next card, he read aloud:
“Stella d’Oria, Contessa di San Giulio.” “Ah! as for her,” he exclaimed,
“you will like her, I know, and I am willing you should become friends. I
used to consider her a little too perfect to suit me, but I am of a
different opinion when it is a question of my wife....”
The new statue was begun without any delay. I sat to him two or three
hours every day, and in the evening we took long walks on the heights of
Camaldoli, where we were most sure of not meeting any one. He enjoyed my
admiration for the wonderful aspect of nature around us, and took pleasure
in giving me a fresh surprise every day. And he was not yet tired of
entertaining me with the varied events of his past life, and of witnessing
the interest his conversation invariably excited in one who possessed an
intelligent but unstored mind. Complete harmony seemed to reign between
us, and yet more than once during the brief duration of these happy days
it was suddenly disturbed by some discordant note which caused the vague
uneasiness I have already spoken of that seemed like one of those
momentary shooting pains that are the premonitions of some fixed,
incurable disease. In both cases they are experienced a long time before
the cause is understood, and the disease is often far advanced before the
tendency of these symptoms is clear and unmistakable.
The terrible chastisement that followed the gratification of my vanity on
that one occasion had inspired me, as I have said, with a kind of
repugnance, if not terror, to have my face praised. This repugnance on the
part of a young girl who had reason to be proud of her beauty was an
originality which had perhaps given me additional attraction in Lorenzo’s
eyes. Now I was his wife, I could not, of course, expect him to obey me
and keep up the same reserve in our intercourse. And yet how many times,
especially during those long sittings in the studio, I longed to impose
silence on him!... How many times I felt a blush mount to my forehead
when, after arranging my drapery and attitude, unbraiding and putting my
long hair to suit his own fancy, and making me change my position a dozen
times, he would fall into an ecstasy against which my whole soul revolted!
Was this the passion full of mingled tenderness and respect that I should
have been as proud to inspire as to experience? Was this really being
loved as I had longed to be? I sometimes asked myself if his admiration
for the hands, arms, face, and whole form of a statue was of a different
nature. I did not yet go so far as to wonder if some other woman, merely
endowed with greater beauty than I, could not easily rob me of a love that
had so frail a foundation....
Fortunately, we left Naples when the fortnight was at an end, though the
statue was not half finished. Our long _tête‐à‐tête_ had not proved to be
all I had anticipated. I hoped more from the journey, and this hope was
not disappointed. Lorenzo was capable of being the best and most
intelligent of guides everywhere, and such he was during our rapid journey
through Italy, where we only remained long enough in each city to admire
the monuments and museums, though we did not follow the beaten track of
ordinary tourists. Lorenzo thought himself versed in everything relating
to art and history, and yet he did not seem to realize that the church had
also had its _rôle_ in the history of his country. Therefore one side of
Italian history escaped him entirely, and I do not know if, even at Rome,
it had ever occurred to him there had been any change whatever of religion
between the building of the Temple of Vesta and the time when the dome of
Michael Angelo was raised in the air. Both are worthy of admiration in a
different degree, and he regarded them with the same eye. But I did not
then perceive all he left unexpressed. My thoughts and attention were
absorbed by all there was around me to see. I was astonished to find
myself in a world so fruitful in sources of interest that perhaps there is
no one man on earth able to investigate them all equally. One alone,
independent of the rest, might really suffice for the study of a whole
life‐time.
At length we arrived at Paris. Lorenzo, of course, had frequently made
long visits there, and had a host of friends and acquaintances there as
well as everywhere else. A few days after our arrival, I attended a large
ball for the first time since my marriage, and the second in my life. I
heard my name murmured on every side. I was surrounded with homage and
overwhelmed with compliments. I was afterwards informed I had been the
object of universal admiration; that nothing was talked of but the beauty
of the Duchessa di Valenzano and her diamonds; and that a journal
accustomed to give an account of the gayeties of the season had devoted a
long paragraph to the description of my dress and person.
All this was reported to us by a young cousin of Lorenzo’s whose name, in
reality, was Landolfo Landini, though his friends usually called him Lando
Landi. He had lived in Paris several years, and considered himself almost
a Frenchman. He had acquired the stamp of those people who have no aim in
life—as easily imitated as they are unworthy of being so—and had wasted
the natural cleverness and good‐nature which redeemed some of his faults.
He prided himself particularly on using the language of polite society,
and was under the illusion that he completely disguised his nationality.
When he fell in with a fellow‐countryman, however, he allowed his natural
disposition to reassert itself, and indulged in a flow of language that
might have been amusing to some, but to me was frivolous and tiresome,
and, after listening to the account of my grand success the previous
evening with a coolness that seemed to astonish him, I fell into a reverie
that had more than one cause. Why had Lorenzo watched me so attentively
all the evening before? It was the first time we had appeared in society
together, and he was anxious I should create a sensation. He himself had
carefully selected the dress I was to wear, and I was pleased with the
admiration with which he regarded me. On this point I had no hesitation: I
was anxious to please _him_, but not to _please_; and as to the gay world
into which he now introduced me, I entered it with the pleasure and
curiosity of a child, and the lively interest inspired by everything that
is new; but I had become strangely insensible to the pleasure of being
admired, or even the gratification that springs from vanity.
In alluding once more to this fact, I will add that it was the effect of
an exceptional grace; for at no remote period of my youth had my mother
detected the germ of this poisonous plant which was to shed so baleful an
influence over the simplicity and uprightness of my nature.
This plant had been swept away in a single tempestuous night, and a divine
hand had plucked out almost its last root. Was this peculiar grace (the
forerunner of a much greater one I was to receive at a later day) granted
me in answer to the prayer of my dying mother? Or was it to the sincere
repentance that had so overwhelmed my soul? These things are among the
mysteries of divine mercy beyond one’s power to fathom. But it is certain
I was thus preserved from one of the greatest dangers that await most
ladies in the fashionable world. I was very far from being invulnerable on
all points, as the future showed only too plainly; but I was on this.
Nevertheless, I had not been put to so decided a proof before. Never had I
seen or imagined so brilliant a scene. I was delighted and charmed, and
unhesitatingly gave myself up to the enjoyment of the evening; but the
incense lavished on me added nothing to my pleasure. It only produced a
certain timidity that lessened my ease and greatly diminished my
enjoyment. I sincerely think if I had been less beautiful or more simply
dressed—in a word, less admired—I should have been happier and much more
at my ease.
In my embarrassment I was glad to find Lorenzo always near me, and the
more so because I had no idea it was not absolutely the custom. But I
noticed with some surprise that he observed every movement I made with a
strange attention, and listened to every word I uttered when addressed.
Perhaps others did not perceive this, but I understood his quick,
observant glance and the expressive features he knew so well how to
control, and I knew also the art with which he could seem occupied with
what was going on at one end of a room, while his whole attention was
absorbed in what was said at the other. In short, I felt he had not lost
sight of me a single instant the whole evening, and that not one of my
words had escaped him. I wondered if his affection for me was the sole
cause of this constantly‐marked solicitude. This was the primary cause of
my uneasiness. Another arose from the conversation that was actually going
on in my presence, which I listened to with pain, and as a passive
witness; for I could take no part in it.
How could Lorenzo take any pleasure in the trivial details, the unmeaning
gossip, and the doubtful jests of Landolfo Landini?... How could he
question him, reply to what he said, and encourage him to continue? And
yet Lorenzo was a very different person from his cousin. He was very far
from leading an aimless life. He had undertaken long, dangerous journeys
that had entailed great exertion and incredible fatigue, in order to
increase his extensive and varied knowledge. He was capable of continued
application. Talents like his could only be acquired by profound study of
a hundred different subjects, as well as by long, serious, persevering
practice in the art in which he had become such a proficient. One can
hardly conceive of frivolity in an artist, and yet this anomaly exists. I
have since remarked it in others, as I observed it now in Lorenzo—a proof,
doubtless, that to soar above the every‐day world, and keep at such
heights, talent and genius, no more than the soul, should be separated
from God!
The morning at length passed away, and about four o’clock we ordered the
_calèche_ for a long drive. The first hour was devoted to making numerous
purchases. Lando Landi escorted us. Perfect familiarity with the shops of
Paris was one of his specialties. Above all, he knew where to find those
curiosities that are almost objects of art, and which have the gift, so
precious to those who sell them, of inducing people who make the first
purchase to continue indefinitely; for each new object of that class
acquires additional value in the eyes of a connoisseur, and in such
matters, more than any other, _l’appétit vient en mangeant_.(139)
We remained more than an hour in the first shop we stopped at. Lorenzo was
in his element. He was a genuine connoisseur in everything. He examined
bronzes, porcelains, furniture of every epoch, carved wood from all
countries, and old tapestry, with a sure and experienced eye, and the
merchant, seeing whom he had to deal with, brought out of his secret
recesses treasures hidden from the vulgar, and multiplied temptations
Lorenzo seemed very little inclined to resist. As for me, I took a seat
beside the counter, and looked with indifference at the various objects
that were spread out before me, but of which I was quite unable to
perceive the value, which was somewhat conventional. I was a little
astonished at the number and value of Lorenzo’s purchases, but, on the
whole, the business did not interest me much, and I felt glad when it was
at an end.
“Bravo! Lorenzo,” said Lando as soon as we re‐entered the carriage. “You
don’t do things half way. That is the way I like to see other people spend
their money. It consoles me for not having any myself to throw out of the
window.”
“I have got to entirely refurnish my palace in Sicily,” said Lorenzo, “as
well as to decorate my house in Naples, which is quite unworthy of her who
is to live in it.”
“You are jesting, Lorenzo,” said I. “You know very well I think nothing is
lacking.”
“That is the consequence of your extreme youth, my dear cousin,” said
Lando. “Wait a while, and you will find out how much becomes indispensable
to one who has lived in Paris.”
“At all events,” said Lorenzo, “now or never is the time for me to gratify
my fancy. I am just going to housekeeping. I have barely spent a third of
my present fortune, and am perfectly confident as to that I shall have;
for everybody knows that a cause undertaken by Fabrizio dei Monti is a
cause gained.”
At that instant a beautiful lady in a conspicuous dress passed us in an
elegant _calèche_, and the conversation suddenly took a different turn.
Lorenzo silently questioned his cousin with a look, and Lando began to
give him in a low tone some information which an instinctive repugnance
prevented me from listening to....
I began (perhaps unjustly) to conceive a strong dislike to this Cousin
Landolfo, and I imagine he would have been very much astonished had he
guessed with what eye I now looked at his face, generally considered so
handsome. It was of a type often admired out of Italy, because somewhat
different from that foreigners are accustomed to, who have no idea to what
a degree it is common in that country. A dark complexion, rather handsome
eyes, fine teeth, and curly black hair, formed in my eyes a most
unpleasing combination, and, without knowing a word they were saying, I
felt positively certain he had never in his life uttered a syllable I
should think worth listening to.
At length we left the boulevards, drove through the Champs Elysées, and at
last found ourselves in the shade of the Bois de Boulogne. While my two
companions were conversing together in a low tone, I abandoned myself to
the pleasure of being in a cool place where I could breathe more freely;
for, unaccustomed to going out during the middle of the day in summer, the
heat had seemed overpowering. Apart from this, there was nothing here to
strike a person accustomed to the loveliest scenery in the world. Unused
as I was to Parisian life, the charm of which often produces an impression
that effaces all others, the things I saw had no other prestige in my eyes
than what they were in themselves. Viewed in this light, the museums,
churches, and palaces seemed less grand and magnificent than those we had
seen before, and the promenades less picturesque and less varied. I missed
particularly the lovely vistas which everywhere in Italy form the
background of the picture, and attract the eye, and elevate the mind to
something higher than the mere treasures of history and art that have
accumulated in all old Italian cities.
And yet it cannot be denied that Paris has the power of making itself
preferred to any other place in the world. It speaks a different language
to every individual, and is comprehended by all. It is filled with
treasures of every kind, and has wherewithal to gratify every taste
indiscriminately, from that which is evil in its vilest form to an excess
of goodness amounting to sublimity; from the most refined extravagance of
fashion to the extreme renunciation of charity; and from pleasure in its
most dangerous aspect to piety in its most perfect manifestations. It
flatters vanity and vice more than would be dared anywhere else, and yet
it prides itself on being able to produce examples of goodness,
devotedness, and humility that are almost unparalleled. In a word, every
one, for a different reason, feels more at home there than anywhere else
in the world. He who once learns to love Paris finds it difficult to like
any other city as well; and he who has lived there finds it hard to resign
himself to live in any other place. It is the one city on earth that has
been able to vie with Rome in the honor of being the home of all
nations....
To Be Continued.
The Rock Of Rest.
S. MATTHEW xvi. 18.
Tossed on many a wave of doctrine,
Restless, weary, ill at ease
With beliefs that quiet others,
But as vague to me as these;
I have done with idly chasing
Phantom lights, that rise and fall;
Drift no more with drifting doctrines—
Grown indifferent to them all!
Shall I long regret the visions
Of a rest so inly wooed?
Shall I long go on deploring
Creeds, that but opinions proved?
Quenched be every weak emotion!
Bring my future weal or woe,
Weal nor woe shall blight or bless me—
Faith, nor creed, shall move me now!
Murmuring thus, there came a whisper
From the Friend who knew me best:
“Seek the rock on which I builded:
On that rock alone is rest.”
Suddenly, with light supernal,
Faith, the higher reason, came,
And my foot touched base eternal—
Benedictions on his name!
R. S. W.
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM.
Anglican Orders. II.
The Validity Of The Edwardine Rite.
Before entering upon the theology of the question, we must meet an initial
objection of Anglicans to our attempting to criticise the Edwardine rite.
They insist that the question has been settled long ago, and in their
favor, by no less an authority than the Holy See and its legate, Cardinal
Pole. The cardinal, they say, in accordance with instructions from Rome,
admitted all the schismatical bishops and clergy, who were not
irreconcilables, in the orders they had received in schism, whether
according to the Pontifical or according to the Edwardine rite. Great
stress has been laid upon this by Anglican controversialists from Bramhall
down to Mr. Haddan; and certainly, if it be a true statement of the case,
the value of the objection can scarcely be overrated. Its truth must be
decided by an appeal to the Papal briefs and to the official acts of the
legate.
The bull of March 8, 1553‐4, granting full legatine faculties to Pole,
authorizes him to deal with two classes of the bishops and clergy—viz., of
the clergy, those who have not received orders at all, and those who have
received them ill; that is to say, orders null and orders irregular
(ordines quos nunquam, aut male susceperunt). The bishops, in like manner,
who have received cathedral churches from Henry or Edward are divided into
those on whom “the gift of consecration has been heretofore conferred,”
and “those on whom it is not yet conferred” (munere consecrationis eis
hactenus impenso vel si illud eis nondum impensum exstiterit). The cases
in which the ordination or consecration had been validly though
irregularly conferred are also described as “received from heretical or
schismatical bishops, or in other respects unduly” (quod iis ab episcopis
hæreticis et schismaticis aut alias minus rite et non servatâ formâ
ecclesiæ consuetâ impensum fuit). By these last words power is given “to
consider cases in which the ancient form of the sacrament had not been
observed, and, if the form used was sufficient for validity, to admit it
as such, and to admit a person ordained in such a manner to exercise the
orders so received.”
Canon Estcourt shows that the “minus rite” cannot be intended to
_designate_, as Mr. Haddan and others have maintained, the Edwardine
orders. He appeals to the dispensations granted to no less than eight
bishops, all ordained according to the Pontifical in Henry VIII.’s time,
wherein their orders are referred to as received “ab episcopis hæreticis
et schismaticis aut alias _minus rite_.”
In the faculties granted by Pole to his bishops for the absolution and
rehabilitation of priests, he carefully explains their limitation to cases
in which “the form and intention of the church have been preserved.” Thus
it is clear “that though the cardinal had power to recognize ordinations
in which some departure had been made from the accustomed form, yet that,
on examination, he found no other form in use which could be admitted by
the church as valid.” In the same faculties he permits the ordination, if
they are otherwise fit, of those whose orders are “null.” He describes
them as persons holding benefices without being ordained.
In 1554, Bonner, Bishop of Bath and Wells, gave a commission to his vicar‐
general “to deal with married laics who, in pretence and under color of
priestly orders, had rashly and unlawfully mingled themselves in
ecclesiastical rights, and had obtained _de facto_ parochial churches with
cure of souls and ecclesiastical dignities, against the sacred sanctions
of the canons and ecclesiastical rights, and to deprive and remove them
from the said churches and dignities.” It is impossible to conjecture who
else these unordained beneficiaries can be, if they are not the Edwardine
clergy.
Anglicans, on the other hand, have made a great deal of a certain
testimonial letter granted by Bonner to Scory, which speaks of the
latter’s sin and repentance, and of his subsequent rehabilitation by
Bonner, and restoration to the public exercise of the ecclesiastical
ministry within the diocese of London. As Scory is spoken of as “our
confrère, lately Bishop of Chichester,” it is urged that the ministry to
the exercise of which he was restored must have been that of a bishop.
Canon Estcourt, after pointing out certain grounds for suspecting the
authenticity of this letter, remarks that Bonner’s faculties only extended
to the case of priests, “so that Scory must have acknowledged the nullity
of his consecration, in order to enable Bonner to deal with him at all”;
and, after all, “the letter does no more than enable him to celebrate Mass
in churches within the diocese of London”—in fact, to exercise that
office, and that office only, which he had received “servatâ formâ et
intentione ecclesiæ.” So much for the Holy See’s approval of the Edwardine
orders.
Anglicans have tried to make out a charge of inconsistency against the
Holy See, on the ground that it did not recognize the episcopate of
Ridley, Latimer, and Ferrer—who were all three supposed to have been
consecrated according to the Roman Pontifical—but degraded them from the
priesthood and inferior orders only. Canon Estcourt admits that Ferrer was
treated merely as a priest, but he shows that his consecration had been a
medley rite, in which the order of the Pontifical was not followed. As to
Latimer, he remarks that there is no pretence for saying that he was not
degraded from the episcopate; and that, with regard to Ridley, the great
weight of authority makes for his having been degraded from the
episcopate. Cardinal Pole, in his commission, ordered that both Ridley and
Latimer should be degraded “from their promotion and dignity of bishops,
priests, and all other ecclesiastical orders.” The Bishop of Lincoln, in
his exhortation to Ridley, says: “You were made a bishop according to our
laws.” Heylin says that they were both degraded from the episcopate. The
only authority for the contrary opinion is Foxe, who makes the acting
commissioner Brookes, Bishop of Gloucester, conclude an address to Ridley
thus: “We take you for no bishop, and therefore we will the sooner have
done with you.” Foxe then proceeds to describe the actual ceremony as a
degradation from the priesthood. Canon Estcourt’s reviewer in the _Dublin
Review_ of July, 1873, maintains that Foxe was right. The reviewer thinks
that Ridley and Latimer were not degraded from the episcopate, because the
_status episcopalis_ was not recognized in those who, though _validly_
consecrated, had not received the Papal confirmation. Upon this we remark,
1st, that the ceremonies of degradation came into use when it was a very
common opinion in the church that degradation destroyed the _potestas
ordinis_. 2. That the form of degradation, in so many words, expresses the
taking away the _potestas ordinis_—“amovemus a te,” “tollemus tibi,”
“potestatem offerendi,” “potestatem consecrandi”—and this in
contradistinction to another form of perpetual suspension—“ab executione
potestatis.” The ceremony aims at effecting the destruction of orders, so
far as this is possible. It may be called a “destruction of orders,” in
the same sense that mortal sin is called the crucifixion of Christ anew.
Indeed, in one place, the clause, “quantum in nobis est,” is introduced.
3. Degradation does not depend upon previous confirmation; for Innocent
II. (1139) thus deals with those who had been consecrated bishops by the
antipope Peter Leo, who therefore assuredly had never been confirmed or
acknowledged in any way by the pope. After exclaiming, “Quoscunque
exaltaverat degradamus,” etc., etc., “he violently wrested their pastoral
staffs from their hands, and ignominiously tore from their shoulders the
pontifical palls in which their high dignity resides. Their rings, too,
which express their espousals with the church, showing them no mercy, he
drew off.”(140) If the Bishop of Gloucester really acted as Foxe
describes, he did so on his own responsibility, and in the teeth of
ecclesiastical precedent.
Perhaps the most important and interesting portion of Canon Estcourt’s
book is that in which he discusses the theological value of the Edwardine
form. It is not merely of controversial importance, but is really
calculated to throw light upon the theology of orders, which, as a
Catholic contemporary well observes, is still in course of formation.
Canon Estcourt, following Benedict XIV., _De Syn. Dioc._, lib. viii. cap.
10, maintains, as the more probable opinion, 1, that, in the case of the
priesthood, the second imposition of hands, with the prayer for the
infusion “of the virtue of the sacerdotal grace,” is all that is really
necessary for validity; although, in practice, we of the West must ordain
again _sub conditione_, if the tradition of the instruments has been
omitted. 2. That in the case of priests, the third imposition of hands,
with the words, “Receive the Holy Ghost; whose sins thou dost remit, they
are remitted unto them; and whose sins thou retainest, they are retained,”
is not essential, and, if omitted, is to be supplied without repeating the
rest. 3. That as to the episcopate, the “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,” with
the imposition of hands, is all that is essential; and, finally, he
allows, in deference to the Holy Office (_vide infra_), that the
form—_i.e._, the prayer immediately accompanying the imposition of
hands—need not express the specific character or work of the order
conferred, as, for instance, the Holy Sacrifice in the ordination of a
priest.
Consistently with these principles, Canon Estcourt admits that, _so far as
words go_, “Receive the Holy Ghost” is a sufficient form both for the
episcopate and the priesthood. As regards the episcopate, this has been
long a common opinion. As regards the priesthood, the Sacred Congregation
of the Inquisition, in 1704, decided that certain Abyssinians had been
validly ordained priests by imposition of hands and the words, “Accipe
Spiritum Sanctum.” From this it follows that the Anglican forms for
ordaining priests and bishops are, _so far as words go_, sufficient. They
are as follows, from 1549 to 1662, for the priesthood: “Receive the Holy
Ghost; whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins
thou dost retain, they are retained; and be thou a faithful dispenser of
the word of God and of his holy sacraments, in the name of the Father,
etc.” For the episcopate: “Take the Holy Ghost, and remember that thou
stir up the grace of God which is in thee by imposition of hands; for God
hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and
soberness.” In 1662, certain changes were introduced by the High Church
party. In the form for the priesthood, after the words “Holy Ghost” was
added, “for the office and work of a priest in the church of God, now
committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands.” For the form of the
episcopate was substituted, “Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and
work of a bishop in the church of God, now committed unto thee by the
imposition of our hands, in the name of the Father, etc.”
Of course the value of Anglican orders “secundum formam” must depend upon
the value of the form as it originally stood. The subsequent alterations
are important as marking, 1st, the dissatisfaction of the High Church
party with the forms upon which their orders depended; 2d, the low
theological standard which satisfied them, after all.
So far as the material words of the Edwardine forms go, they are
sufficient—_i.e._, they are words capable of being used in a sense in
which they would be sufficient—but the words are ambiguous. The form of
ordination, although it need not express, must signify or mean, the
essential idea of the order. Where it does not carry its meaning on the
face of it, we must look for it in the rite and liturgy of which it forms
a part. This is not an appeal to the mere subjective intention of the
minister, but to the objective meaning of the words. Upon this principle
we must, in order to get at the value of the Anglican forms, discover,
1st, by an examination of the various admittedly valid rites of
ordination, what such words should mean; 2d, by an examination of the
Anglican rite, what these words, in the position which they occupy in that
rite, do or do not mean.
Canon Estcourt examines the numerous rites which the Roman Church
acknowledges to be valid, whether fallen out of use, and only to be found
in the pages of ancient sacramentaries, or still living and operative, in
East or West, among Catholics or among those who have separated from
Catholic unity. He finds three qualities in which they all unite: 1st, a
recognition of the divine vocation or election of the ordained; 2d, a
recognition of the “virtus sacramentalis” of orders, as something quite
distinct from and beyond the grace which is also given to the ordained to
acquit himself worthily in the duties of his calling; 3d, a constant
recognition of, and appeal to, the main scope and duty of orders—the
offering of the Holy Sacrifice.
Canon Estcourt next proceeds to examine the Anglican liturgy and ordinal
with special reference to these three points: 1. The divine election. 2.
The sacramental virtue. 3. The Holy Sacrifice. And he finds that both the
liturgy and the ordinal are the result of a deliberate manipulation of the
ancient Catholic ritual previously in use, in order to the exclusion of
these three points, which contain the essential idea of holy orders.
Ordination in the Anglical ritual no longer appeals to a divine election,
of which it is the expression and the fulfilment. It is merely the public
expression of the approval of the authorities of church and state. For the
“virtus sacramentalis” it has substituted a mere _grâce d’état_. From this
it only naturally follows that episcopal ordination cannot be of
indispensable necessity, or more than a matter of regulation and propriety
which, in an emergency, may be abrogated. This is the express teaching of
many of the early Anglican reformers. Even when engaged in defending their
episcopal succession, they are careful to say that they do not regard it
as indispensable. Hooker, who is in many respects so much more orthodox
than his predecessors and contemporaries, allows “that there may be
sometimes very just and sufficient reason to allow ordination to be made
without a bishop.”
Canon Estcourt prints considerable portions of the Anglican ordinal and
liturgy in parallel columns, with the corresponding text of the Sarum and
Exeter pontificals and missals. We see with what an unerring sacrilegious
instinct everything bearing upon the Holy Sacrifice, and even upon the
Real Presence, is either cut out or perverted.
As regards the Second Book of 1552, it is clear that it was the work of
sacramentarians who disbelieved in the Real Presence in any sense, and was
undertaken for the express purpose of purging the ritual of what previous
handling had still allowed it to retain of the impress of that Presence.
Mr. Cardwell, in his comparison of the “Two Books of Edward VI.,” pref.
xxvii., admits that Cox and Taylor, who were probably the working members
of the commission, appear to have looked upon the oblation of the
Eucharist as consisting merely of “prayer, thanksgiving, and the
remembrance of our Saviour’s passion.” Of Cranmer, the most influential
member of the commission, we are told that “about a year after the
publication of King Edward’s First Book, Archbishop Cranmer abandoned his
belief in the Real Presence—a change which seems to have been very
acceptable to the young king and his favorites.”(141) In the revision of
1662, an apparent attempt was made to attain to the expression of a higher
doctrine, both as regards orders and the Holy Eucharist; but even if the
expressions introduced were in themselves adequate, as Canon Estcourt
fairly shows they were not, of what avail could have been so tardy a
restoration? But if we examine these restorations and emendations, we can
hardly avoid coming to the conclusion that they were not really dictated
by any conception of, or aspiration after, a higher doctrine, but were the
genuine fruits of a conservative reaction fired by controversial pique.
The First Book substituted for the Catholic faith a hazy Lutheranism; the
Second Book for this again a hazy sacramentarianism; and the revision of
1662, a hazy compound of the two, with the addition of a Catholic phrase
or so in order to support claims to a wider sweep of church authority.
Thus the revisers of 1662 introduced the words “priest” and “bishop” into
the ordination form, whilst doing absolutely nothing toward restoring the
idea of sacrifice to the liturgy.
But, it may be urged, there is one portion of the Anglican form for making
priests which expresses the Catholic doctrine of priestly virtue—the power
of forgiving sins. Unfortunately for Anglicans, whatever force may lie in
this expression—and all precedents are against its being regarded as a
sufficient form—is neutralized by the Lutheran new form of absolution
which had been introduced in addition to the two Catholic forms. At best,
one is left in doubt whether the mighty words have not shrivelled into a
Lutheran sense, in which sins are not forgiven, but the forgiveness of sin
is merely declared.
It is impossible to do justice in a review to the exhaustive completeness
of Canon Estcourt’s treatment of this portion of his subject. His
conspectus of the Catholic missals and the different editions of the _Book
of Common Prayer_ in parallel columns enables us, as it were, to detect
the pulsations of each several heresy, and to appreciate its share in what
may be called the passion of the Catholic liturgy in England. A quotation
from each of his parallels may serve as examples of, 1st, the action of
the Lutheran First Book upon the missal; 2d, the Zuinglian Second Book
upon the First Book; 3d, the compromise of 1662.
The Sarum Missal.
We thy servants, and likewise thy holy people, do offer to thy excellent
Majesty, of thy gifts and bounties, a pure victim, a holy victim, the holy
bread of eternal life, and the chalice of everlasting salvation.
The Book Of Common Prayer, 1549.
We, thy humble servants, do celebrate and make here before thy divine
Majesty, with these thy holy gifts, the memorial which thy Son hath willed
us to make.
1549.
He hath left us in those holy mysteries, as a public pledge of his love,
and a continual remembrance of the same, his own blessed body and precious
blood for us to feed upon spiritually, to our great and endless comfort.
1552, Untouched In 1662.
He hath instituted and ordained holy mysteries, as pledges of his love,
and for a continual remembrance of his death, to our great and endless
comfort.
The Sarum Missal.
“The body of our Lord Jesus Christ [1549: which was given for thee]
preserve thy body and thy soul unto everlasting life.”
1552.
“Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on
him in thy heart with thanksgiving.”
(This form was substituted for that of 1549, in 1552, and was appended to
it in 1662.)
Canon Estcourt’s argument against the validity of Anglican orders is no
argument from lack of sufficient intention on the part of Anglicans.
Neither do we think that such an argument could be maintained, in
accordance with the commonly‐accepted principles of theology. If it is a
sufficient intention for valid baptism to intend to administer the form of
Christian initiation, it is sufficient, in the case of orders, to intend
to administer the form of Christian ordination, although the ceremony in
either case may be regarded as merely an external form without any
intrinsic value. It is only as a witness to the sense of the form that the
intention of Anglicans is brought into court; and it is not the intention
with which they ordain at which we demur, but the intention with which
they have altered the ordination service and liturgy—_i.e._, the form of
ordination and its context. Had these alterations been merely the result
of an antiquarian leaning towards a more primitive though less perfect
utterance of the same truth, or of a puritanic craving after simplicity,
the irreverence would have been of the extremest kind, but still there
would have been no grounds for disputing the orthodox sense, and so the
validity of the form. But, on the contrary, the very object of the
alterations, as Canon Estcourt has shown, was the elimination of the
orthodox doctrines of priesthood and sacrifice, and therefore of the
significance upon which the validity of the form depends.
The doubts which should beset the minds of honest Anglicans on the subject
of their orders, if they have the least scruple as to the orthodoxy of
their position, are simply overwhelming. If they turn to the early church,
they find that there are at least as many precedents and authorities for
regarding as null the ordinations of heretics and schismatics as for
accepting them. Morinus’ opinion is that such ordinations are invalid,
except where the church has thought fit to dispense with the impediment;
and Morinus is a genuine student of antiquity, and no mere
controversialist. True it is Anglicans may appeal to what is undeniably
the more common doctrine in the Roman Church—viz., that such ordinations
are valid—but then she unflinchingly condemns Anglicans, whereas she has
never condemned Morinus. It is nothing to the purpose to say that the
practice of the church prevents her using Morinus’ opinion against
Anglicans—which is begging the question against Morinus; the point is, Can
Anglicans escape using it against themselves? Again, when they direct
their attention to the special facts of their own history, their view is
to the last degree discouraging. Their latest antagonist, Canon Estcourt,
has notoriously given up to them every point to which they could make the
remotest claim, and has broken and thrown away every weapon to which the
least exception could be taken; and yet it has come to this: that their
only title to orders is a succession probably broken by the non‐
consecration of Barlow, and an ambiguous form which, when read in the
light of their mutilated ordinal and liturgy, is unlike any that has been
accepted as even probably adequate either by East or West.
Even if Anglicans could find their identical form, as far as words go, in
approved ordinals, they could not argue from this the sufficiency of their
own form. Mutilation and involution, although they contract within the
same span, can never be identical. You might as well pretend that there is
no difference between a stamen from which you have plucked the leaves and
an undeveloped bud.
It is true that originally different portions of the church were allowed,
in regard to orders, to give expression to the same truth in various forms
with various degrees of explicitness; but this can afford no precedent to
an individual church for mutilating a common form in order to deny a
common truth.
The Abyssinian Decision.
We cannot conclude our review without noticing an important criticism made
upon our author in the shape of a letter to the _Month_, November‐
December, 1873, by the Rev. F. Jones, S.J. F. Jones, whilst expressing his
thorough concurrence with Canon Estcourt in every other particular, thinks
that he has attached an undue force to the decision of the holy office
upon Abyssinian orders.
Canon Estcourt has understood the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition,
in their decree in 1704, to have ruled that the form, “Accipe Spiritum
Sanctum,” understood in the sense of the Abyssinian liturgical books, is
valid for the priesthood, although, in the particular case, no further
expression is given to this sense, at least no expression within the
limits of the form strictly so called—_i.e._, the verbal formula
synchronous with the matter. The decree which he so understands is as
follows:
Question: “The ordainer passed hurriedly along a line of deacons, laying
his hands upon the head of each, and saying, ‘Accipe Spiritum Sanctum’;
are they validly ordained _in tal modo e forma_, and admissible to the
exercise of their orders?” Answer: “The ordination of a priest with the
imposition of hands and utterance of the form as in the question is
undoubtedly valid.”
F. Jones, whilst allowing that Canon Estcourt’s interpretation is the
natural one according to ordinary canons of criticism, insists that the
decree, “when interpreted in the light of certain rules which arise out of
what is called the _stylus curiæ_,” asserts, indeed, the sufficiency of
the imposition of hands as matter, when used with the form, but does not
define the sufficiency of the particular form, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum.”
The rules in question are as follows: 1. The meaning of the answer depends
upon the meaning of the _dubium_. 2. Nothing but what is directly stated
is decided. 3. “If there is anything in the wording of a decision which
appears inconsistent with the teaching of an approved body of
theologians—such teaching as amounts to a true theological probability—the
decision is to be interpreted so as to leave such teaching intact, unless
the decision should itself show that it intended to condemn that teaching,
and to take away that probability.” 4. Such decisions are formed on the
presumption that every point except the one in question is correct, on the
maxim, “Standum est pro valore actûs.” 5. When the validity of an
ordination is the subject‐matter of a decision, it must be assumed that
the decision has been made after an inspection of the ordinal. 6. “It is
hardly safe to allege the authority of a decision (I speak merely of a
curial decision), particularly when the details of the case are but
imperfectly known to us, without having ascertained the sense in which,
after its promulgation, it was understood by those who were most competent
to measure its importance.” We shall examine these rules when we come to
consider the worth of F. Jones’ application of them to the case in hand.
But first it will be well to see what effect the elimination of the
Abyssinian decision would have upon Canon Estcourt’s controversial
position.
Pp. 158‐163. Canon Estcourt considers various objections made by Catholic
controversialists to the Anglican form of the priesthood. He is
considering the question of the form in its strict sense—viz., that
portion of the ordination formulary which is synchronous with the matter,
whether this last consist in the tradition of the instruments or in the
imposition of hands. One objection urged by Lequien, amongst others, is
grounded upon the very common doctrine that the form of priestly
ordination must express the principal effect of the sacrament of order by
making mention of the priesthood in relation to the sacrifice, which is
its principal object. Now, if, as F. Jones suggests was the case, the
unmutilated Coptic rite was in use in Abyssinia up to 1704, and the
examples given by Ludolf and Monsignor Beb are merely imperfect copies;
and if no decision as to the form was given in 1704, then, so far as
anything has been shown to the contrary, Lequien’s objection holds good
that no approved form for the priesthood fails to make an appeal to the
Holy Sacrifice.
And now as regards F. Jones’ rules for interpreting the “stylus curiæ,”
and their application to the Abyssinian decision. We have no criticism to
make upon Rules 1 and 2. They are sufficiently obvious even to a non‐
expert. Rule 3 cannot, we think, be admitted without qualification. It is
no doubt an important principle that the presumption is in favor of an
interpretation which leaves intact a probable opinion, supposing that this
is not the formal subject of the decision; but we must not do violence to
the natural sense of words, and it is quite possible that such a decision
might completely evacuate the probability of an opinion of which it took
no direct cognizance whatever. The Council of Florence did not directly
intend to condemn the opinion requiring as absolutely necessary the
tradition of the instruments, yet effectively it has done so. As to Rule
4, “Standum est pro valore actûs,” its application to the case before us
must depend upon whether the course indicated is equivalent to the
introduction of a new “actus.” To ask, as the dubium does, concerning the
validity of “tal modo e forma,” implies that this is given in its
integrity. In the Abyssinian case, it was a question whether certain
persons were to be allowed to say Mass and perform other priestly
functions, and the Sacred Congregation allowed them. As to Rule 5, no
doubt an inspection of the ordinals is to be presumed; but here the very
contention of the questioner is that the ordinal had not been followed.
Moreover, there was ample evidence, in the sacred books quoted by Ludolf
and Monsignor Beb, accessible to the Sacred Congregation, and which,
according to F. Jones’ principle, we may assume it had before it, that in
Abyssinian hands the Coptic ritual had been seriously tampered with. The
translation from the Abyssinian, as given by the above‐named writers, is
certainly not an imperfect version of the Coptic, but a deliberate
compilation from the Coptic form and that of the apostolic constitutions,
which would hardly have been made except for ritual purposes.
If we may accept the earliest and most precise evidence as to actual
practice in Abyssinia—that of the missionary Francis Alvarez (1520), the
one prayer used by the Abuna, with the imposition of hands, is not the
form “Respice,” but, in the Coptic tongue, the prayer “Divina gratia quæ
infirma sanat.”(142) But these words, as Canon Estcourt points out, p.
181, “in the _Coptic_ and Jacobite rites, are said by the archdeacon or
one of the assisting bishops. In the Nestorian and ancient Greek, they are
said by the bishop without imposing his hands; and only in the modern
Greek, the Maronite, and the Armenian are they united with the imposition
of hands.” This looks as if the Abyssinian ritual was a complete medley.
This view is borne out by F. Godigno, S.J. (_De Abyssin. Rebus_, p. 224),
who tells us that the Jesuit Patriarch of Abyssinia, Oviedo, as long as he
lived in Æthiopia, always doubted very much, and with good reason, if the
Abyssinian priests had been duly and lawfully ordained, inasmuch as the
forms of consecration used by the Abuna _were so uncertain that they
seemed to have been corrupted_. On which account, in those matters which
belong to orders, and which require in the minister a real character, he
never could persuade himself to use their offices, lest haply the
sacraments should be rendered void.
F. Jones thinks that Assemani would certainly have noticed these
corruptions, had they existed, in his _Controversia Coptica_, composed for
the information of Propaganda in 1731. But Assemani was not called upon to
consider the corruptions of Abyssinia; for, as he tells us in his preface,
the occasion of his writing was the conversion of two Egyptian monks of
the Alexandrian Church, of whose reordination there was question.
As to Rule 6, obviously nothing can be more important than the estimate of
a decision expressed by contemporary theologians; but it is very easy to
misinterpret their silence. In his defence of the Coptic rite, urges F.
Jones, Assemani ought to have quoted the authorization of a form which _à
fortiori_ authorized the Coptic. We reply that Assemani had no lack of far
more obvious and splendid instances of the recognition of the Coptic rite;
that he had no need of such indirect support. The examination of the
Abyssinian monk Tecla Maria, in 1594, sufficiently shows that it was
impossible to judge of Abyssinian ordinations by the Coptic rite. Assemani
himself acknowledges, p. 227, that either Tecla Maria’s memory failed him,
or his ordainers must have been “poco pratici del rito Coptico o
l’avessero in qualche parte alterato.” F. Godigno (l. c.) says that the
reason of Tecla Maria’s reordination was the corruption of the rite. On
the other hand, it is clearly a great exaggeration to say that the
missionaries made nothing of Abyssinian orders, and that the motive of
reordination was the non‐tradition of the instruments. Of John Bermudes,
the first of the Jesuit patriarchs, Ludolf (pars. ii. p. 473) tells us
that he (Bermudes) has recorded in so many words, that he received all the
sacred orders, including the episcopate, with right of succession to the
patriarchate, from the Abuna Mark, under condition that the pope would
confirm it, and that the pope confirmed and ratified all Mark’s acts.
Again, the Portuguese De Francia, one of the negotiators for the Jesuits,
tells the Abyssinian king that he had been taught that, if he is in danger
of death, and cannot get a Catholic priest, he must ask the Abyssinians
for communion.(143)
Certainly, this Abyssinian decision has not as yet made much mark in
theology. Canon Estcourt is able to mention one work in which it occurs—a
certain edition of the theology of Antoine, a Jesuit, and Prefect of
Propaganda under Benedict XIV. But then there is a vast technical
difference, anyhow, between a decision taking the shape of a practical
rule of procedure and a speculative definition. For more than a century
after the Council of Florence, its recognition of Greek orders had no
perceptible influence upon the language of theologians concerning the
matter of the priesthood. It takes time to translate from the language of
action into that of speculation; but who can deny that in any fair
controversy such action must be discounted.
It remains to be determined whether, everything considered, the decision
of the Sacred Office admits of F. Jones’ interpretation; whether the
dubium can be understood, as he suggests (p. 456), to turn exclusively
upon these two points: the non‐tradition of the instruments and the
deviation from the Coptic rite which prescribes that the bishop’s hands
should be imposed upon each _ordinandus_ during the whole of the form
Respice, instead of during the one phrase, “Repleeum Spiritu Sancto,”
which F. Jones thinks the missionaries paraphrased by “Accipe Spiritum
Sanctum.” Now, we must say that it is hardly probable that in 1704 the
missionaries should be seriously exercised about the non‐tradition of the
instruments. Neither is it likely that they should have proposed, in the
same breath, the two difficulties suggested by F. Jones; for why should
deviation from a rite, the substantial validity of which they doubted, be
a difficulty? They ask about the validity of a form and a manner of
imposing hands, which they describe “talmo do e forma.” There may have
been other prayers used in the service from the Coptic ordinal and
liturgy, but the dubium excludes them from “tal forma.”
F. Jones’ notion that the “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum” is a mistranslation of
the Coptic “Reple eum Spiritu Sancto”—which is not found in the Abyssinian
version—is, we think, quite untenable. No distinction was more thoroughly
appreciated on both sides than that between an imperative and a precatory
form. The Patriarch of the Maronites, in 1572, informs the pope: “In our
Pontifical, the orders are conferred without a form by way of
prayer.”(144) In 1860, the missionaries inform the Sacred Congregation
“that the Monophysites believe the essence of ordination consists in the
expiration (_insuflazione_) the ordainer makes in the act of saying,
‘Accipe Spiritum Sanctum.’ ”(145) Amongst the various deviations from the
Coptic rite which Assemani notes in the evidence of Tecla Maria, the
Abyssinian says of his ordainer, “Insufflavit in faciem meam.” This
“insufflatio” almost implies an imperative form, and so far isolates the
words from any precatory formularies that may precede and follow them.
Most probably this form was obtained from the missionaries with whom the
Abyssinians had been so long in intercourse.
Doubtless the Sacred Congregation did not sanction the form “Accipe
Spiritum Sanctum” taken by itself simply, but specificated in the sense of
the Abyssinian liturgy; but this is exactly Canon Estcourt’s contention
against Anglicans.
In spite of F. Jones’ shrewd and interesting observations, we are of
opinion that Canon Estcourt’s appreciation of the Abyssinian decision is
the true one. At any rate, his interpretation is sufficiently probable to
make it most important to show that, even so understood, it cannot
sanction Anglican orders.
Postscriptum
Since the above was written, the discussion has been continued in the
_Month_ by an answer from Canon Estcourt in January, and an elaborate
rejoinder by F. Jones in February. Something of what we have written has
been anticipated; but, on the whole, we have thought it better to leave
our article as it stands, and content ourselves with appending such
further remarks as may seem called for.
F. Jones, in his second letter, insists that Canon Estcourt has mistaken
what the missionaries proposed as a solitary deviation from a well‐known
and approved rite for the whole form used on the occasion. He proceeds to
support his position by italicizing the concluding words of the answer of
the Holy Office allowing the missionaries to admit the person so ordained
“to the exercise of his orders _according to the rite, approved and
expurgated, in which he was ordained_.” “The Holy Office, then,” he
argues, “did not suppose that the Abyssinians were ordained with only the
words, ‘Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,’ but presumed that some rite, and that an
_approved_ rite, had been followed.”
Now, it is quite certain that the schismatical Abuna did not make use of a
rite expurgated and approved by the Holy See; therefore the word “rite”
must refer to the sacerdotal rite to the exercise of which the person in
question was ordained, which rite he might use in its expurgated and
approved form; but whether the bare words, Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, were
used, or the fuller Abyssinian or Coptic forms, the priest would have been
ordained in that rite with a view to the exercise of which he had been
ordained.
As to the question whether the Æthiopic liturgy, as distinct from the
Coptic, was approved, we cannot admit that a conclusion in the negative
can be drawn from the passage F. Jones quotes from the encyclical of
Benedict XIV. The pope lays down that the Oriental churches in communion
with Rome consist of four rites—Greek, Armenian, Syrian, and Coptic; but
he is clearly only giving general heads. The Æthiopic, if approved, might
well have been included under the Coptic. The Melchite and Chaldaic
liturgies are approved; but in this enumeration they are not distinguished
from the Syrian and the Greek, of which they are respectively slight
variations. Further on in this encyclical, the pope says that “Greeks,
Maronites, Armenians, Copts, and Melchites had been given churches in
Rome, in order that they may perform their sacred offices each according
to his rite.” We know that the Abyssinians also had a church in Rome,
where we may assume that they were allowed the same privilege. The fact
that an expurgated edition of the Æthiopic liturgy was brought out in Rome
in 1549 goes some way to show that the liturgy was approved.(146) This was
the first of the Oriental liturgies published in Rome, and may be found in
various editions of the _Bibliotheca Patrum_ (Paris, 1624, tom. vi.),
together with the Æthiopic rite of baptism and confirmation. This rite of
confirmation affords a curious example of the unprincipled variations of
Æthiopic ritual. It is almost the same as the Coptic rite published by
Assemani, to which F. Jones refers, but it carefully eliminates the direct
form, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,” wherever it occurs in the Coptic.
We are inclined to believe that the Abuna sometimes ordained in the
Coptic, sometimes in the Abyssinian, tongue; but we must confess that the
only direct testimony we have met with on this point is in favor of the
Coptic. Still, whatever was the language used, there is ample evidence to
show that the Abyssinians were in the habit of materially diverging from
the Coptic ordinal. To the testimonies of Oviedo and Alvarez, already
quoted, we may add that of F. Soller. Referring to F. Bernat’s
correspondence, he says that that father discusses “the different rite of
ordination and other points of difference between the Copts and
Abyssinians.”(147)
We submit that the Holy Office had no grounds for assuming the use of the
Coptic, or, indeed, of any specific ritual in the case brought before
them.
On The Wing. A Southern Flight. V.
“Les Dieux étaient alors si voisins de la terre
Qu’ils y venaient souvent avec ou sans mystère.”(148)
“There is no sense of desolation greater than that produced by the sight
of a dismantled palace and a deserted garden.” These were the words with
which Don Emidio broke a long and somewhat sad silence which had fallen on
our little party the day we went to Portici.
It is a long drive of four miles on the rough pavement of huge slabs
common to Naples and its environs. We passed over the bridge where S.
Januarius had gone forth with cross and banners, incense and choristers,
to meet the torrents of burning lava from Mount Vesuvius, and arrest the
destruction of the city by prayer. It made me shudder to think how very
near that destruction we had then been. For, of course, if the lava had
once gone so far, there was no natural reason why it should not do so
again, and even pass on further still. That bridge is now hardly outside
the town. Indeed, town succeeds town, and the whole way from Naples to
Portici is one long street, chiefly consisting of villas and handsome
palaces, now sadly neglected, but probably still containing many
treasures, and all with more or less of garden ground attached.
Portici is a royal palace; but for years none of the royal family have
resided there, and it is used chiefly for public offices. It is sad to see
these magnificent buildings left nearly empty; and we can only wonder at
the extraordinary wealth of the past when we reflect that Portici is one
only of many other beautiful royal residences which are no longer kept up.
Even Caserta, which is said to be the largest palace in Europe, is all but
deserted. Don Emidio was telling us an anecdote in connection with it.
Just before the revolution of 1860 the palace had been put in order,
partially refurnished, and redecorated, for the reception of Francis II.
and his bride, the ex‐King and Queen of Naples.
Amongst other valuable ornaments, in one room the walls had hangings
attached with massive gold _fleurs‐de‐lis_. When the revolution broke out,
a Neapolitan duke, one of the very few of the really noble families who
turned traitor to their king, was appointed to adapt and readjust the
palace for the usurper. The whole matter was put into his hands, in
perfect confidence, no doubt, that he would see it properly carried out.
For some time the palace was closed to the public. When again it was
opened on certain days, and those who had known it before saw it again,
they observed that all the gold _fleurs‐de‐lis_ had disappeared. Of course
the fact provoked enquiry; but no account of them was ever rendered, and
all researches proved fruitless. No one doubted but that they had been
“annexed” by the liberal aristocrat, but, equally, no one dared call him
to task. For as annexation on a large scale was the order of the day, it
did not answer to look too closely into minor examples of the same.
Nevertheless, the story got whispered abroad, and his reputation, in
consequence, was far less golden than the missing _fleurs‐de‐lis_.
One day the duke was standing at a window in his own palace overlooking
the courtyard, when a poor artisan, who had already sent in his bill more
than once, came to request payment. The duke, who thought, or pretended to
think, the charges in the bill were exorbitant, began to upbraid and scold
the man from the window. At the same moment the wife of one of the men‐
servants of the establishment was crossing the yard. The duke called to
her, exclaiming, “It is a downright theft. But these artisans are all
thieves, are they not, Donna Rafaele?”
“Your excellency is a better judge of that than I am,” was the reply,
“since the greater ought to know the lesser.”
“I wonder how the duke took it?” said I.
Don Emidio gave me a knowing look, and shook his right hand under his left
elbow. We all laughed; but no description can convey the inimitable
drollery of Neapolitan pantomime. It is a thousand times more eloquent
than words. What expression, such as “to make yourself scarce,” or “to
skedaddle,” could convey what is indicated by that wagging of the
straightened hand under the elbow? You _see_ the thief escaping. It is the
same in everything else. There is a gesture for all the emotions and most
of the casualties of daily life. No beggar tells you he is hungry; but
standing silently before you, with a perfectly immovable expression, he
opens his mouth, and points downwards with his finger. A woman and half a
dozen children gathering round you, and all doing the same thing, produces
an effect so curiously divided between the ludicrous and the pathetic that
it is far harder to refuse an alms than if the request were made in
downright words. It is the same with the coachmen of the hired public
carriages. You are driving rapidly along, and your coachman passes another
whom he knows. In less than a second he has conveyed to his friend full
information of where he comes from, where he is going, and how soon he
will be back, probably concluding with the amount of the fare for which he
has agreed to do the distance; and all without a word being uttered.
The Neapolitans carry the same extraordinary pantomimic power into all
scenes and all places, including the pulpit, or, more likely, the
platform, from which the priest delivers his Lenten or Month of Mary
discourses. He walks to and fro in the heat of his argument, he sits down,
and starts up again, he weeps, and he even laughs. It is often very
striking; and it is so natural, it belongs so essentially to the genius of
the people, that it is never ridiculous, nor does it seem out of place. Of
course sometimes it is done less well and gracefully than at others; but
it is too thoroughly in unison with the language and habits of the people
ever to appear incongruous.
We were sitting on the low wall of the outer steps leading to the tower
entrance of a building at the end of the Portici pleasure‐grounds when
this conversation occurred. The tower belongs, I believe, to an
observatory, and all around are the stables, the barracks, and the
appurtenances of the palace, now empty and silent. The grass grew high and
thick in the courtyard. The deep‐red blossoms of the wild sorrel, with the
sunlight shining through them, looked like drops of blood among the grass.
The ox‐eyed daisies boldly faced the blue, glaring sky. The low, long
building used for stables was in front of us. Then a dark, dense wood of
ilex and cork‐trees, like a strong, black line. And beyond that no middle
distance was visible, but stark and sudden rose the seamed and barren
sides of Mount Vesuvius. No beneficent and tender white cloud broke the
intense, monotonous blue of all the wide heavens. The sky, the grim
mountain, the black wood, and the deserted stables—that was all; bathed in
sunshine, sparkling with intense light, silent with brooding heat, and
unspeakably desolate with a broad, unmodulated, horrific beauty like the
face of the sphinx.
Suddenly there came over me a dim, weird feeling of the ancient pagan
world. There was an inner perception and consciousness that in some
undefined way it was homogeneous to the scene around me and to unredeemed
man. It was cruel in its beauty; as poetic, but not picturesque, beauty so
often is.
I started up, and exclaimed, “Let us get back. The old gods are about this
place, and I cannot stay.”
Time has not effaced the impression, and I can recall the inner vision at
any moment. Frank declared we should come again, and have a picnic there
with the Vernons. But I protested I would not be of the party. “By the
bye, Jane,” said Frank, “why did Elizabeth not come?”
“Because little Franceschiella was buried this morning, and neither Ida
nor Elizabeth would leave the poor mother; while Helen remained to keep
Mrs. Vernon company.”
Franceschiella was a lovely child of six years who had died of a fever the
day before. She was the only child, and that fact, added to her quite
extraordinary beauty, had made the trial doubly hard to bear for her
adoring parents. For, indeed, it was little less than adoration that
Franceschiella received, not only in her own home, but from all her
neighbors. We were very much struck in this instance by the poetic nature
of the Italians. The father was a _vignaiuolo_, the mother did a little
needle‐work, or took in washing; but no nobleman’s child was ever more
carefully bathed and dressed and nourished than this one darling, and that
partly in consequence of her angelic beauty and her infantine charm. The
little creature ran every risk of being entirely spoilt by the amount of
petting and flattery that she received on all sides. On Sundays and
holidays they always dressed her in white with a red coral necklace; and
the mother or the cousins would weave a wreath of flowers to crown her
beautiful, golden hair, that fell below her waist. She had deep violet
eyes with black lashes, and a milk‐white skin. She was very forward for
her age, and singularly intelligent. But she was surely never meant to
live long in this rough world. She came to it like a stranger, and she
remained a stranger all the time of her brief sojourn—as though some
princess from the distant lands of poetry and romance had come for a brief
visit to dwell with common mortals. There was an inexpressible refinement
in all the little creature’s ways which would have become a real cross to
her and the occasion of endless trials had she lived long enough to find
the harsh side of life ruffling her angel wings. It was in mercy the child
was taken away before the period of white frocks and fresh flowers had
come to an end. Life could have brought to her nothing but temptation and
anguish. But of course in proportion to her exceptional nature was the
despair of the poor parents in seeing her fading before their eyes. As
little Franceschiella had been unaccustomed to restraint or coercion of
any kind, it was exceedingly difficult, during her short illness, to
induce her to take the necessary remedies. And nothing could be more
touchingly beautiful than the arguments used by the distracted parents to
persuade her to swallow the nauseous draughts. As usual, there was a
crucifix near the bed, and an image of the Mater Dolorosa—the devotion of
the Neapolitans being very specially to the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed
Virgin. They would beg the poor little darling to take her medicine in
honor of Our Lord’s thirst on the cross, or of Our Lady’s anguish when His
dead form was laid in her arms. And these were not unmeaning or merely
mystical phrases, to which the child could attach but little sense. They
were as household words to her; familiar to her childish thoughts from the
moment she could lisp, and woven into her life as the mysteries of the
faith only are in lands altogether Catholic. But nothing was to avail to
keep the pretty human flower from fading fast. And before a week had past
little Franceschiella had taken flight ere any of the ugliness of mortal
life had tarnished her sweet loveliness. They crowned her with roses, and
laid her, dressed in white, in the little wooden coffin filled with
flowers. Then they flung handfuls of colored sugar‐plums over her, and
placed a white camellia between her still red lips, saying, as they did
so, “She breathes flowers.” And so they carried her, in the open bier, the
uncovered, lovely face turned towards the heavens, and thus laid their
darling in the dark grave, but in the full hope of a bright resurrection.
The mother’s anguish was extreme. The Neapolitan women are an excitable
and highly nervous race; which arises, no doubt, in great measure from the
climate, as every stranger knows who finds the effect produced on his
nerves by this intoxicating atmosphere, which I have heard compared to
drinking champagne. As in the case of the peasantry much self‐control has
not been inculcated, the result is the frequency of terrible nervous
attacks producing convulsions—what we should probably designate as very
aggravated hysteria. After Franceschiella’s death the mother became
subject to these attacks, and seemed incapable of receiving any
consolation till heaven granted her the hope of again becoming a mother.
On the day we went to Portici the Vernons had hardly left her. And it was
very charming to see the Christian sense of equality on their side, and
the deference and gratitude shown them by their peasant neighbors on the
other.
But why did Frank so particularly ask why Elizabeth had not come, instead
of asking equally about Ida and Helen?
“You have, then, seen Medusa in the woods of Portici, Miss Jane?” said Don
Emidio suddenly to me, as we were driving home in absolute silence.
I looked up out of my brown study to find his eyes fixed upon me. “Do you
mean that I am changed to stone?”
“You are as silent as one.”
I laughed, and said, “At least, thank heaven, I am not _malheureuse comme
les pièrres_,(149) as the French say, though I may be as silent as they. I
did not, however, see anything in those dark ilex groves. I only suddenly
felt the awfulness of nature when you look at her in all her inexorable
beauty, with the rhythm of her apparently changeless laws and her sublime
disdain of man. She breathes and blossoms, she burns and thunders, she
weeps and smiles, utterly independent of us all. She knows no weakness; no
decay touches her but such as she can repair. She embraces death, that she
may produce life. She is ever fertile, ever lavish of herself and of her
gifts. But she never _cares_. Her mountains are granite even to the feet
of her Creator, as he climbs the heights of Calvary. Her noontide heavens
are brass to the cravings of man’s heart in his midday toil. She will not
pause in the twenty‐four hours of her inevitable day, though sundown
should bring death to one and despair to many again and again. She treads
her ever‐victorious march over ruined nations, buried cities, and broken
hearts. Oh! I could hate her—cruel power, terrible Pythoness; mocking me
with sunshine, scaring me with storms; ever rejoicing in her strength,
ever regardless of me. I cannot explain why these thoughts came to me, as
across the dark wood I traced the violet scars on awful Vesuvius, and
heard the low whispers of the wind in the long grass at our feet. Suddenly
faith seemed to die out of me. I forgot what I believe; and back came
trooping the pagan gods and the pagan world, with the strong feeling that
pantheism is the inevitable religion of the natural man, and that were I
not, thank God, a Christian and a Catholic, some form of it would grow
into my mind, as the impress left by the face of nature. For a moment a
dark cloud overshadowed me while I looked into the depths of the old pagan
belief; and it became so real to me that I shuddered. It has left me
silent; that’s all.”
“That’s all!” repeated Don Emidio with a sly smile, and imitating my voice
in a way that I half thought was rather impertinent. “Allow me to tell you
that I think that is a great deal. I do not imagine there are many young
ladies who come out for a day’s pleasuring to the gardens of Portici or
elsewhere, and indulge in such profound reflections as you do.”
I looked round, and saw that Frank and Mary were listening.
Frank said: “I believe Jane is quite right; and she has so well described
the effect which the aspects of nature produce on the mind of man that I
am convinced her words embody and express the riddle of the sphinx. The
laws of nature, taken without the doctrine of the Incarnation, which alone
is the keystone to the whole creation, form the enigma which is put before
us to understand and answer; failing which, we perish.”
“But all paganism was a falsified adumbration of the Incarnation; the gods
for ever assuming a human form, and the men becoming gods,” said Mary. “It
had that germ of truth in it which every system must have to be built at
all, no matter in what monstrous form. But it required revelation to tell
us that the ‘Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst men.’ And that alone
explains nature. She is the herald, the servant, or rather the slave, of
Him by whom and for whom all things were created. She speeds on her way in
the full vigor of those laws which were impressed upon her as she first
sprang from the hand of her Creator. She does not stop to share our griefs
or our joys, for she has a higher mission. But she has ceased to be
terrible to us, for faith has unveiled her face, and her harmonious forces
no longer scare us by their inexorable relentlessness. Her one mission is
to sing of God, and repeat to Time the refrain of Eternity.”
“Why, then, do we sometimes pine for her sympathy?” said I.
“Ah! Miss Jane,” exclaimed Don Emidio, “that is because we are for ever
looking for sympathy in the wrong place and from the wrong people.”
“Not always,” I replied. What made me say so? And why did Don Emidio
change color and look at me so fixedly? I was still wondering when we
reached home.
Mary and I were, as usual in the evening, sitting in the _loggia_. But
Frank was not with us, and I missed his genial talk and the odor of his
cigar.
“What has become of Frank this evening, Mary?”
“He has gone down to see the Vernons, and said he should persuade them to
come to us.”
“I hope he will succeed, for I do not like his spending his evenings away
from us. This is not the first nor the fourth time he has gone to
Casinelli as soon as he got up from dinner.”
“Ah! well, Jane, we must not be selfish. He has his life to live, as you
have yours; and I must expect one day to lose you both.”
I felt my heart stop, and then beat violently. What did Mary mean? And why
did some veil seem suddenly to fall from my eyes? It was some moments
before 1 spoke; and then I tried to say in my ordinary voice: “You have
some presentiment about Frank, Mary. What is it?”
“I have presentiments about both of you. But I do not want to force your
confidence.”
In a moment I was kneeling by her side. “Dearest Mary, do you suppose I
have any secrets from you? I tell you everything. If I do not tell you
more, it is because I know no more.” It was a sudden impulse, dim but
overwhelming, which made me add those strange words. Mary looked at me
intently. “Has it never struck you that Frank has a reason for going so
often to the Villa Casinelli, as Emidio has a reason for coming so often
here?”
Our eyes met for one moment. Then I hid my face in my hands, and burst
into tears.
“O Mary! what bitter‐sweet things are you saying? I do not want to lose
Frank, and I do not want to leave you, or to tread in other paths than
those I have known since my childhood. Are you sure it is so? Why have I
not known it till now? And even now I doubt.”
“That is because you were not in the least looking out for it, and were
absorbed in other thoughts, preventing that retrospection which would have
shown you that Emidio’s manner towards you has been intensifying with
every day of our stay here. And now what answer will you give when the
time comes?”
“Do not ask me yet, dear Mary. I must have leisure to reflect. At this
moment my heart is more full of Frank and Elizabeth than of anything
else.”
“Ah! my dear, he could not have made a wiser choice; she is a girl after
my own heart, so true, so tender, so good, and so utterly unselfish.”
“I only hope she will not spoil Frank.”
“I am not afraid of that, for she has a high sense of duty for herself and
for all who approach her.”
“And what is to become of Ida and of you, Mary?”
“I cannot think,” said Mary with a sweet, sad smile. “But I suppose we
shall both of us be happy in the happiness of those who are so dear to us.
It is worse for me than for her. She loses a sister. I lose a brother and
sister both.”
“You don’t know that, Mary. Nobody has proposed to me, and, if somebody
did, I am not certain what answer I should give.”
“But I am,” rejoined Mary.
I clapped my hand over her mouth, exclaiming, “Don’t say it, Mary dear.
Let me be free and feel free. I am frightened at the thought of promising
myself to any one, even where I may feel I could love.”
“Be free, dear sister, until the moment has come when you are sure it is
God’s will you should enter on another phase of woman’s destiny.”
“And may I never do so, except to accomplish his will!” I replied; and
with one long kiss on dear Mary’s brow I turned away, for we heard
approaching footsteps.
Frank and Elizabeth entered first. Ida and Padre Cataldo followed. I
looked to see if there were a fifth figure behind, and was rather relieved
to find Don Emidio was not there. I needed time to collect my thoughts
before I saw him again. Perhaps, after all, Mary was mistaken, and
attached more importance to this matter than was necessary. At any rate, I
was in no hurry to see Don Emidio again.
Frank seemed in high spirits, and Elizabeth looked serenely, calmly happy.
Her soft manner and her slow, graceful movements had long ago won for her
the nickname of Pussy; particularly as her velvet ways were not unmixed
with a playful slyness; so that from time to time she came out with some
remark far more acute and incisive that at first you would have given her
credit for. It was a relief to me when I heard Frank say that he had been
particularly anxious to induce Padre Cataldo to join us, because he had
promised to give us the account of an unfortunate man whose execution he
had attended some years ago in the course of his priestly ministrations.
Ida was looking as thoughtful as Mary; and I saw her eyes constantly
wandering to where Frank and Elizabeth were sitting together. We were all
too preoccupied to talk, but were very glad to listen to a long story.
“Frank tells us, reverend father,” began Mary, “that some twenty years ago
you attended the execution of a poor criminal. It would interest us very
much if you would give us the particulars. In what part of Italy did it
occur?”
“It took place in the Basilicata,” replied the father, “and the whole
province was filled with consternation; for the culprit did not belong to
the lower ranks of life, but was a gentleman by birth, education, and
position. He was the proprietor of a château and a considerable patrimony
near one of the towns of the province, and his crime was the murder of his
own brother. For many generations the family had had an undesirable
reputation for deeds of violence and sudden acts of rage or revenge. It
was not the first time that the history of the family chronicled some
bloody act; though it was the first time, at least in modern days, that
any member of this unfortunate house had suffered the utmost penalty of
the law. I am unable to tell you what gave rise to the violent feeling of
hatred which the elder brother entertained for the younger. There had been
many quarrels and disputes between them from their boyhood upwards. Frank
told me the other day you had been talking about the extraordinary power
the Italian, and especially the native of Southern Italy, has of following
out one design through all obstacles and difficulties, silently and
secretly, for years. If they possess this tenacity of character in the
search for wealth, I am afraid they have it equally in questions of
revenge. And for some reason or other this had been the sentiment of Conte
Falcone for his brother, Don Carlo. One day Don Carlo was found stabbed
through the heart, and suspicion immediately fell on Conte Falcone. He was
arrested, but the trial was a long one, and some months were passed in
collecting evidence. At length he was convicted, and from the moment of
his condemnation made no attempt to deny his guilt. At that time the
prison at Potenza, where he was to await his execution, was under the
direction of a Jesuit father, whose efforts were ceaseless for the good of
the unfortunate criminals under his charge.
“Naturally, Conte Falcone was a special object of care and anxiety, from
the enormity of his crime, and from the fact that his position and
circumstances are generally in themselves a guarantee against offences of
so deep a dye.